Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 33 Comments

Free

Walking and pondering.

Pondering on how well the cost saving drive is going. Not….

Having spent hours going through the weekly shopping list, looking for deals, switching to saver brands, cutting out waste, the bill came in £10 more than the last previous week……

Filling up the diesel thirsty car and finding it was £75 to fill up the tank this week, £3 dearer than last week…..

Paying this quarters electricity bill and finding it had more than doubled compared to the last one……

Filling up the Home Fuel Oil Tank costing £800, last year it would have cost £300.

I could go on but you get the picture. We are ok but many are struggling. Definitely the time to appreciate the simpler life. Appreciating things like walks. Lifts the soul and costs nothing. Then guess what. My shoe sole starts to come off. Maybe not so free after all🤣🤣🤣🤣 But life has helpfully moved on. Hawklad is bigger than me. So now these days I can enjoy ‘hand me downs’. He must be near growing out of his shoes real soon.

Oh hang on, that means buying him new shoes. Just for a moment I had thought I had actually saved some money there. How silly of me to think that.

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Marvel at Scotland

Back to last week. See you don’t need the multiverse to do a spot of time travel.

“Dad tomorrow can we go to Scotland. Don’t mind where just can it be really quiet. Somewhere different. Maybe even exciting.”

Two herbal teas later the solution popped into my head. Visit a place where we can MARVEL at who grand Scotland is.

Quiet means arriving early. As we were heading 180 miles north then we set off just after 5am.

Heading to the stunning coastal village of St Abbs. Part of the Marvel Universe……

The second highest grossing movie of all time, End Game used St Abbs as New Asgard. Hulk and Rocket came here to find Thor. Hawklad didn’t think he would be stood outside Thor’s house…..

I didn’t cause an international incident by taking my shirt off and pretending to be one of the Avengers. Maybe next time. Actually if people think that Thor looked out of shape when he was in New Asgard, wait to they get a look at my version of a shirtless Avenger. Let’s just say the 6 pack is well and truly hidden these days.

As we wandered around St Abbs a thought struck me. The place feels remote almost cut off from modern life. Operating at its own pace with the Sea dominating life. Could somewhere like this be a place which would suit Hawklad. Then the realisation, it might actually suit me. I was brought up by the Sea until I left to go to University. It feels very familiar, very safe. Would a return suit my mindset. Would it blow away the life cobwebs. Would it fix the problem that the world now seems to spin at a different speed to me. Is it a great place to forget the past.

Maybe Thor had a point moving to somewhere as wonderful as St Abbs. A perfect place for his New Asgard

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 39 Comments

Sea

A sea of yellow.

If Captain Chaos made it in there, I’m not sure we would get him out this side of Christmas. If I played golf I bet my ball would definitely land somewhere in that.

So the home at school project is back. Over two years now. Wow two years.

It’s only been a two week school break but so much has been forgotten, by parent and pupil. Trigonometry was mastered, two weeks later it might as well be a cross stitching pattern. Intricate, perplexing, ultimately an unfathomable jumble. Forgetting things is very understandable with my Sinclair ZX81 of a brain (an ancient first try at a home computer which was as powerful as my left buttock). But Hawklad should be different, he has an amazing memory. No he can’t remember any Trig from two weeks back yet ask him about things that interest him and it’s almost PERFECT TOTAL RECALL. Remember stuff from years back. That’s the secret, stuff that interests him.

Sadly British Secondary Education doesn’t fall into that interest bracket……

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 44 Comments

Planning pt 2

Planning can get you to places. Get you to places at the right times. Sometimes planning can get you to places when the weather is nice.

Planning can get you out of the daily routine. Walking on an island in the North Sea is a much needed break from the usual daily routine. That’s good for Hawklad, for Me.

Planning is going to be the key going forward.

To push the boundaries out just a little bit further.

Hawklad wants to see a bit more. Experience a bit more. But his anxieties are spiking again. It’s going to be a challenge. More planning is required.

So can we plan a quiet day trip to another country next.

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Planning pt 1

A carefully planned day trip. A trip 140 miles north up the coast. To deepest Northumberland. To the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. A stunning tidal island set in the North Sea. To reach it you need to cross a one mile causeway which disappears when the tide comes in. Saint Aidan founded a Monastery here in 635AD. Even today you can see why.

So much planning was needed. Time the arrival as the tide was just revealing the causeway. Stay just long enough before the crowds arrived.

Unbelievably the plan worked. Hawklad got his day out with few crowds. That is definitely the blueprint for trying to expand his world on HIS TERMS.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 45 Comments

Messages

Am I a bad man…..

For weeks I’ve struggled with the online banking process. All goes well until the bit about sending a confirmation text message. The message never got to me. So I was constantly using the help desk to approve transactions. All a bit of a polava.

Well something happened today. Something very odd. Suddenly a bank confirmation text message arrived. Then another. And another. Actually over 230 messages arrived. Not all from the bank. Weeks and weeks and weeks worth. Message after message.

