Ah..... Here I am at last. Sitting in my (new) back garden, in the early evening sunshine.
I was listening to the birds singing earlier, when their call was rudely interrupted by an ice-cream van blaring out, 'Oh, oh Antonio, he sells ice-cream' on ultra-amplified chimes. It reminded me of a very elderly lady I nursed a few decades ago (am I really old enough to say that sort of thing? Help). She was very frail and lay in her hospital bed staring at the ceiling, all the while singing, 'Oh, oh Antonio'. During one particularly dull shift she taught me all the words.
Anyway, I felt a bit annoyed with the van, and was relieved when it went away. After a few more minutes, I could here the dulcet tones of 'Antonio' a few streets away to the right, then after a little longer, more muted and further round to the left.
I remembered where I grew up was on a main road, so we never had the benefit of an ice-cream van, and I was jealous of my friends who lived in side-streets where this vehicle of dreams would appear randomly, dispensing treats.
As I fell into a slightly depressed moment of nostalgia, I noticed some ants worrying around the patio. They zig-zagged around, looking for something more interesting than the next bit of paving stone.
To one side of the garden, a bee landed on a flower a little too weak to support it, and the stem sagged, forming a rather pleasing parabola (the maths degree evidently wasn't a complete waste of time). The bee bungied along with it, and hung on in there.
I realised we were all looking for manna.
I was listening to the birds singing earlier, when their call was rudely interrupted by an ice-cream van blaring out, 'Oh, oh Antonio, he sells ice-cream' on ultra-amplified chimes. It reminded me of a very elderly lady I nursed a few decades ago (am I really old enough to say that sort of thing? Help). She was very frail and lay in her hospital bed staring at the ceiling, all the while singing, 'Oh, oh Antonio'. During one particularly dull shift she taught me all the words.
Anyway, I felt a bit annoyed with the van, and was relieved when it went away. After a few more minutes, I could here the dulcet tones of 'Antonio' a few streets away to the right, then after a little longer, more muted and further round to the left.
I remembered where I grew up was on a main road, so we never had the benefit of an ice-cream van, and I was jealous of my friends who lived in side-streets where this vehicle of dreams would appear randomly, dispensing treats.
As I fell into a slightly depressed moment of nostalgia, I noticed some ants worrying around the patio. They zig-zagged around, looking for something more interesting than the next bit of paving stone.
To one side of the garden, a bee landed on a flower a little too weak to support it, and the stem sagged, forming a rather pleasing parabola (the maths degree evidently wasn't a complete waste of time). The bee bungied along with it, and hung on in there.
I realised we were all looking for manna.
No comments:
Post a Comment