Rather a prosaic sort of day, tho’ not without its good points. Thankfully, Val was much better, the medicine that Joe had bought, Chloromycetin, having done a great deal to aid her recovery. Still, tho’, not at her strongest, tho’ we did venture out to buy some bread. Upon our return, I fixed myself a splendidly civilised breakfast of a couple of soft-boiled eggs. A pretty lazy day from then on, for both of us – Val because she wasn’t well, me because… I’m lazy. (I’ve decided that my weakness at Spanish is chiefly thro’ laziness. It’s far easier to shrug or say “si”, when really you don’t understand, than to make the effort.) However, the regimen of reading, listening to music, + playing bridge solitaire, was broken a few times. First, I had to do the washing. Not much, fortunately, since Val had done the bulk of it yesterday, but not easy to wash in cold water in a stone sink, especially with some critical Mexican women looking on. At least, they may not have been critical, but I felt that they were, which amounts to much the same thing. I dragged Val out to do a little more shopping, chiefly bread + bananas. Joe + Judy came round, chiefly to deliver Duncan’s birthday present, a huge bear. It being his birthday, Duncan treated us all to a demonstration of his new-found skill… walking! Judy returned to work, but Joe was persuaded to play Cosmic Encounter one more time – Val won. I popped out to buy a couple of pressies – a boat for Duncan, + a Jona Lewie album for Graham + Barbara. In the evening, Val cooked up a sort of kedgeree of left-over rice + sardines – very tasty. After which, it was just about time to go up to the train station – we’d decided the time had come to leave. Treated ourselves to a taxi – a much longer + bumpier ride than we remembered, + then a rather dismal wait for the train to Oaxaca.
The photo, of course, is not especially relevant, but soon enough I hope we can move on to a more pertinent set of photos.
Quite a domestic day, but definitely time to be moving on. I recall one incident which – as usual – reflects pretty badly upon me. We had been invited to use a jar of honey, but this lead to Barbara having a meltdown when I managed to make a mess of the jar. To some extent it reflected the stress she was under as a young mother trying to cope in difficult circumstances, but this does not excuse my clumsiness and lack of consideration. It meant that our departure was a little strained.
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