Retreat

Adhisthana, October 2021

I've been away on a lovely retreat in the Herefordshire countryside. Because the retreat centre is situated close to where Bee Lady and Landrover Man live, I arranged to drop in on them for lunch before the retreat started. 

I was all ready, packed, sorted, had bought some chocolates as a present for BL and LRM, and was on my way home from a vaccination shift when the car started to sound odd. I stopped, about a mile from home, and discovered that I had a puncture.

First I was cross, mainly with myself, because the garage had pointed out the state of my tyres at my MOT but said they probably had about two to three thousand miles left in them and it was two thousand miles since then. Then I pulled myself together, opened the boot and had a rummage. It's been a very long time since the heady days when I considered myself even slightly competent at manual tasks - with relative wealth comes the ability to delegate unwanted tasks to paid help. Anyway, there was a wheel, a jack and various other bits and pieces including a gadget that turned out to be for getting the fancy bolt covers off the bolts, and the special shaped anti-theft lock nut, so I knuckled down and got started.

No fewer than three people stopped to offer help, and I expect more would have done so except that when the third one turned up I was having a bit of trouble getting the wheel off, so he did it for me and then put the spare on and tightened the bolts and recommended his preferred tyre place in town. Except that it was now 5.02 p.m. and they shut at 4.30. Kwik Fit, however, was still open even though they shut at 5, and I asked them very nicely if they would mind helping, and they did. So I gave them BL and LRM's chocolate, and wrapped up some flowers that had been in my house for a week or so to give to BL and LRM instead.

Bee Lady and Former Landrover Man are very well, and living in a new place with different walks, so we had lunch and did a walk and it was lovely. Then on to the retreat which allowed me to turn off all electronics for nearly a week - no social media, internet, email, nothing. It was like taking life and pressing pause. My only responsibilities were to try and keep and eye on the time and turn up for things like meals and talks, but if I hadn't even done that it would still have been fine.

Coming home and plunging straight back into the modern world after that sort of break can be jarring, so I didn't turn the phone or computer on for a day, but manage to get jobs done in a meditative way, like more pruning, laundry, cooking. While I'd been away Glf had finished the pointing, which looks very fine and makes me happy that there's only one job left in the first round of the LTRP - decorating the porch and downstairs hall.

And then I turned all the gadgets back on, but tried very hard not to go down some of the rabbit holes that suck time out of my life, and I've done quite well so far. I have another retreat booked (at a different centre) in November, to top up my level of chill.