It was only a few weeks ago I saw my first wild orchid but I'm now totally smitten with these gorgeous flowers |
A snapshot of my part of the gardens of my most recent WWOOF host |
Getting artistic with silicon while fixing broken greenhouse glass panes |
It was only a few weeks ago I saw my first wild orchid but I'm now totally smitten with these gorgeous flowers |
A snapshot of my part of the gardens of my most recent WWOOF host |
Getting artistic with silicon while fixing broken greenhouse glass panes |
The return of the feet - relaxing at the end of a day enjoying the evening sunshine |
Welcome to Monimail! |
The dome at the entrance |
Looking through a new partially constructed building towards the orchard |
The gateway through into the walled garden |
View of the community allotments from the tower |
The walled garden |
Shed in transit! |
Community allotments again - and a bit of the tower! |
Looking across one of the wood stores and walled garden towards the main house |
Another view from the top of the tower |
Dunes! |
Not desertey - but definitely duney! |
Unexpected sculptures in the undergrowth |
The ice house |
An oil rig on its way out to sea |
The weather vane - which apparently hasn't moved for decades! |
Chris and Flis working on the chimney stack |
The walled garden from the roof |
The original "formal entrance" from the roof |
The roof...from the roof! |
The West Wing and tower |
Photos of photographers (and my feet again) |
Friday April 18th Just when I thought this walk would end up not having a writing stop, the perfect spot appeared - complete with Forestry Commission bench, located slap-bang in the middle of a sunny glade, the sound of the waves on the beach and the birds on the trees my auditory backdrop.
Up in Scotland on my hols I was invited to take today as my day off from WWOOFing and take it I did! The Mon-Fri work ethic is so deeply ingrained in my mind that I often seem to find myself arriving and leaving on "working days" and not necessarily taking the "rest days" I have accrued. Which, although well and good on one level, on another (the level where I'm having a holiday and enjoying the locality I've turned up in) is a bit of a shame. So this mid-stay opportunity was perfect.
From the Monimail Tower Project where I'm volunteering I set off into the great (by me) unexplored lands of Fife, first stop the Hill of Tarvit. Although the house and tearooms didn't open until lunchtime my main desire was to drink in the gardens - and the sunshine. This was verily achieved with several hours on a very comfortable spot of grass in the formal gardens, by a beautiful dark-pinkish flowering rhododendron. The book I'd started this morning was devoured and in between bits of pondering and jotting occurred.
Onwards I found myself heading North to explore the woods just south of Tayport. I ended up on a merry magical mystery tour finding a convenient spot to park and then my aimless-amble began. It's a very unique experience wandering without a map, without a plan, without a deadline and without any expectations. Very soon I de-shoed and spent the best part of the next two hours following the coastline around, enjoying the different textures underfoot and the different temperatures on my skin (in the sun: really quite warm, in the shade: a bit nippy!)
As my amble crossed into the Tentsmuir Nature Reserve I started seeing an ice house marked on the maps. An ice house? In the woods, by a bunch of dunes? What's that all about? Well, it turns out it's a relic of an entirely non-vegan occupation: salmon fishing. The catches would be brought to this really quite sizeable ice house for storage before being transported south for further processing (and, presumably, eating). And this is where I find myself now.
Sunshine. Barefoot walking. The sea. An ice house. Without paying particular attention but just heading off to what felt like a good place to go (and was only one of several options suggested by my hosts) I've ended up on a pretty much Tigger-perfect adventure. Huzzah.
Addendum
On my walk back I realised that the tall towers I had (wrongly) assumed were part of a bridge were actually an oil platform being towed out to sea. Not something I expected to see! But it reminded me of a throw away comment from one of the room guides at the Hill of Tarvit - "Beautiful view - and no wind turbines!" A brief exchange ensued with me expressing support of wind turbines as an alternative to fossil fuel use (and CO2 production) and him countering with "Well, we're breathing out CO2 all the time!" True, yes - but not quite on the same magnitude as power producing combustion. Which brought to mind two of my current "thought projects":
1) the difficulty of doing "the right thing" while living in a very complex and interlinked world where impacts and subsequent repercussions are often entirely unintended and / or imagineable. Climate change and the energy debate is one such area - particularly given the scope of the challenge (and is a prospective future blog area when my thoughts have coalesced sufficiently!)
2) the importance of the Next Step. Humans are faced with an incredible array of challenges, choices and options - both practically and morally / philosophically. There is rarely a definitive right / wrong answer (especially when the whole human is taken into account - a wide range of crimes can probably be agreed upon as wrong, but the approach to dealing with a human who's committed such a crime - now there's a book in itself). But the simple truth is that the lifestyles being lived in "developed" countries at present isn't sustainable - which is where the next step comes in.
For example, I may* have decided that the answer to this non-sustainable lifestyle problem is for the population to live in housing communities, grow their own food and generally travel no further than 20-30 miles on a regular basis. However, presenting this to someone who has lived a life during which they have travelled extensively, generally purchased prepared food from supermarkets and lived only with immediate family is unlikely to have much of an impact other than for them to think of me as an idealistic nutter who should be ignored, regardless of what I say.
Learning more about where they are, what makes them tick and what would feel like a next step (rather than an intergalactic leap) for them as a discussion and exploration is much more likely to produce a long term positive impact.
