Another 'taking it easy' day - and why not. I seem to have spent the time since about December never catching up with what I have to do, or want to do (which isn't the same at all !) so having a few days here just doing nothing much is very pleasant; I've been having afternoon siesta's too, and am beginning to feel I've caught up on missed sleep.
So today, I walked to town again straight after breakfast, to find the shoe repair man - my Safari boots needed some gluing and stitching. I found his 'pitch' under a tree near the university bookshop, but he hadn't arrived, so I wandered around in the town. I tried to find the fabric market I had been to two years back, but the same stalls are now all secondhand clothes.
I did find a park with about 20 boys playing football, and there was shade and benches, so I sat for a while and watched the world go by again .... this seems to be quite an OAP thing I do a lot of lately ! But several people stopped to chat, and I managed to make a baby scream (a white face = baby tears) and found a lovely but very emaciated ginger kitten cowering under a bush. Doting on cats and kittens is a very British thing; Africa and much of Europe treat them almost as disposable vermin catchers, so if a kitten is obviously abandoned, its just left to take its chances.
I sat for an hour, then went back to the shoe repair man, and he had arrived. 'Fundi George' - he repaired another pair of boots for me a couple of years back and remembered me !! He can't get many, if any, white customers. Another half hour of watching the world pass by .... sitting under a tree on a rock, in my sock feet, as he glued and stitched ... and then he charged me 150 shillings ! Which is approx £1.15p. ! Such repairs in the UK would have been as much as the boots cost me originally.
A bit more essential shopping ....
... followed by a gentle walk back for lunch.
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After lunch, 90 minutes sleep with the breeze blowing in my open door, and then some time watching the balcony ants. I got some tea and fed the ants with some biscuit crumbs. They don't like them dry, I observed, so I chewed up a little corner of biscuit and offered them that ... MUCH nicer ! Probably only twenty or so ants were interested in the dry crumbs, but the pre-chewed and spat out biscuit attracted a few hundred ants. (I know, I'm peculiar watching ants, but they are most interesting little creatures, and stay in their place,i.e. along the balcony and not in my room).
Tea for one relaxing lady on her balcony !
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