Today just feels so genuinely lovely.
It technically started at midnight (don't all days?), when my parents got home and I wished my mum a happy birthday. One dozy, daylight-induced slumber later and we're humbly apologising for "only getting a couple of gifts"and simultaneously preparing a breakfast of coffee, croissants and orange juice. She's insisted on doing nothing productive with her hours of daylight and so we're going out to dinner later.
So I've showered and dressed and for five minutes or so gazed into the clouds past a pair of superimposed tanned knees, with the opening tunes of Neutral Milk Hotel's album faintly playing to my left. Unfortunately my duties as birthday girl's daughter can be postponed no more and it is time to do the dishes.
I now reward myself with the browsing of my only two copies of Oh Comely, and allow myself the time to draft a letter in my head. Occasional visits from my sister - latest watercolour painting in hand - has caused me to decide upon her profession (as an illustrator), and I have mentally commissioned hundreds of works to keep her busy. I can only hope that she takes art next year.
We - my sister and I - have listened to One Day Like This at least - oh, I don't know - seven times in the last half hour. It is a mixture of the melody and lyrics that leave me with the indomitable impulse to think in terms of idealistic nostalgia, and produce a welling of tears in my voice. I can only speculate as to whether or not I shall feel the want to open up my half-empty notebook, and keep it so for a while.
Though it is well past midday, approaching two o' clock in fact, it feels like the sort of day where the afternoon will never come. And I sincerely hope it doesn't.
