I spent the morning ploughing through piles of emails offering to improve traffic to my websites, enlarge my penis, and lend me money. Then there was someone with the memorable name of Uvuvwevwevwe Onyetenyevwe Ugwemuhwem Osas wanting to cut me in on his multi-million-dollar inheritance. What a kind man! I think he was from Nigeria but I could be wrong!
The last email was not from Nigeria but from Nelligen just across the river to tell us that another one of Nelligen's dwindling born-and-bred community had passed away. She'd gone to pick up her grandson from school when she fainted and died peacefully right there and then.
When I retired to live at "Riverbend", death was something with which I was relatively unfamiliar, other than the loss of my own mother and father and, just a few years earlier, the loss of my closest friend.
Life in a small village, though, throws you into contact with people of all ages and backgrounds in a way that is easy to avoid in a city. Back then people would often comment that I appeared 'very young for someone retired', and perhaps I was (I was 55 when I retired).
It's been a long time since I last heard that said, and the number of funerals I attend increases year by year. As a neighbour recently told me, "We're all in the minefield now."
Well, this is it from me for today. I'm off into the minefield!
