The Blind Truth

In the six months that I have been working form home, I have been meaning to secure my passwords, which are now abundant. I’m with an on line system. I can just about remember the password to get onto the site, but t’s so long ago since anyone explained how to use the system, that I will probably get locked out.

Getting locked out was once a job for a socially awkward man who arrived in a van that said “Locksmith” on the side. He knew how to gain entry to your house without a key. Getting “locked out” nowadays means hours on the phone to people who remind you that it’s your responsibility to make arrangements for the recovery of your passwords and that the measure they have put in place to lock you out of your bank account are for your own good. That said, it could be a technical failure at their end. If you lose your tempter at the thought of having slogged your guts out only to find you can’t get at your hard earned cash, the call is immediately terminated.

I bitterly regret my lack of attention to password management. I’ve locked myself out of my on line credit card account. In the time I have spent on hold, a locksmith could have fitted security locks to every point of entry to my house and probably stopped for a cup of tea and a blather about how long he spent on hold when he locked himself out of his on line bank account.

The dear old credit card company are trying their best At least, that’s what they say. They have repeatedly told me that they are “helping” a lot of people at the moment and will get me to their customer service team as quickly as they can. Unfortunately, wait times can be up to an hour.

Last week I finally got through to customer service who text me a special code. They did it several times but it never landed in time for me to enter this code within the allotted time. It wasn’t all their fault. I explained that I wasn’t visually equipped for fast IT manoeuvres. “That’s the system,” the gabbling Shona explained. We had a good tempered discussion about alternative ways to resolve the problem then the line went dead. It was #Argos all over again.

A wide experience of sitting on unanswered customer service calls by people who are “helping a lot of people” has led me to appreciate why being “helped” is such an infuriating experience and causes people to lose their temper.

I know better than to fly into a rage when I’m being “helped”. I also know that making clever comments at the expense of the person who is allegedly “helping” won’t help. What I have also come to learn is that “help” has an increasingly narrow definition. If you should happen to say, “I can’t see to do that at that speed,” you may as well have said “I hate helpful people like you”. Either way is a good way to get the phone put down on you.

If that happens you may feel the need to indulge in a bit of door slamming to let off steam. Just make sure that you have your keys in your hand. If you lock yourself out and you can’t get your credit card to work, you could be sitting on the doorstep for a very long time. Thank goodness for the Right Hand Neighbour who has risen to the challenge on the numerous occasions I have been too stupid to help myself and have left home with neither cash, credit card or keys.

Image is Siobhain Santry's drawing of a grey ribbon with The Blind Truth written on it.

I’ve been cursing the turn of the month and the annual arrival of bees up the nose which are a fair indication that the start of a winter cold is upon me.

Those bees really went for it. By day two they had made their way into ears and throat and had started to become a bit of a nuisance. No matter how much I coughed they weren’t going anywhere. They’d settled in to ensure a generous level of infection. It wasn’t honey.

By day four, doubt crept in and settled. Should I get a Covid test? Probably. Better to be safe than sorry. So I went on line and booked it. Within the hour I was at the gates of the walk in test centre.

It all went smoothly until it didn’t go smoothly. It didn’t go smoothly.
“Just follow the instruction,” she said.
“I can’t see them.”
“The thing is, I’m not allowed to help you. You have to do it yourself. Hang on.” Then she vanished.
“We don’t have any braille,” she said when she returned.
“I can’t read braille. I’m more of a large print girl myself.”
“I’m not allowed to help you and we don’t have large print. I don’t think it’s going to be possible to do the test.”
“Well how about you just talk me though it step by step.”
Hats off for an extremely efficient description at every step of the way.
Thumbs down for the assembled staff providing an audience and a site “Mighty” manager who was “just the contractor” and indifferent in his dismissal.

The advice leaflet that comes with the self-testing kit, at the walk in centre, helpfully suggests that if you are having a problem you should “use your vehicle hazard lights and wait for someone to come and assist you.” I should have brought one of the Grand’s “nee nah” toy cars. Maybe that’s where I went wrong. You can never lay your hands on toy with flashing lights when you need one.

