+24

It's been a very strange day. The events explained in the blog below seem to be ringing a little bell in our lives and the two of us feel all warm and fuzzy and happy and lots of other nice things. 
It's weird, I am by nature a grumpy owld bugger with no sense of humour. 
Yes for my new American readers, humour has a 'u' in it.... and don't get me onto the correct pronunciation of alluminium.
I try to hide this deeply morose personality with a facade of mirth and smiles and jolly stories but I am in reality just a crotchety git who has been forced for many years to work with computers. For those of you that don't know about working with computers, imagine 12 hormonal teenage girls stuffed in a box, each with their own agenda and you have to make them work. 1 computer = 12 hormonal teenage girls. This may be why computers are the most vandalised (with an s) household item.
See, my natural argumentative state just started to come through for a moment, but now I am all over warm and fuzzy again. It's a family thing. I'm feeling it with Kasha.
Sweet!

Somebody shoot me!

It's a small world......

I have seen wonderful things transpire this weekend, I have seen a woman with no family gain a huge family, I have seen tears and smiles and fear and joy in the woman that I love and it has been a wonderful thing to have been a part of that. Her life has gained significant people and when you have never had significant people before that is such a life changing thing.

Kasha's dad left when she was eight years old. He didn't leave well and he left a legacy behind him. Sadly, she wasn't the first to have experienced his self centered, care nothing for nobody but himself attitude.
All he left her with was a name, it was a small thing as in reality we actually don't know for sure if the name he used in the eight years that he was around her was his birth name or real name. But she had his name, and it turns out that so did someone else.

The someone else was Karl, he is Kasha's paternal half brother, back in the years between 2001 and 2004 he placed requests for information about his missing father on the internet. He had given up finding anything in 2004. He stopped looking because sometimes life takes you different places and then 8 years later I found his messages linked to their fathers name in the Google cache logs.
Those of you who know me know that I have certain talents that have served me well on the information highways, so after a bit of looking we found an email address, which led to a contact, which led to a Skype call this afternoon.

It turns out that distance isn't much of a thing these days. Kasha's brother lives in Pennsylvania. He has a wife and daughters, she has a brother, not just that, she has a  sister in law and nieces. She also has another sister in law and nieces in Canada.

I am sort of wondering what is going on in her head at the moment. She has never had significant people, never had anyone to share anything with, never had the touch of family or the joy of siblings that so many of us take for granted. I love my sister, I love her in a way that is without words or meaning, and over the last few hours I have have seen a change in my girlfriend as she realises that there are people in the world who won't go away if she offends them, there is a tie of blood. She has the joy of family, and she is trying to learn everyones names. Studying, learning, looking at facebook with a different kind of wonder.

I like it.
It's a small world.

Water Water...

Yes, I know that Garrigill is in Cumbria, a county famous for being the place that has lots and lots of rain. Loads of rain, in fact so much rain that the whole place has been designed by nature to drain water away.
The whole of the UK seems to be having problems with water and floods at the moment. Buildings are having foundations washed away, cities are being cut off and people are having to deal with waterlogged property. There seems to be a definite change in weather patterns regarding rainfall in this country, but Cumbria has been rained on for years, and Garrigill may be in the bottom of a valley, but water just runs through and drains away.
We have had a huge amount of rainfall the last few days and the South Tyne which runs through was very high.There is plenty of space for filling and for overflow so we don't worry about the river, we get more damage from water that flows down the hillsides and across roads before it gets into the river. Traveling back from work on Thursday, there were times when I thought I may have been better off with a hovercraft or a rowboat. It's quite a thing driving through water as it forms a little raging river that flows across the road.

The water really stirs things up down by the river and we like to take a walk down afterwards to see what has been washed down.
Because this is old mining area there is always weird stuff ending up on the river bank and because of the geology around here we find some really lovely stuff.
This morning while we were out a small clear glint caught my eye in the rocks, and when I pulled it out from under the pebbles a huge lump of formed smokey quartz crystal appeared.
I like crystals, I look for interesting things. I have always had my nose downward looking for things on the beach, in woodlands on riverbanks, looking...always looking but this is a special one.
Never found one this size before.
Time to find space on the shelf

It's A Sign!

THE GEORGE AND DRAGON INN

To avoid disturbing our

guests would coachmen and

ostlers kindly refrain

from saddling and

harnessing before

sunrise

G.EYRE - LANDLORD

January 1853

This sign is tacked into one of the old fire surrounds in the George and Dragon. It was made in the day when making a sign was also done by a craftsman and a sign like this will last hundreds of years. That must have been known to Mr Eyre when he put his name to it.

