Almost immediately after Isaac landed his chef job, he came down with a vibrant and nasty cold, which began with a sore throat and expanded, as colds often do, into headaches and a runny nose and a cough and . . . well, my readers will get the idea. So on his first actual morning of work, my unfortunate but lovely husband, bound by a strong sense of duty, dragged himself from bed at 6 a.m. (if some of you will recall, incidentally, Isaac is not a morning person) and walked to work with his favourite wife, in order that the good patrons of his cafe might have scones and fruit crumble and soup to eat. This early-morning schedule kept up for the first week, and then grew even more daunting; during the second week of work, he was asked to cover the closing shift as well, thus requiring him to be up by six and in town till at least six (sometimes seven) with a long lunch break in between. This, of course, has precluded any substantial healing and also ensured (as I typically walk with him and work a similarly long day) that we've not really seen or cleaned the inside of our beautiful flat. I've so far managed to stave off all but the sore throat, which I consider a fair accomplishment on my part, but studying has occasionally been difficult, as, after numerous exhausting days, my mind sometimes forgets to focus.
Between all these wearying schedules and illnesses and near-illnesses, we've found time to have a little fun. We went in early October to hear a beautiful string quartet play music by Haydn, Mozart, and John Marsh and this past week were given tickets to hear the Scottish Chamber Orchestra play pieces by Borodin and Sibelius, as well as Beethoven's 5th. We've dined out on occasion (mostly when too tired to cook) and spent some enjoyable afternoons at the home of a fellow English student who's been confined to bed of late. We've also endured numerous run-ins with bank tellers, who--though so lovely on my last trip abroad--seem to have turned into incompetent ogres in the space of a year.
The days are already growing shorter: at the beginning of last week, we were able to catch several glorious sunrises as we walked along the beach towards town, but recently the sun has eluded us on our stroll, and we've been enjoying, instead, grey-glowing clouds.
We've finally arrived in the midst of a wonderful three-day weekend, and hope to do something fun with our time before Monday morning strikes again.
Our sunrise last Wednesday (already we had begun to miss the actual "sun" bit!
God bless!
Beautiful!
ReplyDelete