had to move the cars innit
Another great night’s kip. This is what a quiet night in does for you. Today is Tuesday. It’s just another day. It will be marked, unremarkably, by a trip or two to the tip, a visit to Coops to pay for Betty’s MoT test last week and other as yet unknown and unremarkable activities.
Most days are thus. They can’t always be whiz bang headliners really can they? It is important to cram as much in to your life as you can but it is difficult to sustain the pace. You need a rest every now and again.
Or do you? Let’s consider this. My life philosophy is to enjoy it while I can. I don’t know why I am here and on that basis might as well make the best of it. This is a personal philosophy. Others find it convenient to delegate their life direction to deity(ies). At least their after life direction. Others give it little thought. None of it really matters.
What does matter is whether you are happy. Many people in this world are unhappy. There is a lot of bad stuff going on. Many people probably can’t define their state. They are neither happy nor unhappy. These people probably have bouts of contentment. A surprise birthday party maybe or a holiday in Spain (or Greece etc).
I once put my name down for a yoga taster session. There was a notice in the men’s changing room at the gym. Figured this was part of me taking control. Eventually got a call saying I was the only person to have put their name down so instead accepted a Tai Chi taster class instead, with a load of retired housewives. Only did the one class.
It is difficult to take control over your own life. We all have commitments. We have to pay the rent or mortgage. We have to eat, socialize, wear clothes in which to socialize and so on. We get trapped into situations that are difficult to escape from. People who live in places like London pay a high cost of living. It would be cheaper to get a job outside of London and live somewhere more pleasant but they don’t like the idea of stepping off the London housing ladder and worry about job options. They find it difficult to escape. It’s also hard once a family becomes established in an area.
I’m not here to help them. I only observe. You have to do stuff yourselves.
Last night I dug out an old passport. I may have needed to tell the Chinese visa people when I last got a visa for China. It was 2001. Turns out I only need to let them know if it had been in the last 12 months but it did make me look at the passport.
The passport expired in 2005. It almost looks as if I replaced it because I had run out of pages but my current passport expires in 2025 so that mustn’t have been the case. The old one has lots of interesting stamps. 05 Oct 1999 Singapore. July 13 1996 Los Angeles USA. March 24 2000 Vancouver. March 20 1998 Taipei. 8th October 1999 Indonesia. 29 Nov 2000 Japan. 20 July 2000 Ben Gurion. To name but a few. I once lost passport in amsterdam that had New York, Moscow and Tel Aviv all on the same page, fwiw.
Whilst it was exciting to do all this travel, and there are only a few places left that I haven’t been to that might be on the bucket list, with hindsight the trips were characterised by waiting at airports and sitting on long flights in uncomfortable seats. Very little of it was done at the front of the plane. When I stopped the international travel in 2004 to work at Timico I didn’t miss it at all. The airport waits and the jet lag, which gets me quite badly, were what I remember most about the lifestyle. Sure I got to see a lot of the world but was happy to stop doing it.
Now I seem to be travelling again. Not nearly as much and in far more comfort as the trips are mostly short haul. This year I will have flown to Venice, Dublin, Luxembourg, Brussels, Barcelona twice, Copenhagen, Isle of Man, Madrid, Krakow and Shanghai. The Shanghai trip is the outlier but I figured I’d not been for many years so I’d go and it won’t be too onerous. In fact I’m really looking forward to it. Staying at the Shangri-La Hotel. Stay tuned for that one.
UK life has also been action packed. Wimbledon, Coast to Coast walk, Latitude in the campervan, Llanberis walking holiday all spring to mind. It all adds up to a certain state of existence. Good karma, if that is a phrase.
It’s time to go and make Anne a cup of tea. In a bit…
…
The pool was quite full this morning with lots of people I’d not seen before. They don’t normally stay the pace. Most of them will not return. When I returned to the house the tree surgeon truck was waiting outside the house. We had been expecting them tomorrow. No matter. Better to get it done.
We are having the tree that overhangs the decking trimmed and the front hedge. It’s only after it has been done that you realise how badly it needed doing. The guy climbed to the top of the tree to sling his rope over. Missed that bit and the Kindle Fire camera isn’t really up to capturing the moment anyway.
As I write I can hear a second chainsaw in operation down the road. The tree surgeons just said to each other “that’s Eric”. “No it’s not Eric. Don’t know who it is” 🙂
More in due course…