Dales walkies

I've spent the week walking in mostly golden sunshine in Derbyshire.  The accents are gentle and I was called "dook" which is "Northern" for Duck!  Such a lovely accent.  I've managed to pick it up a little I think.  The holiday was a Ramblers walking break in the Peak District - which I have been to before but apparently only on the Dark Peak side.  The White Peak, where we stayed (Cromford) is in Limestone country and we walked amidst glistening towers and pikes of white which apparently look like an Italian Dolomites in miniature, against the clear azure sky.  According to our walks leader anyway. 

I was tired. It has been a long summer, learning a new job.  My neck took about 5 days to unstiffen - a group of us came in from the 10 - 14 miles walks each day to swim in the small pool in the hotel grounds, which was so nice and refreshing. But you had to go as soon as you had taken your boots off or there wasn't any motivation. It gave me a good appetite - cake, ice cream and Eaton Mess featured in my nice-moments of the holiday file!

The dales were silent in many places, peopled by some majestic wind turbines.  We got very close to them and I am amazed at the magnificent proportions of them.  We heard and saw buzzards overhead and one day someone asked if there was an owl in the tree.  It was a resting kestrel, which then flew past and gently came to rest on another tree, whilst a buzzard mewed overhead.  Definitely my highlight of the holiday.  Walking in Lathkilldale, we saw harebells, sheep, and many more people and went down a little abandoned lead mine, with a long metal ladder and dripping, fern festooned walls.  It must have been such a hard way of earning a living and so very dangerous.

Dovedale contributed takeaway coffee, dippers and grey wagtails and half the schoolchildren of Derbyshire.  It's definitely a honeypot.  We finished at Ilam.  I looked in the church and there was a large stone table of prayer cards, written by people who might not normally pray.  The hearfelt grief and honesty made me feel more than a little ashamed when I have been so lacklustre and routine in my own prayers.  I guess it makes God weep for the world.

There was a lot of industrial past on show.  We walked past tracks and cogs, an abandoned engineering workshop, now a nice informal museum, lots of chains and rusty irons bits and pieces.  The Monsal and High Peak trails are former railway tracks axed by the infamous Dr Beeching.
It's been lovely. I spent my thirties and forties climbing/walking/scrambling up big hills and testing my dodgy lungs, but gentler walks with lovely scenery and some fun banter from my walking holiday companions strikes me as a much more lung friendly and interesting way to go forward.  I need to make sure I save hard as I come alive walking outside.

Shining?

Yesterday my two most extravert colleagues were organising the work Christmas meal.  It's a hotel affair with a disco and a magician.  I heard the words "it'll be great to dress up" and my heart sank.  I can't think of anything I like less than parties and dressing up!  Maybe fancy dress? I feel such a fraud and so very awkward for so very many reasons.  I never was a dress up child and I am not a dress up adult.  Yet, I am not confident enough to just be even after all this time, in such situations.  I've done it for a family I really love and an evening of politeness and feeling awkward was worth it - they were worth it. I had a laugh with one of the managers when I admitted I shopped like a man - if I like it and it fits, I will buy either two of it or in more than one colour - on the basis that you will never see it again. Hence I have two navy polo shirts, two short denim summer shirts and body warmers in two colours!  I know!  She told me her friend was like that - favourite shops were mountain warehouse and M and S.  I had to concur.  To a general chorus from the office of "oh I love shopping" I had to admit I would rather buy books than handbags any day.

I have just finished "customising" my recycling bin and dustbin with the reduced price stickers of squirrels and kingfisher my friend found for me in retaliation for the cats stickers I gave her one Christmas for her wheelie bin.  It was a frustratingly crafty thing involving scissors, but I hope now that squirrel nutkin and friends will alert the bin men so I don't have to play "hunt the bin" down the street most Fridays.

Ordinary life.  It's humdrum.  The morning was errands for parents, including wielding a lump hammer to break up the collapsing wooden garden furniture to take to the tip.  I discovered that this was my great grandads hammer and that he wasn't the farm labourer I thought he was (that was nans side of the family) but a master mason, or "brickie".  He was part of the team that built the Middlemoor police station apparently.  Great grandad, if he followed the family traits, would have been short and solid to swing that lump of wood and metal.  It was fun for a very short time.

I wonder what relevance all that is to God sometimes.  But I'm reading the bible book of Kings, and something jogged my memory - God cared about poisoned stew, a broken (loaned) axe and a desperate widow whose hospitality was strained to the breaking point

When it's easy to be grateful

Today I came home from work to the chitter of the back garden sparrow squad.  I thought nothing of it - they are usually noisy.  Going over to wash my hands, I looked out the window - to see a large, brown and beige bird of prey with a nice bright eye and an intentional looking curved beak perched on the brick wall at the back of the house, eyeing up sparrow surprise for tea.  I assume he or she is a sparrowhawk but would be very pleased to be proved wrong!  I would have willingly sacrificed several sparrows to keep my newest acquistion on the wall, but, before I could find either camera or phone it had taken flight, scattering the sparrows ahead of it.  Lovely unexpected thing as the usual birds are blackbird, occasional crow and annoying seagulls.

I have a habit of "making" gratitude quilts - basically hatched lines in a notebook, filled with prayer or thanks for good things, in as many colour biros as I have.  They are a good reminder on a dark morning when my heart is a little rusty.  I think I will have to take my camera to work, too, to photograph the changing colours of the beautiful mature trees where I work, and the way the light shines on the colours of the victorian brickwork, to make up for the drab, draughty huts we work in!

