Sunday

5 March 2017

— Even as we speak, a male pheasant is working the ground under the red feeder.

Good Morning All,

It’s only the second time, so far, a pheasant has honored me with his presence. I don’t know if he’s the same fellow from last month. At the risk of making an ornithological racist statement, all pheasants look pretty much the same to me. But I can tell you he is no yearling, since his tail is long enough to reach the ground.

Normally, I wake around 5:00 or just after, but am usually too lazy to get up. I'll have a game or two of cribbage on my Kindle or read a bit. (At the moment, I’m about three quarters  through the unbelievably fine The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.) Then I might catch another forty winks and fire up the coffee machine around 7:00.

Today, however, I had to be sure to get up by 6:00 since Esther and Jens would be arriving here around 10:30, Jens being a mechanical genius who will figure out how I can be so technically inept as to be unable to successfully replace a neon bulb in the light above the kitchen sink. Jens is a salt-of-the-earth, shirt-off-his-back person. He and his buoyant and kindly wife Gitte were Esther’s neighbors near her house on Esvinget. The three of them have long since become friends. I think—certainly hope!—Jens and Gitte are becoming my friends, as well.

Anyway, when I woke this morning, it did look to be around 5:00 a.m., but then again it looks to be around 5:00 a.m. until at least noon in these wintry northern climes. My bedside clock reported we were sneaking up on 8:00 o’clock. Yikes! Wouldn’t you know it, the one morning I had to … etc.

So, I’d better take a short break here for a shower, some quick house beautifying, and general preparedness. Jens will be only my third official, non-relative visitor.

… Three hours later.

The news is nothing but good. Jens had the neon light working in roughly eighteen seconds. Even better news, the problem was not my stupidity. The fellow at the shop gave me the wrong connectors from the bulbs to the juice. And I’d had the foresight to keep the old ones, which still work. 

Jens, on a roll then, also got up on the dining-room sideboard and enstalled the hanging lamp over the table. This, I am quick to tell you I could have done myself, as far as the wiring went, but I am  subject to sudden and room-spinning bouts of dizziness which make me reluctant to get up on ladders, stools, or sideboards for any length of time. And I am certainly not eager to do so when in the house alone!

After that we three sat for a beer and a chat, overlooking the birds. Jens has very little English, but I understood a good eighty percent of what he and Esther said in Danish. God knows, after another thirty years I should be damn near fluent!

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. For those of you who have been experiencing a vague angst without knowing what might be causing it, I have more good news. If you have been worrying about whether I have yet addressed the trimming of my toe nails, you may now relax on that score. I had to use my larger hack saw for the big toe nails. But I have succeeded and—with luck—will not have to do so again for another six months.