Sometimes just five minutes in a day is enough to fuel a blog.

This Saturday blog contains the word ‘erotic’ those of a cautious nature should just stop here.

It also mentions a local tennis club and Lidl, both institutions that were collecting books for charity.

A friend is clearing out her house ready to sell. She had gathered 9 bags of books to donate. One bag contained a collection of 18th Century Erotic Poetry and short stories written in Latin. The tennis club declined the donation. So now, in a small town in Suffolk, the Middle of Lidl will be quite the surprise for local shoppers.

I was reading her Whatsapp and laughing while queuing in a local coffee shop.It is not often that baked goods  can make me chuckle but the Bostock’s on offer tickled my funny bone in a similar way.

Shopping for the unexpected.

P.s unbelievably there are two women on Google called Fanny Bostock.

This has been a funny week blogwise. With a forgotten one. A hugely over-viewed one( 384!) and one that I wrote and forgot to publish. In between those three, dog walking, normal life, and many sea swims there has not been a lot of down time. Until yesterday when a squeeze- in late lunch date at the local market was cancelled. I read a book about Sport Psychology instead. Storm Amy is on the way. She is the love child of Hurricanes Humbert and Imelda who were jiggy over the Atlantic. Amy made my swim a little like being a lone sock in a washing machine yesterday. Even though she was in her calm phase.

Once again I plan to paint or create an image of each storm that batters our little peninsula. I would rather Amy was spelled Aimee. For some reason it seems easier to visualise a storm with more letters and a double ee. More screechy perhaps. Sea swimming may be off the diary for a few days.

My phone has become a little judgmental recently. The exercise App takes a dim view of anything less than 10,000 steps a day. Never considering my swims as exercise. I also sense a little judgement about my use of a tide and weather App.

Somehow I dropped a blog yesterday. But I did get a weekend’s worth of newspapers read and we did some of our favourite walks in gorgeous sunshine. I spent some time in a second-hand book shop and kept my hand firmly in my pocket.

Second-hand book shops fill me with nostalgia. Had my parents lived until now they would be in their early nineties. An age when people naturally downsize or naturally move to another realm. The books on their shelves finding their way to second hand book shops the world over.

In consequence,  preloved bookshop shelves look very similar to my parents beloved home library. As do the piles of discarded C.D’s.

I also love the smell of old books.

Better blog reliability from this point on.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I have the kind of mind that wanders. Last night I should have been concentrating on the words and music for an upcoming performance.

I don’t read music so concentration is vital. But where was my head? Off on a completely pointless ponder.

Goodness me, doesn’t the vein in that marble tombstone look like an artery?

Odd anatomy, but it could just be a right coronary, circumflex artery.

Needs a stent though.

Now a sensible head that needed to concentrate would have stopped there. But no.

This could be a bespoke, graphic headstone for someone who died of  Right Coronary Heart Disease.

What animal would have a right coronary artery like this. Or any other artery for that matter.

Is there disease further down?

Then in a moment of bonkers serendipity we started singing about Postman’s Park.

A little bit of London obscurity to read in the link below.

Postman’s Park – City of London https://share.google/yTcDiivE7Dw41ZBG2

UNSUNG HEROES by Sian Jamison

And here’s to the memory of Thomas Simpson, Whose life was sacrificed, Rescuing skaters from High Gate Pond When they fell through the treacherous ice.

These are the heroes of everyday life, Their stories may not reach us all, But in Postman’s Park are the tales of their strife, Displayed on the plaques on the wall ‘neath the awning.

Now young Sarah Smith was just seventeen, When her inflammable dress caught fire, Rushing to help her friend in distress, She created her own funeral pyre.

At Battersea Sugar Refinery, Thomas Griffin met his fate, A boiler exploded and scalded him raw, When he went back to look for his mate.

Now William Drake was passing Hyde Park, When ladies he saw in distress, Their horses were bolting, he leapt to their aid, And that was the cause of his death.

Now William Donald, a railway clerk, Was drowned in the River Lee, He was trying to save his friend from the weeds, But created his own tragedy.

And last but not least is Percy Edwards, An officer of the law, He lost his life in a gaseous pit, Rescuing those who’d gone in before.

…

Postman’s Park is where I sat as a teenager, anxiously waiting to see if I had been accepted to train at Barts Hospital in London.

It is also the place I escaped to on occasion when a busy day in the Cath Labs at Barts allowed me five minutes in the sun with a sandwich. Cath ( Catheter) Labs treat and diagnose heart disease.

And where I sat as a woman on the cusp/precipice/adventure of retirement from Barts, wondering how on earth life had taken me on an unplanned full circle.

All this from a solid slab of marble with no heart at all… *

Unless of course you consider the long dead heart that lies beneath.