Days of Gratitude - Creativity, Charity, Cafes, Carousels, Coaches. And Darkness.

Five more days.  They were good days.  I spent them in Manchester staying with an awesome person, the creator of my soft toy Blob Thing.  She's a very busy person these days, excelling in her passion and slowly working her way towards her dream.  I believe that she will achieve that dream.  She has found her niche and it's a place where that great passion is combined with a talent and definite flair and I believe that she is going to affect the lives of lots of people in a very positive way as she continues to walk this path.  Autistic children will benefit massively and so will their parents/guardians and those around them.  They already do benefit massively but this is only the beginning.  One of my joys over the past sixteen months since meeting her has been to watch the way she has run down this path with such total enthusiasm and to watch the way that she has begun to create something pretty damn marvellous.  When I met her this thing did not exist anywhere but her head.  And now it does.  And there is much more in her head to become a physical reality at time progresses.  I am looking forward to watching it happen.

Five more days.  Since Amanda is so busy I now have to occupy myself quite a bit when I'm there.  I am finding ways to occupy myself and know that there is never a cause for me to be bored either when reading and writing at her house or when I go out - walking, visiting a town, writing in the library, or finding new places and people.

This visit was no exception and below you will find a few things I am excited about.  And a cafe that I'll be returning to.  It even has convenient plug sockets for a laptop.  Southport has also given me a writing prompt for a story that is churning in my head right now.  At some point it will come to rest and I'll know the broad outline of the tale.  But that's not something for now.  I'll just tell you it involves palmistry and an impossible fortune becoming possible.

Something else.  I am typing this at the Literary and Philosophical Society Library.  I joined today.  Yes, I am now officially a member.  I plan to spend lots of time here writing and reading.  Perhaps there will be people to meet too and it will become the source of more surprises in my life.  I hope so.

16^th December


Grateful to have found amazing places and things while having to spend hours in Manchester city centre without a plan.

Here:

A brilliant free creative space in Afflecks. With a possibility something similar might happen one day in Newcastle.

The awesome art cafe.

Some great street art.

So many pictures to choose from.

17^th December

Grateful for a great day with Amanda in Southport.

Chips, ice cream, charity shops, a carousel, and tea. Our kind of day.

And it was the first time I have ever seen the sea it Southport. On every other visit it was miles away.

18^th December

Grateful for darkness and light.  The not-church church I attended in Manchester was based on the theme of darkness.  I liked the people there.  I don't think it would be "my" place but I did like them and I liked the honesty and openness that was greater than that seen in most church churches.

And grateful for the women's toilets here in Nexus Art Cafe.

Yep, a gratitude post about a toilet.

19^th December

Grateful to spend most of the day with Amanda.

We caught the bus to Leigh for charity shops and to visit a very good cafe there.

A screen in the cafe displays slideshows of someone's photos. As I was paying I noticed the photos at that moment were of Newcastle.

20^th December

Grateful to have achieved the front seat on the coach back from Manchester.

Grateful for an easy journey.

And grateful for roast chicken. Because I am still a corpse eating monster.

Days of Gratitude - Tea, Cafes and The Rocky Road To Manchester

Five more days.  The solstice will soon be with us and then Christmas.  And then the close of this year of gratitude.  I'm still undecided on what will replace the gratitude diary next year.  How about this:

http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/

or this:

https://dailypost.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/365-days-of-writing-prompts-1387477491.pdf

Each of those contains a writing prompt for each day of the year.  I think personally I prefer the look of the first set.  I also have a couple of books with daily writing prompts.
Maybe that should be the replacement.  A short piece of writing every day from a prompt.  It would be both enjoyable and a challenge.  I wouldn't be too religious about it or force myself to catch up if I missed it every day for a week.

At this point I don't know how my writing will develop in 2017, how much I'll be sitting in the Lit & Phil Library, whether I'll be entering any competitions or submitting any work in the hopes some editor will like it and publish it.

At this point I don't particularly care what I'll find out about those things.  I do expect my writing will develop, that I will be sitting in the Lit & Phil, and that I will probably see some competitions or calls for submission that look enjoyable enough to play with and not care about so-called "success".

So here, five more days of gratitude.

I type this while sitting in the Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester.  In a couple of hours I'll be back in Salford.  I arrived here at 10.30 for a not-church church thing called Sanctus and stayed to write and be in a nice place for a while.  If you're in Manchester I can highly recommend the place.  Unless you need wheelchair access or can't deal with steps.  It's in a deep basement - with a window into a back courtyard - and the place doesn't have a lift.  Apart from that, I can vouch for the toasties, the tea, and the cake.  Also the toilets.  They're pretty cool too.

