The Welsh Marches
Tonight is Sunday and I have just spent the weekend in the above region of the English countryside. It refers to the border region of England and Wales and if you want anymore information on it Wikipedia has a nice entry. If you can believe anything that Wikipedia says!
I was there visiting my Godson and his family.
The weather plays an important in this tale. We have had the first real snow of winter this weekend. I was due to travel on Saturday but the weather forecast was for end of the world scenarios and not wanting to get caught up in travel doomsday I went Friday night instead.
It was late when I got there. Largely because of the two detours I had to take. One was to drop my son with his Mum and the other was to buy myself some new jeans. In my haste to get out of the door I had forgotten to change out of my work clothes and my son had the door key so he could get back in on Sunday.
My hosts fed me a bowl of steaming soup and I crashed into a very welcome bed and slept a deep sleep.
My first contact with the land of wakefulness was the cold wet nose of the family Terrier - Eric. Apparently he likes to do a round of all the occupants of the house in the mornings like some kind of canine roll call. I hadn't shut my bed room door quite as well as I thought the previous night. Eric gad used what little weight such as he possessed and pushed the door to. He had found a stranger in the room and rather than raise the alarm and warn his family he decided to see what I tasted like instead. A few lustrous wipes later, I was awake and Eric was assured of my lack of threat to all he held dear. At this point he leapt off the bed and made for the door, which had closed behind him. There followed 5 minutes of scratching and whinnying until I realised he may want out for other reasons and did not want to share those reasons!. I became aware that it was still dark outside and relapsed into deep sleep with ease.
I rose at 9 a.m. which is just shy of miraculous in my life. I am a catch up sleeper at weekends. It is a bad habit I know but there you are. I tend to lose most weekends at this time of year as, by the time I rise the Sun is starting to set. The summer suits me better. i can rise at midday and still fit a days worth of activities in before sunset. Anyway, My Godson's family are at a different place and as young children they rise with the larks. As such I stumbled into the kitchen into the Armageddon that is Saturday Breakfast with children. I remember those days well.
Funny how I spend my life wishing I did it differently. When My children were young I was up with them at all hours and wished for a lay in. Now I get my lie in but wish I could get out at a decent time. Be careful what you wish for I guess.
Early plans had to be cancelled. I was due to watch a training session of junior Rugby but it had to be abandoned due to poor weather. So I got time to catch up on news/family gossip.
I don't know where the idea for the afternoon activity came from. Myself and my Godson's Father had decided that Saturday should be some sort of indoors day. So quite how we ended up on Prestatyn beach in a howling sleet storm with the tide coming in is something of a mystery. I had wrapped up sufficiently but for my head. I had not planned a hat as I did not think I would be stupid enough to be outside for long on a day like this. Just goes to show you should always expect the unexpected. After 1o minutes it was quite obvious I was not going to survive if i did not wrap my head up. I took off my scarf and wrapped it in some form or turban and surprisingly felt much better, if not a little ridiculous.
Bear in mind I did not shoot this and this was a nice day. We could hardly see beyond our noses!
Imagine dark skies and howling sleet and you would be closer to the mark.
After some time exposed to the worst of the Siberian front we headed for home and a warm cuppa, change of clothes etc. etc. We just had time to warm up before the main event - a barn dance.
It was organised by the church in Chester that the family attend. They are very nice people. Really nice. I just find their brand of worship a bit too "happy clappy". I was brought up much more in traditional fashion but a little more on that later.
I had agreed to go along to the barn dance because I had seen a programme on telly that recommended dancing as a treatment for depression. I get very down in the winter. Unfortunately all my good intentions were undone as my anxiety complexes prevented me from standing up and taking part in ANY of the dancing. Shame! Still it was good sport all the same.
When I was younger Come Dancing was still on the TV. Every now and then I would catch it on late at night as there was little else on. The highlight were the open floor sessions when, as far as I could see, there was a general melee on the dance floor. I just waited for couples to bump into each other. There was a certain look upon the dancers face after a collision, irritation (at meeting the other couple), mild panic (lost their stride) and consternation (at losing their cool in the first place). Then ther would be more serious collisions. No one was actually knocked down, mores the pity but a few heels were lost.