While I slept, those bees got to work and there was no putting it off. I limbered up for a Vivaldi experience. A Vivaldi experience, is the hours that anyone calling their local GP practice will spend on hold as they snake their way up the telephone queue.

I’ll skip the bit about the Care Navigator and go straight to the Nurse Practitioner. If I thought I was having an off day, it was as nothing compared to the day she was having.

Once we’d got over the challenge of describing where to go and how to get there and settled on how she would be able to tell that I was me, we fixed a time for her to “have a listen.”

The rattle rattled and then I stuck my tongue out. “Oh yes, I can see that your tonsils are very red,” she said and took a step back.
“That’s odd. I don’t have any tonsils.”
“You must think me really unprofessional,” she said as more humiliations followed.

The mask of efficiency had slipped. What was revealed was a humanity in our exchange that altered the encounter from efficient coolness to warm, and from warmth to satisfaction.

I cannot help but reflect that so much of the way that we “care” for our health is, ironically enough, delivered without thought to our individual differences. Covid has put the tin lid on it. Government accepts the recommendations to make health services accessible to everyone, and that includes the Covid test. We need something beyond the “Mighty” roll out of testing.

Illness is hard enough without having to stand your ground. Not everyone is as bloody minded as me.

Image is Siobhain Santry's drawing of Anna/

The Flatmate (that was), is now up to her neck in Italian Politics and any chit chat has to be by appointment and booked ahead. We have a provisional date for a week on Sunday.

In the meantime, she has celebrated living half a century. Obviously, I was not invited, because of “IT” and the collapse of air travel. I sent her a phone charger and a packet of pants for her Birthday. These are things that I know she is always short of because, mysteriously, I am now short of them.

The Goddaughter was in my kitchen while I was wrapping up the parcel. I said to her, tongue in cheek, “I think anyone would be delighted to receive a phone charger cable and a packet of pants for their Birthday, don’t you?”
“No,” she said. “It’s a bloody awful.”
“What can you possibly mean?”
“I’m not being funny, but if it were me, I’d prefer Gucci to a packet of pants and a manky old phone cable.”
It was true. She was not being funny.
I tried to redeem myself, holding up a basket I had made especially for the Flatmate (that was) Birthday. The Goddaughter examined it and scowled in disapproval. “Definitely not Gucci.”

On my way back from the Post Office I sent the Flatmate (that was) a WhatsApp to explain to her that I’d sent her a present to make her laugh, but that it wasn’t Gucci.

A couple of weeks elapsed and I began to doubt the wisdom of my gift. Then a series of messages landed to say the present had arrived, and she had laughed and that the basket would live in her bathroom. This is inspired as I will never enter the realms of her bathroom so if she was horrified and feels the need to re-purpose the basket for firelighters, I will never know.

When I came home yesterday a letter from Italy was waiting for me. I couldn’t read it because it was handwritten and handwriting is not an easy thing to read. I sent a text asking if the flatmate (that was) could offer up a synopsis. She said I had better get someone else to read it to me. By great good fortune the honour fell to the Goddaughter as the first person across my threshold.

I have been the lucky recipient of a letter setting out the joy of friendship: a friendship that came about by a chance introduction in Sofia and has taken in various locations, quite a bit of salad, several editions of Newsnight and the Archers.

The Goddaughter was impressed with the sentiment, but wondered where Ambridge was and who Kirsty and Philip were. I explained that Philip is a crook and that the sooner Kirsty clicks on and dumps him, the better. She wondered about the BBC’s involvement in this scandal. I explained that neither Ambridge, Philip or Kirsty were real and that the Covid editions had been a poor show with neither the BBC or Philip coming out of this well. The Goddaughter was perplexed. In fairness to her I looked perplexed when she tried to explain the difference between beeswax polish and Mr Sheen. “You can’t use beeswax on that cupboard,” she’d told me. When I asked why, she rolled her eyes in disbelief that I, who have been polishing furniture since before she was born, could have such a gap in my understanding of household management. “You only use beeswax on certain types of wood,” she’d explained. “Not on that cupboard.”

