I’ve spent the last day and a half adding a grey wood stain accent on the oak coloured fencing’s periphery – Completion of this work finally concluding the week long process of protecting the garden timber. A task made considerably longer and significantly more frustrating by enforced breaks due to sporadic rain showers.
Anyhow, it’s all done now and it has to be said, I’m delighted by the enhanced aesthetics this accent provides. Being a fella with a hybrid Geordie and Yorkshire dialect, I’d go as far as saying it’s probably the most convincing accent I’ve ever produced.
To clarify, my twang sits on a regional pronunciation spectrum which varies depending on whose company I’m in. When speaking with buddies from the north east of England, where I was raised, my dialect errs more towards the Geordie side. All other occasions, venturing more towards the Yorkshire spectrum, my birth county and residential domain for the last 25 years.
Anyway, enough of my dialect dialectic.
On Tuesday, I received my first three hours respite from being my mum’s full-time carer. An afternoon, where showers thankfully held off, which saw me go for a wander with a friend and her beautiful lab/retriever Coco.
This stroll taken amongst Rothwell Park’s pleasant flora and fauna, affording a long awaited catch up, an ice cream, along with sporadically coaxing the inquisitive canine away from a riverbank edge. Having once having to rescue her after a giddy dive into another park’s duck pond, I wanted to avoid a repeat aquatic salvage mission.
During the meander around Rothwell Park, yours truly learned that Coco doesn’t like ice cream (or she wasn’t on Tuesday, anyhow), Meaning next time I dog sit the adorable pooch at least I’ve located a foodstuff she won’t fleece me out of with her shameless sad eye treatment.
That being said, as I’m not six years old, I’m unsure whether I want to survive on an ice cream diet for two weeks! Subsequently, if I want to eat healthily during her tarry, I’ll have to identify further fodder she’s unlikely pilfer with the use of emotional blackmail.
It was good to catch up with Cokey’s mum, Sam, who’s recently sold her home and is looking for a coastline property in North Wales. Seeking to swap her adorable canine’s daily roll in a local park sandpit for horizontal pirouettes on Talacre Bay beach. An aspiration not dented by the fact it’ll morph her bed sheets into a grade 40 piece of sandpaper.
Thursday’s proved to be a highly productive day. As well as completing my fencing accent, I’ve undertaken two loads of laundry, mowed the front lawn, made breakfast/lunch/dinner for my mother and me, tidied out the garage and penned this blog (well nearly).
I also ventured to a coffee house at the White Rose Shopping Centre where prior to COVID’s unwanted arrival yours truly tended to write these daily pièces littéraires. Meeting, once again, baristas who I’d not seen for over a year who greeted me like a returning prodigal son. Individuals whose splendid customer service, friendly smile and turbo charged Americano, which I’d missed during lockdown.
It’s now early evening, these paragraphs delayed by today’s higher priority tasks. As I write, my landscape’s that of torrential precipitation and plant swaying zephyrs. This heavy rain providing a calming affect, in association with watering my recently planted shrubs and plants.
Hopefully, with all of the major garden work being completed at least these monologues won’t be as rushed an as infrequent of late. A far from ideal environment in which to wax lyrical.
Always seeking positives from any day, after a year without, it was truly wonderful to sit in a coffee house with an Americano……. Vive la différence existentielle!
