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Perfect Timing

Is there anything more festive than hanging precariously off the side of a tree, trying to hang some Christmas lights. Yes there is…

Hanging precariously off the side of a tree, trying to hang some Christmas lights, in the freezing Yorkshire rain. Wow it was pouring down. The ladder was slowly and relentlessly sinking into the ground. Why do Christmas Lights instantly form into multiple wire knots that increasingly form into a massive birds nest like lump.

Unbelievably I managed to finally get some lights up, with just two mini wire ball nests. No time to bask in the sodden glory, a village resident approached with a bundle…

“Hi, just give you this leaflet. Great news, the Village has been successful in getting Dark Skies accreditation. We are officially a great place to see the stars and planets now…”

Perfect timing as I’m just about to switch on some 80 outside lights. I could see the look I was getting, one of those LOOKS….

Still that LOOK didn’t take into account two important factors.

ONE…. These are solar powered lights needing many hours of sunlight… Apparently 6 hours of Sun produces 12 hours of Christmas Lighting.

TWO…. This is YORKSHIRE, we don’t do hours of sunlight.

A rough calculation based on the last few weeks weather would seem to suggest we should get about 10 minutes lighting sometime in March…

I think the Dark Skies Accreditation is safe…..

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Air

Definitely a seat with a view….

I had a chat with one of these nutters just before he ran off the top of a very tall mountain. It was his last trip of the day and he was aiming to land in his garden.

Apparently he frequently took paying passengers. As he put it with a cheeky grin… “for a couple of hundred Swiss Francs, it’s either going to be the best ever, life changing experience or without doubt the longest, worst and most terrifying 20 minutes of your life.”

Guess who took the train down….

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Dark side of the moon

Early afternoon in the Dark Side of Yorkshire.

Our 98 month old puppy with his way too full Dark Side of the Moon toy basket. I wonder if Pink Floyd ever imagined that their iconic 1973 album cover would reach these heights in 2024.

That box has seen many uses prior to being a well chewed soft toy repository. From LPs to loose photos to work documents. The box started to spilt with the weight of my records (a few Floyd ones as well) ….Too many records bought over the years. Photos, too many photos taken over the years…. Finally they got filed away neatly in albums. Work documents, well to be more precise, problems to be sorted. Overdue invoices, out of balance accounts, complaints, that kinda thing. Lots and lots of staffing issues. A bit too often this box was mostly filled with what felt like scripts from The Office. Let’s just politely say larger than life characters. Our Yorkshire equivalents of an Angela, Ryan, Andy and unbelievably TWO Dwights. Add our human (I think) version of the paranoid android Marvin from Hitchhikers Guide and someone who could out swear Gordon Ramsey. Oh let’s not forget the chap who thought it was ok to use a work credit card to buy stuff for his house including a PlayStation. The problems that box contained, Dark Side of the Moon definitely the perfect moniker back then.

But now it’s full of dog toys that have definitely seen better days. The abuse those poor things take on a daily basis. How does that fit in with the albums original themes of time inevitably passing, madness and the conflict between light and darkness. When the mad pup stops chewing his tennis ball, I will ask him.

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30 minutes

Late afternoon walk on the North Yorkshire Moors.

A three hour walk and not one sign of another soul anywhere on these moors. Definitely felt like a proper wilderness only 30 minutes drive from our front door.

On the drive home we got stuck in a traffic jam, a farm tractor decided to break down on a steep, narrow hill road. Just goes to show that we are also less than 30 minutes drive from a traffic queue.

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Inertia

First bit of snow of the season.

It might not look like it but this is 3am. iPhone flash plus a really bright moon still making it through the clouds.

I’ve been thinking quite a lot recently about risk, how I’ve become way more risk adverse. Trying to talk myself out of opportunities or new adventures. Increasingly opting for the safe option or even the do nothing approach. That’s so unlike my younger self.

A work colleague was a former mountain biker. A really good one who entered many a competition and won quite a few. A few years back he retired as it was becoming a bit too expensive. In the Summer he was given the chance of going on a two week mountain biking trek to the Himalayas and now he could afford it. As much as he wanted to go he talked himself out of it, some of the sections were really serious and he decided the risk element was too high for him now. After he turned it down he wasn’t convinced that he had made the right call, so to cheer himself up he bought a decent road bike and committed to a much safer hobby, long distance UK tours. AND on his first day of his first tour, he fell off his bike and broke his shoulder.

But then again someone was on the radio talking about how they had been thinking about buying a family holiday home in Europe for years. Always talked themselves out of it until this year, when they finally took the plunge and bought a place in Spain. Just a few months later and they are waiting to hear how badly the place is damaged after it was caught up in the terrible floods that hit the region recently.

Risk….

I wonder with me if my risk aversion is another way of saying OVERTHINKING. Take an age to make a decision then spend an age trying to talk myself out of whatever decision I’ve kind of made. End result, a feeling of way too much INERTIA.

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Not at all

For days this part of Yorkshire has been weather stuck. Stuck under mist, grey clouds and no sign of the sun. Apart from a few dog walks, the kind of weather that keeps you not too far from the fire. Trying to keep warm, I was sat going through some old photos and came across similar greyness in Switzerland. Rather than sat by a fire, here we were sat inside a warm lake boat, with hot drinks and breakfast, watching the world go reassuringly slowly by. Not belting anywhere at 100mph, just leisurely making our way across lake water. Savouring the journey rather than just impatiently trying to get somewhere fast.

