Tag: animals

Tears of travel anxiety

Well, it is here. The day I’ve been rattling on about ALL year long. Mr W and I are embarking on a fifteen day tour of Scotland. It is the longest trip we’ll have ever taken together and the most intricately planned one too.

We will be staying in 14 hotels, travelling over 1800 miles, drinking copious amounts of tea that have been made using our car kettle, going wild swimming for the first time and we are taking you with us!

Yes, to add to the 12-14 hour days, the miles upon miles of hiking and the basic meals of oats and pot noodles, I will be writing every single evening. I’ve often wondered if this will put too much strain on the trip and whether I should wait until after. But truthfully, this is the chance to get every emotion and opinion down as it is on the day without inference of the delay of time.

If you’ve been following this blog so far you’ll know I’m either bordering on OCD or already a fully fledged member of the OCD Club of Organisation Addiction Awareness. So you may not be surprised that every blog going forward already has a template from which I will be able to work from. I also have a notepad that’ll be with me in the car and a printed itinerary I can edit along the way. I really want to learn as I go along on this trip, which means if something I have researched (albeit meticulously) does not work out, I want to find the answers and tell you everything. You may have gleaned by now that I’m passionate about travel beyond measure and if I can inspire (ick word) you to take the trip you’ve been putting on the back burner well that’s just a beautiful thing.

So today, we are driving up to Thirsk in order to break up the mammoth drive to Edinburgh from Essex, our very first and brief stop on Saturday morning. We’ve stayed in Thirsk a number of times now and it works perfectly for us as it’s small enough to not have any traffic and it has a big Tesco and petrol station. It has made the perfect overnight pitstop previously and there’s nothing better on your first night than familiarity. It also helps that our hotel has a restaurant, a budget one, so we don’t need to dig into our food reserves and can be at full energy for the longest start of the trip.

We have an exceedingly early morning tomorrow because we still have a 3 hour drive before our first stop, so we will be up before the sun and on our merry way.

As ever, my nerves about leaving home have started hitting me. This has been happening in its worst form for about three years now. It is hard to pinpoint the exact time it happened but I think it has a lot to do with the time we had to leave our home without a housesitter in 2019. Although we had various people coming in and out at least three times a day, I was incredibly worried about our dog and cats and don’t think I’ve ever really recovered from the guilt. Since then we have secured a housesitter every single time we have left for longer than two days. My dad will always say it’s not an issue but really his doing this enables us to really go out and live.

I literally can’t sit still the days leading up to when we travel and I dare say a lot of that is down to nerves. I love to come home to a clean and tidy home and before we leave I’ll often remember tiny little jobs I’ve been putting off , for instance I’ve been pottering in the garden getting it ready for autumn and reshuffling photos in the hallways.

This week that has been made a darn sight harder due to the flare up of my back condition. Oh yes, we have a 30 page itinerary for a 15 days trip and now is the time my back doesn’t want to play ball. I’ve tried movement, stretching, walking, sleeping, sitting and resting and so far sod all is working. It’s been over two weeks and I am slowly but very steadily getting pissed off. I am determined to keep to the plan for the trip as this has been so long in the planning and even longer in the dreaming.

Putting the final touches to everything this week has definitely kept my mind busy but I know I’ll be a blubbering mess as we leave in a short while. It’s ridiculous really for someone who lives and breathes to travel how much it makes me nervous. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. It catches me off guard and I feel my breath catch in my chest. It’s like a wave of worry washing over me. An anxiety avalanche if you will.

Mr W asks if we should cancel and I know that I can’t stay here forever, holding down the fort, protecting what I can’t while I’m away. Therefore it is off to the horizon we go, me and him, finding the next adventure and praying my anxieties get lost along the way. Maybe I’ll tie them to the rear bumper and give them a good chance of joining us, if they can hold on that is.

Right, here we go. Scotland 2022. Let’s see what you’re all about.

Miles: 232

The world’s best friend

When we were young we would fall out with our friends over the slightest thing. She took the last jelly tot. He splashed you with a puddle. They didn’t include you in the game of hopscotch. We are fickle beings. We see the bad before treasuring the good.