The Goddaughter and the Flatmate (that was) have both enriched my life, in their words and in their deeds. I feel lucky in my friendships.

Image shows multiple red squares with 'The Blind Truth' written inside them. 

The Grand was having his morning nap. The Son was working away in another room and not to be disturbed. The DiL got out her laptop and was busy. I decided to take myself off for a walk.

I thought I’d go for a mooch, have a look at the house I lived in when I was a student. It was not how I remember it. I’d take that walk across the common that I used to do. It had changed. Not even the old laundrette where we sat for hours listening to the sound of our clothes on an endless spin cycle, was the same.

It began to rain so I went in search of a café I once frequented. It was there but not the same. At the counter I asked the server if he could bring the tea and the muffin to the table. He said he could. I paid with my card and missed. He gently took my hand and guided it to the point of the card reader bleeping and then let go. “I’ll bring it over,” he said. If you do a 180 degree turn there’s an empty table about two meters behind you.”
“Thanks, that’s great.”
As I put my card away I noticed a large sign on the counter. “experienced Barrister wanted. Apply within.” What did a coffee shop want with a Barrister?

At the table I picked at the muffin and played with the tea bag, moving it around in the cup. If this cafe had cause to revert to the law, this was a funny way of going about finding legal counsel. If it were me, I’d google it, or ask Siri to find me solicitors within a mile of here. Advertising seemed an unorthodox way of going about it.

“Is everything alright?” the server asked.
“Oh fine, lovely. Thank you.”
“It’s just that you look worried.”
“Just thinking.”
Now I could have taken the opportunity to ask why the café were advertising for a Barrister, but I didn’t. I finished my muffin and sipped at my tea. I had to spin it out because I could hear that the rain was still coming down outside. So there I sat, perpetually checking my phone and wondering how desperate the café’s legal conundrum was.

The phone rang. I saw a long since contacted name pop up “How lovely to hear from you, how are you?”
“The same as I was when I spoke to you earlier.” Without the benefit of detail, I’d guessed wrong.
“I thought you were someone else.” We chatted and then I reverted to my now cold tea. Outside, it was still raining.

Time moved on and there was no putting it off. I would have to brave the weather. “Let me get the door for you,” the server said.
“I’ve been putting it off because of the rain,” I explained.
” It’s not raining any more. It’s the background sounds we play. You’re not the first person to notice that. It’s not raining outside any more.”

As I walked down the road it occurred to me that they weren’t looking for a Barrister but a Barista; someone to make the coffee, from the Italian for bartender.

In my world, a Barrister is more expected than a Barista. That is how I made sense of a sign I could not clearly read. When the phone rang I saw Julia not Julie. Small visual mistakes can make the world of difference to how you see the world.

You would think I would have learnt, by now, that if something seems unlikely then it probably is. Hope continues to triumphs over experience.

Image is Siobhain Santry's drawing of a Barrister behind a café counter.

The Grand can now walk independently. I have been surprised that he can out manoeuvre those of us who have more than half a century of experience on him, and should be able to anticipate his every move. Apparently I can’t.

It’s all coming back to me now. When the Son began his life as a self propelled person I had the same trouble. I could never anticipate the direction he might dart off in if something caught his eye. He had the advantage of being a good few feet nearer the ground than me. What’s more, he had the edge over me when it came to spotting items of interest. It was hard enough to spot the Son let alone a possible trail of breadcrumbs.

Where I might be interested in popping into a shop to explore the beauty and tactile delights of a bit of hand thrown pottery, a one-year-old is much more interested in a well appointed manhole cover. If a determined toddler can’t manage to lift the lid to see what lurks beneath then never mind. There is always the gully that runs around the edge.

