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.
Whilst I understand fully why people don’t like tattoos, I personally love them. Yes there are some awful ones out there however many are works of art and those that dispense them are artists.
For me they represent something I love, a time or a place that brings great comfort or memories flooding back to me, representing something deeply personal and special that has featured prominently in my life.
Alfs paw print from the vet
And this one is for my best mate, Alf who sadly left us on the 16th August this year.
Before and during the inking
When Alf passed away the first thing the vet did was take a paw print off of him that was put into a card, I said to my wife at this point that I’d have a word with my tattooist, Pablo, and see if he could do something with it. Today I have met with Pablo and the tattoo is being done.
Cling filmed for a couple of hours prior to washing
Alf was known throughout the family as “Alfie Moon” and I asked for this to be incorporated into the finished tattoo, and after about an hour the job is done and though a bit sore im really pleased with the outcome.
It won’t be in its full glory until the healing has finished in a week or two, for now it’s all about keeping it clean and protected and moisturised until that time.
Finished just needs to heal
It’s my way of remembering a faithful friend and companion that I now know will be forever with me, in my memory and now etched on to me. When people ask I can tell them the many stories of “Alfie Moon” – A very good boy.
Tattoos, taboo in many peoples eyes, but try to see the world through the eyes of others, it is an art form and art is a form of expression. If it helps, it cannot be a bad thing. And in my case my tattoos tell my life story and those special people, animals and places that have touched it.
I’m a walking art gallery, to some.
But probably not to others, the choice is yours, and yours alone.
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.
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.
Our beautiful lad has come home
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.
Paw print Lock of hairA beautiful paw print photo frame
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.
Anyone who’s picked up on these posts of mine of recent days will know that we lost a very important member of our family on Friday just gone. Our dog Alfie went to sleep after suffering a number of ailments over the past years, culminating in a steep decline in his quality of life in the last couple of months.
It’s a tough and harrowing decision to make, bringing an end to a life that has brought nothing but intense joy and happiness to yours for the last 11yrs and 3 months.
But we had to do it, he couldn’t suffer anymore.
The hole that opened up in our family that day was immense. We stopped eating, our diet has been tears and cuddles and just constantly comforting each other. Along with this now is a list of chores that have to be done, like it or not his stuff has to be sorted, what do we keep? What do we donate? What do we dispose of?
Me, I want to keep it all but I have to be realistic, we don’t want to delete him from our memories as that will never happen, we don’t want to remove his presence from our home as it was his as well as ours. However there are unfortunate animals out there that would greatly benefit from Alf’s legacy and that’s what today is about.
Firstly we return to the vets, we have cards and gifts for the staff there who have all been super towards our little lad, we’re not looking forward to this but it has to be done, we have to settle his account as we left there Friday broken and gibbering wrecks.
Secondly we head to the Local dogs trust homing centre where we can donate Towels, Bedding and an elderly dog stroller
Thirdly we will go to the local hospice shop where we can donate other items, that again will help this wonderful charity.
It’s going to be hard, the house is going to be a little emptier today. But his legacy will be that he is helping others both canine and human, and isn’t that a wonderful thing.
I’m sure I will write a lot more about him on here and I’m not apologetic for that at all. My wife and I are still very raw about his passing and we will breakdown at a moments notice, however we are supporting each other, and doing what we can to ease the pain, and not forget him. Walks and talks are now our priority, it helps.
It’s amazing how, you can fall so madly in love with an animal, another species. Life really is wonderful and heartbreaking in equal measures.
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.
My certificate of completion
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.
Langar airfieldOn a caravanA casual warning sign in the club house
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.
Snug Swinging Photo discussion Safety brief
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.
Cessna 208 Skyvan
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.
Just about to go up On boardOut you go Above the cloudsSupermanWow
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 got his wings Langar
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 😂👍
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.
How would you describe yourself to someone who can’t see you?
Deep, non judgemental, 5ft 10” carrying a tad too much weight, likes beer, bad food and fixing stuff. Too nice, hates incompetence and liars. Dreams big, never achieves, gets taken for a ride, trusts the wrong people and is known to fart occasionally.
Of course no one on this site would quote the last fact as they’re only interested in quoting untruths of how they’d like to be described.
Be truthful, we’re all individuals with good and bad traits. Don’t be what you want to be. Be what you are. We all fart.
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.
Foxes Den 
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