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There was me thinking that Stefan had once more descended to the ranks of Nemesis when, in fact, he had just fallen out of the habit of walking to the ICA each morning. Every time I hear the annoying noise of a moped, it sends me back to the days avoiding his horrid little red machine. But, no, I was wrong.
This morning I spotted him, heading home with a pair of Nordic walking poles. We stopped and chatted.
Apparently, he had just fallen out of the habit after a short break. Then, a couple of days ago, he was woken in the middle of the night with an awful leg cramp which had him thrashing about. Eventually he got out of bed and wandered around the house, frightening his cat but exorcising the cramp. It was then that he realised he needed to get back to the walking.
When I asked about the poles, he told me that he had had a weird pain in one upper arm and a friend told hm that he should use the poles when he walked to properly exercise his upper body as well as the lower.
I have no idea if this is true. The people I tend to see with Nordic walking poles look like they would fall over if they didn’t have them. Anyway, whatever they do, Stefan seemed happy with his. He strode away from me, cheerful and revitalised.
This was not the only major interaction I had this morning. As I sat in the ICA bistro, enjoying a few pages of my book, Bengt suddenly appeared in front of me. And, of course, we chatted.
With the elections only a couple of weeks away, he has been busy canvassing and telling people who and why they should vote for them. This morning, he was handing out leaflets at Vagnhärad station from 05:45, the ICA at 09:00 and, this afternoon, was at the local high school as they had a play election. He was expecting to get home at about 21:00.
He was oddly pleased about his very busy day talking politics.
We also discussed a possible French meal at our house but agreed that the women in our lives were responsible for this sort of organisational stuff. We, after all, did the cooking.
Walking home, I stopped at the second bench for a short rest and bathed my ears in the bird song of the woods. It was blissful. The lack of any kind of two wheeled horror had me sitting there a little longer than necessary.
One of the books I am currently reading is The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil. He started writing the book in 1921 and never really finished. I think it is incredibly funny in parts. It also has long, rambling paragraphs which remind me of my own style. Here is a snippet which I particularly like. By the way, Ulrich is the man without qualities.
Once a man has put his house in order it is time to go courting. Ulrich’s girlfriend in those days was a chanteuse in a small cabaret who went by the name of Leontine. She was tall, curvaceously slender, provocatively lifeless and he called her Leona. He had been struck by the moist darkness of her eyes, the dolefully passionate expression on her handsome, regular, long face and the songs full of feeling that she sang instead of risqué ones. All these old-fashioned little songs were about love, sorrow, abandonment, faithfulness, forest murmurs and shining trout. She stood tall and lonely to the marrow on the tiny stage and patiently sang at the public with a housewife’s voice and even if something suggestive did slip in now and then, the effect was all the more ghostlike because she spelled out all the feelings of the heart, the tragic as well as the teasing, with the same wooden gestures.
Man without Qualities by Robert Musil