Everything is so temporary these days. Communication like this today would have been ran through a printer onto a piece of paper or card and then laminated and blu-tacked to a wall. Technology may be wonderful but we have lost our style and what we make today will not be here in 200 years. Thats quite a sad thing, and it makes me wonder about what we leave behind. 

I don't have a clue who G. Eyre was, but next time I'm in I may raise a glass in the direction of his name, the man had style....and trouble with noisy ostlers, damn them and their rattling...

What Time Is It?

To be more specific, what time of year is it?
We were out walking up Cross Fell this weekend and while there may be a chill in the air that tells us it isn't the height of summer (also no insects tells us that). And it may be that the trees are semi naked as they move around dropping leaves on us . . but winter?! You can't really tell from this picture. 

I may trudge up there when we have snow so that you can see the difference.

Paint The Sky With Fire

Garrigill is well known for it's firework display, the wonderful gentlemen from Dragonfire fireworks (www.dragonfire.co.uk) did themselves proud again last night.
The village filled with cars as people drove in to see and then even more drive in and park on the incoming roads on each side of the valley to watch from a distance. But the best position is to actually be underneath it in the field, and for just a few pounds (all money collected goes to Garrigill village hall) then that has to be the place to stand.
Dragonfire obviously design this show for those that are in the field and their technical brilliance really shines through. Long distance crossovers, fireworks rising and falling only to re-ignite and rise again, sculptures of fire and then the finale of night turning into a day above your head, the dark sky lit by a fire of colours dancing in synchronicity, fire falling to earth to touch the grass just a few meters in front of you and each boom exploding across the valley and echoing back and forth until it fades away.

The display doesn't last a long time, but the effect leaves you breathless. This was my first Garrigill firework display, but it was by far the best display I have ever been to see, and for such a small village, wow, what an amazing event.

If you come to see it pay the few pounds and come stand in the field, you won't regret it.

Keeping tabs on

I spent most of yesterday making arrows because I had been talking to Dougal in the George & Dragon earlier this week and mentioned my archery interest and somewhere along the line I offered to loan him my bows so that he could have a go.
Problems....always problems.....

The last time my bows were out the bag it was for my son and his friend and between them they destroyed most of the arrows, so a promise to Dougal meant producing some more of the damn things.
I have everything that is needed to churn arrows out by the dozen and so I knocked some out in a few hours and got everything down to Dougals house by early afternoon. He seemed quite pleased and we will see how he gets on. I would imagine the arrows I left wont last long, it's a thing with new archers that they go through a few arrows :-)

It's been a good week, started well with a catch up with some friends from Canada and then a few days holiday which gave me a very short working week.
I get Kieran back for my week soon and I always enjoy my time with him. I'm looking forward to next weekend which is the late Garrigill fireworks display, a damn fine display for such a small village and so the three of us will be at that next weekend.

I have also been wondering about getting involved in some of the craft fairs that are always on in these rural areas. I know that there probably isn't much of a market for longbows and arrows, but people are always interested in how they are made and perhaps if Kasha and I shared a stall she could do some of her stuff and I could do some of mine. It might be fun.

Meanwhile we can still see the grass as we walk the hounds so I guess the hardest part of winter isn't here yet. I am wondering if Northgate will put snow tyres on my company car....maybe I should ask them?

Darker Earlier

With the change in the clocks and the dark early evenings it feels like you don't have the time to see what is around you anymore. There is no daylight by the time I get home now and because of that I don't get to walk the dogs down by the river every day which I miss. Yeah, I have days off, but it was nice getting back in the summer and being able to go out for a little time with the pack.

We were talking yesterday about the change in the seasons, there was a biting rain, small drops but so cold that they stung the face and hands and left your ears wondering if you had just dipped them in the North sea.
We know that it's Autumn because we have branches instead of trees and the air attacks us with freezy droplets. It's different earlier in the year when we have full trees and the air attacks us with insects. We are now waiting to be unable to see any kind of tree at all through the dense fog while the air pounds us with hail. Looking forward to spring and the more gentle snowfall that will cut us off from the outside world because you can't get up the hill to get out of the valley.

Yeah.... I wouldn't want to be anywhere else....wheres my snow shovel....

Stolen!

Kieran was back with us for about ten minutes when he decided that my new guitar just had to be played.
He opened his birthday presents and then got his hands straight onto my birthday pressy

I hope that I can get it back at some point so that I can try to catch up with him, yeah....he plays a lot better than I do.

It's nice having a 15 year old, his humour has developed into a nearly adult style and his adult personality is starting to show through.
I know everyone is proud of their own but he is so nice, he is the nice popular one. He is everything that I would have wanted to be at that age, in fact he is so cool that he helps my street cred :-)