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Posts Tagged ‘River Brue’

For me, 2011 has been an interesting year with most of the excitement crammed into June when as I was about to depart for a month long trip to the USA, my grandson Mika was born up in Scotland, the day before I left. So June 2011 was to be a very intense month indeed !

Inevitably when I sit and write anything on December 31^st, I think immediately of my Father who died in 2007, if he were still alive, he would have been 91 today, his birthday. But I will think no sad thoughts, nor sing sad songs for we all have our time on this Earth and all eventually will leave it, the measurement being what we did with our time here, not the length of our stay.

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Although not an earth shattering event, I awoke today to my 65th birthday, I am now official an Old Age Pensioner as well as just being an ‘Old Git’. I cannot report that I felt any different, there were no string quartets and choirs of Angels to herald the dawn, in fact it was a pretty ordinary day.

With one exception: Having a birthday immediately after Christmas means that it is often forgotten or ‘over looked’ by most and yet this year, at least by my low standards, there were quite a number of phone calls, e-mails and a flurry of birthday cards and even, one or two presents so, yes it was an unusual birthday in this regard. There were no great events of celebration,  I had my ride by the River Brue, my friend John came round to help me reassemble a bed and my afternoon treat was a visit to the Blood Pressure Clinic but never the less, that is how some birthdays go !

Really this just follows on from my previous blog post “Coming Home” and is part of that process which started on my recent trip to London which led to the laying of some ghosts for me plus my reassessing previous assumptions and trying to plot my way forward from where I am today.

However, it is rather more than just this because our view of any ‘journey’ is predicated by where we start our travels from and in this regard, past memories and our reactions or, how we handled things at that time, can provide helpful clues to decisions we have to make today. Although ‘history’ does not repeat itself in exactly the same way, as people we can often have the unfortunate habit of repeating our past mistakes if we are not careful.

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I would never have imagined myself becoming that interested in birds but perhaps because whilst looking after my Mother, a daily morning bike ride mixed with a little photography by the banks of the River Brue led to an interest in Herons and Egrets. Additionally there are my two Gulls, Oscar and Girly that I inherited from my Father and turn up every morning for breakfast, they are quite old now but still full of character and for wild creatures, very smart and often funny.

Long before David Attenborough appeared on TV, there was Peter Scott, a naturalist and no mean artist, he set up a nature reserve at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire and used to do programmes from there. I had never visited the place so a week ago, I made a visit with a friend of mine. The weather was very good but what a truly amazing place it is, I will visit again and often but if you want more information on it: http://www.wwt.org.uk/visit-us/slimbridge . In the meantime, I thought I might share some pictures.

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For the background, see below and the earlier, “Focusing My Efforts – Before…” but this blog concerns the second part, after my Mother’s death. Similarly it shows my thinking and expectations at that time, both would be subject to considerable change and for that alone to me, worth remembering the ‘difference’.

So, Part Two…

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I started writing this blog in November 2007 but its content tends to be more political than personal so about a year ago, I set up another blog with the intention of that being both more personal and intimate. However, for a whole number of reasons, I was just far too busy to maintain two blogs and since have been even busier in ‘doing up’ the house, I therefore decided to close the second one down.

However, the handful of entries whilst not great prose or great ideas, do cover the period up to my Mother’s death and beyond so, in that sense, are most certainly ‘personal and intimate’. In many respects, whilst people commenting and ‘following’ my blog is not that important to me, every entry in some way, is a snapshot of where I am or was at a given moment in time and relative to some ‘issue’. It is not a conventional Diary but perhaps more of a Journal as in recording a journey so below and in sequence are those entries in two long blogs.

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So here we are again, the end of another year and decade, the start of a new one and what an odd year 2009 has been. At a personal level I am frankly amazed that my Mother is still with us, bits fall off and yet she still struggles on ! My own year has been dogged with repeating ingrowing nail problems and as a consequence, repeating infections and my immense frustration with Doctors ! But having said that, I close 2009 with the best photographic kit I’ve ever had and a very clear mind.

On the political front, Gordon Brown has stumbled from one crisis to another, all Members of Parliament have been bought low by the “Expenses Scandal” which I have always thought rather overblown but the public have used it as a stick to beat with in terms of “payback time” and a General Election must be held within 5 months… good fun all round.

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Today is my birthday so that I have now reached the great age of 64 which is probably equivalent to 54 compared with my Parent’s generation so I do intend to make the best use I can whilst I can enjoy good health and to be as physically active as I can.

My wish is not so much a long life as a fully active one that finishes suddenly rather than peters out in poor health and dependency, God willing. To my mind, continuing to live whilst you can do the things that you enjoy doing and still make a positive contribution of some kind is fine plus keeping yourself physically active makes good sense. You may not live longer but you will enjoy a better quality of life until the end.

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At the beginning of October I mentioned in another piece that I had picked up a rather nasty bacterial infection called Cellulitus which inflamed one leg to twice the size of the other. I detest being “ill”, have never been the kind of person who described a cold as “Flu” and have a reasonably high pain threshold but I must admit that in the earlier stages, it was very painful.

Still the main problem was that as I have a housebound 89 year old Mother to look after, being “not well” can only be a part time activity at best and so all activities have to be prioritized into essential and non-essential tasks. To me though the biggest loss due to necessity was having to suspend my morning bike rides.

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I recently wrote a general e-mail to my mates to let them know that I was now posting a blog and the reasons behind it. The following is a quote from that, the comments in brackets were not included, they know all that:

“Not asking for any sympathy here so don’t offer it, the job is the job (looking after my parents in their old age), but obviously in terms of going out and getting intellectual stimulus, things for me at this time are rather restricted so my world has to be the web. And strangely as I keep my technical “skill set” current (my working background being IT), odd coincidences can happen and the results, can be beneficial even under restricted circumstances.” Read the rest of this entry »