I spot that I haven't posted anything apart from gratitude posts recently - unless you include Blob Thing's blog which has been a little wild recently.  I'll try to post something else soon.  I hope to get a story posted here by Christmas.  It's a Christmas story so it should be posted by Christmas!  I'm quite happy with it and, at 15,000 words, is by far the longest piece of fiction I've ever written.

It's all progress.  Looking forward to the progress of 2017.  It's going to be special.

11^th December


Grateful to have been able to spend more time than expected with a friend.

Grateful for her treating me to lunch at Tea Sutra.

And that she wrote something meaningful for me.

12^th December


Grateful the new printer works so I have been able to print the Christmas story for a friend so she can be the first to read it.

Grateful too for a year old memory shared.

Cheating - but it's the only photo!

13^th December

Grateful for a quiet day.

Grateful for new internet, and new electricity and gas meters.

Glad to have finished two of my many unfinished books. That's almost miraculous.


14^th December


Grateful to have found the item I needed to complete Amanda's present.

Grateful for everything said at the school parents' evening.

Grateful for comments about the last Blob post. It's the graveyard one at blobthing.blogspot.co.uk
Unless it's a .com.

3400 words of an event I don't remember.

15^th December

Grateful to have returned to Manchester.

Grateful for Megabus tickets and odd sights in Salford.

Days Of Gratitude - Experiences of Wonder Inn Manchester. That's Not a Typo.

As I type it is December.  Twelve days have passed since I returned from Manchester once again.  The days below cover my time away there.

Days away have changed somewhat since I first started to visit the place.  It's a good thing.  My friend has got a lot busier with something that is her passion and which she could have been designed and built for if humans were designed and built for different purposes and roles.  I'm very proud of her for the way she's created something that is good, something that helps other people, something that is needed.

But it does mean that when I'm there I'll see less of her than I once did.  And that means I have to occupy and entertain myself much more than I used to.  That's okay.  We have some time together still.  When I started visiting last year I would have found it very difficult to occupy myself so much.  I found Manchester big and busy and anxiety producing and had no confidence to not get completely lost and worried and generally confused by the place.  Over the course of the year I've got more used to the place and more used to how the pieces fit together.  There's still a lot of scope for getting lost but I have much more confidence there now.

So what to do when I have to spend the day alone in Manchester?

On a day of fair weather that's easy:  Take myself somewhere and have an adventure.  So I've just finished posting about a day spent wandering round reservoirs.  I've got plenty of plans for places to see.  In the sunshine a day alone is no problem.

What about a day of rain?  That's been a worry for me.  Especially if it's a day of rain on which I am not able to stay in the house.  What should I do?  On this visit to Manchester I solved my problem.  My worry has gone.  It wouldn't have been solved though had I not had the moment of total clarity I wrote about a month ago.

I know now:  On a rainy day when I can't be in the house I can spend much of it writing.  And I have found what is for me a perfect place to write.  It's the Wolfson Reading Room in Manchester Central Library.  This place.

It's quiet.  It's light.  There are no distractions.  There are enough plug sockets.  And there is free Wi-Fi.

What more could a woman want if she has to use some hours on a rainy day in Manchester?

As I return to Manchester later this month and then again next year there will be rainy days on which I can't be at the house.  At all.  On at least some of those days, The Wolfson Reading Room will be my very happy home.

It spoiled me though.  It did.  It spoiled me totally.

When I got back to Newcastle I wondered whether I could find an equivalent place to write.  Somewhere I could make it a joyful discipline to visit regularly.  Somewhere just as silent.  Somewhere with just as little distraction.  And plug sockets.  And Wi-Fi.  And no cost to be there.

I hunted.  I found nowhere.  I asked for advice.  There was nowhere.  There are libraries with silent rooms in Newcastle.  But the University doesn't offer membership unless you have an academic or specific research reason to be there.  And the Literary and Philosophical Society costs £120 a year to join which is more than I can afford just to have a quiet room to write in.  Unfortunately they don't have a membership option for people who haven't got lots of money.  There is one for people who don't want to borrow books from a library.  Maybe I should ask about that.

