Grateful: Day 73 - Crisis

* This picture was the result of the search: sausage surprise. Just thought you should know.

So very grateful. Today, I got to walk around a lot, attend to two 'first aid' situations, both involving slings and arms that mov
ed surprisingly well, laugh a lot, smile at people, run a creative writing workshop and a guided meditation, both of which went well, drink tea, eat biscuits and talk a lot of shit with a lot of different people, buy Connect 4 and Jenga (both rip-offs, Hasbro... MUCH cheaper) and each an orange truffle and a ginger biscuit, both of which almost drew tears of joy.

I got home to find cooked for me a sausage

feast, full of flavours, together with yesterday's leftovers and a mountain of sprouts (oh yes, oh yes). Then we played a game that I picked up at a workshop with Carol Ann Duffy years ago, when I first met my so deeply loved friend Esther Lilley (thank you thank you thank you thank you, how different and some how less sparkly my life would be without her influence

- from chance comments about thrones, stinky socks and scansion to the massive honour of being the maid at her and Daniel's wedding - phoooo! - so grateful).

The game is this... each person writes down two abstract nouns and two concrete ones, each

on its own slip of paper. On separate slips, you write the definitions - whimsical or straightforward, but relevant. Then you fold each slip and put all nouns in one bowl and all definitions in another, then pick them out and read them. That's how simple.

We HOWLED. I think at some point each of us nearly weed. There is such poetry in that game, and such bliss. We played it in the creative writing workshop too, where it went down well,

but I don't think at any point there was a potential loss of bladder control.

Then we watched I've Loved You So Long. I love to watch Kristin Scott Thomas* (even if I'm never entirely sure about her name). What a beautiful, beautiful film. I cried, not as often as in Kung Fu Panda (that scored 9 hits), but deeply and for real. No superficial flinch. It was beautifully acted (the little girl was amazing, the secondary characters good enough to eat and the two leads like magic) and it was very, very touching. Thank you.

* Even dowdy, she has cheekbones to die for and a grace I can only dream of.

Now to bed and tomorrow home for proper. If the transport had been working today, I'd have gone to Muswell Hill direct, but it wasn't, so here I am again. Mmmmmmm, sausages. Mmmmmm, friends. Mmmmmm, sleep.