A Slow Weekend, Written Down

Last weekend I did not do very much, and I want to remember it.

I had cleared the diary on Wednesday. No visits, no errands, no tasks with a deadline. Only the shape of two days and a few small ideas I had no intention of acting on.

Saturday

I woke without an alarm, which I do not do as often as I'd like. Light was already in the room. I lay there for a bit, not thinking, and then I got up and put the kettle on.

Breakfast was toast, eaten standing at the window. I watched a woman across the street water her pots, one by one, taking an unreasonable amount of care. I felt oddly proud of her.

Around ten I started a loaf of bread. It's a simple one, and it needs very little from me, only time. I mixed the dough, covered it, and left it on the radiator shelf. Then I walked to the park without a destination and sat on a bench until a dog asked me for attention.

Lunch was late. The bread came out of the oven at two, and I ate the heel of it with butter and nothing else. In the afternoon I read a chapter of a novel I'd been carrying for a month, then fell asleep with the book on my chest.

Sunday

Sunday was slower still.

I wrote a letter. A proper one, on paper, to a friend I had not written to in a year. It took most of the morning, because I kept stopping to look at the garden. The letter said very little and I enjoyed every line.

In the afternoon I walked to the post box the long way, past the church and the empty school. The streets had a Sunday sound: a distant lawnmower, a radio from an open window, a child on a scooter.

What I noticed

A slow weekend is not an empty one. It is full of small, ordinary things, and they stand out because nothing is crowding them. I noticed how my bread smelled. I noticed the colour of the sky at five o'clock. I noticed that I was not hurrying toward anything, and that this was unfamiliar enough to feel a little strange.

Some things I kept:

• No phone until after breakfast

• One big task, bread, and the rest left open

• A walk without a route

• A letter instead of a message

• Supper at the table, with a candle

Why write it down

I could have taken photographs. But a photograph shows a moment, and what I wanted to keep was the slowness between moments. Words are better at that. They can hold a Sunday afternoon and the feeling that it went on.

I've put the page in my notebook. In a few months, when a weekend gets busy, I'll read it again. Maybe I'll book a day off and try the same thing.