It’s the Little Things

Sitting alone in my room, counting down the days, hours, minutes and seconds, I have plenty of time to think. So what? I spend most of my waking hours (minutes and seconds) thinking. Today, in a moment of intense clarity, I realised that I wasn’t thinking about the little things; I was simply enjoying one of them. A rather important one.

Ironically, perhaps, this moment of clarity was, almost literally, sparked by one of the biggest things. There I was, sat at the desk, whiling away the hours (minutes and seconds) when I was struck, right in the eye. My right eye, as it happens. Then my left eye, soon afterwards. The sun. I’d not seen it for four days, but there it was, just about to disappear behind the buildings behind the barbed-wire-topped wall, just across the road. It struck me that it is just one of many things we/I take for granted; one of those things we/I don’t miss until it’s gone. Confined to barracks in a west-facing room, there was that great big bloody ball of fire, sending me some vitamin D. Probably.

I paused to capture the moment. That was quite tricky, obviously, but this may give you an idea of what it was like.

And this is how it felt. Sort of.

Even better, these two photographs then magnified the sense of the here and now, and the importance of apparently insignificant little things. Look closely at the first, and on the top bunk, you can just see the tail end of a soft toy my son had left behind in the UK, two years ago. I’d forgotten all about him/it, even though he/it had been given the most wonderfully bizarre name. How could I have forgotten?

Here he is. This is Slippery. I’m so glad I can take him home, but at the same time I am sad for all the other things I have long since forgotten. (Indeed, I found a new torque wrench hiding in the drawer – the “important stuff for Col” drawer – in my room at mum and dad’s. I’d ordered it ready to bring back last summer. No recollection, whatsoever!)

Then, behind that yellow squinty me, you can see the outcome of my morning chores. Well, chore, I suppose would be more accurate, unless you include putting the rubbish out in the corridor. Yes, I’d managed to do some laundry. By hand. In a baby bath. God, I want to hug the person who invented the washing machine.

Little things. Little things.