Shopping

• I ended up buying a tent today, for the purposes of climbing a mountain at the weekend. It’s nice to have a tent, for future adventures. Its miniscule size when folded and its miniscule price tells me it may be a really terrible tent. I think I might get wet if it rains.
• Last week I happened to lie in someone else’s hammock, and felt about a million times more relaxed, as if I was floating. And boy do I need me some of that. So at the weekend I shopped around and got myself a very lovely hammock. Which is awful exciting. Today I went to buy rope to attach it to trees with, in a hardware shop full of fascinatingly useful things. My favourite things were the wheels – all kinds of sizes and designs of castors. It made me a little wistful that as a child I never made a go-cart for careening dangerously down hills in, out of packing cases and old pram wheels, like they do in the stories. When I have kids, I’ll definitely make go-carts with them. Or is it the kind of thing which is only fun if your parents tell you not to and it’s far too dangerous? How sad it would be not to be part of the fun…
  Anyway, the men who served me smiled and were pleasant and didn’t look at me like an alien or an idiot, even when I had absolutely no idea when I wanted (I need some rope to hang up a hammock. I don’t know, what kind of rope do you think I need? Oh, I don’t know how to decide, how about this (points to one of suggested rope types at random). Hmm, what size do you think I need? Oh, and how much do I want? Hmmm…). Miraculous, in a very tiny way. Were I to have further hardware needs, it’s back there I would go. (There is no way to write that sentence without it being open to a smutty interpretation.) (Unless that’s just me.)
• Small golden peaches are some of the best things in the world. I am just getting used to how delicious they are, and how I should buy lots.
• If you were here you’d have heard even more about how much I want a kitten, or kittens. You might well want to bury an ice pick in my head. Just as well I’m thousands of miles away. But I really do. I went to the shop for some hamster food, and there were sad little puppies, and the most beautiful rabbits, and all kinds of rodents and fowl and reptiles and fish, and most of all there were kittens. I know it’s silly and anthropomorphic and frankly ridiculous, but they mewed at me and looked at me with their enormous eyes for all the world as if appealing to be taken home. A grey tabby which stared proudly, like a little tiger. A no-colour, miserable-looking little kitten with gummed up eyes, needing rescuing. But the one I wanted most of all was the little Siamese, which seemed sweet-natured, neither aggressive nor apathetic, and had huge bright blue eyes.
  Oh dear. Don’t be surprised if I cave in in a moment of weakness and acquire a cat.
• Similarly, I also didn’t buy a doughnut, or doughnuts, because even though I wanted to and it would bring me pleasure, it was ultimately a bad idea. I was strong. Thing is, sometimes I do buy doughnuts.
• A group of nuns outside the church, and voices soaring from within. I like seeing nuns, or monks. I don’t know why. They are cheering I think. They are from another world, and they don’t seem real. And it’s like you’re playing a game of spotting things, and they are a notable kind of person, worth spotting, both unusual and distinctive.
• Clearly, when you go to get photos developed in Mexico and they say one hour, clearly they will not be done today, clearly you will have to come back tomorrow. I don’t mind at all, but I feel a fool for having lived here six months and gone back thinking they would be done. Latin time. Silly me.