Our cruise,
sailing May 1 from Oban, has been cancelled. I’m not entirely surprised.
And Andrea has
posted an update on Andrew’s health – I’m
talking about Fruity Knitting. The news is not good. A cancelled cruise seems a
small thing by comparison.
So the passage I
had half-written in my head, about the cruises C. and I have had cancelled –
this is the THIRD – seems irrelevant. Helen thinks we need but to postpone
(again). I feel I’m losing ground rather briskly, indeed have been worried
about whether I would be able to manage May 1. One needs at least to be able to climb up – and eventually down –
the steps alongside the boat. Once aboard, I could stay there; although one of
our ports of call was to have been Inverewe Gardens. I’d like to be there. It’s
all very well, indeed fairly easy, when the boat puts in to a port. But if my
experience last time is any guide, usually we just anchor and go ashore by
tender.
“That’s how they
keep it so cheap”, one of us said over supper one night, on the Majestic Line cruise
to the Outer Hebrides which I actually succeeded in going on, in 2018. I exploded
into my soup.
Helen says I haven’t
deteriorated over the winter, but I’m less sure.
Once during (what
was surely a Lenten) Mass, in Birmingham many years ago, I heard a priest say
that it was more meritorious to accept the sufferings dealt to one, than to
make up sufferings for oneself. I sat there piously accepting whatever suffering
was doled out to me – but when we got home, I found that the Aga had gone out.
(=no lunch)
But, ah, knitting!
I have picked up stitches for the first Polliwog sleeve, and started knitting
it.
Metropolitan
Rebecca (comment yesterday), I am sorry to have mislead you. The author I have
recently “discovered” is Gianrico Carofiglio. I’ve finished the first of his
books with a policeman named Fenoglio as the hero (“A Changeable Truth”) and
have gone on to the second, “The Cold Summer”. The language this time is less
transparent. I think he also wrote a series with a hero-lawyer.
I looked up the author "Gianrico Carofiglio worked for decades as a prosecutor dealing with organized crime and was later appointed as the advisor of the anti-Mafia council in the Italian congress" so I expect the lawyer books will be good as well. Thank you also for the Fruity Knitting prompt. I never seem to see the updates.
ReplyDeleteAll this staying in has been bad for everyone. We're finding out how much unsuspected exercise we used to get just by window-shopping, etc. Perhaps you could do some "step" exercises at home? It seems to involve merely finding something to step slightly up on, and down again. Dull but apparently it helps maintain the muscles for climbing steps.
ReplyDeleteDo you have a dietitian available to consult? If you kept a record of what you eat, they might be able to point out any minor deficiencies.
I always slow down over winter and pick up in the summer. My consultant looked at my 6 monthly lung function test results over the past 5 years and there was a clear pattern. I was also told to take vit D by one consultant; she's Italian and maintains no one in UK gets enough of it!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the book clarification! The U.S. Amazon says that “The Cold Summer” is the first in Carofiglio’s Fenoglio series, so that’s the one I’ve requested that my local library buy (they didn’t have it). Fingers crossed I will be able to follow up on your suggested reading!
ReplyDeleteNow I need to cancel my library hold on the other one, Kyril Bonfiglioli, which frankly sounds too silly for words. Although, who knows — I have found perfectly good books through similar means in the past, like in high school when I read all the mysteries on either side of Agatha Christie on the library shelf. I guess I’ve been hanging out in libraries a long time :-)
ReplyDelete