Normality Resumes

It’s been a week since I returned from the long weekend visiting America. Quite predictably after sitting next to a horrific little man on the flight home that coughed and sneezed without covering his mouth for eight hours, I got sick - which wiped out the latter part of the week and much of last weekend for me.

Whenever I get sick these days I remember the lung infection I had a couple of years ago - mostly caused by never slowing down. I still remember the local doctor prescribing me colossal numbers of tablets - steroids among them - to take immediately, and every few hours. They did the trick.

It’s been weird - slotting back into the daily work/life balance grind after experiencing a possible “sliding door” future. While at the FlightSimExpo several people asked if I might “make the leap” at some point - go full time with what has until now been a hobby. There was a part of me this morning - in the moments before powering up my work laptop - where I began wondering “what if?”.

You know the funny thing? Flying pretend aeroplanes on YouTube wouldn’t have been my first choice as an alternative career.

I’ve always loved writing.

In a perfect world people I would be independently wealthy and travel the world writing reflections on days filled with wonder and discovery. Of course I’m not independently wealthy, and realistic enough to know that writing would never pay the bills. It’s a nice daydream though.

Anyway.

After work today - in the hour before my other half got home from work - I cut the grass in the back garden. This was of course a stupid idea, given the sun’s attempts to incinerate us all at the moment, but needed given that the green bin will be collected tomorrow.

I learned an important lesson about cutting the grass this week - if your teenage daughter volunteers to cut the grass, you need to put time aside to cut it again a few days later - while she’s not around, so it doesn’t hurt her feelings.

Seriously. It looked like a deranged spider had accidentally started the lawn mower.

While mowing the grass I had some ear pods in - listening to music. It occurred to me towards the end - dripping in sweat - that there’s probably an amount of sweat that would complete a circuit. I wonder how many volts a pair of Apple AirPods can empty into your head? I wonder if they test that sort of thing?

My other half arrived home just as I finished - sitting in the newly billiard-tabled garden with a pint of water. She brought news of our younger daughters, who have travelled down to the coast for a few days - taking the youngest member of the household for her first holiday.

One thing is for sure - the house is very quiet without them here. I’m trying to enjoy it, but it feels odd.