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”…
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.
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.
I’m trying to learn German, been trying for years. It’s a few years now but we used to stay in a largely Germanspeaking 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.
A trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, a country estate with a large range of art scattered around the countryside. Some small pieces, some giants. Some by leading artists including the controversial Damien Hirst. Hawklad wouldn’t even let me take a photo of one particular statue ….
A sometimes mystifying but frequently stunning few hours. Unbelievably it was almost warm as well….
As a child I could eat most things as long as it was covered in at least 1 inch of Tomato Ketchup… even pesky vegetables. Now all these years later,Hawklad has upped the ante. Seemingly everything on his plate is edible as long as it’s found submerged in a sea of the red stuff. But whereas I would be fine with the cheapest ketchup, Hawklad has to have Heinz…. And when I say a sea of the stuff, it’s at volume levels which create destructive pressure levels. The Swiss Hotel we would stay at on more than one occasion had to order more ketchup as someone had completely exhausted their stocks.
Spiez, a wonderful town which every so often has had its Ketchup stocks put under extreme pressure….
A trip along the wonderful North Yorkshire Moors Railway. The very same railway that featured in the recent Indiana Jones and Mission Impossible movies.
Built in 1944, this locomotive did a grand job pulling my large backside over the Moors. Trust me that’s some mighty effort required up those hills….
As a kid I had a treasured Hornby Train Set. It was one train that looked a bit like 44806, two carriages, one small platform and a few track pieces. Just enough track pieces to build one really small loop. That train went round and round and round and round and round, getting nowhere fast. Yet hour after hour, lost in my dreams, that little loop track became a train winging across countryside, through cities, over huge bridges, through cavernous tunnels under great mountains. Mile after mile, endless possibilities.
That was several decades ago. Where did that boundless childhood imagination go as I got older. I miss it…..
Driving along a certain road, a route I frequently venture down. It’s not a bad trip at all, nice country views, not too much traffic and memories. Just on the outskirts of the city, the road runs by a little road side cafe.
A smile. Always a smile.
Mum’s 70th.
That cold, frosty and beautifully clear morning, Mum had just landed in a farmer’s field….. A so called bumpy landing, ‘came in a bit hard’ …. A hot air balloon flight over the city and countryside. Mum now had a tale to tell, so the family gathered to listen in this small roadside cafe. Tea and Cream Scones, sat huddled on the wooden benches outside. Much laughter. All the funnier as mum revealed a secret, she was scared of heights… If we had known earlier she might well have had a birthday boat cruise down the river.
Over the proceeding years the cafe has physically not changed much, maybe the wooden benches are looking a little more creaky. But one change is that it’s increasingly become a bit of a biker pit stop haunt. Yamaha’s and Motörhead Jackets reside on the wooden benches alongside couples and families, cream teas still being consumed by all. Mum would find this amusing.
Feels like a timeless memory to me.
There is another road, often ventured as well. Nice road, very like the other road. This one had another memory.
But no smiles this time, they have slowly faded..
This road runs by a derelict pub, one that’s been up for sale for too many years. Sadly the years have not been kind to the old building. Windows broken, part of the roof have collapsed, weed filled car park. Surely it can’t be too long before the bulldozers move in and put it out of its misery. Yet this was still the site of a memory. For weeks we had kept our work romance quiet but finally it was time to come clean. A Christmas office quiz night and meal at an old country pub. Back then it was a place full of life and character, really well kept and stylish. The big reveal ended up probably not being a romantic one, rather that the seemingly clever bloke from Finance in the three piece suit was in fact a monumental idiot whose useable pub quiz knowledge was limited to football and football…. Plus wow, was he an embarrassing dancer. Little did they know that it took years of practice at the TopDeck in Redcar to get this bad….. WHAT on earth could she see in him…… What she did do that night was to convince me to go on holiday with her to Switzerland, our first trip. That old pub and that night proved to be our gateway to The Alps. And as we left, it started to snow, snow just a couple of days from Christmas.
That memory would bring a smile every time I passed this pub. But that was when it was a busy, working pub, when it had life. Watching it fade away started to change the feel of the memory as well. As the life slowly ebbed from the pub, the gloss and magic went from the memory. The memory became less vivid, less colourful, faded, transient. Now when I pass here, I struggle to see the memory anymore, I just see a sad old derelict building. When I do try to recall the memory it feels really ancient, from a different world, almost artificial. Compare that with Mum’s birthday memory which feels alive, vivid, as if it was yesterday. But heres the thing, both memories were born just a few months apart.
