Exit from Venice and Entry to St Pauls

 

I wanted to make sure that I was still awake when Steve got home from working a few days in Venice. Before he went he told me that they had to wrap and move some household items from an apartment there. As you can imagine, nothing like that is easy in Venice where a barge has to be used for transport. When he got there he found that the apartment was enormous and was actually on three floors. Anyway it is what it is, when you get involved in these jobs abroad, arranged by somebody else. Actually he found it all most interesting and has not stopped talking about it yet. He said how nice the people were that they were working for, who plied them with teas coffees and sandwiches to keep them fuelled during the arduous climbs up and down five flights of stairs carrying furniture.

 

Steve had flown out to meet the friend he was working with who had driven the truck out there. He had travelled with Easy Jet and found it all a bit wearing since it was half term and both flights were seriously full but with a lot of children who were very noisy just because they are children. On the outward journey the flight was delayed by 90 minutes that meant he was late to bed when he got there and the flight back was later still. It was close to 1am when he got home.
 

In an effort to keep my eyes open I sat at a desk and did one of my random embroidery operations on a shirt of mine whilst the TV chirped on in the background. Michael Portillo was as charming as usual talking his way through one of his great train journeys programmes and then later of I was kept awake by stand up comic, Paul Chowdhry, who had me laughing so much I was in tears and wondering how come he gets away with all his quite outrageous jokes and comments. If you have never seen him take a peek on YouTube and you will see why he is on so late, not that he is rude, but a little on the dangerous side of what we are and are not supposed to say these days. In his case PC is just his initials.

 

Earlier in the evening I had sent Steve a text to ask how he would get in if I was asleep, but he managed to access the back door and was already shedding clothes through the kitchen and down the hall as he made his way directly to the bed. I managed to wake up at the usual time of 5.30 am this morning and since he is quite merciless at waking me up normally, I put all the lights and the kettle on and proceeded to get myself ready to go swimming and dressed in run kit for after the swim. I intended going, even if he didn’t make it. In the end he did get himself together and we were not even late arriving at the pool where he was coaching a group. When it came to the run however, all the stair climbs and long hours caught up and he had a fairly rubbish run, but we did at least cover the required 5km. When we got home again for him to make ready to go to work he handed me a small pile of soggy wet work clothes from rainy Venice. 

This evening he will come with me to my ‘Write Night’ in Worthing at St Pauls in Chapel Road where I will read several of my recent poems in a roomful of fellow scribblers. I really don’t know why I do it because I get so nervous. Steve know that and even though he finds these evening very hard work he comes to support and encourage me, and always tells me that I was best which is never the truth. The three pieces I am taking are all dark and very emotional and I just hope that even though I have read them aloud at home a good few times, that I can hold my own feelings back and still speak clearly. I find it a challenge but also find it encouraging and worthwhile for myself, it makes me happy, when my scribbling goes down half well. In a group of would be writers, I know that they have to listen to me, if they expect me to listen to them….. Fair doos!