The gambolling of pugs in the park

A glorious spring-like day. The London legions issuing from Brighton Station when I arrived at Queen's Road for my massage from Jewel. Rather agonising it was too as my shoulders and neck were a dense mass of knotted evil. Later I felt as if someone had been pummeling my back, but I felt released: freer and loser than I have felt for months. I like Jewel, and hadn't seen her since before my wedding, and she was asking all about it in quite an interested way. After she'd finished the last stages where she manipulated my neck and so on and she left the room, I was so relaxed that I struggled for a few seconds before I could sit up.

Floated home via Sainsbury's feeling swan-necked, and with the spine of a young grass snake. And then Lorraine and I took a constitutional in the park. We came across a convention of pugs and their owners, which was a Lowryesque scene, and stood laughing at the twenty or so pugs gambolling about. Into the walled garden, where we drifted happily for a while sniffing aromatic verbenas and sitting on a bench in the sun listening to robins and blackbirds singing, and the steady stream of traffic not far away of course.

In the evening Lesley and Derek came around for supper. Lorraine and I had donned our kitchen aprons (me as kitchen porter) and Lorraine had made some outstanding Indian food. A lovely dhal,  an amazing lemon chicken cooked with fistfuls of coriander, and other lovely Indian vegetables. Interesting chats. Lesley and Derek had recently been to India and had an amazing, if rather challenging, trip. Travelling in a coach there sounds rather alarming, the truck drivers keep themselves awake by deliberately driving on the wrong side of the road as this forces them to stay alert enough to get out of the way of oncoming traffic. Mellow evening, and I played some Nick Drake as Derek is a big folk fan with an encyclopedic collection.

Just four of the many pugs in the park


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