Random Harvest 7: Colds, Crochet and Cars

(A rather cryptic sounding post coming up, but you can blame my cold!)

The last two weeks have been comprised of my having been deprived of the company of my beloved red car after it needed some reconstructive surgery doing on it after a bump, then I caught a nasty cold when my hubby’s virus decided to grace me with it presence, and hence reduced to a zombie-lie state with social commitments cancelled, deciding to at least urge on my crocheted wall hanging number 2 to get within sight of its finishing line. I did get some writing done, and I’m almost at the stage of at last writing the climactic scene with a little help from my muse giving me some useful stage directions from the wings – you know, some great plotting solutions that you think, YES! Perfect! Cheers! and wonder how you ever had the cheek to think that creatives harping on about muses were exaggerating at best or deluded at worst ;>)

So a seasonal random harvest time for me and for many of us when we’re catching other people’s colds or queuing up for the flu jab, while the darkness descends all too soon in the day to reset our diurnal rhythms for the coming winter. There’s a wind-tossed apple tree in my back garden that has dumped more apples in a series of ‘drops’ onto the lawn than ever before in the history of me and my hubby living here, while the Christmas decorations are invading the shops to drawn us all on into the festive season. But the sickly feeling I have with my cold and the numbing and oppressive lack of taste and smell (my biggest bugbear when I get a cold) make juxtaposing apples with Christmas decorations even more conceptually queasy. Of course I have googled the differences between colds, flu, and pneumonia, but luckily I’ve not yet convinced myself of having the latter two – but to call a cold a common cold is doing it a gross injustice.

Nevertheless, when I was fishing around for a picture of a virus for this post, the artist me just couldn’t pick an ugly bug, so a pretty immunity picture it had to be instead, and just like the crochet, full of colour. And the huge grey patch of concrete where my car usually sits has now been filled by bright red once again. Stranded as I was, here in this rural location, day after day, I was soon seriously challenged by my lack of freedom, which I knew was important to me, but the depths of which I didn’t fully appreciate until it was withdrawn for two weeks through ‘that’s life’ circumstances, and I honestly had to dig deep to endure. Mindfulness, yes. Patience, oh yes. Constructive use of time, oh yes – I made up some voile nets for my mum and even went so far as to respect the slippery slithery nature of this delicate fabric, while the pins fell out and while the sewing machine objected to what it was being asked to seam. But we got there, and the days limped by.

But harvested gold nuggets of the last few days to end with are:

1.My reading a debut novel by Catherine North called ‘The Beauty of Broken Things’ published on World Mental Health Day which was on the 10th of October, a beautifully written story addressing mental health issues through charismatic characters and so worth a read.

2.This lovely ‘Autumn Leaves’ jazz piano piece from Andy…

3.The crochet being nearly finito petito as I say when finishing a creative project…

4.And driving my  car home. There are no words for this last one, this song says it all :>)

Reunited, by Peaches and Herb

Just to add, I’m not fishing for ‘get well soons’, more a case of I’m right there with you if you have a cold right now that you are becoming convinced is as bad as the flu. Who said men are worse at being ill than women?  ;>)

Cheers, all!