Telstales

Tag: holidays

  • A New Year’s resolution..pah, that went well!

    I’ve never been one to make any form of resolution for New Year.

    Years ago, it was more of the usual, “1st January, that’s it, I’m on a diet” knowing full well that the ‘food’ excess purchases to cover the Xmas period ‘must’ be consumed before the ‘use by date’ arrives and knowing that ‘well, it’s only a short lived over indulgence’ which will go back to normal calorie intake soon…hopefully. ( in reality, it never does!)

    So, not being one to make resolutions, and as I sleep poorly overall, reaching the magnificent lengths of maximum five hours sleep per night, I told myself as others can get a longer sleep pattern that from 1st January, this has to change.

    Now, I’m not saying to sleep in all day, not even all morning to lunch time, but going to bed at around midnight, it would be satisfying to wake at seven rather than silli-o-clock each morning.

    Therefore my one and only resolution for the year was (not is) to get a better, more settled night’s sleep and if I do wake up, to try my best to stay settled, relaxed and undertake the recently read article that to lie there with an empty head (ok.. can achieve that as it’s empty most times 😵‍💫😁) and pick any letter of the alphabet and think of all the things beginning with that letter then one will quickly doze off to sleep.

    Fine in theory. I tried. But the letter Q and then X I chose as my letters to think of all the words I could find was too limited and as I got more frustrated, I found that the process of trying to think of a more meaningful letter was making the cogs inside my walnut whirr leaving me going into ‘wake up completely’ rather than ‘go back to sleep mode!’

    Hence, I got up as usual (five hours sleep) and gave up on my New Year resolution venture, being just too complex for me to achieve!

    now for a cup-of-T

  • We’re in the cage now

    Been away on a forest holiday. Beautiful lodge, all one could need, sat every day, at different times of the day watching nature close-up doing it’s thing with in an open environment!

    Apart from daily forest walks for health, exercise, well being, switch off and discovering more hidden treasures within each forest area, the rest of each day was sat, soaking up at close hand what nature had to offer.

    That got me thinking….

    When I was a kid, in the 1960’s, I remember being taken to Chester Zoo to see various animals close up that I would never have seen in real life apart from in books, magazines and on TV ( to add… the TV was only available to view in black and white screen which was ok viewing Zebras but pretty much useless getting the full colour effect on most other animals and creatures 🤣) ‘As a kid’, it was amazing to see them.

    Getting a tad older, I remember dragging the family around Knowsley Safari park and no doubt the kids thought the same as me when I was a kid. The safari park to me looking in as an adult, was a step up from the zoo, still caged but with more space to roam, and a little more freedom.

    Yet looking today at those two scenarios, the forms of entrapment doesn’t personally sit with me well at all. Yes, it enables us to see what we wouldn’t normally see on our daily routines and no doubt the care of such animals is paramount with an audience of thousands passing through each day. It is just more that these animals can’t just roam as the would in their homelands.

    And talking about ‘homelands’, our recent Covid encounter which restricted our movements for the fear of being unable to cope and to minimise the spread of the disease, due to the emptiness of some communities I read that wildlife was slowly returning to where they once lived before humans built their communities pushing away such creatures into other spaces and away from newly created buildings. Amazing to think that the creatures that called their place home could actually return there in the absence of humans!

    So, back to the holiday. I was just sat there, enjoying the peacefulness of the forest beyond the lodge boundary, listening to the birds and watching the death defying squirrel leaps and hoping that the deer would just pass by for a closer view, and it struck me that being there, contained within the lodge boundary that we humans were the ones within a cage and the wildlife having the freedom to roam and were out there viewing us as the trapped species!

    How wonderful to think that even with man’s intention that nature has the last laugh at us!

    now for a cup-of-T