The first two I looked at where about WORK. From colleagues. Moaning colleagues. Very moaning. My life was definitely not enhanced by reading them. The next message was clearly another moaning work one. The one after that looked like O2 trying to flog me a new mobile.

Am I a bad man, I snapped. I might have accidentally deleted all the messages. Deleted without looking at virtually all of them, just 4 out of 230.

Yes I might be a bad man but wow the feeling of power. The liberation. Sometimes I do like online connectivity. It would have taken me ages to shred 230 letters. That’s progress.

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Issues with Horses

Hawklad was playing online with his best friend so I had an afternoon to burn. Let’s go for a local walk.

I have issues with HORSES. Always have. Some say its because they like me for some reason but I know differently. The truth. They are after me.

As a child I once went to Africa to visit my sister. At one stage I was asked to stand next to a horse so my family could take a CINE film. Remember those…. As I stroked this particular fella, much laughter ensued. The horse literally ate my T-shirt. From then on the vendetta took hold. A few years later I was trying to get into a Football Stadium to see Newcastle get beat again. Stood in the queue chomping on a chocolate bar when a police horse stood on my foot. As I spun round in pain another police horse ate my Mars Bar……

The theme continued. I was walking on Dartmoor when a wild pony pinched my sandwich……

If only it was always that end. I was walking through a city centre to a meeting one afternoon when I came across a crowd. A new Betting Shop was opening and the famous Racehorse, Red Rum was the guest of honour. I found my self in a queue which I thought led to a free T-shirt but no, it was the queue to stand next to the great horse. I patted the huge horse with some trepidation and he repaid me by crapping on my shoe….

See they have issues with me. Maybe it’s because they know that I once voted for that horse loving movie, The Godfather as my favourite soundtrack ever. They know….

So on this particular grey Yorkshire afternoon I found myself walking across a field when over the hill a pack of ravenous beasts appeared. They came closer….

And came closer…

And closer….

And closer….

And sensing blood, even closer….

I was surrounded. I now knew what it felt like for Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum to be surrounded by a pack of blood thirsty Jurassic Raptors.

And remembering the best Jurassic Park survival strategy, I legged it. And when I got back home guess what. I had stood in horse poo….. See they have issues with me.

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More gloves

The GIVE A FENCE A GLOVE push continues here in Yorkshire.

So much love to the fences. I’m reminded of a Beetles song

GLOVE IS ALL YOU NEED

As the Bank Holiday kicks in here, the roads are rammed full. The car parks are overflowing. But around our village, all is quiet. Hardly any traffic. Our walk today and we didn’t see another soul.

Quiet amongst the storm. So a few days of local walks, table tennis in the garden, lego. Maybe even croquet amongst the mole hills. That’s what Hawklad needs at present. A time will come when Hawklad has to face crowds but not yet, still too much anxiety. Progress has to be at a pace that suits him. I might wish for bigger adventures further afield but those can’t be now. Certainly not this weekend. So for a few days the adventures are amongst the GLOVES.

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Eggs

Still not feeling very Spring like.

Somebody’s been busy….

These EGGS make a cracking Egg and Soldiers. Mighty fine very local honey as well. Every few months the Bees do a mighty impressive fly past directly over our house. There is something much more regular than that. Every morning the Cockerel provides a morning alarm call at 6am. Not always welcome.

If only we could bribe the big fella to call out at other times. Hawklad would appreciate that. He really struggles to get the concept of time. Digital or Analog, doesn’t matter, he just struggles to tell the time. Sometimes he can work it out but it’s a real effort. Thankfully he can use his iPad to read out the time for him and to set alarms.

Unfortunately iPad audible alarms and time prompts are not allowed in the exams. Exam timekeeping will be a huge issue for him. So as Hawklad pointed out, “I wonder if they would rather me take the cockerel into the exam hall instead.”

Why not, I bet Cockerels are not specifically mentioned in the regulations.

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Hidden secret

My favourite tree. Has been for over two decades now, everyday I see it from the garden, standing alone and proud. Surviving several lightning strikes and countless storms.

But today after all these years I discovered something special about that wonderful tree. A magical hidden secret…..

Hawklad sat an exam today at home. Two hours worth of work. I set him off and kept out of his way. No need for two teacher referees this time. I was asked to keep an eye on him to make sure he stuck to the exam rules. Deep sigh….. They could just ask him and he would straight away tell them the truth. On one trip to Switzerland I gave him a sip of a shandy drink. At the end of the holiday we went through Swiss Customs. We were asked if we had anything to declare. Hawklad immediately owned up to that shandy….

No I didn’t enforce the exam rules. He walked about. He finds sitting still difficult, not moving for two hours would be torture to him. He had some noisy crisps and really loud wrapped up mints. He talked to the pets. The key things he stuck to. He didn’t use any sources of help, he observed the time allocation. If only school exams could be this flexible.

So the hidden secret.

The other side of the much loved tree has a face…

An angry face. Can you see it.

Wow. How did I miss that. Just goes to show that you can never be certain that you know everything. But I do know that school exams are forms of legalised torture. Why do we do that to them.