Over the last few weeks we haven’t seen much of the sky. Mostly it’s been like this….
But when it has parted….
On another misty, dark day, we were heading back from the City and passed a stricken smoking car. Suddenly I was taken back years. Back to when I was young and Dad’s 4 wheel pride and joy. His MK1 Ford Cortina, 1% Silver 99% Rust and Holes. Top Speed, who are we kidding, there was nothing TOP about that thing. Stationary to walking pace in about 2 days before the inevitable smoking breakdown. I had completely forgotten about that Henry Ford Miracle and strangely I was smiling.
Maybe that caught me off guard….
We drove past a Children’s Play Barn, I brought Hawklad here countless times when he was a toddler. Fun times, so many happy memories. But life moves on, he became too old to venture there. The Xbox world became way more attractive than climbing around a Pirate Ship Climbing Frame. Now he’s doing College and the Christmas Present list is way different now. As I took another glance at the Play Barn in the Rear View Mirror, feelings of melancholy swept over me.
York Minster and the surrounding streets after dark.
It’s hard to avoid the countless city ghost tours, apparently it’s one of Europes most haunted cities. Any city with this much history is inevitably going to be on that list I guess. It’s hard not to walk past one of these tours and not shout ‘he’s behind you’ or hum the ghostbusters theme. The actors doing these tours are super talented and I’m sure they are more than use to that kind of terrestrial intervention from muppets like me.
I love the city at this time. It’s almost quiet, peaceful with the heaving daytime crowds having largely ebbed away. You can almost hear yourself think, you can remember, reflect. Recall a world which is now gone, feeling like it’s rapidly receding in my rear view mirror.
Christmas can be the most wonderful of times but it can also be the most painful of times. Isolation rather than solitude. A life that is out of reach.
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.”
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….
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.
The day started with me sat up in bed trying to get my head round one of those bizarre dreams. This dream jolted me awake just before the story played out.
A right racket coming from my neighbour’s garden had me heading outside. I bump into the disgraced wrestling promoter Vince McMahon who he is clearly dressed for manual labour also carrying a hammer and chisel. I ask him what on earth he’s doing in the next garden and get a one word reply “Stonework….”. Bemused at why a Fallen American Wrestling Billionaire is doing stonework in a small Yorkshire Garden, I ask WHY… The growled response “I can’t tell you”. The dream ends….
The day ended up being like so many other days, seemingly sleepwalking through the day. Basically functioning in autopilot mode. Doing things like I always do them. Doing things without thinking. Never stopping to ask
What am I doing?
Why am I doing it?
Am I doing the right thing?
Am I doing it for the right reasons?
Is it working?
Are there better ways of doing it?
But I just switch off and plod on. All the more worrying is that in reality I am deeply flawed. Too reliant on my questionable judgment. I make mistakes, I get lots of things wrong. I have little faith that my autopilot mode will safely land the plane. So why do I way too often just switch off and let it randomly fly. Maybe it’s the reason I so often feel like life is drifting aimlessly, the bucket list of must do adventures keeps on growing without any items getting crossed off as completed.
Back to that weird dream. I initially just assumed that Vince McMahon didn’t tell me why he was working in my neighbours garden just because he was being secretive, protecting his business. But hang on, maybe “I can’t tell you” means he is just as bemused as me, he doesn’t know why he’s doing it. Is he flying autopilot as well.
A thought struck me as we ambled towards the light. I would have loved to have done something like this with my Dad. Don’t get me wrong, we occasionally had trips out, but they were pretty rare. Looking back to my childhood I can still count the trips. I remember Dad taking me to see the 125 High Speed Locomotive, back then it looked like a Space Age Rocket rather than a Passenger Train as it passed through Darlington Station. I remember a trip to a Train Museum where I found an old ticket machine that dished out things that looked like raffle tickets. As we walked around the museum he eagerly checked out each steam train while I trailed a few paces behind. There was another trip to see a charity cricket match featuring the sporting legend Fred Truman. That was the trip Dad sent me into the players showers to get Fred’s autograph…. Not sure that’s happening these days…. A few trips to the coast to see a storm, sat in Dad’s banged out car, I’m eating chips while Dad is silently smoking.
