The Pillow Book of Prudence . . . Part 10

Brevity: Things that are brief can be appreciated or they can be a vast disappointment.

Eating a block of chocolate is too brief. Chatzy to America is too brief.  The series of Return to Cranford and Doc Martin likewise.  Sunny warmth on a winters day: all too brief.  The scallop season.  The dog’ s good behaviour.  Exercises for a damaged ankle are not brief enough so perhaps they should go into the longevity category.  The current flood of political mind-bending should be so brief as to be non-existent.  In fact politics as a career should be non-existent.

Longevity:  Things that are long can be viewed as bounty or utter tedium.  The reader must be the judge.

My mother’s active life, for which we give daily thanks.  The time it takes to mend an ankle.  Spring approaching.  Pre-election claptrap.  The love of a good  man.  Trying to finish the Work In Progress.  Editing.  Waiting to hear from London.  Reading Jilly Cooper . . . again . . . bounty, definitely not tedium.

The eighth month has reached the end of its first week and it is possible to say that what began as a tedious recuperation of great longevity is actually scurrying by.

Friends chat and invite me to collaborate on fine arts projects, in writing endeavours Interviews take place.  And the time I spend on my latest novel becomes shamefully brief.

Frustrated with the (wrong) perception that I am spending too many long hours with my foot elevated, every moment my husband spends in a vehicle, I join him.  I try to avoid the walls that sometimes hem me in.

In more rational moments, I accept that rehabilitation of all the ruptured ligaments in wrist and ankle will take time if this is not to happen again.  That my patience previously brief, must prove itself worthy of the name.

In the meantime, I watch the white flowering quince boughs I placed in a vase in the hall.  They have been there for five weeks and have only just burst into bloom.  Does that not exhibit longevity of the highest order?