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….
In the quiet my mind wandered. Watching and listening to the latest rain storm to crash into our little bungalow, sat on a little Yorkshire Hill.
How can I get Hawklad for a holiday somewhere. How to do it without ramping up his anxieties, how to fund it, where to go. I kept going back to previous holidays, holidays before our little world changed. Coming to the same phrase in my head.
Can never be the same again.
The logical approach is to go back to our former Swiss trip base, Spiez. I know how to get there, the ways that would work and not work for Hawklad. Ways to avoid queues, and crowds and anxieties. Familiarity is important to him, reassuring. Spiez would offer that.
Plus it is a wonderful base to explore the rest of Switzerland and even Northern Italy .
Plus it is one of Europe’s most beautiful bays.
BUT
Things have changed. It’s not 3 or maybe more now. It’s just 2 of us. So many memories there. Maybe so many ghosts round every corner…
Much to ponder, but it is one stunning place. Always will be a special place for us.
Yorkshire is kinda stuck in weather, stuck in cold, grey and damp. It’s not just here that gets weather like this, even in my favourite place, Switzerland. Sometimes we would wake up to grim alpine weather, yet it didn’t stop the family adventure. Waterproofs on and off we went.
Happy GREY days.
Don’t panic this is not the weather today….
Time creeps up on you…….
I’ve never been one who worried too much about ageing. It is what it is. I was also someone who never really lost too much sleep on the ever growing bucket list. Plenty of time to catch up and tick those all important activities off the list.
Then life happened. Too many trips to funerals. Suddenly I was aware of that ever clicking life clock.
Last night I was watching a movie based on a family skiing holiday. A holiday that went badly wrong. The Will Ferrell ‘Downhill’ Movie. The most un ‘Will Ferrell’ movie ever. It was really good and rather unsettling, especially as the main character was probably about my age. As the movie went on I could hear that clock ticking just that little bit louder.
I’ve always wanted to ski. It’s right up on my bucket list. Near the top. I’ve just never got round to doing it. A couple of trips to a really rubbish rock hard carpet slope. That’s all I’ve managed. We had plans to go to Switzerland as a family during the winter. I could see a route to finally being a proper skier. Then life happened. Those plans evaporated. So last night I was watching that family ski in the movie and that ticking clock was deafening. Will I ever ski…..
It sounds silly but that thought really depressed me. I feel further away than ever from those alpine slopes. Time and my body is not on my side. Too many years of contact sport has left me with a ‘ previously enjoyed’ body frame. A couple of things need patching up. If I get them patched up then skiing might be out of the question. That ticking clock is annoyingly deafening.
Yet I still so want to SKI.
I guess all I can do is keep that dream alive for a while longer. Put off any patching work on the body and accept a few aches. Drop as much weight as I can and stay as fit as I can for as long as I can. Buy as much time as I can for that dream to come true AND JUST HOPE.
First garden rose of the year. Ok strictly speaking it’s the neighbours rose. It’s sneaked through a hole in the fence which I should have fixed by now. But I will take this.
“Dad what are you doing?”
I was trying to build a DIY fire pit. The last one had disintegrated in the lovely Yorkshire winter weather. Trying to harness my inner Bear Grylls, I was in the zone.
“Are the sides supposed to be so uneven. Is it a square, a circle, triangle or pentagon?”
Ok it had some symmetrical issues….. it started off as a square.
“Oh, well it isn’t a square now. And the height is all over the place. It’s like looking at The Alps.”
Yes that was an unexpected design feature.
“It’s not the most sheltered spot. Not sure lighting a fire will be easy there.”
Didn’t think about that….
“Don’t you think it’s a little close to the oil tank.”
Oops I forgot about that great big green tank with OIL and FLAMMABLE written in big letters down its side.
“Dad I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we forget about the fire pit. When we need a BBQ then why don’t we just run an electric extension cable outside. Then we can just rig the George Foreman Grill to work outside. Job done and you don’t need to spend days trying to light the fire….”
That sounds like a better plan.
Another cold start. I’m calling it an official three jumper day.
One of those cold starts that as hard as you work out, or regardless of how many warm layers you put on – your still cold.
The first week of schools version of homeschooling has now finished. Some subjects did embrace the opportunity. These offered the child a chance to be creative and to see where their learning interest would take them. Sadly that was not much of the week. Most of the lessons reflected the normal parrot learning teaching approach. What is the point of getting someone with dyslexia to translate page after page of French (without any context or help). What is the point of setting an online spelling test where the spoken words are so rare that I had to look every one up in a dictionary to see if they actually existed.
But he survived. The parent got through it as well. So that’s something.
Whether it was my lack of sleep, the unremittingly grim news or a week of homeschooling but last night I couldn’t get a thought out of my mind. Maybe, just maybe this is our world now. No more holidays. No more new lands. No more Switzerland. Certainly the financial shock of the next few months will take me a number of years to repair the bank balance. Generally travel may become more difficult over the next few years. Aspergers and the fear of social interactions is certainly not going away any time soon. So maybe that’s it with travel.
That’s sad but actually there is more to life than travel. So much to see and visit close by if it comes to that. Anyway we have not had a holiday since 2015 so we are used to it anyway. Doing virtual tours is a fun, safe, environmentally friendly and is so much cheaper. Then a thought crossed my mind. It was inspired by Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) while we watched Fawlty Towers. Basil was getting seriously cheesed off with a guest who was disappointed with the view from the bedroom window.
“Well may I ask what you expected to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? Sydney Opera House perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically”
Actually could we scale the virtual tours up a notch. Why don’t I pick a window with a chair next to it. Then why don’t I stick a poster or large photo over the window glass. Suddenly my view of say the trampoline could be transformed into whatever I fancy. I’ve seen other people do this in the past. So tomorrow I am going poster hunting. Got a couple of belting posters of The Alps to find.. But in the meantime I’m hoping my bedroom window will look something like this.
It’s Sunday. We are still clinging to our mad old planet. So it’s time to breathe and visit a place seemingly immune to the growing madness. A place of peace and beauty. It’s Switzerland.
I’ve been so fortunate to visit this wonderful country on a number of occasions. So many stunning locations. But I have a soft spot for one mountain. It’s called The First.
It’s not that big. It’s classed as a minor summit of the Schwarzhorn. But it would be massive if it was in the UK. It’s all relative.
The trip starts with a beautiful train journey to Grindelwald.
The First is special to me. It was the first Swiss Mountain I went up. It’s the one I’ve been on top the most. It’s the one I stood on top in a T-shirt and shorts in the middle of a massive snow drift. In fact it was the first adventure I ever had in this great country. On a Sunday 17 years ago.
So forgive me. Lots of photos.
Once in Grindelwald you take a small cable car to the top. The views are epic.
And they just keep on coming.
The higher you get The Alps slowly reveal themselves.
How can a country be this beautiful.
Eventually you arrive at the top of The First.
Next week the adventure will continue.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 