A bit of thanksgiving of my own...

I know I’m a day late, but I've been wondering if our Friends Across The Pond have an idea in this Thanksgiving malarkey... 

I’m having rather a trying day (plugging through a monotonous but useful task [every office job has them!] while trying not to disturb the person at the next desk who is getting a tad tense wrestling with a lot of figures) and I find I keep thinking “Roll on five o’clock!”.  But it occurs to me that this is wishing the next three hours of my life away, which I don’t like doing.  So for now, while I munch my apple and finish my cup of green tea, I’m going to practice gratitude.

Thank you, you gods and little fishes, for this very good apple.  Thank you for apples, generally.  And bananas.  And pineapples.  And the mad way pineapples grow...

Thank you for the frail wintry sunshine washing over Kew Green, and for the beautiful wispy mares-tails of cloud in the sky.

Thank you for the fact I’m going on holiday in just over a week!

Thank you for the fact that all my orchids are re-blooming.

Thank you for all the actors, dancers, singers and musicians whose great performances give me so much pleasure and awe.  Thank you in particular for all those who are not just gifted but hot hot hot and gorgeous as well...

Thank you for the wonderful autumn colours all around me at Kew, now entering the final phase before winter; and for the winter colours (textured bark, scarlet twigs and stems of dogwoods, rose-pink linden buds, nerines in bloom) just arriving, and the sharp, musky, bittersweet and incense-y perfumes of the season.

Thank you for it being Friday evening, the evening I treat myself to a really easy supper, and desert, and a beer. And a dose of silly TV - Friday night means "The Mentalist" and "Castle"; yay, shiny...

Thank you for my health.  Thank you for my family and friends.  Thank you that I have a job, an adequate income, a roof over my head, sane flatmates, and the use of a kitchen where all the appliances work.

Thank you for my writing.  Even if it never means a thing to anyone else at all, it means the world to me to have a creative outlet.  Thank you for my maddening, mercurial Muse, and Blessed Be She Who Comes With Stories! Thank you for that mysterious inner spring that wells forth with situations and scenes, characters and ideas.  Thank you for the guidance that nudges me towards knowing that this story will work better if it’s told in the first person, and this story doesn’t yet work because although the initial premise is good there’s a socking great hole in the plot, and this story is the one I simply have to tell right now...  Thank you for giving me Gabriel Yeats and Simon Cenarth and Anne Hope, thank you for giving me Thorn and Anna, thank you for the Ramundi clan and dumb, long-suffering Massimo; thank you for Iain Siward and Aiean Aietes, for the Hobards brothers and Maramne Myers, for Mel and Dottie and David and Yaz, for the Hughuddles, and for all the other imaginary people who have made and are still making my life a happier place.