Sunday Afternoon Procrastination Club
While my other half stands on the touchline of a rugby field many miles from home watching our middle daughter's latest attempt to injure herself before school on Monday, I'm sitting in the warmth of the junk room at home, waiting for files to download, and wondering where the day went.
I haven't wasted the ENTIRE day – just most of it.
This morning I was up at a reasonable time, fulfilling a promise to our eldest to take her out for breakfast. There is a cafe about half a mile away that we have walked to several times recently – they cook basic food, and make wonderful coffee. There is a reason for going out for breakfast, rather than buying some bacon from the supermarket – it's an excuse to get Miss 19 to leave the house. I'll chalk up the expense of breakfast out as “investment in mental health”.
The cafe is a converted industrial unit – nestled beneath a martial arts gym, and a next door to a car servicing place. Long wooden tables stretch throughout, with a mixture of chair designs dotted around. It has been surprisingly busy during the times we have visited – filled with people from all walks of life – although thankfully few are similar to the man that sat opposite myself and Miss 14 in Starbucks yesterday.
He strode through the doors, looked at the empty side of the table opposite us, and asked if he might share the table – I smiled, and said “of course”. He hung his waxed jacket on the chair, dropped copies of the Times, the Telegraph, and the Financial Times on the table, and then placed his flat cap and reading glasses on top before joining the queue for coffee. I smiled, and wondered if anybody could appear more like a wealthy conservative if they tried – I wondered if his wife might be in a nearby clothes shop for women of a certain age, then castigated myself for making presumptions. He might be a batchelor, or a widower. He might have even bought all the right wing newspapers in order to use them for firelighters. You never know...
We got home from the cafe just in time to wave goodbye to the rest of the family as they headed to Rugby – not before my other half could give me another errand though – to pay the outstanding balance on a Christmas lunch reservation. We are going “out out” for Christmas lunch this year – to a pub in town. It costs quite a lot, but we have realised over the years that spending time together is far more important than turning our kitchen upside down for the entire day, and spending hours cooking, peeling vegetables, washing up, and so on. We put the money aside months in advance, and then look forward to getting up late, and walking into town on Christmas morning.
(Who am I kidding – the kids will be up at ridiculous o'clock – they always are)
So anyway. I walked the mile into town, paid the balance, and then walked home again. Now I'm sitting in the junk room, typing this, and figuring I should really go and draw the curtains, switch lights on, and warm the house up. It's only 4pm and it's almost dark outside.
p.s. other than this, I still haven't written anything remotely “creative”. I need an intervention.