Manhole designs have changed over the years, but still they lend themselves to the accumulation of a range of potential treasures. Toddlers have not changed that much, but they too lend themselves to the accumulation of treasure. Both the Son and the Grand, seem to have been hard wired not to be able to resist a treasure hunt. So much the better if you can find treasure where no one else is prepared to go.

When it comes to a manhole cover the Grand is fearless. Quick as you like he’s back up on his feet and passing out fag ends to anyone who wants one. “Doit” he commands. I know that “Doit” doesn’t mean throw it as far away as you possibly can, but that’s what I do. “ewwee” I say, pulling a face. He does the same and then wipes the residue from the top of the manhole cover all over his other hand. This is made easier because it rained a bit earlier on in the day.

When the Son was small we were walking down the road when he suddenly bobbed down to retrieve a used prophylactic. “That’s a useful little bag,” he said, handing it to me. It might have been once but was not destined to be so again.

“Now you may need to keep an eye open for treasure,” The DiL said. He likes bottle tops and acorns and everything goes in his mouth.” She was right.

Thanks to the Grand I now know that you could probably play a game of Twister on the proliferation of bottle tops lying about on Tooting Bec common. You are never more than a stretch away from one. I know this because the Grand and I, made very slow progress on our walk as he stopped to pick them up. I drew the line at abandoned bags of dirty nappies. The acorns got stashed in my pocket.

The desire to be a good enough parent was as nothing compared with the desire to be a good enough grand parent. In the scheme of things does it matter if I can’t spot fag ends and bottle tops and I’m not much cop at Twister?

There is always a way round these things. I can turn it into a game. Or, I can say “No” with the most serious expression I can muster. I could throw a Granny tantrum. My fall back position is to use the had sanitizer that would appear to be one of the Granny perks of a global pandemic.

Image is Siobhain Santry's drawing of Anna walking with a small child, the child pulling behind them a big recycling bin. 

The Sister has a wonderful garden. It’s awash with colour and raspberries. It’s full of interesting quirks: Planting, statues, places to sit, bee hives and fruiting trees.

We enjoy a stroll. She tells me what she’s been up to in the garden and I throw out the odd comment. “That’s nice. I like that,” I say encouragingly.
“That’s a lump of concrete I dug up.”
I’m not deterred from commenting on her efforts even though I seldom have quite enough information to make an informed comment.
“That’s interesting. Are those a couple of stone lions standing guard to the artichokes?”
“that’s the legs to the garden bench.”
She’s only laughed once when I asked “what is that? Some kind of sculpture?”
“It’s a plant and it’s dead.”

The Sisters’ garden is a place we sit and drink tea and blather together. She’s quite accomplished at blathering as well as gardening, and she makes a decent cup of tea.

After she’d made the tea and while she was blathering I began to consider the beautiful wave of pale grey blue under her garden table. What a good idea to let the grass grow and enjoy the impromptu wave of blue flowers.
“I really like what you’ve done under the table,” I said.
“Thanks,” she said. “It’s a work in progress. I just haven’t got round to finishing it”.
“You don’t need to do anything. It looks great, and it means you don’t have to move the table to cut the grass.”
“Of course I move the table to cut the grass.”
Generally, it’s best to stop digging if you feel yourself sliding into a hole. I shut up and had to consider the possibly that I had made an assumption too far. A moment of reflection would surely reveal a route to discovering the mystery of the blue grass under the table, without making myself look a total idiot.

After a bit more tea and a lot more blathering I asked her how she did it.
“It’s modelled on a polystyrene manikin I got from the dump.”
How she got from a polystyrene manikin to a mist of blue flowers under the table was a bit of a mystery. We were looking at the same thing and saw two different scenes. We were talking at cross purposes. I gave up. “What is that under the table?”

When the nights were dark, the Sister had started to make a sculpture out of chicken wire. She had used the polystyrene manikin as her template. The gentle wave of blue was, her abandoned chicken wire sculpture of a female torso, who now lay recumbent under the garden table, rocking about in the breeze.

