Late night or early morning
I managed to get back to my usual routine yesterday, but it’s already gone out of the window. Yesterday: up early, a couple of hours of work before sunrise, out at 6.15 for a walk up the hill (favourite image, a goat in a tree), back down again and full of energy, chopped down some new growth of fig tree at the front of the house. We had the thing poisoned last year as it broke our sterna with its roots, but some new parts are coming back. As I was doing it, a neighbour came out and said he’d just poisoned the leaves, so no need to cut the branches. I’d just done it all, intending to do a proper job after the summer where you drill holes in the branches and put the poison in that way, but he does it by spraying the leaves. Turns out it had also damaged his sterna and the one under the house in front of us, so he will see to the rest of its demise. Good news for us.
After that, I was able to get back to this book I am trying to write. It’s not been an easy one and has been very off-and-on what with heat, visitors, the summer generally and not having a clear idea what the thing is about. I am now three chapters from the end of a very dodgy first draft and need to get it out of my head so I can leave it alone and see it in a clear light, starting again in October. That done, lunch done, piano playing for an hour, some socialising and an early night.
Today: awake at 1.00 a.m. and I didn’t want to be. Mosquitoes, mainly. Sat on balcony to enjoy the hits from the 70s and 80s from the harbour and read the news which becomes every more disturbing day by day, before hitting the keyboard for as long as I can before I go back to sleep on the sofa – if I can, and if the cicada right outside the house will let me. Unlikely I will feel up to my walk later, so there goes my routine, but you never know. So, I’ll be off to start the day now, or finish the night, whichever it is.
