Roads to Joy

So I was out in my dressing gown at 7am yesterday morning, dropping a tray of cat litter into the bin before the dustmen arrived, and therefore I managed to catch a glorious sunrise which did indeed presage a brilliantly sunshiny day.

But I’d not have seen it if it weren’t for the cat. How strange is that then? These familiars are good for something, I guess, if only for the unexpected joy of being there to catch the sun coming up into the heavens above. Though when they wish, cats can be good at snuggling into a warm lap and making the lap’s owner feel needed. New dawns, new days ahead.

As I retreated back into the warmth, however, I clocked a pale blue flower opened in one of the front beds that line the gravel path to our front door. On a chilly morning, this sight too was unexpected, but no less delightful for that. But Greater Periwinkles are hardy evergreen shrubs, robust enough to withstand the cold, and still bloom in the early spring.

Many more wonders of the blooming variety are expected here throughout the garden as the seasonal dance commences. But what we have to do is organise the plant pots in the back patio, so that there’s a semblance of conscious order about the place, rather than the helter-skelter distribution currently languishing around and about the ancient stone steps that are unsafe to venture upon. A job, a kindly and not too onerous job, for the oldies to potter away at!

Simple pleasures, simple joys then, to populate our days. Speaking of populations, I have a new, extremely simple task set for an assuredly delightful afternoon this coming Sunday, which is Mothering Sunday in the UK, as it turns out. We’ve got tickets booked for a Town Hall high tea and vintage tea band concert, with a glass or two of prosecco for those of us who are not such keen tea drinkers, and we’re sharing a table with a young family and their six year old son. If he happens to be bored in adult company, I shall quietly open up my 24 slot plastic box full of LEGO™ mini-figures, two per slot, and see if he’ll be as interested as our grandson has been in changing their costumes and heads about. With some fifty mini-figures, there should be lots of characters to create an intriguing table tableau, and then we’ll see where his imagination takes him. What stories for his characters might he make up?

At one point, I had put together a complete toy family: grandparents; adult children; partners; grandchildren; neighbours. All dressed up in recognisable LEGO™ block accoutrements so that they were representative of us. But childish imagination soon put paid to that conceit, and everybody’s mixed up now! Time for another child to have a go at rearranging things, I reckon.

New days can bring new joys of delight, if one only looks.