happiness – Page 4

Pinch pottery

This last week I have been away at a lovely location in Norfolk enjoying a few days away with the family.

There was an activity taking place that was an introduction to pottery, and here they were going to teach a technique that has been around for millenniums – Pinch pottery. I did pottery at school and was ok with it but I never made anything to write home about.

To be totally honest I had no idea as to what I was going to do, but everything I’m doing lately seems to be in memory of our little dog who passed away in August of this year. Still very raw, I think of him a lot, and I’ve made this little pot for him. Yep it’s crap but it’s my crap, it’s a reminder of good times for me, a cartoon representation of him and on the rear of it I’ve signed it and stated where I made it.

It’s my first attempt in about 45 yrs and everyone has to start somewhere. I doubt I will take it up as a hobby at home but I enjoyed it, and for a small period of time I was productive, something I have been lacking in of late. It was most therapeutic.

It’s now home, and in the next few weeks I will paint and seal it and hopefully have a nicely presented little keepsake. You can see the finished item here: Pinch Pottery Pt:2

I love trying new things, I loved doing this and who knows I may book a class and look at doing more in the future, just not at home. The missus would kill me 😂

Pretty dull

What would your life be like without music?

Pretty dull I’d imagine. Yes I love my silence, but I do have a soundtrack to my life like many people do. I love all genres of music, and to be honest, i listen to some pretty random stuff across the entire music spectrum.

But.

I do have a number of playlists that reflect my moods.

And I love playing them.

Music comforts, calms and allows things to be put in to perspective. It revives both good and bad times as well as having a motivational aspect that we all need from time to time.

It would be pretty miserable without music.

Good day all.

In silence

How do you celebrate holidays?

Not sure what’s exactly meant by celebrating holidays but I’ll have a crack at it. Working the hours I do pretty much every day I get off is celebrated just like a holiday because those days are few and far between. They are very much days that are treasured and always spent with my wife and family.

If you mean public holidays such as “Bank Holidays” they are nothing special and to be honest I pretty much work every single one of them so no celebration there.

If you mean annual holidays then I still don’t quite get what is meant by celebrating them? Do you imagine that everyone is a crackpot dancing a jig and running around like a banshee just because they are on holiday.

I imagine just like me, most people celebrate in silence, just happy that they’ve made it to a holiday and to be in the company of those they love. And no more work for that period of time.

Have a super day.

Quiet everyone

What’s your favorite word?

It probably sounds corny, and to be honest it is quite difficult to sideline a single word that is a favourite of all those that are used on a daily basis.

But for me it would be the word “Quiet”

It’s the one thing I like the most, it’s the one thing I seek the most and at the same time it’s the one thing that seems to be most difficult for me to find. It’s a strange all encompassing word.

My wife is a polar opposite, she loves hustle and bustle and finds “Quiet” difficult to handle but we do find a happy medium.

Yes, I’m the guy that would love that house in the middle of nowhere with no neighbours or main roads for miles.

Silence is golden they say, for me it’s an achievement to find it, keep it and treasure it.

It’s a lovely word “Quiet”

Peace to you all and please try to have a happy stress free day.

It’s my journal

Why do you blog?

During my working life I have so far experienced, 17 traumatic suicides on the railway. I am more often than not the first person on site and have to make access to the site, safe for all the emergency personnel about to arrive en masse. I have seen things no one should ever expect to witness. And I sincerely hope you never do.

For this reason, I have had health issues mainly around PTSD that I was diagnosed as having just two years ago, after a young lad ended his life on my shift. That one affected me, though i often go into self denial that this was the cause. Though in all seriousness it was probably the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

I used to journal as a result. It wasn’t a private journal, I used to have it beside the bed and actively encourage my wife to read it. At the time I was hiding a lot of my feelings from my wife, I was the typical bloke that wouldn’t talk, however I was storing this all inside and even I could see this was heading straight towards becoming the perfect storm. I’m glad I did that as it helped her and it also helped me to prompt conversation and off load some of that weight from my shoulders.

Blogging became the natural progression from the journal. The family now have links to this blog and they all check in on a regular basis to see what I am doing. I include all the hobby stuff and it is now more of a website than a blog site.

I sit here typing as I am now at 4 in the morning and the wife will turn to me and say, “Are you doing your blog?” And I will say yes. She knows that this is my way of healing some scars by just offloading the excess baggage that life supplies sometimes. And do you know what? It works for me. I don’t do it for followers as that’s not what I’m about. To be honest it wouldn’t bother me if not a single person read my site, for me I have a history at my fingertips where I can check my progress. I have bad days, I have days where I do nothing but whinge, but I can now see why these things happen and that’s all down to this blog.

That’s why I blog, this last month has been awful as my constant companion, Alf, our dog, another who would just sit and listen to me wagging his little tail passed away and it has just ripped the hearts out of my wife and I. See his pictures here: Alfie. All hobbies and interests have disappeared as we have just entered that, “Can’t be arsed” stage of grief. We will come to terms with it in time, and again this is where the blog helps.

Hopefully people will understand this. I’m just a guy who is suffering but I have found a way to let off that steam, accumulated as a result of other peoples desperate actions.

It’s tough, but I won’t let the demons win. It is a daily battle that I doubt I will win in the long run but hopefully I can put it aside for a good while longer.

I really wish for peace for you all.

Talk,

Blog,

It really helps.

Throwing a relation out of an airplane.

Well not me in particular but we have paid for an elderly relative (73yo) to fulfil a dream and today he will be doing a tandem skydive from 14000ft above Nottingham in the East Midlands. This post will cover the day.