The whole family would have an annual trip to Scarborough. Dad would frequently disappear for most of the days to do his thing. I can remember seeing him sat on a bench some distance away from the rest of the family as they tried to stop me from falling off the Donkey Rides on the beach.
That’s it, I can’t remember any other trips with Dad. Definitely no walks through a Forest….
To be completely fair, back then in our northern working class town travel was way less accessible. Few cars, even rarer aircraft tickets…
At home there was similarly limited Dad time. Dad might be briefly pulled away from reading the newspaper to talk, I might get a few words before he buried his head back into the racing and obituary pages. As Dad listened to his radio on an evening I would clearly annoy him with interruptions, you just know when someone wants you to shut up. Volunteering to take him a cup of tea to him while he sat in his Greenhouse might yield me a few minutes being told all about how to grow tomatoes or raspberries. Even when I was sent on a Sunday to the local Pub to tell Dad that his meal was getting cold, I would be lucky to get a brief nod before I was pointed in the direction of the door. On the way home again I trailed a few paces behind while. We just didn’t talk that much. So few chats with Dad.
Those times were so frustrating to me. I would have loved ME TIME with DAD, yet in reality MY DAD TIME felt very distanced. I’m sure it wasn’t the case but it just felt like I was often a nuisance, a bit in the way, an interruption to Dad’s routines.
The end result was I always felt distant from him. He didn’t understand me and I didn’t really know him. I knew he liked trains, liked cricket, he liked fishing, he liked gardening, he liked beer, he smoked, he was in the army. Looking back, I now realise that he wasn’t happy, probably chronically depressed and I still don’t know him. I will never know him.
Another late evening trip out for Hawklad, this time a couple of hours drive to the beautiful Peak District. It might well have been quicker but I managed to get lost in the dreaded Yorkshire Twilight Zone, otherwise known as the city Sheffield’s road network.
On the bright side, while lost we discovered a Dunkin Donuts store. One of those occasions where I happily ignore any gluten issues I may have for the GREATER GOOD….
The downside of evening trips is that you can far too quickly start to run out of light, BUT for those couple of hours, having somewhere as amazing as this place basically to ourselves, absolutely wonderful for Hawklad.
Summer poses its own set of challenges. This season’s weather hasn’t been great with few warm weather days. Yes there has been sun but it’s often felt more like late October than high Summer. But the weather hasn’t deterred the crowds. Try to go anywhere around midday and the car parks are mobbed. Hawklad doesn’t do mobbed car parks….
But leave it until the evening and suddenly the car parks are empty. Ok that usually means the venue is shut but not everywhere. Just like Dalby Forest. A few hours earlier this walk would have been rammed with hikers, dog walkers and mountain bikers but now at 6-30pm it’s all change. It’s quiet, we are the only car in the car park. A 2 hour walk and we didn’t see another soul.
Or just like 6-30pm on the North East Coast. A couple of intrepid surfers enjoying warming drinks on the beach. A couple of ball chasing dogs with well wrapped up owners. That’s it. Solitude.
Yes 6-30PM cuts down the places open but it opens up so much space and peace. It works for us. Just don’t forget the Woolly Hats, it is Summer here.
Just a few clouds make such a huge difference to the mood here.
Did I ever really grieve, TWICE
Back in 2016, almost to the day. I was sorting out mum’s funeral, broken yet my mind was on my seriously ill partner. It felt like grief had been put on hold. Then a few weeks later I’m sorting out my partners funeral and again …..
Was I really grieving, how much was I allowing myself to grieve.
My focus was on our son, trying to keep my head above the single parenting waves. Looking back I was living through Hawklad. If he was happy, I was happy. If he struggled, I struggled. Did I ever really think and meditate about what grief and death truly meant, how it was changing me.
Probably NOT.
Probably figured out way more about me as a PARENT.
Maybe the Mood will change one day and I can start to seek a little more clarity on grief and how it’s changed me, still changing me.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 