Well, hello there! It's been a while – getting on for three years, in fact. How've you been? We've been pretty swell, doing lots of new things, just enjoying life as much as possible. There have been festivals, lots of work and school, some excellent GCSE results for Matthew, an amazing offer and acceptance of a university place to study film production at Salford for James, adventures on stage for me, and a lot of growth (physical and mental!) and gathering of wisdom for all four of us. There have been some hard times (some of them still with us), but there have been plenty of laughs and hugs and good times. We're still a solid little unit, us four!
I've been meaning to get back into walking and blogging for a long time. Poor Freya (who's four now – can you believe it?!) hasn't been walked consistently or for long distances for a while and she really needs the exercise... as do I! And then, I was writing a letter and popped a little sketch in it earlier today. The sketch only took two minutes, but it awakened something in me that I'd thought was possibly dead! The desire to be creative again. You might recall that this blog was quite creative because it was peppered with all sorts of nonsense that I made up... what's that? You thought every story I told was real and true? Well, none of it was lies, but I do tend to embellish. Anyway, I felt like starting again because I did enjoy sending my thoughts out to my 17 subscribers. And also I need the writing practice because I'm writing a graphic novel with my brother (he's the artist) and the words have dried up. So here we are.
Here is the sketch that inspired my comback:
If you're reading on a phone, that might be too small to see, but it's a biro sketch of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. Nothing special, but it did remind me that I don't actually have to spend all my evenings being a boring old fart who watches Downton over and over. I can do anything I want with my precious spare time. So I will.
So we started right away. Matthew's actually been asking me for ages to start the walk again, so he was delighted when I popped my smelly old trainers on and asked if he wanted to come for a little walk to post my letter. It was raining a little bit, but we both love a rainy walk – so invigorating. Not perhaps what you want on a Sunday evening, to be invigorated, but there just seemed like no better time to begin than that moment. If I'd put it off and waited until later in the week, I'd have forgotten (I have an appalling working and short-term memory).
Since it was 9.30 at night, we didn't go far. But it felt reassuringly familiar to just trot off down the road with Miss Freya all excited and sniffing all the gateposts along the way (gross, but good for her, so I've just read!). It felt a little like it did during the lockdowns because the roads were empty again, as you can see:
Remember that time I lay down in the middle of the road right at the start of the first lockdown just to see how long I could stay there before a car came along? Ahh, fun times.
It's nice to reconnect with the outside world again. Not that I haven't been outside for three years, but I haven't noticed what's been going on out there for a lot of it. I hadn't noticed that it's going dark at 8pm already. This is a good time of year to start walking again because we find it easier to walk in the autumn and winter when you don't get as sweaty. Nice. And if it rains, it's just delicious. I much prefer getting wrapped up on a frosty day than trying to make sure I have enough ways to keep cool on a summer one.
A dark and gloomy ginnel:
So there you have it. We're back, and we hope to stay a while again. The interesting walks won't be every day because I have other things to do these days, like the theatre and the graphic novel, but we hope to start getting plenty of miles in each week again. I've realised how much I miss the chance to be away from any kind of screen and have the opportunity to let me mind go quiet. I've never been good at meditation (probably ADD), but walking does the trick.
Until the next interesting walk – toodle-oo. Big kisses, Linda, Matthew and Freya.
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