A closer inspection revealed that rust had set in to her work of art. The polystyrene manikin, had been mauled by dogs and lay mortally wounded on its side. The Sisters’ planting is clever but she had never considered the possibility of letting the grass grow under the table.

Next year, on the first decent day, when we’re eating our lunch outside, busy scratching and slapping our ankles between bites of food and the irritating jaw of insects, the sister may explain that it was my idea to let the grass grow, but obviously not a good one.

The Sisters’ garden is a triumph. She knows a considerable amount about gardening. I know very little about it and that’s reflected in the endless varieties of geraniums that have found a spot to flourish in my own patch.

The Sisters’ garden may be the gold standard of gardens, but at least mine is not littered with bodies masquerading as clever planting.

Image is Siobhain Santry's drawing of a grey ribbon with The Blind Truth written on it.

We’re living through Goldilocks weather. It’s been too hot to sleep. Then it was too wet for my tomatoes to ripen, too cloudy for the runners to flower. The plums at the top of the garden are now looking glistening pink, but even the satisfaction of an endless supply of plumb jam has limits. I’m restless. All of this against a backdrop of staying at home. The daily constitutional is getting to be a chore. What do you do to pep it up a bit?

I take every opportunity that comes my way. I’ve tried the zoom dinner party. I’ve got a film list I’m working my way through. I’ve extended my reading into new territory. All of this is well and good, but what I really crave is something a little more visceral: something that offers a less thought through reaction and just brings a moment of joy.

The God Daughter has been going to the beach. “Are you mad?” I asked. It wasn’t a question but more of a statement of fact. “Why would you want to sit in a traffic jam and compete for space with thousands of other people and their litter?”
“No no no,” she said, wagging her jewel encrusted fingernail at me. “I go when it’s empty. I go before they have even thought of getting out of bed.”
“Night swimming?”
“Sort of. We leave at five…am,” she said. “you can come if you like.”
“You’re on.”

It was like being in Varna. I woke up. I put my swim suit on. Granted, eighteen degrees is not the same as August on the Black Sea but some things were the same. The God Daughter was in full regalia, nails sparkling as she swung the steering wheel into action. “Have you got your swim suit on?”
“Course not.” She looked horrified at the prospect. I just sit down. The boys like to go in. You go in if you want. Far too cold for me.”
“I once swam in an arctic lake,” I explained, then realised that I was now fully committed.

At the beach, there was no one about, unless you count the volunteer litter picker who had been hard at it since before my alarm clock had gone off. “Nippy,” he commented, pulling down his woolly hat.
“You going in then?”
“In a minute.” I said, bracing myself.

Taking the plunge, the cold water woke up all my senses. Being lifted up by the waves was a thrill. Swimming against the tide was exhilarating. How often do you have a beach to yourself? I could swim for an hour in the knowledge that no one was going to crash into me. I was not going to garrotte a small child over the head in an act of front crawl. It felt more than good.

“I’m terribly sorry,” a small voice next to me said.
“No I’m sorry.” I swam left.
The small voice swam right. We practically collided. Then I went right and she went left. How is it possible that in the expanse of the English Channel I’d managed to crash into the only other swimmer who couldn’t see where she was going?

Here we were, two middle aged women, splashing about in the certain knowledge there was no one to collide with only to collide with each other.

The sun was up and the beach was filling up, so we packed up and left.

“You’ve got loads of room Love,” the God Daughter scoffed at a woman gingerly manoeuvring her way out of a tight spot in the car park. I like to think the other swimmer was the passenger in that car, smiling like me.

Image shows multiple red squares with 'The Blind Truth' written inside them. 

The Toad is right up there with the viper when it comes to expressions of morality in literature. He’s the method by which feminine goodness is put to the test and the punishment for mean or shrewish behaviour. What then, is the meaning of this?