I did my skydive in 2009, I was in my mid 40s then and I did mine at the London Skydiving centre based at Chatteris airfield in Cambridgeshire.

I did my jump to raise funds for Watford Hospice, we did quite well from what I can remember however the total escapes me as time has erased that figure from my memory banks.

Anyway, today is not about me it’s about my brother in law Terry, affectionately known to the family as El-Tel and that’s how I will refer to him throughout this blog.

This is El-Tel’s day…and what a day he’s going to have.

We head off to Langar skydive centre in Nottingham, it’s 11:30 am and El Tel is due to jump at 13:00.

We arrive in plenty of time however the weather isn’t playing ball. It’s cloudy, quite windy and no planes have gone up yet due to this.

All we can do is wait. Many people booked in earlier are leaving as they have other engagements and they have rebooked for another day. However we’ve decided to hang about a bit, we’ve had a snack and plenty of coffee and the afternoon weather looks promising.

So off he goes for training where he gets his harness put on and goes through safety procedures and landing protocols.

The clouds have cleared, the sun is in the sky and the wind has dropped.

No time to waste it’s in to the plane and off to the drop zone.

The aircraft is a Cessna 208 Skyvan reg: G-FBPS.

It takes about 15 minutes to reach the altitude that they are jumping from, this little video below is what we can see from the ground.

Our view 14000ft below

El-Tel has also booked a video and picture package. So a camera man will be jumping with him as well.

And a few minutes later it was all over. A once in a lifetime time experience. Would he do it again? Just like me it’s a firm no. We’ve had the experience and we’ve got the memories and that’s what it is all about.

He’s had his day and thoroughly enjoyed it, we’ve all enjoyed it and it was a lovely family day out even if throwing the oldest member of the family out of an aeroplane was a bit extreme.

Life. To be lived, to be enjoyed and occasionally it’s exciting 😂👍

A bit of this and a bit of tat

If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

I miss the stores such as Maplins (aka Radio Shack). When I used to go into town with the wife at the weekends she would go do her thing and I would go into and spend a lot of time in Maplins. For her it was like a kind of Man Crèche as she knew where she could easily find me ( don’t forget this was in the days when mobile communication was in its infancy)

Here you could buy individual electrical components, it must have been murder doing a stocktake. But I loved it. All the kits, all the ideas, and all the boys toys you could dream of.

I really miss Maplins.

I’d also love to have a store where you could get hold of good quality retro games, and equipment at a reasonable price, not at rip off prices that are currently being seen on auction sites. People really do have inflated ideas of the worth of items only a few decades old, they really are becoming the new antiquities.

So maybe the shop I’d like to own would be a mix of Maplins and a quality second hand store of memories. Somewhere the hobbyist or dreamer could walk into and spend a good while reminiscing, and maybe buying some stuff.

That would be nice.

Expect little. Don’t be surprised or worried.

What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?

That’s better Wp, looks like a little thought has gone into this prompt but don’t get too excited as it’s not that good.

People blog for many reasons, some professionally some for fun and some like me for the reason of maintaining some sanity in what is a world full of hatred, poison and what appears to be total and utter disrespect for pretty much everything.

Pleasantries seem to be in extremely low stock these days.

Anyway back to the question. My blog like many others will more than likely just drift into that great pit of unread nonsense in the cess pit that is the internet. People don’t seem to like just every day ramblings and thoughts, they want the nasty stuff, for that we have MSM not the old fashioned blogging platforms.

My blog, took over from a book I had at the side of my bed, yes I used a journal as I was struggling after some pretty horrific situations in my work that would have finished a number of people. I was screaming for help, and that never came. For me this is self healing. This is my way of sorting the mess out.

If just one person looks at my blog and smiles, learns something or picks up a tool and repairs something or stops an item going into landfill I’ll be happy.

But then I’ll never know, as that’s not the point of this blog. Even at my age I’m still learning and this platform in my eyes is my personal journal, if you are reading it then, welcome, I have let you do that.

My thoughts. My journal, My journey. My search for peace.

Anything else is a bonus.

Do whatever you fancy

What strategies do you use to maintain your health and well-being?

Strategy? What a load of old tosh. if you have a strategy for your health and well being than you need to give your head a wobble as you’re over thinking it.

This is what the dictionary states:

Dictionary

Definitions from Oxford Languages ·

noun

noun: strategy; plural noun: strategies

1. a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.”time to develop a coherent economic strategy”Similar:master plan grand design game plan plan of action plan policy proposed action scheme blueprint programme procedure approach schedule tactics set of tactics

2. the art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle.”he was a genius when it came to military strategy”Similar:the art of war military science military tactics generalship

a plan for directing overall military operations and movements.”non-provocative defence strategies”

Here’s what I do though:

I eat what I want
I drink plenty of water
I sleep when my body tells me to
I get drunk occasionally
I do what I want, when I want
I don’t suffer fools
Don’t do social media
Don’t follow MSM
Enjoy life

Not much of a list to follow but basically do what you want and don’t follow the advise of a fool such as me, or some other numpty on social media who claims to know the answers to life. ( A dimfluencer )

However I’m still here after almost six decades, so I must be doing something right.

Happy days all….

That’s all folks

List 10 things you know to be absolutely certain.

You will be born
You will live a life
You will be taxed for everything
You will make good choices
You will make bad decisions
You will experience deep joy
You will experience excruciating pain
You will grieve
You will love
You will die

You choose your direction in life. Make it good.

Peace to all.

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