Fortunately I have a home here so really have no excuse not to write.  It would just be nice to be able to allocate a day each week, perhaps more later, to going to a specific place to write without faffing around for half the day and then realising I've done very little and then getting despondent about the whole thing!

16^th November

Grateful to have been able to return to Manchester after a six week absence.

It's been too long but that couldn't be avoided.

Here is the view from the front window of the Megabus before leaving Newcastle.

17^th November

Grateful to be able to spend a bit of time with Amanda.

But only a bit of time. I had to be elsewhere for most of the day. Grateful to have found somewhere good to sit and write. There will, I suspect, be more days sat in this room.

Also grateful to have found an awesome cafe, The Wonder Inn, to have a drink in that afternoon. Very awesome. So awesome that a weird organisation called the Sunday Assembly has chosen to meet there.

18^th November

Grateful to have survived the rotten weather and come back with lots of charity shop purchases - six items of clothing and seven books - for £8.49.

Grateful to be looking forward to an evening with Amanda. In the quiet. Our first in a while.

The photo is of one of five elephants that live in Notlob.

19^th November

Grateful to spend the day with Amanda. Grateful for good charity shops, good lunch, the exciting V bus routes, and a bit of madness.

Also for buses bearing registration plates such as this one. Deep joy!

20^th November

Grateful that the journey back was easyish. I spent it behind the driver of the Megabus because I had been struggling rather while waiting for it.

Grateful for an adapter bought in a crappy shop while I was away. It means I can finally use my snazzy moving colours light bulb.

A Three Reservoir Walk In May - 3. Turton and Entwistle, Lancashire

Moving on up, we're moving on up, moving on up ...

The path from the Jumbles Reservoir led me uphill.  After crossing the main road it led through a one person wide tunnel under the railway, across a muddy field and then into the woods up the hill.  At this point the path became almost indistinguishable from the rest of the wood.  But that was fine.  The way forward lay at the top so getting lost would have been difficult.  Difficult but not impossible.  I have a talent for getting lost even when closely following a map.  I once got lost on a mountain ridge.  With only one logical choice for my route to get down.  Yet I found myself in totally the wrong place, half way down a wet bank in thick clouds, knackered, and not knowing quite how I got there.  If only I had carried a camera back then - the Carneddau are beautiful even in cloud.  Is it always cloudy on the Carneddau?  Probably not, but I never once had a view from the summits of Llewellyn and Dafydd.

That was a day ten years ago.  I had carried a decent OS map and a compass.  If only I had remembered to use them before striding out confidently from the summit towards a handy cairn, just visible through the gloom.  If only.  It's okay.  No one died!  I got it sorted and eventually found my way out of the clouds and down to the falls above Abergwyngregyn.  Hey, they get a mention in my blog two posts in a row.

On my reservoir walk I journeyed without useful navigation tools.   All I had was a single sheet of A4 paper with some printed directions and a rough outline map with a route line across it.  My outline map showed the relative positions of the three reservoirs I was visiting.  But not much more.  So far the directions hadn't led me astray.  That would come later, just as an added bonus before finishing the walk.

The woods let out into open country and the warmth of the sunlight.  The route crossed fields before leading onto a track.  The views were good, the air felt good on my face, the light made me smile and it was too hot for a jumper.  Yeah, life was excellent.  I had to feel a bit sorry for my friend.  I had a conversation with her via WhatsApp while I stood and looked at the view.  She was stuck at work.  A necessary thing but I would much prefer to be in open countryside than stuck in a workroom in Manchester.

The view speaks for itself, even in photo form, which can never compare with the reality - even when people are clever with lighting and have super-snazzy cameras and then edit their photos carefully and fiddle with colour and contrast and everything else.  I'm afraid my pictures aren't like that.  They're all just point and click with a pretty cheap phone camera that I hadn't learned to use.  None of the pictures in this post have been edited in any way.  Not even a bit of judicious cropping.

These pictures won't win awards.  Nevertheless, some shots from the track:

Eventually the track descended back down to the road and from there it was just a short walk down to my third reservoir of the day, the Turton and Entwistle Reservoir.  The dam at the end of the reservoir was once the highest in Britain.  The water flows out and down to Wayoh Reservoir - the first I had visited - and then on to Jumbles Reservoir - the second reservoir of the day.

More pictures.  The path round Turton and Entwistle feels very different to the route round the other reservoirs.  Maybe it's due to the tall forest rising up around most of the lake.  Maybe it's due to the entire path being flat and very well made up.  Maybe it's due to the bigger car park and the popularity of the place.  Maybe it's just that my unfit legs were getting tired and hoped that they would be back at the railway station soon.  Whatever the reason, it was a contrasting experience.

