Monday 5 January 2009

The Leisurely Student

There's something very satisfying and leisurely about riding out on a bicycle on a Monday morning - even when the cold takes all sensation from my nose - to make deliveries and go to the camera shop to have a film developed; and counting the people I recognise on the way.

I should be writing an essay.

After that - when I next have a moment when I'm not staring out of the window, scouring Wikipedia for scraps of minor interest or even getting around to any other item on my list - I'd like to compile information about the Language Of Flowers - the 19th Century code for personal messages in a carefully-constructed bouquet, wreath or posy.

Instead I seek out the mundane-but-necessary to stave off any substantial task. I become a domestic Robocop: as I pass the kitchen green horizontal and vertical lines in my vision narrow to frame a stack of washing up; or it's like a Wild West shooting game - I round the next corner and see a wooden cutout of a pile of clothes to be put away... BANG! He's down. Next... It's that incorrigible bandit, The Untidy Drawer! POW...

Etc etc until the bell ring for coco.