It’s been a bit of a castle fest this summer……
CASTLES seems to feel like one of the few things that the UK can still do well.
But then again I’m not sure how many castles here, especially in the north, come with wine vineyards. This beautiful castle in Switzerland does.
Spiez Schloss.
A shed load of calming thoughts needed, a few minutes thinking Switzerland.
The latest madness to add to the ever expanding simmering pot of mayhem comes from the US Health Secretary, Robert F Kennedy. I can think of a few F words that would fit perfectly there. In his words ‘Autism destroys families’.
Absolutely staggering. ‘Destroys’ implies burden, something intrinsically bad which needs isolating and eliminating. Implies the desire to remove from day to day life. This kind of language lays the seeds for Fascism.
I’m sorry Mr F….. Kennedy, what actually destroys families is the lack of meaningful support, it’s the constant fighting the system, it’s the ill informed, hurtful and dangerous comments made by deluded self absorbed politicians. Sadly Mr F…. isn’t on his own in the political world in thinking this way, we have them here in the UK.
Mr F…. Kennedy you are so WRONG. It has been and continues to be the best ever privilege to be a part of a happy, loving Autism Family. Every day I learn so much, see so much beauty, experience so much wonder, togetherness and LOVE.
I guess many parents have probably done this. A Ninja Argument with your partner. Our Individual flaws mean that things like arguments can brew up anywhere, anytime, sadly even when our children are present. What follows next is an argument while desperately trying to hide this from the kids. Trying to portray normality, happy families while having a right ding dong…. Using all the tricks in the book, those looks, silence, sarcasm, sign language, under your breath anger, referring to your partner in the third person….
One of those arguments sticks in my mind even now, even after something like 10 years.
This argument’s fires were stoked in the gift shops of Interlaken, reaching their zenith on the lake boat returning to the hotel. It was one of those arguments that we couldn’t even agree on the length of the conflict. Sat at a boat dining table, I’d moved to let’s park this argument stage. Withering looks, caustic comments and a well placed under table shin kick clearly indicating that feeling wasn’t yet mutual.
Here’s the madness, I can remember the argument yet I have no idea what we were arguing about. Parents with a wonderful son, in a wonderful location, so many adventures to be had and we were consumed on pointless, destructive arguments. No recollection of good moments, just the self inflicted negativity. Apart from the madness the only other thing I can recall from that day was getting seasick. Seasick for the only time in my life. I’ve been on really rough North Sea crossings, NOTHING. Yet on this beautiful, wave free Swiss lake, as the argument finally subsided on both sides, the gentle movement of the boat got to me. Everything was moving and swaying, wow was I feeling nauseous. Even trying to hide this from Hawklad. Stumbling off the boat at our destination and slumping on the nearest bit of dry land grass.
My last memory of that day was one more comment I heard – ‘that’s a little too over dramatic…”. All I wanted was the world to stop spinning. Now I just want to play out those few hours again. Replace negative memories with fun ones. Life can be such a wonderful adventure , if only we let it.
I always wanted to stay a night here. Maybe one day. Almost touching distance of The Eiger, the famous mighty Swiss mountain.
The winter months, the inhospitable weather, deserted paths and seasonally closed cafes. This time of year always makes me more reflective, some would say EVEN more reflective.
I’ve been thinking about parenting, specifically before our family world changed and I fumbled my way into single parenting. With parenting you sometimes get things right, sometimes get things wrong and sometimes you kinda just drift about on the tides of life. Given that there is no parenting blueprint to follow and the propensity of our little raptors to transform the seemingly straightforward into sleepless, stress filled angst maelstroms, we can forgive ourselves for not always being perfect. As a couple we were very different with very different takes on how to bring a child up. Sometimes we agreed, more often we negotiated (possibly argued) our way to compromises. And YES we didn’t get everything right, sometimes we got it spectacularly wrong. Looking back that doesn’t frustrate me, we did our best.
But now, in 2025 something does bother me, frustrates me, makes me feel sad. It’s not the decisions we got spectacularly wrong, it’s the decisions and opportunities that we kicked into the future. We didn’t say NO, we just said not now. ‘Not now’ because of some fairly unimportant work stuff, because it took us slightly out of our comfort zone, because it will complicate things, because we don’t need to push now because we have loads of time to sort this out in the future….
Let’s think about it again next year…
Let’s not do that now but maybe later….
Let’s talk ourselves out of this even though it could be so wonderful, no pressure, plenty of time to get round to it….sometimes sitting doing nothing can seem better than having the time of our life’s.
We were fooling ourselves, time ran out….
I keep going over those moments. Often trips, adventures or holidays that didn’t happen. Like the big Christmas adventure, the chance to take Hawklad to Lapland to visit Santa. Never happened even though we could have done it and we both knew it was a great adventure. Yes just the two of us could do it now but it’s not quite the same after the pesky Art Teacher decided it was time for some festive tough love… What a missed opportunity because we thought there was plenty of time.
