An ordinary day. I awoke to my range sputtered out and her sputtering was soot, all over soot. Thankfully, possibly politely and to save me, her spit didn’t go too far. Anyone who has dealt with soot will know how determinedly it holds to itself. Tiny balls of refusal, sitting there, all sizes,complete and resolute. Cleaning cloths are ruined in immediacy. However, I know this game. She, the Spitter, the Fed Up. Someone turned me down too below the hum beat of the home and she obvously struggled to breathe, eventually panting into something big and black and stuck to the wall, like a nothing much. When I arrived down about 6, I could see the story. Ok, I said, because she is very important to me and keeps my winters a warm hug and much reassurance I will call in the sweeps. Your throat is choked and you have done so well, because, if I am honest (confession here), I knew her flues were compromised and did nothing about it. I am not a woman who does nothing about an alert, but this time, I did. I swabbed her down, caught those balls of refusal into kitchen roll and binned them. She, my lovely warming range will have her skirts twirled and her breathing tubes whistle-cleaned and her privates rid of all amorphous carbons next week. A relief for sure.

The day dindled on with a this and a that, gentle and amorphous. I did things, swept floors, enjoyed watching the trickles of my life conjoin and connect. I watched the sky, the cloud bumps and the pull-aways, the almost parental cloudal wrap, as if the kids need corralling. I washed things which required washing. I fed the birds, watched them jink along the fence, saw the long unpainted fence, thought about that. I read awhile, and then something blasted in my phone, a voice saying my mobile is in danger, hacked, all information already absorbed. It was alarming at first, the voice cutting through the audio book I was listening to, I will not panic (I told myself). And it kept coming. Your private information, bank info, passwords, social connections all compromised, all hanging off the cliff. I still didn’t panic. I might be ostrich here. I did breathe a lot, out in out in, mostly out. I thought, child. I thought Stu. In the overtake of my screen, where the invader could not be swiped away, I could still connect with him. He talked me through it all, go here, swipe there, delete there. All done and deleted.

It thinks me. There are a gazillion things I can, and will, sort myself. There are more which I cannot. I believe that the strength, the power in me is knowing that and then recognising it and then taking action. Tripling. I see the tripling gate. If I go through this, ask for help, I am weak, a failure, needy.

I say oh no. You are brave. You are real. You were the strong support once, and through decades of so-called ordinary days full of soot and cold and turnaways, for days, weeks, months, years.

Remember them and smile. You did this.