As we grow older the jelly tot arguments turn more sour. She chose to see her other friends. He cheated. They spoke behind your back. We are fickle creatures. We see the bad before treasuring the good.

When we are old the jelly tot arguments turn to mould. She left me behind. He broke my heart. They were right. We are fickle beasts. We see the bad before treasuring the good.

The thing is you shared those jelly tots with the girl who introduced you to friendship. You welcomed the guy into your life who taught you to love and how to pick yourself up and look for love again because of how it made you feel. They spoke behind your back and it’s just what you needed to put up with less shit in your life. You saw the bad before treasuring the good.

In life a friend will come that won’t ask anything from you, will sit by you whether you’ve spared a kind word or not, will forget when you have yelled because they are making too much noise and will bound towards the door every day for 5 years because they thought you weren’t coming back again.

They will pull you forward despite the beating sun, the long spiky grass, the torrential rain.

They race up and down the stairs like a loony to make you laugh when you introduce your new boyfriend to the family.

They eat any unoccupied food when you’re not looking. They know they shouldn’t but it just smells so damn good. 

They never bite or growl, wimper or leave your side.

They are the world’s companion. They are your best friends.

They are the good that you treasure.

Photo by Dave Watson
Please check out his work on https://www.instagram.com/davewatson_uk/ or at https://davewatson1980.picfair.com

All part of the narrative

If you have read my last few blogs you may have seen how excited I’ve been to set up our pool for the summer. We are yet to use it properly and with the impending heat wave of doom it feels like we are halfway to actually surviving it. 

The thing is, when you own your very own property things can change really quickly. Obviously I don’t think there is a curse placed on mortgage payers, but it can be a kick in the gut (and wallet) when something unforeseen happens. Usually for us its technology, last year we had a 6 month struggle with our boiler. 6 months prior to that, our dishwasher upped and fucked off due to a internal complication I think it made up quite personally. 12 months previously to that, our fridge freezer decided it wanted to shuffle off its mortal coils. And fun stuff like that seems to happen a lot when you have zero back up plan and really would like to have some savings building up. This week, our cat decided to check out our pool and punctured its air-filled dreaminess. Mr W and I have spent all of 30 minutes in its cool depths, all of those in the shade. Frustrated is not the word. We are yet to find the tiny hole that is deflating our hopes and dreams. 

The problem with owning a house is there’s no landlord or council that has a duty of care and maintenance to come and fix said items. I mean, if you rent and burst your swimming pool and Landlord Larry will fix it for you, well quite frankly, when can I move in? 

It’s a delicate line to tread when owning your home. On one side there’s the fear of something breaking and checking the sofa for coins to fix the problem. The constant cycle of decorating and learning about electrics and plumbing and a whole host of DIY skills. We had a flood during the lockdown of 2020 because the pump for the electric shower decided it needed a laugh. The flood rained down through a newly installed ceiling and we haven’t been able to fix the pump whatsoever. It sits waiting for the next big project. If I had decided to kick the pump around the garden like a football I’d understand. If I had run the dishwasher for 24 hours straight for a month I’d understand. But technology truly has a mind of its own. 

The pool however, did not decide to deflate. Our ginger Tom saw to that. He is like a moth to a flame when it comes to water. He likes it colder than cold, fresher than fresh and will nick your tea or wine if unattended. The boy is a liquid lusting whore. I could scream and shout, I actually want to, but I learned years ago that our animal friends, our pets, companions, and family are a blessing. If he had sat on that decking, drawn out a claw and run it down the plastic much like someone would key a car, then I’d be having words. However the simple fact is, he wanted water, he went for it. It is his quirk. Much like our other cat’s quirk is to want attention just as you are falling asleep or the other’s is to claw his way up your leg to say hello. Much like Sylvester Stallone in ‘Cliffhanger’. They don’t do it to annoy us. Nor to irritate or make angry. It’s just them. 

I have lost patience with previous animal loves and you can’t take it back. I regret how I used to tell off our dog about peeing in the home. She wasn’t well and I wish I had been kinder. I used to get exasperated about the mess. But the truth is, I’d do it all over again for more time with her. The same goes for our black moggy who we lost in 2019. She would scream at me from the kitchen counter for food. All day she’d cry. And I would cry back at her. ‘Yes, yes, in a minute.’ What I would give to hear those sounds again. What I’d give to have learnt more patience back then. But now, I live with those lessons and what it has taught me. 

