Spare a Thought

It was my sixth hot water bottle that I had filled with boiling hot water from the kettle. One has to go carefully, especially when there is a knitted cover to consider, it's not a task that one can do in a hurry!!

Mom always used to say 'a watched pot never boils' and so I spaced out my labour of love with other chores that needed to be done while that wretched kettle boiled again, and again and again.

There is nothing nicer in the mountains, after a long day of hiking, than climbing into bed and rolling one's tootsies around a hot water bottle.

But you have to admit, filling a half dozen hot water bottles is not an enviable task. My mind wafted off into space and I began to think kindly of other people in the world, who had to undertake mundane but necessary tasks, day in and day out, in the heat, in the cold, tasks like that of the many security guards in the world. Mindlessly walking up and down, endlessly looking at the time as minute by minute eeks past, waiting for that shift to end.

Spare a thought for the gardener during Jacaranda season, patiently raking up those zillions of tiny leaves, week in and week out until the rainy season starts and they would all clump happily together.

Spare a thought for the tomato sellers, hundreds of them lined the roads on the way to the Eastern Highlands. Rows and rows of rapidly ripening tomatoes painstakingly and exquisitely piled in one dollar lots, like rosy, rotund miniature Eiffel Towers yearning to be purchased!!

Spare a thought for the conveyor belt worker, sorting pills, sorting oranges, sorting out pork scratchings to see there were no hairs left on the crackle! How about sparing a thought for the fellow in the factory who has to test the temperature of every single pea that passes by on the conveyor belt

On a more modern theme, spare a thought for the Social Media 'Liker'!
Yes there are people who are paid to 'like' items on social media platforms and business managers are using it to generate more footfall to their page.

So next time you are scrolling on Facebook or Instagram - and you see how many 'likes' there are, spare a thought for the Hot Water Bottle Filler!! Filled with Love!!