In recent months, I've been making a habit of going for a pre-breakfast walk each day, usually for just half an hour during work week and a bit longer on weekends. Now the days are steadily becoming shorter, and cooler, it's not as easy to get out the front door. :) Still, it's another good chance to see, on a daily personal level, what's happening in my part of the city, and also daydream a bit, of course.
Although nothing dramatic happened on my early-morning walk today, there were plenty of signs that life had already started in the suburb:
- newsagency and bakery crew at the local shops were already getting their business activities sorted before opening hours
- a few of the regulars walking their dogs
- early-morning joggers
- the glow of a big tv screen under a half-drawn blind
- cats sitting on windowsills
- first customers at the newsagency and bakery that hadn't opened at start of my walk
- some council workers starting up their leaf-blowing machines
-and some other signs: on a metal pole, a handwritten sign for a garage sale (may have been on weekend just past); half-finished landscaping in a front yard; today's newspaper on a lawn; a building site before the 'brickies' and other tradesmen had arrived.
One of the classic books that relied heavily on the accumulation of daily observations was Rev. Gilbert Whites' The Natural History of Selborne. Written in the late eighteenth century by a priest in a village, it has now become a valuable record of pre-industrial England, including weather conditions, local people, natural landscapes and flora and fauna of the time -many varieties of them are now extinct or endangered.
Readers: if anything really unusual happened on or just after your morning walk today, in any part of the world, please feel free to post a comment.
And now I'd better get ready for work. :)
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2 comments:
I don't want to fill people's lives with work related stuff...but...today I was bought lunch by the last remaining Sandakan survivor. Obviously he wasn't dragged along for the 'death march', he was allowed out of the camp with a handful of other officers before the march commenced. This gentleman is a living treasure, and a bloody good bloke to boot. We talked about everything but the time he had there. He is incredibly generous, interesting and has asked me to start up a correspondence with him - which I will gladly do.
It only just sank in when you wrote about life and the activities of the morning. Thanks Tim, continue to avoid the bitter animosity that I drool...
Thanks, Jum! Looks like you had a fascinating chance encounter with history, and as a total bonus was lucky enough to meet a great person who survived it as well as being part of it. It's one of the real privileges of the museum work we both do that we can meet such people and hear their stories.
I was never really cut out to be an Angry Young Writer or a sulphur-sneezing speech fiend [just kidding!], so will resolve to be content with relaxed morning walks and mild-mannered blogging. :)
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