All fairly sensible and possibly pretty obvious, but just my own exploration of how the world ticks and what I may be able to do to grease the cogs here and there.
*As much as I would love to have decided upon an answer to the question of how to live sustainably I can say with certainty that I haven't! I am really enjoying exploring community living and growing as what can be a very positive alternative to "mainstream living" but very much in the context of continuing to grapple with the reality of what the achievable "next steps" more broadly may be.
The rollercoaster of life has been running at full pelt recently and, in truth, I've been running on empty just to keep up. It's truly wonderful to have such a full and fulfilling life - and even better to be able to have space to pause and catch my breath in the midst of it all.
I've experienced many sorts of exhaustion over the years but this past week has produced a new version entirely. It's been a version which has meant although I can function at some levels there have been chunks of time when my brain simply hasn't worked. I've pressed the metaphorical "go" button and had a response that simply said "That function is currently not available". Which has been really bizarre. I thought I'd got to know my tiredness warning signals but this one's a new one entirely - and for a thinker like me, a rather stark one!
But even in exhaustion, I get to enjoy self-discovery. It's been an intensive year so far and doesn't look to be slowing down. Not that I'd wish it to - but it's challenging me to be even more aware of myself, my needs, and my warning signals! All of which are things I know I've improved on over the years but, as with pretty much all of life, there's room for improvement.
So welcome to day 2 of Tigger-finally-stops-to-catch-much-needed-breath.
Day 1 was spent in and around Morecambe but most notably involved a mesmerising gig by Beccy Owen. She is an artist with a phenomenal voice, who writes beautiful and haunting melodies and has provided somewhat of a soundtrack to various moments in my life for a good few years now. An old friend gave me her second album (The Singer Kicks) many many moons ago and since then it's resurfaced on many occasions at just the right time. Yesterday's gig was literally round the corner from Chez Tigs in Morecambe at a wonderful music venue called More Music and my decision to go only coalesced on Friday. And oh, how glad I am that it did! A wonderful treat to see her perform live, I've walked away with 2 more of her albums (and the stories of each of the tracks on her latest, Imago, to accompany me listening to it) and having had the opportunity to say hello to this fabulous lady. I suspect the gig will be a very welcome ear-worm for me for the next good while. Huzzah.
And now day 2 finds me at my spa of choice up in Cumbria. Well, it did until I decided it was time to move out into the sunshine for an absolutely glorious day. Just down the road from said spa of choice is Wray Castle, a National Trust property I came to about 4 years ago with a friend who was visiting. At that point there will still plans afoot to turn it into a luxury hotel but, for whatever reason, those plans got kaiboshed and the NT is now plotting what to do with it. In the mean time they've opened it up and on a day like today it provides a wonderful setting for enjoying the sun, having a little sleep, picnicking, reading and generally feeling like I'm on holiday. Which I've decided I am - a one day holiday which will go on for as long as feels right. And may well involve a curry en route home.
I had pondered exploring some of the local footpaths (accompanied, of course, by an OS Leisure map of the area) but got drawn down to the lakeside and am now listening to the lake lap against an outcrop of rock I'm currently inhabiting. I've had motor boats, the passenger ferry, sailing boats and a kayak pass by variously but mainly I've just been drinking in space, time and gorgeousness. Which is altogether rather marvellous.
And, in moments of consciousness and, I suspect, trundling along in my unconscious, pondering the rest of the year. What's already planned, what I might want to fit in, what will happen unforeseeably and regardless of my plottings. But the reflection that has yet to be included in this particular bit of writing is about the tiredness with which I started.
I had a day off last Saturday. A day when I did very little and yet didn't leave me feeling much recharged or particularly refreshed - I just knew I'd avoided depleting my energy reserves even further. This two day period is incredibly different - primarily because I can rest psychologically. Last Saturday's rest came after 4 days in the office, a long day teaching (which was fabulous but, fundamentally, incredibly energy intensive) and preceded the first of four modules of one of our annual training programmes. I am very much one part of a larger team at said training programme but it's my responsibility to make sure all the course materials are prepped, get them there and unload - and on that particular first day of the first module of the year I had additional responsibilities too. So I may have had a day off (a luxury in itself, I acknowledge) but my brain knew there was no chance of relaxing - I was scared that by switching off "too much" I might miss something and create havoc as yet unknown.
This sense of psychological tension also reminds me that although my year thus far may not have involved huge amounts of physical exertion it has certainly had a high dose of psychological work.
Planning. Fitting in. Looking after. Dealing with. Being aware. Making decisions. Living with decisions. Offering support. Seeking support.
Finding balance is, perhaps, the greatest challenge. Life has dealt me a hand in which I am balanced and supported on many of Maslow's needs but as I reach the upper echelons of that infamous pyramid the challenge to find balance is all the greater. Perfection is certainly not what I strive for and the balance I have carved out is something of which I am proud and pleased with - and makes the moments of imbalance all the more pronounced. Life being the ever-changing beast that it is means this process of finding balance is one I know I will continue to dance anon but discovering this new side, this new recognition of psychological weariness has been momentous and exciting. Long may living continue.
On the way up... |
Slightly more recognisable as me. Certainly recognisable as sans jacket. And a bit bonkers. |