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Morning sunshine
In the UK, we’re really quite far north. If you live in North America, take out a map and trace a line horizontally from London to your part of the world, you might be surprised just how far north we are. This means that in the summer we have long days and short nights. In the winter short days and long nights. There comes a point when you really want the long nights to become long days. A craving for the sun; a wish to be warm and to see without the aid of electrical lights. We move the clocks…
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Snowy break
We decided that we’d go away for a few days after the New Year. We went here, and were lucky enough to get some snow. I feel very lucky indeed.
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New Year 2025
Well, we’ve managed to reach 2025 years from 0, and there was quite a lot that happened prior to that, 13.8 billions years of things to be specific. It turns out that the date of the New Year (1st January) is quite an arbitrary thing, and depending upon when and where you live(d), it could have been a whole bunch of different dates. Anyway, for now I’m sticking to 1st January, and wish you a happy New Year on that basis.
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Little break in Wales
We’re lucky enough to be friends with the owners of a fine hotel in north Wales. Most years we get invited to stay there, and this year it’s fallen between Christmas and the New Year. It’s wonderful, and I’m in love with their place and where they live.
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I’m profoundly lucky
It’s the time of the year in which I find that I have more time to reflect upon life. Apart from the normal gratitude for my health, family, security and normality / predictability of my life, the thing that I’m most grateful for is WordPress. The ability for me to express my (mostly banal) thoughts and reach much of the world (should they wish to engage), is something precious and remarkable. This point bears further pondering. I have an idea, I log in, type, upload images and hit publish. It’s there for those able to browse the internet, all in…
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Christmas 2024
This year, I was mostly ill – yay! I tried to have fun, and I did, but gosh, I could have done without the sickness. Boo!
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Today it snowed
When I was a child, the snow would reliably come each year. We’d have weeks of snow, and it would lay on the ground, thick and knee deep. Now it goes for years without snowing, but when it does come, I have to go out into it and try to relive some of the joys that I had as a child. Today was such a day.
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Not sleeping well over a long time is brutal
I have nothing further to add, I’m too tired.
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I love where I live
If you know me, you know that I love the place where I live. However, it’s easy to forget just why you love it. I went down to the coast today with my camera and watch Santa sail in on a fishing trawler, to the delight of countless young children gathered there. It was a real moment of re-remembering why I love where I live. The people, the coast, the sea, the architecture.
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I’ve joined Bluesky
I’ve not been all that happy about my continued use of X / Twitter. I’ve decided that I’m going to focus more effort into Bluesky from now on. I see this as a platform which has ethics more aligned to my own. You can find me here: https://bsky.app/profile/nathanwrigley.com
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Trying something new
One of the things that I’ve noticed about myself lately is that I’m getting stale! I’m not really trying out new things. This is not a bad thing, but I had a revelation the other day that I ought to try out some new things. So this morning I headed to my local theatre and joined in the session in which you got to interact with the actors / actresses from the production that they’re putting on at the moment. It was really wonderful and I’ll be going back. Now I need some more new things to try out. Oh,…
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I love stumbling upon things, like this church
Today I decided to go for a walk. I picked a random place on the map, drove for 20 minutes and got out the car and started to walk. I stumbled upon a church, walked up the path and pushed the door, expecting it to be locked. To my surprise, it was open, and in I went. It was a beautiful church and I got enormous pleasure wandering around, knowing that I had no intention of visiting it.
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I’m not that house proud
I’m not normally house proud. I can cope with a fairly high level of mess and chaos. However, today, I decided that I was going to do a huge tidy up. Root and branch. Top to bottom. You know what, it feels good. Today I’m feeling house proud. I should do this every decade or so. P.S. I cannot cope with untidy cables. I’m cable proud to a ridiculous degree.
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Paris
My family just went on a, somewhat impromptu, trip to Paris over the last few days. To say that I love Paris would be an enormous understatement. I think that it’s profoundly wonderful in so many ways. The architecture, the food, the culture. It’s all great. Now, I’m sure that if you live there, the daily grind would be just the same as elsewhere, but for a few quick days, just wandering about and taking in what the city has to offer, it’s wonderful! I would add that it was hysterical that I managed to cause stress at every-single-point at…