Another magic morning is coming up at "Riverbend". Just ten minutes earlier, the river had been hidden under a blanket of early-morning mist but, like Cat Stevens lyricised oh so many years ago, "morning has broken" and "mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning".
Mine is also the porridge, full of raisins and honey, which together with a cup of hot lemon-and-ginger tea should keep me going until lunchtime on the verandah rolls around. There are only two days left in this year - well, three, if you count today! - where has it gone? Did you ever hear yourself say when you were twenty, "Gosh. It only seems like yesterday that I was ten"? Me neither! But these days it only seems like yesterday when I was in my sixties and in my fifties, not to mention forties! I think it was sometime in my late forties when time strapped a jet pack to its back, lit the afterburners, and if you blinked you missed a whole month.
A bunch of youngsters to whom life is still eternity, last night parked their hired houseboat across from "Riverbend". I was expecting a lot of noise but whatever they were drinking did the job because they were out like a light by ten o'clock. And they still are as I type this with one hand on the keyboard and the other holding a spoonful of porridge.
I hope it'll stay quiet because I think I spend the rest of the day just lying on my back, chewing on a bit of grass, and thinking of nothing but what my final words might be. "Another magic morning" should do it.
