Break of dawn

Dawn doesn't actually break until 8am so my early morning walk is not so early.  I like to walk through the town before people are around, maskless, which is against the regulations here.  There is a steep climb up to the chateau, part steps and part path.  By the time I am halfway up my breathing is laboured so sometimes I stop just to give my lungs a rest.  Yesterday morning it was particularly difficult to breathe so by the time I was halfway up I was struggling.  I don't like to admit even to myself that I can't run from the bottom to the top anymore so I pretend I am looking out over the river and the old bridge.  So I staggered up to the halfway point, turned and looked.  I couldn't see a damn thing the mist was so dense, but as I couldn't continue for a minute or two I remained staring out, at nothing.  Suddenly a runner appeared from nowhere and said sarcastically, 'nice view'.  Oh well with a bit of luck I won't come across him again.

There are bars at all the downstairs windows,  just like a lot of Spanish houses, which is not conducive to relaxed living, especially as I used to work in prisons.  My American neighbour said he would cut them off for me.  I hesitated slightly because this is an ancient building and for all I know the bars may be  some part of its history, but I decided to risk it and told him to go ahead.  He had a contraption, which he called a masher but I would call an electric saw, and he set to work tackling the lower bars first, both horizontal and vertical.  It was a tough job as the bars were thick and had clearly been there for hundreds of years, but eventually the saw slid through.  With dizzying speed the bars slid out of the top and the whole caboodle crashed onto the ground below.  Thank goodness no-one was standing underneath.