Today, I wake early. Spring and birds do that to me. I make tea and look out into the garden listening to the BBC World Service where various people from Ukraine are carefully explaining their situations. I set the table for breakfast and later, when R sits down with me, I tell him what I remember. By the time I get to the part where the poet spoke about the taste of blood he suddenly had in his mouth when he heard that all four bakers of his most cherished bakery had been killed, my voice gets tight and I am struggling to breathe. 

Our Sunday is peaceful, I sort out the week's laundry, clean the bathroom, cook while R fits a new drip feed watering system to the greenhouse, after lunch, R makes coffee and we drink it sitting out in the sun - a first - by the flowering peach trees. I've had a rough two weeks health wise and for the first time in two weeks, I manage my 10 k cycle and arrive back home tired but triumphant. I call my father and we discuss the state of the world. 

I hear him turning pages and he tells me, he has been browsing an old edition of The Odes by Horace, and he reads to me (in German, not Latin, the English is mine):

 The wicked man advances, but punishment, though lame of foot, has rarely let him escape. 

There you have it, he tells me. It'll all turn out right in the end. We proceed to talk about the weather.