daily writing prompt #4
In our house, we are very aware of this thing that happens in life. You upgrade, you add a thing to your life, in our case, it might be a dishwasher, or a better laptop, or the new car has a feature like parking aids. Within a short time, you realise that there is no living without it.
Once you’ve lived with it, there’s no going back. The next iteration of this thing will have to include this, or else how will you manage? No matter that for all of your adult life you were quite capable of parking a car, okay, mostly you coped. Now there is no way you can possibly do it without this wonder of the modern world, the parking assistance feature.
How do I answer this question? It is a movable feast, it is at the whim of whatever new thing has changed my life. Is a wife or a dog a luxury? For the sake of discussion, let’s leave those aside. Obviously I wouldn’t want to live without either – and this conveniently saves me from having to rank them. Yeah, you would hope the wife, right?!
There are a few contenders, my MacBook Pro, my iPhone, my incredible noiseless earbuds, all make the list. I think the thing that would be hardest to manage without is my garden. It is a place of sanctuary and calm. I can occupy myself, I have a large greenhouse and a shed, and there isn’t a man alive who doesn’t like to potter in those. I can always hum to myself in the garden. Who needs podcasts when I can mutter and mumble to my heart’s content?
If you have no idea what I am talking about, I can only imagine you haven’t tried it yet. It allows you to order and tidy things, fiddle with stuff, fix things, grow stuff, plan what you are going to grow, it is like a den for grown-ups, your own private little domain. The kind of things that appeal to boys. We just like all those things, we make no apology for it.
I am going to go with my garden. Always something to do. Always a place to sit. Always something to look at.
Always there.
a blog less ordinary 