Reasons to come home for Christmas

View from dog walk on Christmas Eve:


View (well the better view was to the west but that was of Arran again and rather cloudy) from dog walk on Boxing Day:


And school friends out for a meal last night. Not exactly the best photo of any of us, but never mind.

Reasons to drive home via Wanlockhead

(highest village in Britain, in the Southern Uplands of Scotland)

Sheep! Heather! Hills! Single track roads! (not in these photos, but there are.) All things I have not seen in too long.

Looking down the road (car numberplate just sneakily out of frame):


and looking left:

For Myo

Because we have cliffs too, you know. And ours are prettier... ;)

Taken while down in Brighton visiting my dad - this is the first of the Seven Sisters, at Cuckmere Haven.

This is up closer, and you can just about see the layers of flint in the chalk:


From on top, looking back down: I think the path used to go across there...


And looking the other way, towards the rest of the sisters.


So pretty.

Below freezing though, that day. Brrr.

This invisible world I choose to live in

I went to see a stone circle on Sunday.

Cue pics.

This is Arbor Low, on the road from Ashbourne to Buxton, on the southern edge of the Peak District. It is neolithic, worked using the most primitive of tools (shovels made from animal shoulderblades, and the like). There is a Bronze Age mound built over one corner of it.

(Bonus points for anyone who guess that I was rather pleased at getting my shadow to fall right between the central stones.)

Who knows how the people who built this thought of the world? We'll never know. Never truly be able to imagine what it felt like to be one of them. But I walked through the entranceway and up to the central stones and tried to anyway.


Four and a half thousand years ago.

Wow.

But it's the same hillside. I stood where they stood. I took photos of the stones they quarried and carried. Those are their stones, not mine, but I can walk around them, in a world they could never have envisaged.

Four stones stacked atop one another will outlast all your dreams... or words to that effect. My book is on extended leave in Manchester and Google has failed me.

chezskit

As I had a friend round last night, this is As Tidy As It Gets. Though the debris of our alcohol- and chocohol-ism is littering the coffee table. But anyway I though I’d make the most of it and take a few pictures for the curious minds out there.

Unfortunately it isn’t really possible to get far enough away from any wall to take good pictures, so they’re not great and there are a few more than you really need.

Three Hobblings may be able to spot letters/things they have sent me…although in some cases they will need to be spectacularly sharp-eyed (and possibly I would need to have put my camera on a better resolution). But I count 5 things from one person (oh guess who) and 2 from each of 2 others. Oh and biped can of course spot her cunningly-disguised Farscape.

Okay so:

Lounge/kitchen

From entry door:

From window corner:

From kitchen corner:

From bedroom door:

Bedroom

From door to lounge:

From bed:

Bathroom, from bedroom (too small to take a photo from within):

View through flat from bathroom door (door on right is Ye Cupboard Full Of Junk, a tradition in my family):

And lastly my dining table because it made a nice (if messy) arrangement and you can’t really see it properly in any of the others:

…so there you go. Suggestions? Improvements? Awe at my fantastic interior decoration of cream on beige on beech? (I need a few more big pictures or posters.) Envy? Terror? Smugness at having a card/letter in clear view?

Warnings/Promises

I have a lot of dreams, mostly highly impractical. I know I’ll never manage all of them, not in a world where I need money to do them all. But I am scared of living my whole life and never managing any of them…I know that I am the sort of person that could easily just go along with the world from day to day and never make the effort to do the truly fantastic stuff. And I want to have one or two things where, when I look back on my life, I can see some things which not everyone does, which not everyone could do – some stuff that proves that I did something a little different with my life.

So here I shall write down…a few promises to myself. Not all the things I would love to do one day, but the things where…if I were to get to retirement and I hadn’t done these things, I would look back and feel like I’d missed out. I shall try and keep them as few and as realistic as possible, otherwise this exercise has little point.

If I live to three-score-years-and-ten:

I shall have a variety of jobs, not all of which shall be desk-and-computer based.

I shall work fully and properly in the voluntary sector for at least a year.

One day, I shall live somewhere non-urban, remote and wild (but with broadband).

I shall visit every continent (arctic ones optional).

I shall not give up hope that somewhere out there there is Twu Wuv (shades of Newboy), but I shall not feel that my life was in vain if I never find it.

I shall always give at least the percentage of my income to charity that I currently give.

I shall learn the basics of another language other than German, and I will get my German back up to at least the standard it was at when I left school.

I shall live abroad at some point.

I shall do my best to always stay in touch with the few best friends I have from the places I have lived and the things I have done so far.

Did I say few? Okay, I’ll stop.

I shall always be happy to be silly.

I blame it on your obvious ways...

Office life. I find it strange how it encapsulates, for me, the best and worst of human society and interaction. And I think my office is reasonably representative of an average humdrum office.

Worst because everything is so...worn-out. Every day, the same clichés, the same little unfunny jokes, everybody reacting to each other in a pre-programmed way and never really thinking about each other. Best friendships are not often formed with work colleagues.

Best because despite that, it works. People get along, people have a laugh, people know enough about each other as they need to know but not so much that they couldn’t bear to be around each other any more. You know that this isn’t a group of people who would choose to be friends if they hadn’t met for any other reason, and yet there is sufficient camaraderie and good humour that everybody gets along despite their differences.

But ‘tis humdrum withal. Nothing changes, even with our staff turnover as high as it is. We may occasionally talk about news and current affairs but never in earnest, never really interested or wanting to change others’ opinions. There is little to make one day different from the one before.

What I find really depressing is that I get the impression that most people’s lives work like that out of work too – they never think, and would be puzzled as to why you’d really want to. Thank goodness for books, and for the fact that I can choose my friends to be crazy and original people who make me think and keep life varied.