Life's Ups and Downs

I've been feeling a little down lately. Everything I need to do feels like I have to climb a mountain, and I just can't get thorugh all the chores. That means I don't have time for the things I'd really like to do, like posting here once the commissioned writing is finished for the day. Today I didn't even complete the one article I had intended to get through. Admittedly I had to plough through 546 paragraphs of a legal judgement before I could make head or tail of the case, but that wouldn't normally be such a problem. Hopefully tomorrow I can work out what message the solicitor client wants his readers to get from the piece, and get it finished.

On Monday, my hubby had a cataract removed under a general anaesthetic at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital. He is full of praise for his treatment there, compared to his experience at the small local private hospital where he had a local anaesthetic, but the operation was abandoned because he wasn't able to keep his head still enough. That was five months ago, but it seems it was worth the wait.

Our roles in the car are now reversed and I have to be chauffeur, which doesn't suit him as he likes to be in the driving seat. This afternoon we ran a couple of errands with Jade in the back seat before I drove us to our little beach for our post lunch constitutional. The common above the beach is hardly recognisable now as we have arsonists in our midst and much of the vegetation has been burnt off. It's amazing how quickly the ground level turns green again but this is all topped with bare black branches.

The only compensation is that we can see through them so the views over the harbour are even more spectacular. The one above looks over the lake in the common and on to the harbour, with the Purbeck Hills across the water. Much of the vegetation on the far side of the lake where we ususally walk has now succombed to the fires.

Dorset Place Names

Pic by Stephen McKay

In my last post I mentioned keeping my hubby company during sixteen hours of driving. He had to collect a machine and deliver it to Bridlington which is on the coast of Yorkshire and north of the Humber Bridge. It shouldn't have taken that long only something went wrong with the van he was driving and he had to keep the speed down.

We left home at 7.30 am and returned shortly after 11 pm so it was a very long day and ended up being something of an endurance test. We couldn't stop anywhere for the night because I had deadlines to meet and needed to start work early the next day.

There were some compensations and one of them was driving over the Humber Bridge which I wrote about here. When we left in the morning, I enjoyed my high seat in the van and being able to see so much more than when I'm lower down in my car. One of the fields I pass every day at that time was full of rabbits playing and hopping around. I'd never seen that before because the hedge is too high.

We drove west across the south of Dorset to our pick up point and I thought you might be interested in some of the place names we passed by. Tolpuddle is famous for its martyrs who, in 1834, were convicted under the Mutiny Act for forming the equivalent of an agricultural trade union to try and get a fairer work deal for themselves and their families. They were sentenced to seven years in the penal colonies of Australia and Tasmania. The Museum of the Tolpuddle Martyrs has been set up in the village to tell the story to visitors.

There are other 'puddles' in Dorset and our drive took us past turnings to Turners Puddle, Briants Puddle and Alfpuddle before we arrived at Puddletown where we turned off to the 'piddles' - Piddlehinton before Piddletrenthide. All of them follow the valley of the River Piddle. And one of the local breweries produces a beer called Piddle: a few weeks ago my friends and I were drinking pints of Piddle.

I hope the humour in all this is not lost on you. If you are English, it won't be.

The Humber Bridge

All pics by David Wright

At 5.30 pm yesterday I sent this text to my son:

Gonna be late. Just come south over the Humber Bridge. Ab Fab.

And it was. Absolutely fabulous. A fantastic experience to drive over the amazing engineering feat that is that is one the largest suspension bridges in the world. It made up for the 16 hours of driving that my hubby had to do with me keeping him company divorced from my computer. (More of that next time.)