A couple of reservoir views.  I think six months on I'd probably take slightly different photos.

Quiz.  What types of evergreen trees are native to the UK?

This reservoir felt large because I was tired.  But it isn't really very big.  The water in Kielder Water would fill the Turton and Entwistle Reservoir nearly thirty times and my entire walk length that day was a couple of miles less than the length of the perimeter of Kielder.  Next year I must see if there's any way I can get to Kielder.  It's tantalisingly close to home but public transport is almost non-existent and we have no car.  Does anyone want to volunteer to take me out walking there? 

Now.  I had a choice.  Should I continue to follow the reservoir path?  A nice, flat, easy, well made path.  A path that led to another easy path through the wood and back to the railway station.  A path I could follow with no difficulty whatsoever.  All I had to do was to cross one of the bridges over the stream feeding the reservoir.  And then follow that easy path.  That's all.  God in his infinite wisdom had given me a second chance to be sensible knowing that it was unlikely that I'd be sensible straight away.

The first bridge was large.  The second smaller.  Here's Blob Thing sitting on it.  He was trying to tell me to be sensible.  He said, "We've got to cross this bridge so we might as well follow the obvious path."  Would I listen to my friend?  Of course not.  The directions on my piece of A4 paper didn't say to follow the reservoir path.  They said to cross the bridge and turn left.  Head up into the hills again.  I had my directions and I had to follow them no matter what a reasonable soft toy was telling me.

My route - our route - rose steeply along an obvious path.  It then became less obvious.  It then became invisible.  I stood in the fields and all I knew was that I had to get to a stile I couldn't see.  Somewhere in the rough direction of over there.  Did I just go back down to the reservoir and follow the sensible route?  Of course not.

I would persevere.  My route directions governed me.

My route directions had guided me well.  But now they didn't.  Now they became quite useless and my map was of no use.

I made it though.  To that stile.  Across mud.  Across bog.  Across the unknown.  It wasn't at all pleasant.  But I made it to that stile.  Success.

The path then led downhill from that stile.

Back to the reservoir.

About a hundred yards from the bridge.

Dammit!

From there it was an easy stroll along the remainder of the water - I walked most of the three mile perimeter - and up to the station.

Entwistle request stop.  It's not the busiest of places.

The walk was over.  And I was happy.

We arrived back at the Manchester home and sat back on the sofa.  Content.

We rested and gave ourselves three rewards:

Tea.  Cake.  And memories.

A Three Reservoir Walk In May - 2: Getting In A Right Jumble

Onwards and downwards!

That was my immediate future.  I didn't mind.  Life has its low moments and it has its high moments too.  There is meaning in both and there is often more life in the valleys than on the hill tops.

I had reached the south end of Wayoh Reservoir, part way through a day of walking between three reservoirs on the border between Bolton (Greater Manchester) and Lancashire.  It was proving to be just the kind of day I needed.  My own company, hardly seeing another person.  To be among nature - even though in this case nature included three man made lakes.  To see the open sky and to be blessed by the light.

My path from here took me through the little village of Edgworth, Lancashire, and then along the stream running from Wayoh until I reached the Jumbles Reservoir.  Before leaving Wayoh I took another look across the valley at the view.  My immediate future was down.  But I knew that later in the day I would be standing on the hills I could see.  I looked forward to the up.  And to the down.

There's not much to be said about Edgworth, at least not as it pertains to this walk.  I passed through as quickly as possible, following the busy road.  I was momentarily tempted to change my plans completely and catch the bus that was due - a rare sight in the village - and explore somewhere unexpected.  My soft toy Blob Thing was amused by the names of places we passed that day.  He liked Wayoh.  He liked Jumbles.  But the highlight of his day was that before leaving the main road we had passed from Edgworth itself and into Turton Bottoms.  Blob Thing is easily amused.

On reaching the bottom of Bottoms we crossed the water before leaving the road behind to follow the water.  A signpost ahead told me in big letters that the footpath was closed due to a broken bridge.  That wasn't pleasing news.  The road route would be less than ideal for a quiet day and I knew that I had missed the infrequent bus.  Fortunately the signpost was a lapsed signpost.  It had lost its meaning just like the church no longer has relevant meaning for a lapsed Catholic.  Fortunately the path had officially reopened a few days earlier.  The bridge had obviously been repaired or replaced.

