A very uneventful day today. I am turning into a hermit; there is a word, I have heard, for the opposite of hibernation. It is estivation. That is more or less what I am doing. I had agreed to mind my neighbour's dog so picked her up yesterday evening and this morning we went for a walk down by Blackrock Castle. We were there at half-seven and that is the time to be there. At times I could see no other human, but it was not so deserted as to feel unsafe. The tide was mostly in and the sun was out. It was lovely and I felt very privileged to live so close to the sea and to such an amenity. The sound of the cars heading towards the tunnel added rather than detracted from my enjoyment, as it brought the fact of my being on holidays into focus.
I brought the dog with me to Mahon Point market, parking in the covered car-park. I always park there anyway: it wasn't just because I had the dog with me. Plastic-free July continues apace. I brought the plastic bag my strawberries came in last week and reused it. The punnet was the only new plastic I acquired: all my veg came loose or in brown paper. I bought pesto in jars and a take-away salad in a compostable container. Like I said before, it's easy to go plastic free in the summer when I can go to the market. This is excuse-making as there are other markets I could frequent that operate on Saturdays.
The dog's owner collected her at lunch-time, and all I've done since is get my eyebrows threaded and buy Parmesan (wrapped in waxed paper) and a cotton shirt for work (12.95, bargain). Then I had to make a work-related phone-call (less than fifteen minutes). It wasn't for my main job, but for a tangential unpaid hustle. That hustle has been worth every minute of unpaid time I have spent on it. This is advice I would give to anyone: you have to give to get. Not so much as to make yourself an eejit, but you have to invest more than you would think for even modest returns.
That was my day. It was fine, but I have nothing lined up to do at the weekend. That is worrying and I must investigate what is on and what I could go to. I went to the cinema on Monday on my own. Going to the cinema was on the "43 before 43 list" that I wrote at the New Year and I only got to it this week. But I got to it. I'm getting to lots of other things as well. Because this is how the summer works. It is not like a fortnight's holiday or a really long weekend. Things go very slack, and that is when possibilities emerge.
