I have always maintained that I am a fundamentally lazy person. So it's a mystery to me that I do so much when my basic instinct is to do nothing at all. I spend a lot of time imagining how it would be to have a day, a week, a month, doing nothing. But then I remember that by 'nothing' I mean cooking and baking when I feel like it, reading as much as I like, watching films when it pleases me, talking to Simon and the children without actually moving too much, going for a stroll round a beautiful garden. And so on.
The trouble is that I don't allow myself many such days (but my current year plan does incorporate many more than I've had in the last few years) which is why yesterday's Bank Holiday Monday was such bliss. The children were happily back from Canada/Reading Festival/Wales/Italy/GCSE results. Simon was happily cycling some long distance. I was happily in the house and garden and it was warm and sunny and quiet; the perfect day for doing nothing at all.
I had a lovely time baking and cooking after two months' without a kitchen (the new one is almost finished but usable) and tested out all the appliances making cake, biscuits, quiche, pasta. I knitted with soft alpaca wool. I read Julia Child's recipes, about Julia Child and Julia Child's accounts of living in France (having just seen the film Julie and Julia I'm a newly, Childishly inspired). I listened to the fantastic Beatles programmes on the BBC Radio 2 Beatles Bank Holiday.
Later, we found an unlabelled bottle of Riesling in the wine-rack; we know it's from Dr Loosen but the classification and vintage were a mystery so the wine was an absolutely delicious, serendipitous surprise. And in the evening we basked in the warmth and late summer light with our glasses of wine, and did nothing. Well, my sort of nothing.
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