Then there are those moments, missed opportunities that yes we can still do (and sometimes have already addressed) but we left it too long for his mum. She missed out. Hawklad never got to experience these moments with her. Disney Florida, Panto, trips to see Whales, Horse riding, skiing, Yellowstone, Kennedy Space Centre, Patagonia….. I could go on. Especially this little beauty, I managed to film Hawklad’s first walk on an old video camera, his mum was at work. The camera wouldn’t connect to the TV, so I needed to get the tape converted to VHS. I never did get round to it, I put it off (plenty of time) and then it was forgotten in both our life’s. She never did get to see that special moment.
Now I feel sadness over those moments, moments his mum never got to experience, Hawklad never got to share with her. It’s a painful lesson.
Time will run out……
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….
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….
I remember that morning so vividly. 11 years ago, on holiday in Switzerland and it was a grim start to the day. I’d got up early, before the family woke up, to go for a run along part of Lake Thun. As I started it was chilly and damp but after a few minutes it started to rain, proper RAIN. It absolutely chucked it down, forcing me to shelter under trees. The rain kept on getting heavier and I kept on getting colder. Time to abandon and head back to the warmth of the Hotel. But then an odd sight. A group of joggers and running under umbrellas. How can you run holding an umbrella….. They stopped and beckoned to me, I think I’m joining them…..
A few minutes later I’m running under an umbrella held by an Italian chap who didn’t speak any English, none of them did. But they were clearly talking to me excitedly about something. Then the mad Italian umbrella group stopped. Stopped in the pouring rain and under umbrellas start to pass around a drink from a small hip flask…. I didn’t ask where that flask had been carried as I couldn’t see any pockets on any of the Italians….. I don’t know what it was but it was warm (with no pockets, a little more concerning) and tasted like cough medicine. Stood in a rain storm, shivering under umbrellas, drinking cough medicine with Italian strangers. Without understanding a word we somehow managed to figure out that we supported equally crap football teams. Newcastle and Monza…
What a bizarre morning. Especially bizarre as it was Hawklad’s mums birthday and just 2 hours later we were sat outside, in blazing warm sunshine having ice cream for breakfast….. As we enjoyed the beautiful weather, 5 Italian chaps walked past, waving, and shouting to me “Newcastle, Newcastle, Newcastle”…
Bizarre…….
For a relatively small land, Switzerland often feels like it has so much space.
Sometimes we can have too much space….
When Hawklad was at Nursery and First School he had plenty of friends but things change.
Aspergers, going from a Tiny School to a huge Main School, Covid Insolation, Home Schooling, Rural Life, LIFE.
Currently Hawklad now finds himself self with only one Friend he has contact with, and that is only sporadically. Been like that for over 4 years now. No sign that position will change imminently.
Too much space.
I’m trying to learn German, been trying for years. It’s a few years now but we used to stay in a largely German speaking area of Switzerland. Great chance to practice, way better than getting strange looks in Yorkshire trying out my second language. As a result, these days I have to practice by ordering the occasional German magazine or newspaper.
I’m not going to kid myself, my second language capabilities are still pretty rudimentary. There are reclusive Himalayan mountain sheep with a better grasp of German grammar than this Yorkshire Pudding. Which basically means that quite often it’s picking out the occasional word I can translate amongst a sea of letter confusion. It’s a good job you get pictures in the magazines to at least give me a few clues on what on earth is being written about.
A couple of years back I was trying to read a German magazine article about Interlaken, a beautiful Swiss town which was often our Sunday morning adventure. Best hot chocolate of the holiday. Best shop combo ever for the three of us. One shop, three happy punters. Hawklad looking at a huge Schleich toy section, his mum looking at a huge wall calendar section and me fascinated looking at the amazing cuckoo clocks on the wall.
Interlaken given its name is unsurprisingly a town between TWO huge lakes. But this article mentioned a third lake. A mysterious lake, as hard as I searched on the maps, I couldn’t find it. In the end I decided it was either a massive underground lake or a famous fictional lake from some mega Swiss story, maybe a continental Europe version of Brigadoon.
Yet this week. In an English magazine, an article about last Ice Age, that mystery lake was there again. And this time I could read the words all about the now not so mysterious third lake. Apparently the two Interlaken lakes, Thun and Brienz, were once a mega lake called Wendelsee, Lake Wendel. No wonder it’s not on the maps now, and what a good job it’s not. Our favourite shop would have been underwater, right smack in the middle of that lake. In this case two lakes is definitely better than one.
Sat in a surprisingly quiet cinema, watching Despicable Me 4. I could hear Hawklad laughing, along with his fellow Minion Movie Goers…. I smiled then slowly an emotion swept over me. One I’ve had before in these nearly 8 years of single parenting but never this strong, this striking. Would she recognise his laugh, it’s been 8 long years, so much has changed.
His mum never got to see or experience this moment, all the moments. In 2016, when he was just 8, she left this stage. She has missed out on so much, the highs, the lows, the laughs, the tears, the struggles, the adventures, the family time, seeing all the great strides he has taken. Would she even recognise him now.
She missed so much.
Missed so much precious time.
I know the value of that now, I didn’t a few years back. Maybe that’s the thing about LOSS and BEREAVEMENT. You get to see the fragility of life and what is lost. You start to develop a better focus on the value of time and the pricelessness of the precious moments.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 