On the sixteenth I left pancakes on the table, told whoever came down to find them, and walked out the door before anyone did. Eleven kilometres, out along a grey harbour and back, no destination and no reason I could have given you if you'd asked. The Lamp Left On is about as close as anyone got to writing it down: a Sunday sealed under cloud, the honey jar left open, steam still coming off a plate nobody needed to wait for.
I like walking on my own. Always have. It does something a meeting room never does, or a to-do list. So I walk, and somewhere on that walk my phone rang and it was my mother. I don't remember what was discussed. Probably not enough.
The rest of August was mostly other things, the way months are. Three Targets and the Washing Machine Door was a proper dinner party: someone toasting semantics with total sincerity, someone else defending their share of the laundry in exact percentages while the machine sat there in the next room, innocent. Meanwhile, Fox found someone with an e-bike to fan over and asked three times, formally, whether he recommended I buy an e-bike for Fox. I thanked him for his opinion three separate times, and told him please, come again, as though he'd been consulting rather than just sitting in the armchair next to mine. There was a loud supermarket trip with a two-year-old, who had the worst time ever, and me muttering it afterwards like it was a survival medal.
My brothers both had birthdays, again. Where did a year go?
On the last night of the month I officially parked a few ideas and sparked a few more. Then, Fox and I went out and found a nearby BMX track in the cold.
Tomorrow is the first day of Spring. Bring it on.