The barn dance had this sort of entertainment value. Towards the end of the evening I was noticing a pattern however. No matter how well spaced and marshalled by the master of ceremonies, by the end of each dance ninety percent of participants had ended up in the North East corner of the room by the exit. Interesting.
As it was a family event it was all over by 9:30. Time to get back into Wales, get hte kids to bed and get off for a cheeky pint at the local. All in all a satisfactory evening barring my anxiety disorder.
I slept well - again! Sunday was a day to go to church. Back in Chester. I had my Godson and his brother in my car so as to relieve pressure on my hosts car (2 adults, one child and two dogs). On the way the two lads wanted me to tell them jokes but I had exhausted my supply of child friendly jokes the day before and I was running on empty.
Now I am not a religious person (I hold few beliefs save for the one about Portsmouth Football club rising from the ashes of Russian Mafia money to take on the world again - there is another blog there - sorry). My hosts are. I could write a book on my religious upbringing but the upshot is that I don't believe in anything much. Quite a lot of Christianity is quite frankly fantasy. That is not to say religon is not of value.
If you look at nature in general there appear to me to be only two perogatives. Food and sex. Not necessarily in that order. Reproduction of the species and gathering enough food to feul that reproduction. Just about everything else is up for grabs. So if you take Human civilization, well we would not be very civilized if we only followed those two precepts. We do in actual fact but there is a lot of time to fill in between the eating and screwing and that is where religon comes in. It gives an arbritary level of what is considered "decent" behaviour, a yard stick. Some may scoff but i can't see where else our moral values come from except religion.
With that respect in mind I still cannot come to terms with intelligent people coming up with such comical outpourings than i witnessed that Sunday. I feel awfully guilty about poking fun at them behind their backs because as I said before they are genuinely very nice people. A great advert for Christianity. It is just I don't believe. Sorry.
We were going to have a wander around the walls of Chester, built by the Romans, unfortunately one ofthe boys slipped in the ice and lost the plot when he got covered in cold water. Still I did enjoy a picnic by the river Dee and saw some spots I recognised from Hollyoaks (teenage/young adult soap opera set in the city)
I left for home at a reasonable hour. The weather was a good bit cooler over the Penines and i didn't want to be drivingthrough it in the dark.
As a final footnote a colleague had confided that he too was driving to the "other side" as they say in Leeds. He wasn't going to be a million miles from where I was. I bumped into him on Monday afternoon and asked him how he had got on. After we had exchanged brief stories I could hear him muttering to himself as he walked away
"Prestatyn beach! Hee Hee"
My first contact with the land of wakefulness was the cold wet nose of the family Terrier - Eric. Apparently he likes to do a round of all the occupants of the house in the mornings like some kind of canine roll call. I hadn't shut my bed room door quite as well as I thought the previous night. Eric gad used what little weight such as he possessed and pushed the door to. He had found a stranger in the room and rather than raise the alarm and warn his family he decided to see what I tasted like instead. A few lustrous wipes later, I was awake and Eric was assured of my lack of threat to all he held dear. At this point he leapt off the bed and made for the door, which had closed behind him. There followed 5 minutes of scratching and whinnying until I realised he may want out for other reasons and did not want to share those reasons!. I became aware that it was still dark outside and relapsed into deep sleep with ease.
I rose at 9 a.m. which is just shy of miraculous in my life. I am a catch up sleeper at weekends. It is a bad habit I know but there you are. I tend to lose most weekends at this time of year as, by the time I rise the Sun is starting to set. The summer suits me better. i can rise at midday and still fit a days worth of activities in before sunset. Anyway, My Godson's family are at a different place and as young children they rise with the larks. As such I stumbled into the kitchen into the Armageddon that is Saturday Breakfast with children. I remember those days well.
Funny how I spend my life wishing I did it differently. When My children were young I was up with them at all hours and wished for a lay in. Now I get my lie in but wish I could get out at a decent time. Be careful what you wish for I guess.
Early plans had to be cancelled. I was due to watch a training session of junior Rugby but it had to be abandoned due to poor weather. So I got time to catch up on news/family gossip.
