Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 43 Comments

Third lake

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.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 33 Comments

Lucky

Not a bad place to run.

The iPhone tries to hide the terrain. It’s a bit steep. it’s a bit bumpy. It’s also hardly ever used these days. But yesterday I was around about here when I came across a dismounted mountain biker, someone who initially looked like he was taking in the view. As I passed him, he asked if I knew anything about fixing knackered bike gears. After I said ‘a little’ and started aimlessly tapping the bikes chainring, he painfully explained ….

“If you heard any screaming noises a few minutes back, it was from my lungs, my knees and my backside. My wife said I should take up this as a hobby, she said it would be fun, good for me. Strangely she didn’t buy herself a bike…. The first time I went out I fell off and dislocated a finger. Since then I’ve been lost, bruised, angry, tired, broken but never ever has it felt like fun“

His bike was beyond my expertise…

The poor chap groaned …. “this hobby just keeps on giving”.

LIFE IS FUNNY SOMETIMES

Just then, in the distance, a bit of a dust cloud coming up the usually quiet hill lane. One bike, two bikes, three bikes, four bikes, five bikes. All flying up the steep climb, heading towards us. It was like a scene from a modern day remake of a Spaghetti Western.

Unbelievably a professional mountain bike team, all in matching team kit, out on a training run. Not just one bike expert, FIVE EXPERTS. Within seconds the fallen bike was as good as new.

In the words of Monty Python, the Lucky, Lucky, Lucky B………

Yes Lucky but I also suspect, he is now a FORMER Mountain Biker…….

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 43 Comments

Sculpture

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….

Definitely worth a visit.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 25 Comments

Strange things

Apparently there is a mysterious monolith that keeps appearing in various parts of the world. Strange Things.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/monolith-mystery-las-vegas-desert-b2564821.html

Looks impressive, well today I think we found the Yorkshire Mysterious Monolith which has randomly appeared in a similarly remote, exotic location… A Cow Field.

Same shape just a bit crap…. That kinda sums up Yorkshire sometimes 😂😂😂

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 37 Comments

Nearly

Nearly the longest day and it still doesn’t feel like it’s nearly summer. A walk along the bitingly cold Yorkshire Coast.

These are really unstable cliffs. After high tides and especially after storms, you will see intrepid fossil hunters scouring the base of the rocks for fragments of a past world. Locally it’s known as the Jurassic Coast.

No T-Rex hunting for us this day, way too cold. Hands much better employed stuck in the pockets avoiding frost bite. Is it really the longest day in a few hours…. As we eventually headed back to the warmth of the car we passed a bare chested Surfer marching briskly towards his inevitable frozen doom in the North Sea.

“You might need a few more layers on….”

“Probably. The secret is to not scream too loudly and look like you enjoying it.”

“I thought the secret was to surf somewhere way warmer”

“It is but then you don’t get to surf round Icebergs. Plus if it was warmer my wife would have me cutting the grass….”

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 47 Comments

Wrong order

For years I’ve tried to learn a second language. At school, French was the weapon of torture preferred by the teachers. They tried, I was very trying….. After about 15 years of more self imposed French torture, after so many different language learning systems, I realised that there we’re still rabbits and chickens who could ask for a sandwich in Paris better than I could.

Experiment abandoned…..

I switched to German. Since then I’ve tried, I’ve really tried. Slowly the second language developed past rabbit linguistic levels. Increasingly on the Swiss trips, I tried out my German, usually spectacularly badly. But then in 2015, on one particular train heading towards Bern, with one particular German speaking Train Guard, a Guard asking to see our tickets and asking where we were going, I nailed it. The perfect response in perfect German. I actually spoke German for maybe 20 seconds…..

I looked over at my partner and whispered ‘that was unusually competent German for me…’

Well I thought I nailed it.

The Guard looked coolly at me over his glasses and said in perfect English…

“you used all the right words but pronounced them in the wrong way and you got the word order completely wrong”…

He then proceeded to give me an impromptu lesson on how verbs are parachuted to the end of sentences when certain words like THEN or BECAUSE are used. But then there are other words for BECAUSE that don’t send the verb flying all over the place….. what on earth is that all about.

