welsh hills again

I have been tagged by red haired runner and writer Preseli Mags for a meme on memory.  Memories are a blur and a swirl.  I try to pick something out, make something emerge from the mist. My brother's trainset, a Hornby train, the track secured to a big board.  Paul had two trains with their sets of carriages, painted in brown and cream.  We used to play a lot together, my brother and I.  We lived up on the edge of the moor and went to school across town so we didn't really know the few local children who lived further down the common.  We spent hours up on the moors and out on the common whenever the days were fine, but sometimes, it being the Pennines, rain streamed down the window and we hung around moaning that we didn't know what to do.  My mother wouldn't let us say we were bored but she was good at coming up with projects which would take us a while.  I only understood when I had children of my own that there was an element of self intere...

This summer we haven't had an away holiday. There is too much to do here and the complications of getting someone in for the chickens, peacock, cats, house, holiday cottage and garden are a bit daunting. When I was working and living at ninety miles an hour I needed holidays like I needed air. I couldn't go back to work without the sense of when the next one would be. They were like rocks in a fast running river, stepping stones that allowed me to keep going. Now that I have stopped whizzing up and down to London and leaping on and off trains and planes I don't feel the same need. It is beautiful here and, when people come and stay in the holiday cottage for its peace and beauty, it seems perverse for us to insist on going somewhere else, possibly somewhere less beautiful, and requiring the crush and hassle and sheer mind-numbing boredom of modern low cost air travel. And it is not green either! But every now and then it is good to heed the urge to get out more. So ...

I've always wanted to go to Newfoundland, probably influenced by "The Shipping News" and the sense of a place on the edge. Our older son is married to a girl who comes from there so this year we set off for a visit to her family: me, Ian, son, daughter in law, grandson aged one and a half and younger daughter. Younger son was supposed to be coming too but was laid low by glandular fever and had to stay behind. We drove down to Heathrow through torrential rain, hearing on the radio of motorways blocked and people stranded. Miraculously our drive was ok but our flight was postponed to the following morning and H and C, flying down from Manchester to shorten the journey for the baby, had to go back home and try again the next day. But eventually we were coming off the aircraft at St John's airport (small, shining clean and oh so civilised after Heathrow) and being met by C's parents. H, C and baby were still to come so we did feel rather like the support band when ev...