Sometimes I Sits and Thinks

and sometimes I just sits.

I am conscious that over the past week or so, I have moaned about my health or rather consequences of my ill health.

First off, I am 66, a bit disabled and have multiple pathologies, but that is not how I define myself, nor is it how I wish to be defined. Some few years age I was accused of burying my head in the sand; it was an opinion expressed repeatedly and somewhat forcibly, and caused me to lose my self confidence for a bit. However, that is past and gone.

I would prefer to define myself as someone with a cheerful disposition, caring, friendly and outgoing. I am so happy to be going to the local bridge club, and improving my game as well as meeting new people. In addition to that, I love my family and see them as often as possible. Getting a car through Motability was great as it gave me the ability to get to places otherwise impossible (or very difficult).

I love reading, particularly detective fiction; recently I have been reading authors from different countries (Italy, Sicily, Spain, Sweden, Iceland) writing the same sort of stories as Ian Rankin. They each have their own “Rebus” and they are each firmly grounded in their locality and their own climate. I enjoy seeing the parts that are almost a constant and the parts that are so different because of climate differences or other cultural differences: (In Italy, especially Sicily, the Mafia; in Spain the issues arising from the Fascist era; in Sweden the immigrants from Eastern Europe.)

I love jigsaws and recycle them through my sister, 2 friends here, and then to the charity shop. My dining room table is quite small, so I can do only 1000 piece jigsaws, which is something of a shame as the bigger ones are more challenging – mind you, some of the 1000 piece ones are very challenging too!

I love cooking, and I make it worth the effort by making large casseroles and so on and then freezing them in single serving quantities. I just love my new induction hob, it is so controllable: you can leave a casserole on it just bubbling away for 3 hours almost unsupervised.

After quite a long gap, I have gone back to the Church, and am so glad I did so. I left many years ago for rather foolish reasons involving a row with the rector and silly pride kept me away for some time.

Perhaps some of that can go towards defining me….