I like to sit in the garden when it’s dark. The cloak of darkness brings privacy and I enjoy that moment when the sun fades and a feeling of stillness begins to make its presence felt. There is a big old rat that takes short cuts across the garden. I’ve never seen it but others have. The rat doesn’t bother me and I don’t bother the rat. So, when I heard a rustling in the shrubbery I assumed that was just Ratty making his nightly foray into next doors garden. It was not.

Tilting an ear for clues as to what that was, lurking in the undergrowth, a toad hopped onto the seat next to me and settled itself in. I knew it was a toad because I had initially mistaken it for a fallen leaf. Putting my hand down to sweep it away was how the toad and I became acquainted.

Acquainted might be a bit of a stretch. It was more of a blind date moment when you suddenly realise that you had better make your escape, by any means possible, for fear of impending physical proximity. I fled inside, but as I was closing the kitchen door, the toad made a dash for it and vanished into, or under, the sofa.

The Right Hand Neighbour was away so I needed a plan. I am not the first woman to have wondered how to dislodge a toad from the sofa but I might be the first one to have done it with Tupperware. With little chance of being able to see my unwelcome guest, I threw down Tupperware containers in the hope of entrapment, and waited for the sound of toad against plastic. Not on the first attempt, it has to be said, it worked. Once caught, I threw him out.

Cleaning up the mess was not the end of the matter. The toad was throwing himself against the door and was still at it when I switched off the lights and went to bed.

It’s habitual, to throw open the kitchen door first thing in the morning. In came the toad. It was no good trying to deter him. Once a toad commits to a course of action he has no choice but to see it through. He simply doesn’t have the means to reverse, but he did have all the toad moves. Not even Tupperware could do it this time. What was I to do? Should I call for assistance and change the locks?

I’ve been vigilant. I didn’t want to live with a toad but that toad now makes himself known whenever he gets a chance.  He’s leapt courgettes, scaled tables, settled on benches and even tried to share a glass of water.

No matter how revolted I am at the prospect of the companionship of a toad, he’s ground me down. Unless I stay inside with the doors locked or can impose upon the Right Hand Neighbour to lie in wait, I’m stuck with that toad.

I cannot help but wonder if, in the telling of this tale, it should be woven as a test of femininity, in which it took a toad to show me the error of my selfish ways. Or, is it simply that if you can’t reliably see that toad you are probably stuck with him?

The toad has moved in. I’m thinking of naming him Roger or Trevor. That’s another story.

Image is Siobhain Santry's drawing of Anna siting on her coach with a big green toad lounging next to her. 

The topiary at the top of my garden is definitely due a hair cut. I’ve resisted doing it myself because a lack of three dimensional vision has lead me to the conclusion that I have no skills in this department. Months of covid lockdown have lead me to the same conclusion about my own hair. The only thing that I can say about cutting my own hair is that it would be shorter.

Some relief has come about, over recent days, at the thought of a garden that is running wild, inhabited by an owner with wild hair, once clipped to within an inch of their lives. It has come about because I lost my reading glasses. I lost them without noticing, which shows how much use they are.

I have been looking for my readers, for over a week now. I have looked in the dishwasher. I have done a meticulous finger search of nearly ten days of household waste. I have been through the mounting bags of charity shop donations as well as the ironing, the washing and my phone book, asking anyone who has dropped off food at my door, or sat in my garden for the proverbial two-yard cuppa, to check they have not taken them away with them.

Relief was at hand. Not the glasses, but the availability of a hair dressers appointment and gardening assistance. I’ve waited for months and both came along on the same day.

“Ewe. I’ve found a pair of glasses in your flowerbed,” said the garden support team. “Are they yours?”

I must have lost them leaning over a plant I inspected, working out whether or not I should pull it up and consign it to the recycling, or water it. The blind truth of the matter is that I didn’t notice the scattering of spectacles in the flower bed and sprinkled them with a light dusting of mushroom compost that had to go somewhere because the bag burst.