Memories are delicate, can’t be taken for granted. Yet is it also possible that some memories are intrinsically tied to something like a location, a sound, a smell. Things that stimulate a certain reaction from our senses that link to a memory. If that thing is damaged, the memory is also damaged. But surely it might also be possible that we can find memories that are more embedded, tied to things we pick up on which feel like that have more permanence. Let’s say locations that appear untainted by time, places where we can still talk about timeless personal memories.
Time for a little piece of Switzerland. So many memories flow from just looking at these photos. Memories that feel as fresh as ever.
What an odd night with two very different DREAMS. One really nice dream, but I can only recall snippets. One really weird dream and I can recall it vividly. With me I think the key is how I wake. Wake slowly and the dream is hazy, fading quickly. Wake with a START and the dream is clear, has a permanence.
The first dream felt like such a lovely, safe place to be. Based on real places. I know it was about Lake Brienz in Switzerland. The rest is hazy, no idea about any details, just that I was happy. I’ve been truly blessed to spend a little bit of time here, wish it was way more, such a stunning place. I woke slowly and quietly.
And then we come to the SECOND dream. Just an hour or so after Lake Brienz.
Even now, everything from that dream is so vivid. It started off in another real place, at my parent’s old house. I was in the garden and it was a perfect copy of reality. Little long forgotten details brought back, the gap in the fence under the hedge where my tortoise would go exploring, the crooked apple tree, the missing pane in the greenhouse, the lavender smell. So many details. The dream kicked on. A young couple had moved in next door. I talked with them over the fence, but quickly the guy had to go inside to feed the pets. He liked it here, she hated the new house. She hated the area, the people, the weather, her new home, everything. She even hated the plants in her garden. She bitterly talked about wanting to be anywhere but here, it was her husband’s bad idea. I felt really uncomfortable. As soon as she could get out, she would. She was even going to burn those two ugly Japanese shrubs in the pots, I asked if I could give them a new home. She shrugged and stormed off. So I headed inside to see Mum, to tell her that I had met her new neighbours and that she might get those two nice plants that she likes. The reality was actually my mum left that house nearly 30 years ago and although the garden in the dream was perfect, the other bits of the story had much fiction. That couple never existed, the inside of mum’s house wasn’t quite right, the neighbouring garden looked odd, but I do remember those two Japanese plants, they were definitely real, although I’m not sure mum ever noticed them.
Here’s where the dream slammed in a sudden handbrake turn…..
As I went inside I heard mum’s voice scolding my older brother. He was apparently sleeping his life away and his breakfast was still on the table….. now there was some reality to part. I can remember my older bro liking to party at the weekend and as a result he would stay in bed till nearly midday, that didn’t please mum…..
Back to the dream, my brother’s bedroom door opened and out came my bro. As he walked passed me on the way to the kitchen, he patted me on the back and said in am AMERICAN ACCENT ‘Hi Bro….’.
But that’s not my brother, he’s not American and hold your horses ….that’s Jack Black……
That jolted me out of my dream, and I’m sure I woke shouting ‘Jack Black ain’t my brother’.
Figure that dream out, not been back to that house in decades, haven’t spoke to my brother in months and no I have not seen any Jack Black movies recently.
Really odd and just a bit frustrating….. So many unanswered dream questions and really frustratingly, why can’t I remember all the good details from the nice dream.
Another Spring trip to the TROPICAL Yorkshire coast. This time FILEY. Filey was once a really popular Victorian seaside haunt and on the rare warm day, still gets mobbed. Today, just one day away from the usually seriously busy Bank Holiday Weekend, it was a bit of a ghost town. The 1000 place Car Park, had 3 cars parked up. Yes Saddo counted them. It’s just TOO cold.
A few years back there was a newspaper story claiming that an underwater ALIEN base had been discovered, bizarrely off the coast of Filey….
The town is supposed to be an ALIEN hotspot….. Well I hope the little Green Men have a Base which has robust anti seagull defences and monumentally good heating.
PS… my helpful spellchecker tried to change underwater to UNDERWEAR. Now that would have been a story. An Underwear Alien Base, I’m lost for words.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 