One of these mornings you’re gonna rise up singing.
Yes, you’ll spread your wings, and you’ll take to the sky.
But ’til that morning, there’s nothing can harm you.
Gershwin
In my last piece I wrote how being away with the faeries led to the fall – not into the devil’s hands but a rabbit hole. This morning it was an early start to go and have a chat with my doctor, a charming lady who listens – does make a change after the last few weeks trying to get ear people to listen. Ironic that ENT ain’t listeners…
You may have read my account of previously beating Diabetes with diet. What goes around comes around and for the last 50 days I have been focussed on doing it by diet again having been a little too self-indulgent. I have successfully lost half a stone by changing my diet completely to decrease my intake of pills, and this appointment was arranged in response to two letters and a phone call harassing an unresponsive practise administration to discuss my health again. The fall I just threw into the discussion…
I think the doc was impressed by my figures. I weigh and record my weight every morning and my blood pressure every third day. Losing 9 pounds and keeping BP where it should be looked good and so we went through the drug reduction process. Blood tests are arranged along with some test related to my hopefully long gone cancer. I foolishly named a weight target to be achieved by my birthday, so I’m on the hook now. The conversation was warm, friendly and positive leaving me feeling good, so I went for a hobble along the seafront.
The delight of living in a small town, not overrun by tourists who just pass through on their way to walk the Seven Sisters, where people say good morning to each other and smile a lot, put a spring in my hobble. A sea breeze and a sky filled with colour and pattern put a song in what’s left of my heart. Leaving my cane in the car I limped along. I am turning into a garrulous old man. This must irritate people as my hearing aids are not terribly effective right now so conversations are even more bizarre than some of those I had with students when teaching life drawing.
One young man tugging on his mother’s arm was regaled with the story of Colonel Cody and his man-carrying kites as I suggested to his mother she might find it easier flying him above on a long rope – look up Cody and his British army kite system, it will amuse you and my knowing it won an international design prize when it was used as a part of a conference hall lighting system, so maybe as a way of peacefully walking a small boy it’s not that farfetched given sea breezes like this mornings? But I digress – you have to accept it, it’s a part of those disjointed conversations
I stopped to discuss the wisdom of crows with a man feeding them nuts, which he does on the prom daily, whilst saying good morning to his pooch. Then on towards the bright light in the east below the layers of cloud. To the west the ugliness of modern accretions on Brighton’s seafront backstopped the view behind Newhaven’s lighthouse. No backward ferry this morning to glean golden on the grey surf but sunlight backlit the drying wings of the cormorants on their rock fastness, now free of the swirling kittiwakes who have moved on to other quarters for the winter.
I suspect the artist colony in Cornwall was as much attracted by cheap property (not these days of course) as it was by the quality of the light, because that quality of light is here too on mornings like this. Art money is a struggle to come by and we all like to focus on our art where the living is easy.
My physical decay doesn’t remove the simple pleasures of limping along the prom looking to strong horizons lit by Ra and decorated with clouds in all forms – puffs, galleons, layers and lacy curtains over a range of blues. The sea is supposed to have been the birthing liquid from which first life crawled out onto land. The waves pulse, tides rise and fall with the orbits of Ra and his goddess the moon. And I am grateful to fall onto my car seat when my limping and hobbling demands an end… and coffee…
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