One look at the glasses told me they were beyond redemption. Getting a replacement pair is proving harder than expected. I need an up to date prescription. That is, I don’t need an up to date prescription as it makes no difference to me. The Opticians seem to think it’s important. A quick e-mail revealed that not only was my Optomitrist on his hols but he’d gone to Slough for his respite. On his return he tells me that my prescription is in storage in Coventry and not to bother asking why. I don’t.

When I explain to my local high street provider that I don’t need an eye test, my ten-year-old prescription will do, no one rings me back. I suspect they suspect I’m calling from #Down The Line. Their fear of making a fool of themselves in front of Radio 4 listeners trumps further enquiry. Who in their right mind would buy reading glasses with an out of date prescription?

A good dousing in #Fairy Liquid and hot water has eliminated most of the mushroom compost staining. The blur is much the same as it ever was, apart from the large blob in the middle of the left lens, so I have started wearing the readers again, at a tilt to counter balance the blob.

In the drive for better looking glasses I lost my chance to book a hair appointment.  I can probably do without one, but unlike the prescription for my reader, there is always room for improvement. I will be nothing if not persistent. The garden is looking beautiful, although not by my hand.  

Image is Siobhain Santry's drawing of Anna's face. 

If you attend one of the great masked balls of Venice, its said that you will not recognise your own reflection in the waters of the Grand Canal. With anonymity assured, anything goes. So the question is, dare you enter the world of masquerade and let go of your inhibitions from behind the secrecy of a sophisticated and stylish face covering?

The rules of social distancing forbid such cavorting. Anyway, the three-layer paper mask, in fetching medical blue or gorgeous medical white, does not offer the seductive powers of carnival and is more asphyxiation than intoxication. On the grounds that it has to be done and you should probably try everything once, I’ve been giving it a go.

The on line advice is that you should wear a mask unless it obscures your residual vision. Sitting in my kitchen it didn’t. The on line advice is also to practice walking about at home to get used to it. I did it for a week and every time I moved my head I couldn’t help but wobble. Even though I didn’t fancy a lie down, I felt it may be forced upon me with every step. So, I had a sit down and a think. This was a job for the long cane.

My cane technique is improving with the demands of Covid. The cane is like getting your head round your computer. You might not fancy it, but the more you flex the muscle the better it feels and the more in command you are of what you are doing.

Off I set in the quest for the veg that I had forgotten to order on line. The heavens opened and by the time I arrived at the point of “are you the end of the queue?” I doubt I was recognisable to even the most ardent of carnival goer. On the up side, this was life and I was living it.

“Next customer,” came the command from oblivion.
“Do you mean me?”
“I need you to go this way?”
“Which way do you mean? Can you say the way?”
“That way?”
“This way or that doesn’t mean anything to me. I can’t see.”
“Over there.”
“Hello,” I drawled, waving my cane about.
“Next customer.”
“OK, I’m coming in.”
“Unbelievable,” came a low murmur from behind me. She did not mean me.
“I’m turning right for tomatoes,” I bellowed and pressed ahead.
Amazing what I find I am prepared to do, and broadcast about, in my love of a baby plumb.

I needn’t have bothered with any of this, because round the corner, John and Bill, and their veg, stall were back. I knew because I heard John shout at me. “Didn’t the cough carry you off?”
“Not dead yet then?” I batted back.
“Have a tomato Love.’
I did and then I bought another half kilo for good measure.

Hardiness is a quality that I temporarily misplaced last Saturday in the rain. I’m taking the view that, even with a cane, the wobble may not be a price worth paying if I have a hope of remaining upright. I’ve been on line again. I’ve downloaded the badge that says “I am exempt from wearing a face covering.” I hope I won’t need to use it, but if John and Bill ever run out of tomatoes, I might just need it.

The weight of all those tomatoes impeded my usual desire for a walk home. I had a sit down on the bus and wore my face mask all the way. While I wasn’t moving I wasn’t wobbling. Good job it wasn’t standing room only.

This might not be Venice, but a mask is simply a must if you can.

Image shows multiple grey squares with 'The Blind Truth' written inside them.