I awake and the sky is a soft grey lid above. I get up, shuffle on my butterfly embroidered slippers and descend the stairs, making coffee and French toast for me and J, quicker than before. Spooning over a mixture of berries and trying to trickle some maple syrup on top of the toast from the bottle with no spout, from which a small flood of the amber fluid gushes forming a sugary puddle on the plate, I pass over the heaped plate to J and cock my hip up onto the stool. The window is open nearby and the air is soft as it sneaks in and caresses my arm. I can see the Perovskia which has recently bloomed. It is electric blue, an astonishing blueness that I can hardly take my eyes off. I love this blue. There is another blue I am enchanted by, the blue of the kingfisher....and the pale sky-blue of the cloak on the statue of Holy Mary, that stood atop the old electric heater in the bedroom of my childhood..Blue Gentians too, nestling in the cracks and crevices of the Burren, that our guide told us was the exact shade of blue in the eyes of the Goddess Athena...looking outside at the tangled tapering blue spires of the Perovskia plant, I can just make out some honeybees hovering, then landing, before taking off and encircling the flowers lazily, watched from the garden wall by a tattered young magpie, who looks on the scene with a glassy eye before jumping from the wall and flying off.
