Yesterday’s stroll around Skipwith Common and you could easily be mistaken for it being a glorious Summer’s day if there were leaves on the deciduous trees had and the 1degree/ real feel -3 temperature was more like…well…Summertime temperatures…aka… warmer!
A Christmas break from the regularity of the usual Monday to Friday working week, I found (as I usually do find and no doubt will continue to find in the future) that the days all just seem to be as one.
As I previously wrote, I really lose track of which day we are on and what the date is (yes the usual Christmas, Boxing and New Year’s days dates and the month I know) yet it’s as if it doesn’t really matter over the Christmas break period.
I don’t really find the same issue if on a holiday for a week or two..I know the day and date as I trundle along with my holiday daily journey, it’s just a different feeling over the Christmas break. I just don’t know why and really, I guess it doesn’t really matter. It’s as if ‘me’ has stopped, to sit on the Christmas break and then afterwards…. click…. Back to it… the regularity of daily life.
So I feel that over the Christmas break, certainly for the one at the end of 2024, my new day (which covers the whole of my Christmas break period) I proudly named:-
“MonTuesWednesThursFriSaturSunMonTuesWednesThursFriSaturSun”…day
At 66 years old, at some point I will give up work, then maybe then all my days will be blended together as life will become one long break and and one long blended day..month..year!
After 51 years of working (as at the end of 2024) I will at some point look forward to it… But not just yet as I journey through 2025!
Great…managed to get through the first day of January 2025 unscathed, no catastrophies, disasters, incidents or accidents….just a few more days to go to 2026…..
I do!
Always have.
Can’t wait for Christmas time to look around and buy some new.
Too many I buy, I know.
Hoping that family will have some with me when they visit.
They don’t.
Then can’t stand ’em.
So, I end up eating them all myself.
Greedy I know, even more so when I see the short use by date and start having them for breakfast….well….there is fruit in them so the mince pie counts as being healthy, doesn’t it?!
The end of 2024 brings with it the start of 2025.
Spent some time this morning quietly thinking about the year of 2024 and all it brought, the good, the bad and the in-between. More good than bad which is good rather than bad!
And as I look forwards into what 2025 may bring (more of the same hopefully) I won’t make any New Year’s resolutions, I never do, more because I can never stick to them, even after two hours of making one, they are usually broken!
So it will be just to continue, enjoy each day and it arrives, try to be positive, be happy and not to be wasteful in all aspects of my life, including recycling as that’s important🤣
Well, apparently a ‘no name’ storm will be arriving over the next few days, Monday 30th December 2024 to Thursday 2nd January 2025.
Well, when they say storm here in North Yorkshire, England, they are usually short lived and certainly not as extreme as other places on Earth yet they do seem to be getting worse and more frequent from when I was a kid, many many years ago.
And this time, the predicted wind and heavy rain will also dump loads of snow on us on New Year’s Day. So remains to be seen!
The main weather reporters get blamed if they don’t report the severity of it yet when they do and it’s not as bad as they say it could be, then they get slated again for over reporting!
Yes, we will get some weather each day that’s for certain and as I already said our weather extremes are usually short lived.
So let’s see what the weather has in-store for us this coming week.
I am a bit fixated about the weather though, probably due to my gardening business trying to plan my week ahead and day to day depending on the weather, ( “yer can’t mow grass when it’s chucking it down!”) so the weather has a direct bearing on what I can and cannot do in gardens!
I always find that through each year I know which day of the week it is, which month it is and most times, which date of the month it is. Even away on a holiday, I cope with knowing. All probably because I am structured with my gardening business then specifically holidays which are semi organised into daily routines.
So how come, when I get to Christmas Day and Boxing Day, yes I know they are in December and they are 25th and 26th respectively, but I haven’t got a clue which day of the week they have just been on! So all I see it as Christmas Dayday, then Boxing Dayday!
Now this morning is obviously the day after Boxing Dayday, but although I can easily think ‘yes it’s the day after Boxing Dayday so it must be the 27th’, I’m really struggling to think of which day of the week it is! I know it’s a ‘me thing’, and it doesn’t really matter, just find it peculiar that all year round I can cope until Christmas ‘forget-me-days’ come around again!
Update……
….ahhh…..how strange!….. Just reading that there is a specific period after Christmas Dayday/Boxing Dayday….which is known as ‘twixmas’ or ‘Crimbolimbo’ and as such I feel much better as it’s not just a ‘me’ thing ..it’s and everybodyme thing…cool!
And folk saying that they have lost track of what day it is as it’s not important as one day ‘drifts’ into another and they all get ‘blended’ together!
How lucky I am not to have to go to work anymore ( if I choose not to)….although my fear is that one day when I do finally hang up my gardening gloves for good and close my gardening business then everyday will just ‘blend’ together. Probably have to be called my ‘twixyear’ or ‘Yearbolimbo’ or something!
It’s getting worse…today it’s 364 days til Christmas Day and folk already have their Christmas lights up….so early for Christmas 2025!
Times have changed over the years. I had a stressful Local Authority job for 37 years and as the years went on and the ladder rungs I climbed, I realised how stressful it was all becoming.
So, at the age of 55, ‘fortunately’ (in hind sight, not at the time) through the Conservative Government’s ‘helpful’ (not) tightening on public funding and the squeezing of budgets, I was made redundant.
A blessing in disguise. Tried for more ‘stressful’ jobs at other employs but after some time and again the stressful interviews attended without success, I gave up applying for employed jobs and eventually established my own gardening business. (More on that later in further articles)
But the main point is that all my stresses eventually fell away following my redundancy, and it showed me just what the effect of such a job can have.
So I have for nine years been self employed and loving everyday of it.
However, I am really concious of being in situations which are more stressful to me. Perhaps as my life has changed to a more stress-less lifestyle, when more stressful events occur then my stress levels skyrocket and I really feel anxious and agitated to be in these situations.
Take a visit to a local supermarket on evening of 23rd December 2024….a visit to collect prepacked Christmas food for Christmas Day….the supermarket was heavingly busy even at 7pm. I was expecting that….even parking the car was traumatic possibly due to me really knowing what it would be like in the store…..I was the one pushing the trolley whilst it was being filled by others. Wherever I stood with my trolley in hand someone would reach over to get something from the shelf behind. So, I was always in the way. Even when I did wait at the end of an aisle where there was a blank area, an elderly guy tried to reach for something behind the trolley and I politely said “there’s nothing there, it’s a blank wall!” I think he was on auto pilot going around the store and must have thought, ahh there’s a trolley stopped, there must be something behind it!
I could feel my stress levels getting worse so decided just to track my blood pressure on my watch….
And there it was, the evidence!…. It was only one supermarket visit yet it’s effects on me we’re quite profound. Needless to say all’s returned to normal as soon as I left the supermarket as I would expect it to!
I do need more of a stressless lifestyle nowadays and do refrain from putting myself in situations where I will be stressed but it is impossible to do every day!
So, all in all, stress isn’t a me thing anymore!
I don’t know what it is, this “effort” thingy, but I find that making a Christmas “effort” is getting harder to do.
Yes, all the ingredients are there:-
Maybe as I am getting that bit older and reflect on the true meaning of Christmas yet really know Christmas is for the children and families, maybe I’m on my own thinking this but all this ‘effort’ put in is just faff! And I’m not Anti (or Uncle!) Christmas in my saying this, more just as I see it when looking back over the years.
Telstales 