Describe your ideal week.
No work
Plenty of sleep
Eat well
Drink plenty of water
No stress
No worries
No aggro
Find a money tree
Discover the meaning of life
Find the book that explains how to keep women happy 😊
It’s not going to happen is it? Oh well a healthy dose of the normal then.
Peace to you all.
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.
That was the call we’ve just had from the vets. A lovely and quite melancholy call to be honest, just as if he’s had a minor procedure and he has awoken and is now ready to come home.
Reality is a little more stark. We are now heading down to collect our little fellah after he has been cremated.
We didn’t know what to expect to be honest, do we take a bag? Is he in a polythene bag? My wife was upset as she’d taken the call as I had been on nights and was in bed. I had this overwhelming feeling yesterday that he’d be coming home today, so in a way when I awoke I wasn’t surprised, strange isn’t it?
We needn’t have fretted, it was all so professional. He’s in a lovely woodland scene tube, we didn’t want a sealed casket as we wanted his ashes to go with ours in the end, please don’t judge us, it’s what we want and you will never understand just what this little character meant to us.
We also have a certificate of individual cremation, with lovely words, we have a lovely little picture frame memento with his paw print, we now have to pick a picture from the thousands we have of him, no easy task and I suspect we will have words about this. The vets have taken a cutting of his fur and put it in a small phial, lovely touch. We have two beautiful cards with his paw print on, and I will be using one of these to get a permanent tattoo on my arm with his pet name as he was known to many in the family- “Alfie Moon”.
The feeling in the house at the moment is nice, all the doubt we had has now gone, and we are so happy with the professional service we have experienced.
We can now move on to the healing stage, as he is now home. It’s so weird that the immense feeling of grief has lifted and a modicum of calmness and happiness has returned, it needed to as it had been missing for some time now.
Our lad is home, where he deserves to be. And he will be with us forever more.
Welcome home son ❤️
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.
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 😂👍
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.
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.
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:
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….
Our last day today was a hot one. Here in sunny Broadstairs it hit a balmy 28 degrees so I suspect summer has now officially been and gone.
We have a family wedding up north in about seven weeks and I’ve been hanging around in getting a new suit, as the only one I seem to have that fits now is the one used for funerals. Probably not good to turn up at a celebration wearing that I guess. No I’ve been good and got myself a nice new three piece one that should do the job, I’m very happy with it and the wife has also given her seal of approval so I suspect for once, the boys done good!
Whilst we were shopping we came across this strange sign. I know Apple have brought out the iPhone, iPad, iWatch etc I’m just curious to know what this is:
I’m wondering, does it tell the time or stream the internet? The mind boggles. Do I need one or shall I stick with what I have….oooerrr missus.
That aside we’ve had a lovely day just walking around the seafront people watching. Tonight we have been out to celebrate a 50th Birthday at Sittingborne dog track, otherwise known as Central Park stadium.
12 races, a lovely dinner and some alcohol free drinks as yours truly was driving. Spent a little, lost a little, didn’t come out any better off. Gambling is a mugs game, thank god I don’t do it that often. I don’t really know what I’m doing, maybe that’s the problem. Anyway it was fun and good to meet up with distant family.
So I sit here perusing the past week and what a fantastic time we’ve had. The driving is by far the worst part and by tomorrow afternoon I will have racked up almost 800 miles, and on Uk roads that isn’t fun. However we’ve made memories, spent time with the family and seen friends we have not seen in a while. So the inconvenience of driving pales into insignificance considering what we have done.
I’m looking forward to the next get together in about 7 weeks from now. I’m just not looking forward to the last leg of driving from Kent to the East Midlands tomorrow.
But I’m sure it will all be worth it.
We’ve finished our small break away in the Devon countryside and taken a long and protracted drive across the south of England to the garden of England. Kent.
We are here to attend a surprise 50th birthday celebration, and thank god we are not doing anything tonight as I’m absolutely cream crackered (Slang for Knackered). Britains highways are crumbling away and to be honest they are not fit for purpose. An allegedly “fast route” of 250 miles should have taken 4hrs and 55 mins, so we finally arrived at our destination 7hrs and 30 mins later. Awful, and a bloody embarrassment to this island as are all forms of transport we operate in this country. It really is a pathetic state of affairs.
Anyway that aside the last couple of days in Devon were beautiful. I saved a baby rabbit from the attention of a wild cat, our beautiful best friend (our dog Alf) even though extremely ill loved the time with his mate Herbie, they played together and brought smiles to our faces, tears to our eyes and love to our hearts, as anyone who knows Alf, knows this is not expected with his illness, it was lovely to see the old Alf. if only temporarily. He’s a beautiful soul, not an angry bone in his body. Just a gorgeous little dog.
We’ve headed off to Kent now whilst Alf has headed back to the East Midlands in the company of my Brother and Sister in law who know how to look after him and how to treat his illness. We will be back with him in a couple of days.
Now in Kent we’ve booked in at our hotel that is a lot less luxurious than the farmhouse in Devon, but comfortable all the same. A quick visit to my Sisters for a Coffee and whilst sitting in her back garden we get dive bombed by a juvenile Seagull on its first flight. But he seems unable to get airborne so his parents start to dive bomb us in the garden, protecting their young I suspect.
So what with all the chaos that has prevailed, with all the noise and aerial activity we have decided to retreat indoors to leave them to it. Hopefully they’ll be able to get junior airborne once again.
Back to the hotel as tiredness has silenced me and I need some rest. Tomorrow we are off to the dog racing in Sittingbourne for a meal and some light entertainment. Hopefully there will be no further animal shenanigans.
Peace to you all.
Not been answering the standard sometimes mind numbing questions that WP throws out on a daily basis as I’m currently enjoying some time away in and around the coast of Devon. Family time, good food and drink and company and a few nice little walks away from it all on my own some.
I’ve been swimming and taken loads of photos, here are a selection below.
We’ve brought our dog Alf with us as it’s probably the last holiday he’ll have with us due to his illness. He’s thoroughly enjoying it and tiring him self out constantly. It’s lovely and we are all enjoying our time with him. Time is precious.
I’ll return to normal operation when we get back if I can be arsed. Having too much of a good time.
Have a pleasant day everyone.
Foxes Den 
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