So fast forward to 2024 and I’m still trying. I think I’ve just about sussed out the verb going to the end thing. Sadly my pronunciation is still very Yorkshire mixed with Geordie, think Monty Python. What chance have I got with actual German speakers when my very own car satellite navigation can’t even understand my accent. That’s when I’m speaking English…… But one day, hopefully really soon I will get the chance to try German again in Amazing Switzerland.

Ich kann es kaum erwarten, es wieder zu besuchen, weil es sehr schon ist.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 41 Comments

Still cold

An April trip to Scarborough. Time to put on the Simon and Garfunkel cover of the old English Folk Song.

Are you going to Scarborough Fair…

Well I hope they got wrapped up as it was seriously COLD, AGAIN. Beautiful but COLD.

The Scarborough song is about asking too much of others, asking impossible tasks, love fracturing. Well it would mess up if one lover was expecting a Caribbean beach holiday and they ended up on a long weekend in not so tropical Yorkshire.

We had been over here for an appointment, the last bit of formal support Hawklad gets these days. One 45 minute session every 3 weeks or so. From about the age of thirteen the support levels have shrunk rapidly. Get to 18 or 19 and they will have completely disappeared. Not because the need isn’t there, it’s likely to be there more than ever, but because nationally access to services are being restricted. Years of cut backs and efficiency restructurings have led to ‘streamlined’ services being overwhelmed with demand. So we get frustrated and angry with the lack of local support but unless mental health is given the priority it needs nationally, then it’s an IMPOSSIBLE task to support every need, it just can’t happen.

Or is it IMPOSSIBLE, at least could we do better, could we give some more support to those who need it. I guess it comes down to a couple of drivers…

– Maybe those in charge see more votes in focusing on tax cuts and immigration crackdowns,

– There are just not enough profits to be extracted by greedy hands from Mental Health Services.

The UKs so called Prime Minister will give daily speeches solely focusing on how he is being tough and proactive on trying to fly a few desperate refugees to Rwanda at a cost of £500 Million (plus…), yet he never seems to ever raise an eyebrow at the mental health crisis unfolding across the country. But what is clear.

The money is there, the money to fund services is definitely there.

This shouldn’t be impossible.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 36 Comments

Saltburn

Three…..

3…….

Stood on Saltburn Pier today and it was 3C. As the wind howled across the North Sea, I dread to think what the wind chill factor was. Apparently it’s still Spring here. Thermal T-shirt, thick jumper and a down jacket simply wasn’t enough. We were FROZEN. But then again as Basil Fawlty once said when told there was always someone worse off than yourself

“REALLY, I’d love to meet them as I could do with a b…..y laugh”

We weren’t those poor souls trying to SURF. We heard frequent bloody curdling screams as they entered the water and that wasn’t a monster JAWS shark causing that. I’m sure I saw an iceberg at one stage, or maybe that was a surfer who had spent more than a minute in those frigid waters. We passed one surfer sat in his car, with the heating full on, holding a steaming cup of something, who was uncontrollably shaking….

Yes good old Saltburn. An old Yorkshire coast childhood haunt of mine. Every year my so called school would do a sponsored beach walk from Redcar to Saltburn and back again. The teachers spent the child free day in the Hydro pub. Don’t tell them but quite a few of the pupils had curtailed the walk after 100 yards and were in the Dolphin Pub, a bit further down the beach. I usually made it to Saltburn as then I got to ride the little funicular up the cliff. Back then that was as near as this part of the world got to Disneyland.

Sadly last years Oscar nominated movie called Saltburn had nothing to do with this little coastal town. Shame that, it might have livened up the movie a lot. I would like to see them attempt a lot of the raunchy stuff they apparently got up to in that movie anywhere near Saltburn beach, in these temperatures. Maybe that surfer sat shaking in his car had tried to recreate some movie scenes and spectacularly failed….

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 45 Comments

Northern lights

More storms, more rain, more wind. The Farmer’s hard stacking efforts are now completely wrecked.

A cold often, grim, winter like day.

Not much fun, a day that felt like hard work.

But you never know what is round the corner. Forced ourselves and the very reluctant mad dog out for a cold, windswept, late evening walk.

The clouds cleared just enough for a few, brief light show moments. The Northern Lights never fail to be thrilling. If only my old phone could capture the beauty just a little better.

It can be such a wonderful life.