The weather turned really fine on Wednesday and hopefully by the time you read this it will have remained so. It was forecast to be nice through to the weekend anyhow. I had no work scheduled for Wednesday so I arose a little later than usual but still before 8 o’clock. After a toilet visit, a quick wash and my prayer session I got dressed in my new running kit and went downstairs. Before I did anything else I had to put out the bins for emptying and recycling then I went into the cellar for some time on the treadmill. I suppose I could have pounded the streets but I tend not to do that these days. Anyhow I spent around 30 minutes building up a sweat and losing lots of calories in the process and afterward cooling off in the rear garden, then it was back indoors to have a bath and wash some clothes. I wasn’t hungry but I had it in mind to have a fast day anyway so I turned my thoughts to something other than food. I eventually came back downstairs dressed in some of my nice summer clothes, the sort you don’t want to be wearing in the job I do! I had no intentions of working that day in any case. I spent some time on the computer before heading off out with no particular place in mind to go. That was around 12.15. I still wasn’t hungry. I headed down to the seafront and walked at a fair pace for about two miles and then started back home via the towns promenade which isn’t as you might think on the seafront, it is on the town side of the small lakes which separate it from the seafront. As I got toward the busy part of the seafront there were many people on the beach, with their cars, dogs and children if they had any, all doing what people do on a lovely sunny day at the beach. Many were sitting on the sea wall which runs alongside the beach separating it from the coastal road. there were people on bicycles and skateboards and a few, like me, just walking. As I got further along the front and away from the busiest part there were few people about. Coming back along the Promenade I began to see much more people about and although I didn’t walk into the main shopping area along Lord Street I knew it must have been full of people enjoying their day. Even on ‘bad’ days Lord Street has many visitors. I carried along the Prom watching the children playing on the lawns, their parents quietly sitting in the sunshine eating fish and chips or sandwiches, some licking on a soft ice-cream. A typical day at the seaside which I have seen so many times in my life. By the time I had reached the far end of the Prom there were fewer people to be seen. I walked back toward home along Rotten Row, alongside of which is Victoria Park where each year they hold the Southport Flower Show and I could see much activity in there. Temporary gardens were under construction ready for viewing later in the month. Rotten Row has been a popular road for floral displays all year round since Victorian days with each side of its half-mile length filled with flowers and shrubs of all kinds. Over the last few years however only one side maintains a floral display. I suppose that is due to the financial cut-backs. A notice announcing the forthcoming Air Show on the 8th and 9th of September reminded me that soon it will start to become cooler, although this summer hasn’t been what you might call ‘blazingly hot’. Time marches on regardless. Whenever I go out walking I see the signs of annual repetition on display everywhere. Nothing ever seems to change, a bit like the old song in ‘Fiddler on the Roof‘, sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the years, one season following the other……and so on. I get bored with that sort of thing, everything run by the calendar, nothing ever spontaneous or just done for the sheer fun of it. Many people don’t look at life that way but if they just stood back and took stock they would see how very much regimented their lives are. I think that as we get older we begin to either simply go with the flow, one thing then the next, all predictable, or we rebel and just go off at a tangent and do things on a whim. One of the reasons I don’t visit my local pub for weeks on end is the monotony of it all, same people doing the same things every time they go there, regularly! So on Wednesday everything changed for me, nothing was routine. I exercised on the treadmill for a couple of miles, I went for a five-mile walk in the fresh air and ate nothing all day. When I returned home I took a couple of photographs of the plants growing behind the wall in the front garden. Click on the images to enlarge them.
Thursday? Well that was another day………
Shirley Anne
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