I don't know where the idea for the afternoon activity came from. Myself and my Godson's Father had decided that Saturday should be some sort of indoors day. So quite how we ended up on Prestatyn beach in a howling sleet storm with the tide coming in is something of a mystery. I had wrapped up sufficiently but for my head. I had not planned a hat as I did not think I would be stupid enough to be outside for long on a day like this. Just goes to show you should always expect the unexpected. After 1o minutes it was quite obvious I was not going to survive if i did not wrap my head up. I took off my scarf and wrapped it in some form or turban and surprisingly felt much better, if not a little ridiculous.
Bear in mind I did not shoot this and this was a nice day. We could hardly see beyond our noses!
Imagine dark skies and howling sleet and you would be closer to the mark.
After some time exposed to the worst of the Siberian front we headed for home and a warm cuppa, change of clothes etc. etc. We just had time to warm up before the main event - a barn dance.
It was organised by the church in Chester that the family attend. They are very nice people. Really nice. I just find their brand of worship a bit too "happy clappy". I was brought up much more in traditional fashion but a little more on that later.
I had agreed to go along to the barn dance because I had seen a programme on telly that recommended dancing as a treatment for depression. I get very down in the winter. Unfortunately all my good intentions were undone as my anxiety complexes prevented me from standing up and taking part in ANY of the dancing. Shame! Still it was good sport all the same.
When I was younger Come Dancing was still on the TV. Every now and then I would catch it on late at night as there was little else on. The highlight were the open floor sessions when, as far as I could see, there was a general melee on the dance floor. I just waited for couples to bump into each other. There was a certain look upon the dancers face after a collision, irritation (at meeting the other couple), mild panic (lost their stride) and consternation (at losing their cool in the first place). Then ther would be more serious collisions. No one was actually knocked down, mores the pity but a few heels were lost.
The barn dance had this sort of entertainment value. Towards the end of the evening I was noticing a pattern however. No matter how well spaced and marshalled by the master of ceremonies, by the end of each dance ninety percent of participants had ended up in the North East corner of the room by the exit. Interesting.
As it was a family event it was all over by 9:30. Time to get back into Wales, get hte kids to bed and get off for a cheeky pint at the local. All in all a satisfactory evening barring my anxiety disorder.
I slept well - again! Sunday was a day to go to church. Back in Chester. I had my Godson and his brother in my car so as to relieve pressure on my hosts car (2 adults, one child and two dogs). On the way the two lads wanted me to tell them jokes but I had exhausted my supply of child friendly jokes the day before and I was running on empty.
Now I am not a religious person (I hold few beliefs save for the one about Portsmouth Football club rising from the ashes of Russian Mafia money to take on the world again - there is another blog there - sorry). My hosts are. I could write a book on my religious upbringing but the upshot is that I don't believe in anything much. Quite a lot of Christianity is quite frankly fantasy. That is not to say religon is not of value.
If you look at nature in general there appear to me to be only two perogatives. Food and sex. Not necessarily in that order. Reproduction of the species and gathering enough food to feul that reproduction. Just about everything else is up for grabs. So if you take Human civilization, well we would not be very civilized if we only followed those two precepts. We do in actual fact but there is a lot of time to fill in between the eating and screwing and that is where religon comes in. It gives an arbritary level of what is considered "decent" behaviour, a yard stick. Some may scoff but i can't see where else our moral values come from except religion.
With that respect in mind I still cannot come to terms with intelligent people coming up with such comical outpourings than i witnessed that Sunday. I feel awfully guilty about poking fun at them behind their backs because as I said before they are genuinely very nice people. A great advert for Christianity. It is just I don't believe. Sorry.
We were going to have a wander around the walls of Chester, built by the Romans, unfortunately one ofthe boys slipped in the ice and lost the plot when he got covered in cold water. Still I did enjoy a picnic by the river Dee and saw some spots I recognised from Hollyoaks (teenage/young adult soap opera set in the city)
I left for home at a reasonable hour. The weather was a good bit cooler over the Penines and i didn't want to be drivingthrough it in the dark.
As a final footnote a colleague had confided that he too was driving to the "other side" as they say in Leeds. He wasn't going to be a million miles from where I was. I bumped into him on Monday afternoon and asked him how he had got on. After we had exchanged brief stories I could hear him muttering to himself as he walked away
"Prestatyn beach! Hee Hee"
No comments:
Post a Comment