The Lotos-eater

“In the afternoon they came unto a land, in which it seemed always afternoon.”

Those words, from Tennyson’s The Lotos-eaters, always puts me in mind of a balmy day, in the late spring or early summer, with blue skies, white clouds and green fields. It always feels like afternoon; the chores of the morning, finished in the cool of the first hours of the new day, are done, if there were any to do, and laziness and slumber are all that make demands on one now.

I am just over half the way through my holidays, and though Idylland is not quite as free and careless as the results of a half-consumed lotos, it is quite enjoyable, nonetheless. I relish the feeling of time: I needn’t hurry and do all that requires accomplishing today, because I will have time the next day or the next after that. Certainly, my holidays will end soon enough, but for now, I have time, time to spend with the cats, time to read and write, time to listen to music, time to do nothing.

This is as close to Lotusland as I will come. It’s not bad for all that, even if some appear to have found their own way to the lotos...