Skip to main content

A Single Moment

I live for the moments in time where there is nothing in particular to worry about.  Since I was eight I have been a chronic worrier and I regularly used to be told off at school for pulling the face of anxiety. 

So when I suddenly realise that I'm not worrying about anything it is a bit of a sun-breaking-through-the-clouds event.  I last had that moment on our mini honeymoon to Florence in October.  We'd just conquered the Duomo and were sitting on a bench opposite it looking back up at where we'd been.  The man had to take his shoes off because his feet were so hot from the 460 stairs we'd just climbed and a local walked past chuckling away in Italian.  He just kept pointing at the shoes and us and the sky and generally having a very good laugh at us stupid tourists.

Sitting there, leaning on the man I had nothing at all to worry about.

I'm pretty sure the moment evaporated 5 minutes later as we tried to buy ice cream from a lady who saw us coming but for a few minutes the worry was all gone and forgotten about.


- Photo by Brian Duffy for Italian Vogue, Florence 1964
  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Disconnect

There is a feeling of being lost which has been creeping up on me more and more over the past few weeks. It makes me feel as though I am a different person to the one I was a month ago. Different thoughts, different priorities. Even so far as saying different voice, different body, different face I see in the mirror. I do not feel like I am me and the more I try to reach myself or sift back over old conversations and emotions to find myself the less graspable 'I' am. I can hear my voice talking at people. Sense me ears listening and my brain nodding along happily inside my skull. But there is a disconnect. And in that gap I do not like the situation. I don't feel comfortable and I don't know how to get up and be even remotely okay about where I might end up. It may simply be a bad Monday or a bad week about to start. When the disconnected fog descends, as it certainly will again and again and tomorrow and the next day again and again, I will try to be ready to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pleasantness

Sitting on the train is something I spend the majority of my week doing.  Some days I hate it and count the stations off with frustration and rage that I've chosen this way to travel to work.  Other days I'm indifferent and the countryside slips away infront of me until I'm at Charing Cross without realising I even boarded.  But days like this morning I actually enjoy it and relish every second spent before arriving in London.  Leaning my head against a finger print heavy window staring at fields and terrace houses listening to music and drifting off to sleep between stations.  Dropping in on loud conversations between giddy (there is no other word to sum them up) fifteen year olds heading for school.  Drowning out a business man angrily whispering into his mobile by turning my iPod up a fraction.  Noting that the woman sitting next to me is trying desperately hard not to lean on me though the Southeastern train carriages aren't design...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tuesday Mornings

The fog had crept across the garden all morning, soaking into the space between tired daisy heads and trampled grass. It had stealthily stroked everything it passed and left a cold trace of moisture clinging to the underside of oak leaves, pampas grass and rhododendron blooms. Up in the sky the sun was battling to break through the thick cloud cover and every tentative shaft of light was being batted away by this endless trail of fog.   Two red wellie boots jump from an open doorway into this scene. Determined thuds on the back door step and with a second’s pause to contemplate which direction to run in they are off, racing into the gloom adding a jolt of colour and noise.   A second pair of boots join them, more slowly this time and in a gentler colour way of navy blue. The door is closed behind these boots and a voice calls out to slow the red boots down. A warning not to fall in the puddles, be careful of the tree roots, don’t go further than the stile at the en...
Post a Comment
Read more