This is my google activity summary for the month. And it tells an interesting tale. Of someone who don’t go very far. I’ve visited one city. London. I fucking live there so not sure where the ‘visit’ comes in. And my ‘highlights’ are the beautiful Northway Gardens, where my tennis club lives, Toulouse Cafe, where I pretty much live when outside the house and Sherrards, one of our local bakeries and another cafe too. But one to which I never go. Because in Toulouse I get greeted with hugs, kisses and smiles by Benny, my favourite Kosovan in possibly the entire world and the place is without doubt the ‘community centre’ of the area. Where everybody knows your name. Or gets it wrong, but at least make the effort.

But Sherrards doesn’t employ Kosovans. It favours heavily tattooed women from other parts of Eastern Europe. Parts where smiling is verboten!!!! and customer service is something that is done purely out of the need for a financial transaction to take place, with the minimum of engagement or apparent job satisfaction. Okay, how satisfying is it to put three croissants and a rye bagel into a paper bag and then rob the person of £8.64 for doing so? (I never said it was cheap there), but you gotta make the most of
things. And they don’t. So the only time I enter that shop is when I’m desperate. When Lila’s coming over and no-where else has a ‘proper’ croissant. Where the almond ones look dry and uninteresting, the pain au raisin look just like they did last week, but about 6 days harder. Then, and only then, will I go to Sherrards. Where some of their stuff is quite outstanding. And Google caught me.

And my walking is still on the decrease. Which is sort of understandable, until you factor in the best reason of all. I don’t always bother to take my phone out whilst walking. Call me odd, call me old-fashioned, call me Fatima, if you wish, but if I’m out strutting round the Heath, I don’t need my phone. And if I don’t have it, then, according to Google, those miles don’t count, don’t exist, won’t make me a better or healthier person. Wasted miles. The diametric opposite of ‘wasted calories’. It’s good to be ‘off the grid’. Even for 42 minutes.

On Wednesday night I went off grid. Went to Mill Hill, which is waaaaaay off anywhere. Out in the rural wastes. And there, in a lovely little park, my tai chi school met up. We socially distanced completely, other than the hugging. We wore masks throughout, except when we took them off or, in my case, never put it on. And there, together and as one, and ‘live’ AND without (fucking) Zoom, we celebrated in the moving meditation that is that most splendid of Chinese… things. Probably, now, the only splendid Chinese thing left. About 20 of us. Ahhhhh, remember ‘people’?

Happy Hot-as-hell Saturday (‘perfect tennis weather’)

A xxxx