Too often I find life goes by way too quickly, way too much stress, feeling out of control with no time to contemplate life. Even when the weather was grey, I treasured those moments of stillness on that lake. A chance to quietly think and breathe.

Those boat trips are years back, definitely well beyond my rear view mirror now. They haven’t really been replaced with anything similar. Life happened, a new reality dawned. A reality which often seemed like constantly moving from one activity to the next. Constantly busy, constantly occupied, rushing, maybe not achieving anything, maybe not feeling like making progress, just always doing stuff. Feeling like I hardly had any time to stop and breathe.

I love nature, I find so much peace there. When was the last time I spent real time gazing at a real mountain, a lake, out to sea. Not just a a fleeting glance then off again, actually stopping and taking the time to take in the wonder and the beauty. I’m tempted to say I don’t do this enough, but sadly the real answer is NOT AT ALL….

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Peaceful morning

Seconds from one of THOSE moments….

Walking along the peaceful Yorkshire roads. No cars, no people, just the sound of birds and a happy dog excitedly bouncing through a carpet of dry leaves. One of those times when the World seems still, peaceful. I try to capture the moment.

Then a dog does what a dog needs to do.

With Pop Bag in hand I bend over to deal with the smelly doggie gift. My mobile slips gracefully out of my jacket chest pocket and tumbles almost in slow motion to the ground.

Some things in life are INEVITABLE, Thanos was right about that.

Like a precision tool, my mobile scores a direct hit onto the newly produced Doggie Gift. Think of the sound welly boots make when squelching through inches of mud….

I am no physicist but there must be some universal laws at play here, but how does both sides of mobile get covered…. How does it get inside the protective case. How does it fill the speaker holes. For the first time my mobile has full coverage in Rural Yorkshire.

Then that realisation. No hankies, no tissues, nothing to begin to wipe it clean. A poop bag is absolutely no use here, it just spreads and smears. Dry leaves help a bit but they can only do so much. It’s a long winding two mile walk home with the smelliest mobile in the world and I’ve used my last poop bag

Do I just carry it at arms length like I’m holding some biological weapon….

Do I lose all self respect and just put it in my pocket……

Such decisions for a peaceful Yorkshire morning .

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Misty Moors

Another much needed break in the weather, so we headed for a late evening Moors walk. We had the place to ourselves and wow did we enjoy it.

I’ve been venturing here for decades and wonderfully, it never seems to change. Along the path there is a creaky old gate which is a nightmare to open but also which is just low enough to step over. For years I would simply jump it but recently I started taking a short detour and opting for a gap in the fence.

After all these years I still can’t figure out how to open that gate….

And WHY did I stop jumping over the gate…..

I can still easily clear the height but for some reason I stopped. I kinda assumed it was simply about the fear of PAIN. For years I played contact sport, the bumps, the hitting the ground didn’t seem to matter. But at some stage it started to really hurt and I suddenly really knew it. I became way more careful and cautious playing sport. So if I mess up that gate jump, it’s a very hard ground, it will hurt…

But now I’m wondering….

Is it the fear of PAIN or is it the fear of BEING WATCHED MESSING UP. What happens if someone sees me fall, make a fool of myself. The EMBARRASSMENT. I’ve started to notice that I will turn opportunities down simply because I might be noticed messing up in public.

A few months back I was out trail running on a popular path and I jumped a fence, or tried to. I slipped and basically crashed into the fence, landing like a bag of spuds on the other side. A few bruises but no pain… But I was seen falling by several walkers. I bet they laughed. Is that the reason that I’ve stopped jumping that Moors Gate. It’s crazy it wouldn’t normally have bothered me, in fact I would have loved the idea of people getting a giggle, so where did this social embarrassment come from.

Well this time I jumped the Gate but guess who looked around first to check that no passing walkers were looking.

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Bonfire Night

Blue Sky Yorkshire, if only this was the norm. Bonfire Night was certainly way more cloudy, way more drizzly. A few very damp fireworks, definitely way less than previous years. The only disruptive noise coming from next door’s mad Dog barking incessantly at the local Owl. The Owl sits on a tree overlooking the garden, and turns it back to the Dog. The Dog must get really frustrated at being ignored.

Hawklad loves F1, he has a real fascination for the motorsport. At the weekend we went to a talk by a former Team Principal and real character, Austrian Guenther Steiner. Hawklad loved it, especially as we got seats that were not next to anyone else, that really helps. If he feels hemmed in then it becomes way too stressful for him. If he feels stressed then he usually has to quickly leave. He has survived a number of rock concerts largely because of the combination of the noise, the darkness and people focused on the stage. This all adds to a feeling of anonymity, that’s the key. Plus he can move around to find less busy areas. He just doesn’t want to feel like he is seen.

This was all brought into stark focus after the talk had finished. Hawklad put his head down, hoody over his head. Out of the Arena, through the streets for 40 minutes, he never looked up once. Only when he got back into the safety of the car, did he raise his eyes and relax. The social side to life is so difficult for him.

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Election Night

If only elections were like Saturday Afternoon Football. Turn on the TV at 4.50 and you get the results. Election Night just drags on and on and on. I managed 5 minutes of the CNN coverage, that was more than enough for me. Why not just show great themed movies like Mr Smith Goes to Washington, do a 5 minute election summary and then move on to the next movie.

Even better idea, if you can trust a rodent with the arrival of Spring, let the Groundhog choose The President. Way cheaper, way quicker and way less opportunity for election fraud. Now that’s an Election Special Night I would watch.