The way ahead was clear and we were soon in quieter surroundings - this water was only a few metres along the path.  I wonder where it all is now.  How far have the different molecules travelled in six months?  How many still swim in Jumbles?  [Can a molecule of water swim in water?]  How many have passed beyond to the sea?  And how many evaporated and dropped elsewhere as rain?  The life of a molecule is unpredictable.  It has many highs and lows.  But do you hear it complain?  Even in the death of the molecule, its transformation into another form, it is silent.

The surroundings improved further. This nicely paved path was a joy to walk along.  Everything was calming.  The reflections smiled and the trees sang their songs and chants.  Birds and insects followed their lives and somewhere out there, unseen, there may have been mammals hiding or sleeping.  The path buzzed with electric life and I breathed in a touch of freedom.

Continuing the walk, lest I were to end up reprinted in Pseud's Corner in Private Eye, I encountered this:

I suspect that the bridge had not been sufficiently repaired while the path had been closed!

Fortunately there was a pipe across the little stream so crossing was easy.  The main waterway is to the right of the photo.  It was only a little stream - without the pipe I'm sure I'd have found a jumping across point.  Or just used the broken bridge.  It looked safe enough.  Just broken.

Following the water downstream.  Isn't it gorgeous?  Don't you wish you were there.  It would feel very different of course right now.  Bare trees.  Cold air.  And starting to get dark as an early night falls across Lancashire.  I would still like to be there.

A little weir.  Enough said.  The sound helped clear my head further.  It wasn't like the torrent of a waterfall, where I would like to sit and just be still with that one sound in all it's variations.  I love the clarity of the waterfall and the way it excludes all other sounds.  Just that one noise.  A life noise.  Not the thousand death noises of the city streets.  I'm the same with the sea.  The noise and appearance of the sea is life for me.  It doesn't matter whether it's calm or a raging storm.  It's life for me and the moods of the ocean lift me whenever I allow them.

Next year I must see if I can seek out some excellent waterfalls.  When we lived in North Wales we had waterfalls I could get to relatively easily - and my mental health was such that I didn't grab hold of the opportunities enough.  To be exact, I grabbed them rarely.  Which is kind of a vicious circle.  Poor mental health leading to not going to the place that's good for my mental health leading to poor mental health.

This year has been a promising start to escaping from that cycle and I've been aided and abetted by my bus pass.  I've been able to go out more and not worry about spending the money we don't have.  It's been fantastic.  I still don't always grab hold of the opportunities.  There are still days on which I can't get out of course.  That's one thing.  But there are others on which I don't get out even though heading off on some wild adventure on a bus would be the best thing for me.  This year though I've seen more of the area in which I live than in the five years previously.  And I'm eager to see more.  To see it all!

Walking onwards from the weir that I wasn't going to say anything about, the water widened.  A rock face appeared opposite.  I was now at the north of the Jumbles Reservoir, opened in 1971.  The rocks opposite had once been a quarry.  The reservoir also covered a large complex of mills and some bleach works that didn't do much for the water quality.

The reservoir.  Very pretty.  I am told that it's even prettier in the autumn.  Maybe next year I'll find out for myself.

One distinct bonus of Jumbles Reservoir is that near the car park at the southern end - which is in Bolton, Greater Manchester - is a cafe.  I was very tempted to buy some lunch there even though I was carrying a smattering of food.  Tempted.  But I wanted to eat by the water instead.  I did treat myself to an ice cream though.  It was good - though not as good as the home made blackcurrant and liquorice ice cream sold in a shop in Southport.  There cannot be many ice creams as good as that one.

The path led across the water leading out of the reservoir and then my downward route came to and end, being replaced by an upward route.  As you might expect.  As the path rose back to the level of the water I was greeted by a tree.  A rather lovely tree.  And, as any regular reader will know, it doesn't take much to get me to take a photo of a tree.

The path then led along the other side of the reservoir.  I found a quiet spot to sit on a bench by the water.  Very quiet.  Nobody passed by as I ate.  I was happy.  Who could possibly complain about their life when it contained moments like these?  [I'll tell you who could.  Me.  That's who.]

Part way along the water my route took me away from Jumbles.  Wayoh and Jumbles had been life giving.  And the day wasn't over.  There's a third post to write about the day.  A third set of photos to make me smile with memories.

Onwards and upwards!