Tag: travel
I’m lucky enough to be able to say that Grasmere’s not a long way away for me. Pretty much all year round, though, getting up into the Lakes on a Friday involves crawling along in traffic (and though I can’t really blame people for wanting to drink it all in, that doesn’t mean I don’t blame them, vociferously, in the privacy of my own car). thing 37: ‘a delightful weekend in the country’: going on holiday (not by mistake), part (iii)
As you’ll have gathered by now, wtak is not a ‘quick, pass me a dolphin so I can swim with it’, bucket list sort of a thing. Not wanting to panic my way through middle age ticking things off and anxiously scuttling onwards, I didn’t Make A List. I have known, though, of a few things I wanted to feature in my fifty, and seeing puffins was one of them. No idea why. It just was. And today, all being well, was the day.
Suan and I drove to Seahouses and parked near the harbour, whence (more…)
thing 37: ‘a delightful weekend in the country’: going on holiday (not by mistake), part (i)
Categories: reflection, travel
Okay, so it’s not exactly the country. And it’s not a weekend, more of a week. Well, 5½ days. But there hasn’t been nearly enough Uncle Monty here at wtak; and besides, I was definitely starting to drift into the arena of the unwell—too much work, too many difficult things going on. So it was time to stop. Or go, then stop. So off I went.
For me, holidaying alone—I love the slightly quaint feel of “holiday” as a verb—can be a tricky undertaking, both in the conceiving and in the doing thereof. I can well see that a few days away, alone, might (more…)
thing 32: ‘how pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho!’: Mary King’s Close
Categories: reflection, travel
Framily. Prinks. Twixtmas. Hmmm. Every so often I hear a new word which makes me cringe but which I have to admit does usefully convey meaning.
Okay, prinking (= pre-drinking = priming with cheap[er] at-home alcohol in order to achieve required degree of intoxication while out, without having to take out a loan) isn’t often a thing I need to talk about, but the point still stands. So I find myself telling you that during Twixtmas this year (more…)
thing 29: ‘one person, and they’re talking to you’: a radio interview
A few years ago I was interviewed in a sort of rent-a-therapist slot on Radio Cumbria; they wanted someone in the biz to say something vaguely intelligent for a “dealing with difficult events” programme. Getting the phone call from some BBC gofer I’d thought it was a wind-up, but there I was, about an hour later, sitting in my study being invited to pronounce on a variety of things down the telephone—and live on air. Surreal. ‘Ah yes, (more…)