convalescing

13th january 2023

Cousin Peter and I had a lovely Christmas dinner.

It was only a few days late.

I’m glad to say that Peter is getting better after his fall.

And I’m getting better after my long cold bicycle ride to fetch him from hospital.

We’ve been taking things easy.  

I’ve been making sure that Peter gets plenty of rest, and plenty of food.

I’ve been keeping him entertained.

We only play the easy version of dominoes.

It’s more relaxing that the sort where you have to keep doing sums in your head.

I’m giving Peter cocoa pops, to keep up his blood sugar levels.

We’ve enjoyed doing puzzles together.

We like this one

because there’s no right answer.

Peter and I prefer non-competitive games.

And we don’t want anything too energetic, in our convalescent state.

Spillikins is a quiet, sedentary game.

We eat nuts while we play, for protein.

Tiddlywinks could be competitive.

But we’re both so bad at it, we never get as far as competing.

It can be tiring having to get up to fetch the tiddlywinks.

Peter suggested setting up a marble run.

That was very tiring indeed.

Especially when the gobstoppers escaped and I had to chase them round the room.

This sort of dominoes is also uncompetitive.

But strenuous for the person setting it up.

We took turns to eat popcorn in the middle, while the other one set up the dominoes.

Every now and then I remember that important things are going on in the world outside.

But apart from putting posters up in my windows

I feel that getting myself and Peter back to full strength is enough for me to cope with at the moment.

I used to think that patience games were peaceful.

But with Clock Patience, you have to walk all round the clock many times.

We need raisins to keep our energy.

Jenga is a really strenuous game, what with the climbing and the building.

and it never ends well.

By the time we’d finished our games, we were completely exhausted.

Somebody did.

Jenny arrived in her dressing-gown.

But Jenny had the clever idea of moving the hands on the clock forward.

When it got to twelve o’clock, we were still quite wide awake.

After we’d eaten the snacks, Jenny read scary stories to us.

Then we all fell fast asleep.

But I had a dream about Ruffy calling to me from his prison cell.

I really must remember to do something about rescuing him.

I’ll think about that in the morning.

Or the one before that.