Pied wagtails (this one posed at Groombridge Place) are the prettiest of birds, which please, not least, by their swooping flight.As I sit on a bench outside the chemist in Mount Pleasant, the shadows of the plane tree leaves above my head are waving and quivering on the pavement at my feet.
"Have a good weekend," people still say to me sometimes. And it is with a mixture of regret and pleasure, when, as someone says it to me this morning, I realize that "weekend" means very little to a person, who does not occupy himself during the week with anything that he does not do at the weekend. Those 14 hour-days of commuting and meetings, correspondence and telephone calls, had the merit , I suppose, of giving a meaning to "weekend", just as walking easily, gives a meaning to recovery after suffering from a broken ankle.
2 comments:
I could go further. A crusty retirer finds weekends a penance, being required to share the pavement with other people. You will not be at all surprised to know that I reserve garden work for the weekend. And there's some waiting at this very minute.
You're right about pavements overflowing at the weekends with flaneurs and such like. But close examination of the problem tells us that most of the pavement space is taken up by pensioners, who, as the late Auberon Waugh once mischievously observed, "walk four abreast on the pavements of Taunton", and present an insurmountable obstacle to spry and busy younger people trying to go about their business.
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