LIFE IS FULL OF SIMPLE PLEASURES
LONG ago I bought a little book called Simple Pleasures, published by the British National Trust. I dip into it from time to time, just to remind myself that every day is filled with small delights – if we take the trouble to look for them. Most of them are free and very few of them involve large sums of money.
There’s a special pleasure in finding a new bud on my rose bush, for example, or in sitting on my stoep in the evening, watching the last rays of the sun paint the Simonsberg mountain beautifully pink.
There’s even a kind of perverse pleasure in being woken by an irritating cat patting me on the nose long before I’m ready to get up and feed her.
Right now I have the pleasure of knowing my favourite velskoens are being mended and will be ready for collection tomorrow. I bought them many years ago. They are simple and plain and nobody could accuse them of being items of beauty.
Over the years they have stretched and softened and gradually moulded themselves to the shape of my feet.
I have never owned a pair of shoes anywhere near as comfortable as those old velskoens. But eventually they split and began letting pebbles in and I decided it was time to replace them. The new velskoens are rather more fancy than the old ones.
They have pretty stitching and metal eyelets (the old ones just have holes) and an extra piece of leather to reinforce the heel. But the fact is they are not as comfortable as those old ones. Maybe a decade of use will make a difference, but at my age I may not have a decade to spare.
I took the old ones to our local leather guru, who examined them, then turned them over and stuck his finger through the hole, while I held my breath. Eventually he decided he could patch them.
“They won’t be pretty,” he muttered, “but I can fix them.” Pretty? They never were pretty. Comfortable, yes, but never pretty. I danced out of his shop grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
Now I have a small green ticket tucked in my wallet, telling me I can collect my beloved velskoens tomorrow. I take it out every few minutes and stare at it, thinking of the pleasure I will have tomorrow when I slip my feet into those simple old (patched) vellies again. One of life’s simple pleasures lies in looking forward to tomorrow’s pleasure. Last Laugh
At the end of the term little Jimmy brought home and handed his report to his mother.
He looked on in anxious silence as his mother read his report card.
She became more and more concerned, frowning at every comment she read.
Eventually she looked up sadly and said: “Jimmy, it seems your teacher doesn’t think you’re very bright.”
Jimmy answered: “Well of course I look stupid to her. What can you expect? She has a university degree and I’m only in Grade 4.”