I've been a bit down, recently. There's this loose idea running around in my head like an excited puppy, knocking things over and widdling in corners. Two years ago I had a heart attack in January. Last year I had one in February. This year...
.
It's daft, and I know it's daft, but that puppy just won't sit still. Every time I bend down to pick something up, every time I fill a shovel or drive a spade into the ground the puppy is always there, reminding me that this could be the thing that's going to kill me. It's really rather disconcerting.
I was noodling on this quite deeply the other day. I usually listen to podcasts or audiobooks or lectures while I'm working but on this day I left the ear buds out. The day was calm and sunny, but cool, and the birds were in fine throat. I tried to listen but was working in the front garden by the main road so their concert intermittently disappeared under the weight of a tractor's growl, a truck's roar or a motorbike's squeal. And I grumbled and wished the traffic would dry up so I could listen to the birds and not have to think about the fact that this impending bad mood could be the bad mood that's going to kill me.
It felt like a tipping point, nudging me into the darkness, because suddenly, on top of my frustrations, bad mood and impending death, my back ached, my nose bubbled and my fingers glowed with cold.
The Spent Twins chose that moment to sweep down the path in their precious 4x4. Zoe and Chloe Spent live on the farm in a small and extremely cluttered caravan. Eroded by life, they move through it as if shouldering into the teeth of a gale, pulling various damages and infirmities after them. Their faces, non-identical but disturbingly close, are so care worn as to be practically unreadable. They look like they've been helping Sisyphus. And they sometimes pick me stuff up from Iceland.
Zoe's window sweeps down and she glares out at me. "There's some strawberries in the 'fridge for you," she says. She hacks a glob of phlegm out of the window, sweeps it closed and then powers the precious 4x4 onto the main road and away.
The birdsong returned, for a while, before being destroyed by a rasping red delivery van. I found myself wrestling with a stubborn root that just might prove to be...
I sighed. Nothing had changed. Except... Except now there were strawberries.