Tuesday, July 7

It had rained in the night but the promised storm never arrived. The hot wind did though.

Naa got up as usual, and I got up shortly afterwards. I washed my hair and body and stood in the gale to dry them.

At about 11:00 I notice that the last trailer of hay from yesterday has been reversed up the slope for unloading into the barn. Stefan had driven it into a garage yesterday evening because, by the time we had loaded it, nobody felt like unloading it again.

I think about going to help unload it, but when I get back from the toilet it is already half empty. In a few minutes I will go and have another look and there will be nothing left to see. I will be secretly glad because every muscle in my body either aches or hurts.

The sky will turn dark and the winds will become fiercer. Sunshine will refuse to leave the house and we will be driven back inside. 

I will finish Bob Dylan’s Chronicles. I will realise that, with typical perversity, he has concentrated on stories from periods that nobody usually considers, and told very little about the incidents people might expect. There is nothing about Highway 61 Revisited, or Blonde on Blonde, but quite a lot about Empire Burlesque and the album he made with Daniel Lanois, the title of which he doesn’t even mention.

Later we will go to Benita’s to get water and stay for a beer. The weather is such that we will be the only customers when we order. Ricky Tillman and friends will arrive, stay briefly, and leave. Only Helmer will sit outside.

After Naa has gone to bed Irma and I will have a regrettable and unnecessary argument in which what I think I am saying will not be what Irma thinks that she is hearing. 

We will manage to keep this going for some time, when both of us would have benefitted from me shutting up after ten minutes. 

I should have learned by now that repetition is usually not the mother of learning. Repetition is more often the sound of someone digging themselves into a deepening hole when they should have got out and filled it in several hours ago.