The truth is, I let our cats get away with murder, they are pampered beyond belief and I think thats because they’ll never understand just how much they mean to us so I find other ways to make sure they know. They’ve been there every single day during lockdown. They give me cuddles on my bad days. They give me a reason to get up. They’re true companions. 

So when one yaks up on the floor, I’ll sigh and grab the kitchen towel. When there’s a puddle of pee because our tiled floor is better than the flower beds and grass, I’ll shake my head and get the mop. Because we brought them into this home, we chose them. They are entitled to be who they are. I can have the patience for them and their quirks. 

The same goes for the quirks of this house, technology has a shelf life. It shouldn’t but it does. A burst pipe, dodgy electrics and so on goes part and parcel with the mortgage. Would we have rented if we’d have realised all this in the beginning? No, of course not. Owning this house means our hard earned savings went somewhere and will one day pay for our retirement or travelling or even be handed down to our kids. It is something worthy of being patient about. However frustrating and hard it can be and often is. 

It was our choice to buy this place. The same as inviting our furry pals to live with us. It’s all about choice. So when something bursts, breaks or fizzles its electrics out of whack I will have a moment of disbelief, that’s only natural, but I’ll also take what I’ve learned about patience and carry on. It’s all part of the narrative. 

Now I need to find the pool puncture so I can sigh in a very chilled manner!

Photo by Dave Watson
Please check out his work on https://www.instagram.com/davewatson_uk/ or at https://davewatson1980.picfair.com

Animals

For power.

For religion.

For right. For wrong.

So much killing that no other animal in the kingdom subjects their own species to for reasons that even on ones deathbed won’t matter.

Whether you are making the gun or pulling the trigger; you feel you have the divine right to kill someone. Whether you are building the bomb or pushing the detonator; you feel you have the divine right to take away someone’s mother. Whether you are the one ordering the cull or the one acting on the order; you are murdering a generation.

After thousands of years of murder and passing the blame when will humanity stop killing their own brothers and sisters. When will the efficiency of the human brain, which produces the thought to gain power and follow religion, realise that we all come from the same place. We have the same genetic make up; we all have people we love and we would all be devastated when that person is deemed collateral damage.

Since when did anyone have the right to kill? Does sitting behind a desk give you a moral high ground as you bang that gavel and sentence someone to death? A child’s life in the crosshairs of your rifle is simply snuffed out because the pinch of the trigger takes a second in a lifetime of a hundred thousand hours. Does the ease take away the guilt? Do you feel any?

Everyone has a mother. A father. Someone in this world who loves them. That person who gives them their daily smile. A face etched with joy and a lifetime branded with happiness. Wiped away in another persons second of stupidity. Wiped like a tear falling on a cheek or a bloodstain on a cold wooden floor.

Males quarrel in competition. The weaker fall behind and fall victim to a hungry alpha. The smaller get trampled and forgotten. Funny how this can so easily be mistaken for humans that none take the time to see that we don’t need to kill to survive. For love. For food. For nothing. We can survive enough on our intellect and preserve what we have without resorting to ‘this is mine, not yours’. It is the pure ‘want’ of something, like land or proving someone/thing wrong, that propels us into this forbidden and shameful territory where death is second nature.

Animals need to kill in order to survive.

We ‘need’ to kill in order to grasp onto something more. Something unearned. Some unnatural desire to better a life that at birth was so pure and perfect already. Our hunger for the perfect life reveals our fangs; it reveals our bloodthirsty nature and blinds us to what was already pristine and beautiful.

If you ask me, we are the real animals. They use their instincts to hunt and kill to survive. We use our intelligence to maim, murder, massacre until surviving becomes the biggest challenge we face.

Kill or be killed.

Our instincts have been swallowed by our greed.

We are the deadliest animal. And it’s time to cage the kind that deserve its boundaries.

Photo by Dave Watson 

Please check out his work on https://www.instagram.com/davewatson_uk/ or at https://davewatson1980.picfair.com