I had a perfect day today.
Now; you might think "here we go: more smug bollocks from teacher-boy who gets 54 weeks holiday per year and wants to rub our noses in it. Again".
But you'd be wrong. This isn't about the benefits of a louche summer lifestyle funded by all you hard-working real tax payers. It's about one of the many lessons I learned from one of the finest human beings it has been my privilege to know - my late father in law.
A working-class boy from the Toonheid in Glasgow, Bert Costello died last October following 18 months of physical torture in the shape of an aggressive strain of Parkinson's Disease. Refusing to bestow on him the gift of mental decay, it so robbed him of his physical abilities to the extent that he was unable to move anything other than his eyes and his mouth in his latter weeks. But his mind remained stubbornly unaffected - ensuring his physical decay remained in razor-sharp focus for the duration of his illness.
During his final weeks, through his awe-inspiring and almost infallible dignity in the face of his illness, he expressed one wish: to be able to go home, sit on the sofa and watch a DVD with his wife for an evening. A wish that was - he knew - impossible to grant.
But Bert - I think - didn't allow his wish to eat away at him. He refused to allow it to become a fruitless, destructive longing - because in the years leading up to his demise, he knew, at the time, the significance of sofa-DVD evenings with the Mrs. He recognised perfect days when they were happening, and stored them away for when he might need those memories.
Did you have a perfect day today ? Maybe you did and didn't realise it. Because one day, you might look back on today and offer to sell your soul to experience just one day like today. And you might curse the fact that you missed it when it happened.
Today I woke up, had coffee and toast outside in the sun. I had to go to the shops for some messages for Cedar Nursery; while Yvonne knocked her pan in at work, I went and bought some stuff for our lunch which we ate outside; Amanda (my daughter) had a friend drop by for lunch (Sarah - beautiful, smart young lady and a credit to her parents); I went to the Doctor to have a minor skin lesion on my back examined (nothing to worry about); I had a couple of cold beers in my back garden and made dinner for me and the Mrs. This weekend we are driving to France for a cheapo holiday. The sun shone all day.
Nothing really spectacular. No expensive eating out. No life-altering experiences. But a day that - one day, when my health has failed me - I may consider selling my soul to experience just once more.
And that is Bert's lesson. Perfect days don't happen every day; they maybe don't happen every week. They probably don't happen in the Seychelles, or Italy or Florida or Gleneagles. But one might well be happening right now, right under your very nose.
Sitting outside in the sun at 6pm with a cold beer in my mitt - I realised how perfect a day today has been, stored the memory away for future reference, and raised a glass to Bert.
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