almost sunrise

I am a recovering broken-footer. Almost two years ago now but I still can’t run. Maybe that’s because I broke it by rolling my ankle, as you do, with all the muscle and tendon damage that involves, so sitting on a couch with your foot at flop for three months probably means that these soft tissues are going to heal a bit shortened. Bone, fine, muscles and tendons, not so sure.

Hope I haven’t got you squirming as I would be if I were reading this rather than having actually gone through it. I could never be anything medical. Haven’t got the stomach for it.

Anyway, point being, I’m trying to get some fitness back into this tired old body so I’ve been walking, as I used to do, at sunset every evening, as sunset is wont to be. Well, trying to. At about the half hour mark I start to limp. The arch of the damaged foot gets tired and aches. This has been going on for ages and I don’t notice a lot of improvement so I’ve decided to try and strengthen the foot more gently with lots of short walks instead of few long ones. So rather than going for my morning coffee around the corner I can walk about 12 minutes to another cluster of shops, and then 12 minutes back. Among other strategies.

Two or three of the cafes there open at 7 in the morning, whereas the ones around the corner don’t open till 8. This would have had no relevance to me 15 years ago and prior, when getting up was the hardest part of my day and best avoided if possible. But of recent I have become an early-morning person and so have had the opportunity to notice that this is my favourite time of the day. Being out of the house by 7 is better than being out by 8, especially at this time of year when you are almost seeing the sun rise.

And the big city in the early morn (just to be a bit poetic because it is poetic) is a special thing. You have big city facilities available to you without having to fight for space. You have peace and quiet, the morning birds a-twitter and a-warble, open streets you can just walk across. Anywhere. In spite of peak hour being on the rumble.

I have to sit outside for my cappuccino or I get very sad and it is threatening to get to that time of year when the bones freeze and the fingers don’t bend if I do, but today I found a cafe in my newly-frequented area that has one of those outdoor gas heaters. Wooohooo! Might get me through the winter without ever having to cross a cafe threshold*.

Moving to the Adelaide Hills soon. Adelaide just doesn’t do cafes the way Melbourne does. Especially not the Hills, not at 7 in the morning. Am I making a big mistake? How important is a cafe in the scheme of things?

I’ll be letting you know anon.

*Did you know that a threshold is so named because it used to hold back the thresh? Back in, like, Elizabethan times when the streets were effectively sewer channels and they put straw on the floors to mop it all up, the threshold was a piece of wood across the doorway to keep all the thresh in. Somewhere in the intervening years we have dropped one of the aitches. Just a little something for your edification.