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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.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 30 Comments

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….

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 32 Comments

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 .

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 31 Comments

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.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 31 Comments

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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Huts

Tropical Scarborough on a blisteringly hot Autumn Day.

Forget the ice cream, hot soup was the order of the day.

Not sure if it was just the weather but when I offered to buy one of the brightly coloured beach hutches, Hawklad firmly declined…. The huts cost between about £70,000 to £160,000. You can rent them as well, Peak times set you back something like £300 for a week. For that you get a few kitchen items, a sink, deckchairs, use of the shared public toilets and free pet seagulls.

Peak includes Christmas, Wow that would be a brave call. Not sure the paper party hats would stay on too long with the inevitable Winter North Sea skin shredding sand blasting wind and icy horizontal rain.

Walking along the beach we passed a few groups of teenagers clearly starting the Half Term Break with some beach fun. I couldn’t help think about how Hawklad might view these scenes. It’s a part of teenage life that has so far eluded him, spending far too much time with his ancient relic of a Dad. Not sure those teenagers would spend too much time discussing beach huts…..

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Castle walk

Living in the UK has many negatives, things like the weather, road potholes, useless Water Companies, Nigel Farage, Fuel Prices, Morris Dancing, late running trains, Brexit, did I mention the WEATHER. But then again we have some beautiful landscapes and CASTLES. Lots of Castles.

So when the clouds parted we headed off to one such castle. Helmsley Castle, over 900 years of history. It’s a wonderful adventure.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 32 Comments

Deep

That kinda day, just grim….

This afternoon we drove to a city on the coast, to Hull, visiting its large £50 million pound aquarium, The Deep. So many memories flooded back walking around the maze of tanks and glass tunnels.

The last time we had ventured here was when Hawklad was about 4. The three of us came with his Dutch friend and parents. Life was way different then, preschool Nursery was working out really well, Hawklad was flourishing with loads of friends. A never ending succession of meet-ups at various houses, parks and attractions. On top of family and work contacts, it felt like a socially full and connected world. Aspergers was still a year or so away from really knocking on our front door.

So many thoughts now…..

Piggy backs looking at the fish now replaced by someone towering over me. That bubbly child who would run up to anyone and excitedly tell them all about the sharks, now we carefully pick the moment to look at the tanks, waiting for the crowds to part and plenty of space to appear. Now we are a family of two (four counting mad pets) with a barren social diary. All the families and friends from Nursery have long since dispersed, including the Dutch family. Home based Work and College is proving socially isolating. Our Family Photos seem to feature fewer and fewer loved ones.

It’s a sobering thought, just how quickly life can change, just how easily people can become cut off and isolated within this increasingly noisy world. The other prevailing thought came from watching the various sea creatures effortlessly change direction in the large, populated tanks. At times with me it definitely felt like rudderless sailing, buffeted by the storms of life. Definitely not feeling much like effortless and intentional changes of direction of my part. But who’s to say that my planned direction would have turned out any better than the reality. Plus, in this life I’ve not yet ended up stuck behind glass windows, being gawked at, swimming round in never ending circles. I wonder how the fish feel, in control, socially connected with all the other creatures in the tank, immune from the storms in the real world or boxed in, constrained. Without the storms of life, stuck in one place.

THE DEEP ended up making me think way too DEEP.

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Mr Blue Sky

And finally some blue sky.

What have I become…..

This week I booked the Christmas food delivery from the local supermarket. It’s arriving on the 23rd December, that’s over THREE MONTHS away…. For years I was the supreme last minute panic shopper, now I’m living the dream as Mr Forward Planning.

I’m on a roll now.

Time to book a Christmas trip out. Tickets pre booked for the Pantomime at the local theatre.

I could get used to this. Maybe I can start buying presents, booking family visits. I could start writing Christmas Cards…..

BUT you can never take the MUPPET out of my personality. Muppets don’t forward plan, they just move cockups into the future. I’ve just realised that I’ve double booked my two Christmas bookings. Food coming at exactly the same time as the Pantomime will be starting…..

I’ve started messing Christmas up and it’s only early October. Marvellous…….

Truly Living the Dream …….

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 18 Comments

Diverted

Maybe it’s like this everywhere but wow there is a shed load of roadworks right now. A few weeks back a motorway trip from here to London was like a Chris Rea, Road to Hell video. On this weekday, the 200 miles we travelled was for over half of them within roadworks. 3 lanes down to 2 or 1. Most of that done at crawling speed. Usually you can divert down the other possible motorway but that was basically a car park due to its own road work hell. A 4 hour journey ended up being double that. We even had traffic jams on the way back, at 2am…

It’s not just the motorways sadly….. Around our little bit of the Yorkshire countryside, the road work plague has gone into overdrive. We don’t have many roads here and at this time of year they should be muddy but quiet. They are definitely quiet as a good proportion of them are closed, partially blocked or about to be hit..

The Weather is fighting back and vandalising.

Mr Saddo got his map out and counted. I really need a life….

Our village has basically one road which then eventually branches out into 10 smaller roads heading out in various directions. Of those 10 branches 6 currently have road works badly effecting them, 2 more are closed for months and one of the last untouched roads is about to be hit for weeks…

Here when a road closes down the diversion takes you miles and miles in completely the wrong direction. So much worse when the diversion has to avoid other diversions. Deep sigh.

But there is a scary underlying thought here. All these roadworks around the world need lots and lots of signs, cones, barriers, speed cameras, portacabins, trucks, lighting, diggers, steamrollers and traffic lights. A mind boggling amount of stuff. For that motorway I mentioned at the start, apparently someone worked out that in the last 5 years it’s had over 100,000 different road works…. Imagine that spread across all the roads. Now imagine road utopia and there are no roadworks anywhere. WHERE DO THEY STORE ALL THE SIGNS and BARRIERS and EVERYTHING.

They can’t store it, we don’t have the storage capacity anywhere. There won’t be anywhere we can put this stuff except on the roads and motorways. Put the stuff on a road and it becomes a road works…. So we have to have roadworks and lots of them just to put stuff somewhere never mind if we actually need to fix a bit of tarmac.

We have created a Frankenstein Invasion, the Roadwork Monsters are among us permanently. All those dystopian movies about AI being the biggest threat to humanity and actually we end up losing control to ROAD CLOSED signs. I guess we had better just get used to being controlled and diverted in wrong directions.