Practising Gratitude

I'm not sure where in my continous walk of learning to be a bit of a follower of Jesus I picked up the habit of gratitude.  When I was truly bored - and it was a horrible time at work - I tried to find 50 things to be grateful for at a time.  Lists usually included coffee, chocolate, books, Jesus, the bible and disintegrated into duvet, the bin men, buttercups and just about anything else I could find - 50 is a big list! A friend of mine said (rather cynically) that finding 3 things a day to be grateful for over 365 days would be very challenging.  I'm tempted to try it.  An excuse for a new notebook.  I'm fairly convinced that habitually looking for things to be grateful for is doing interesting things to my brain and rewiring this natural pessimist into a slightly more sunny and positive version - although to be fair, this may be the work of God's spirit! Certainly I did it through gritted teeth when I had a puncture and found the spare tyre also had a screw in it and the repair man took an hour and a half on a very sticky day!   But I was grateful I didn't have my new manager in the car, which would have been the case a week later for a scones and cream motivational afternoon.  I am not sure about the management blather but scones and cream can motivate me any time!

Walking on the edge

I've had eight weeks of cramming new information and forming good working relationships and my head is tired.  I need a mental holiday and the best way is to dig out my rapidly failing boots and camera and take a walk.  I had fun hauling up and down the hills around Ladram Bay, reading the signs stating that "happiness is a holiday home in Devon" and that "this is a cliff edge - thank you for your consideration". That one made me laugh - consideration?  999? Rescue helicopter? It's a long way down at this point.  I agree that having a home in Devon is a happy thing and walked to Otterton for a cheese scone.  I found myself grousing on the way back as all the cars seemed to take the Devon lanes wide, making me want to yell "you are not driving a tank" although fair point, some were pretty large and the lanes are overgrown.  I've been reading a couple of books by Matthew Johnston "I had a black dog" and one lovely one of his mindful photographs.  I would so like to be a better photographer.  His beautiful simple books remind me to make sure life is less frills, more happiness, to beat the black dog with exericse, to learn to be gentle.  I find the last really really hard. I have set myself a target of doing 150 miles to get a medal with "race at your pace" but someone suggested this was too easy, so I upped it to 200.  With the reaction that I then started worrying and knew in myself that that's not good.  I ate humble pie and am doing 150 miles walk challenge in September, which, with a peak district walking holiday should be fairly straightforward for me.  I think it will be the first sporting medal I have ever achieved, although somewhere I have a certificate my good friend bought me for walking up either Snowdon or Ben Nevis and a swimming towel for the herculean effort that was a pool based, 12 week "channel swim" that my friends had to help with as my doctor banned me due to ear infections.  Challenges are great, but I am learning that they need to fit properly.

Lost - searching for home

This weekend I watched the film "Lion" in someone's garden, with a retiring collection being made to Tearfund.  I need to watch it again as for the last half I was fighting neck cramp that put me in bed for a couple wasted hours of Saturday morning.  Waking early and ramming breakfast so you can take painkiller is not my favourite way to wake up.  It's a beautiful, aching, well told, fabulously acted story of a boy who loses his family, his home, his roots and has his new roots in another place soil-shaken out so that he is compelled to find his background, his source.  Being a curious sort, and having missed half with poor concentration, I've ordered the book "a long way home" on which the film is based, from the nicely accommodating library.

I've just read about the importance of home on a friends' blog.  I'm a long time Devonian.  I used to have a beautiful photo on my wall which was taken by someone I loved - a photo of the stone marking a first war cemetery where so many of the Devons gave their lives.  The person I loved remarked that Devonians don't travel well far from home.  Which is true for me. 

I love the pinks of Devon.  "Red" Devon, with it's sandstone cliffs that feed into the pinky soil, the reddish tinge of brickwork, the crumbly browny reds of the Roman walls and the colour that cattle pick up when they are shin deep in Devon mud.  I grew up with a dad whose burr is nothing compared to the deep dialect richness of his mum and dad.  My Kentish mum couldn't understand them first off.  I know the ways around East Devon, the free parking, the hills and back ways, from childhood walks, school run/walks and a lifetime of being adverse to more adventurous travel!

I have been thinking about photographs this week.  My new manager trusted me enough to share her stunning photographs.  She has totally awesome talent and technique.  It took guts for me to share my not so good photos after that but I wanted to.  It inspired me to make a photocalendar for my newly acquired desk (after six rootless work weeks) for the new year.  And I realised how few I have taken this year.  Low photo count is usually a sign that I haven't prioritised any time and space.  And I am feeling dull and dry. About as dry as the yellowed grass was.  I could do with a season of rain. Time to get outside behind a lens and leave my books for evening joy!

Rain

It's raining hooray!!!  I never thought I'd say that. I should be praying and I'm sitting watching grey marbly clouds solidly filling the window.  Rain on glass sounds like rice krispies - sort of crackle and the popping sound as it slides off the glass.  I can hear it drumming on the flat roof and rippling down the drain and the swish of wet car tyres this morning through the open window told me it was damp before I opened the curtains.

The air feels fresher, the plants look bedraggled bless them and I am hoping my colleagues wedding tomorrow won't be a soggy disaster. I've heard a lot about it in the six weeks I have worked there - and the grotty work carpet is strewn with the heart shape confetti we gave her. I think this year I will need to make friends with Autumn.  Last and previous years bouts of depression spoiled my appreciating it and I want to revel in the colours and cools anticipating walking in the Peak District.

Today is the day I get a desk after said six weeks!  Not sure what we will do while the team are trundling around with furniture but it will be nice to have a home.  My colleagues are all wanting to pick desks so, as they are young and I'm not that fussed, I guess I will let them fight over them.  At least I am getting a desk, and my random clutter will have somewhere to go.