Chapters and Chores

After too many hours on the bus on Monday, Tuesday was a chapters and chores day.  Read a few chapters, do a few chores.  Repeat.  And focus on memorising a Tarot card a week.  Last week’s card was ‘The Wheel of Fortune’.  Upright Meanings: cycles, fate, decisive moments, success, good luck, fortune, unexpected events.  Had a decisive moment: flash-idea to write short pieces loosely based on the key words of the Tarot cards each week.   First piece, inspired by a question I once heard in an interview; “If you were a character in a book, which character would you be and why?”

Tuesday morning was bleary and dull, clouds hanging like a head cold.  The post arrived, a heart-sinking manilla envelope from HMRC.  The kind of envelope that has the sound of Wheels of Fortune grinding to a halt, then screeching upside down.  But no.  This particular HMRC manilla envelope turned the Wheel of Fortune perfectly upright.  Am owed a tax refund.  No cheque yet, just the notice. 

Sunbeams broke through, golden-white, reflecting rainbow spectra around the kitchen.  Time for a celebratory walk, in the manner of the cat who got the cream.

It’s difficult not to wonder ‘how much’ when a cheque is in the post.  So, I wondered, coming to the conclusion that even if it was a penny, it’s better than having to pay anything out.

Went The Virginia Woolf walk, long sunny shadows over the castle grounds.  Hundreds of sea birds were sunning themselves on the harbour rocks.  Then, as the Wheel of Fortune would have it, just as I pressed ‘video’, the birds flew up and across the bay to the sandbank. 

After the devastating bird flu a couple of years ago, the seabirds are thriving once again. 

Wheel of Fortune. 

Chapters and chores.

Images for this journal have been posted on Insta @purplehaze_journal