I was on the road to the hospital to visit Dave and mulling over some overdue blog posts when Leila messaged saying her domain had expired. To cut a long story short, we restored the domain, fiddled with her settings because the site wasn't showing on her end, and saddled ourselves with a challenge to write a post every day until Sunday.

Now that's not hard is it? God after all made the world in seven days, easy peasy. Britney Spears and Jason Alexander married and divorced in 55 hours. Judi Dench logged in 8 minutes of screen time, practically a day's work, in Shakespeare in Love and got an Oscar for her efforts. 

So what is seven days- throw in a photo (as I've been doing for the longest time, in lieu of words) or three; a movie review (Trainspotting 2 was fantastic); two birthday shout-outs (to Tonic and Ally); and another photo of a Sunday dinner (another glorious roast maybe, that bastion of white-people food)- and it will be all good.

Why do I feel though as if I'm short-changing myself? Why does Monday look and feel suspiciously like the Monday previous? Lunch is the same predictable steamed chicken and vegetables and I doubt it if it will really save me, that it makes a difference in the over-all scheme of things, which at the moment is looking the way I've always seen it; a sameness punctuated with ineffectual punches we describe cheerfully as 'soldiering on'.

Dave- who by the way is the owner of the flat I currently live in- got home from an ordinary fishing trip, one of a countless he'd done complaining of a sore leg, nothing really out of ordinary for someone in his mid 50's, and 24-hours later was facing multi-organ failure because of a ruptured and infected bowel.

He survived and is now 'soldiering on' towards a slow and tedious recovery. A week in ICU, hovering between life and death, he had not seen anyone gesturing to him to go towards the light. Between half-lucid and drug-addled moments, he cursed his doctors and nurses, his parents, his children. He emerged from the other side, battered, gaping open wounds in his side and leg healing slowly and having to confront the reality that life was not altered- only disrupted.

We think we grapple with time; we think we're given a reprieve, or a punishment; or foolishly, a reward but time doesn't wait for no one.

Don't wait for epiphanies. Just do it.