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Posts Tagged ‘Somerset Levels’

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 was born in Hackney Hospital but bought up in South London and although I have lived away from London, the City of my birth, I have always returned to it frequently indeed, for many years and no matter where I was then living, I always insisted on meeting up with friends and having my birthday celebrations there which fall just after Christmas.

I suppose that either you are a “city person” or you are not, I have always been a “city boy” and consequently have always felt at ease in cities both here and abroad. Apart from one fleeting visit, I have not been to ‘my London’ for the six and a half years I have spent in Somerset, nursing my Parents through the final stages of their lives. However, this week I took the time to do so…

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As we are now in mid November, I have reached the point where I as usual, just stop shopping until the New Year and that includes the Internet which is my favourite form of shopping. This may just be an age and stage thing, but still…

When I moved down to Somerset to look after my Parents, my children, their grandchildren would often ask me what Nan and Granddad wanted for Christmas/Birthday and my replies were just never that helpful because when you reach a certain age and stage, the simple answer is “nothing” or at least, nothing you could expect someone else to buy you.

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I was reminded today by my annual invoice, that I have been writing this blog for three years now having started it in November 2007, I even find myself amazed since I really began it as a bit of an experiment to test myself out. The reality is that the vast majority of people, launch themselves on a personal project like this, life gets in the way and then the enthusiasm rapidly drains away.

According to some estimates, roughly 175,000 new blogs are started every day but probably only 10% survive, if numbers are you thing, Technorati is a good site to check such stuff out on the ‘blogosphere’: http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/

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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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As I have mentioned before, these past 8 months have, though truth to tell not at a constant pace, have been spent redecorating my house. It is a process that will likely not be completed before Christmas (2010, I hope !) but it is a pretty thorough job with the aim that from here on in, there will only be a need to ‘freshen up’ the paint work from time to time room by room and as needed.

Although the job is not finished, I have reached the stage where a more ‘normal life’ can be lived as in having a lounge where I can sit back and watch TV if, there was anything much to watch that is. We are not yet into the “Autumn/Winter Season” when they start reeling out all their new series, we are still on the tail end of the Summer Season when nothing but repeats are shown and as a result…

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I usually rely on the Media to provide me with ‘stories’ that I can look at, think about and then do a ‘personal take’ on but lately, the whole media has been distinctly boring and dull, even the party conference season has not perked them up and the Labour Leadership Election has hardly caused a ripple in a very stagnant pond.

The only thing I have noticed browsing the broadsheet comments boards is that the people who write in these days seem on the whole to be rather nasty and mean of spirit. I thought this was just the militant Dawkins followers or “Dorks” as they are known, fuming over a successful Papal visit but it is not just them. Even on quite trivial news stories, the moaning ninnies are out in force and able to inject some pointless invective on any subject, mass therapy clearly required. So I have decided to do a Baldy’s Ramble…

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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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It was sometime in early March, following my Mother’s death at the end of January, that I embarked on the “Great Redecorating Programme”. How high were my hopes to finish this all in 3 months, no problem ! But alas, the best laid plans of Mice and Men…In truth, there were all kinds of contributory reasons that conspired to cause delays.

Due to the incompetence of a Bank, settling my Mother’s rather simple estate became overly complicated and delayed but also, I rather underestimated the scale of the task I had taken on. I admitted this to a friend of mine the other week and he just laughed, he and his wife had decided that a couple of months back ! However and for all that, looked at another way, my original finish date was end May, the ‘overshoot’ is only about 6 weeks which is not the end of the World.

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