well, its been a while, and before you know it the moss has grown sheltering a multitude of tardigrades, or at least so I’m told be social media, urging me to buy a microscope to see them for my self. I don’t mind seeing them on the internet but I’m not sure I need to confirm their existence all around me, particularly in the winter moss which spreads carpet like all around.

Much has happened since we last spoke; Christmas for example, passed with visits from both our mothers, both widowed, within the last couple of years, one more so alone than the other due to many accidents of breeding way back in the past, the most minute of genetical errors meant that my Mum wasn’t able to have kids, she tried and failed many times, each failure chalked up and devastating for them both, miscarriage after miscarriage and I believe one still birth. This final straw which led to them finding me underneath a bush. A place where, incidentally, I have felt very comfortable taking a little doze from time to time in the past. Under a bush. On a roundabout, outside a hospital, next to a main road, in a strangers back garden, definitely more, but I couldn’t tell you specifically where, but lets say it happened in my 20’s and 30’s; the wilderness years. So Christmas was good, sad but good, the elephant in the room being my Dad who wasn’t in the room, and who is actually a pile of charred flesh and bone in a casket somewhere in between my Mum’s house and the funeral directors. Its pertinent how little we talk of the future, much further forward then the end of next week, I know Mum’s hurting, but the ridiculous stiff upper lip of the British seems to hold fast, especially when they’ve sent more than 65 years together, Christ i’d be broken, in bits. But then she’s had her fill of death and disappointment I guess, she’s being strong, for me, herself, her friends, the ladies who operate the tills at M&S? I don’t know. Its early days and I’m keeping an eye on my Mum.

I made some sloe/damson gin, which a couple of years ago would have been headline news on the Ministry of Shrawley Walks, its stowed away, and will be ready for March or April; Easter Gin. The sloes were large, round and coated in that matt dulling nature coating which makes the fruit look more rustic, polishing them like an apple would be impractical, and pointless and so would pricking each individual, to help release the flavour, as I used to get the kids to do way back when they hadn’t discovered their own friends, independence and the internet, this time I froze them and beat the stink out of them with a rolling pin; I don’t bake so battering fruit and potential murder are the only uses I find for such a device.

Mrs T and I have foolishly signed up to walk 1000 miles a year, well in this year anyway in an effort to lose weight, get a bit fitter and reach beach presentability before our shit of a prime minister decides to take us fully back in to the victorian age and force us into the work houses via food banks and fuel poverty, our television chefs (the bastards) spilling out frugal recipe after frugal recipe due to the shortage on the shelves, christ a few short weeks ago we could barely make a Crisp sandwich (potato chips for our cousins across the pond). So yes we hope to get to Turkey this summer, the guest house is booked, we’ve persuaded an extra friend and her fam to come this time, and myself and my main man walker, we’ll call him B, are getting ready for our ridge walk where we will once again discuss pension provision and then Grime music with an unsuspecting minor. Well we are 50 you know and sensibilities must be upmost in the list of priorities (I probably spoke about this a few years ago in August, when in Akayaka, theres no index, so you’ve got a long search ahead if you choose to accept the challenge).

Last night I slept well and with the aim to get up at 6;20 to go out and walk, but I woke up and felt I was dreaming someone else’s dream, with one leg crossed over the other to create a kind of number 4 with my legs. I felt that I was facing down, and travelling down in this shape, but able to move laterally towards various folk who beckoned me from behind corners, around doors and through gaps in the sky, I saw these people and followed them but when I reached where they had gone to another one appeared somewhere else, beckoning me. I’m unsure if this was a dream, or someone else told me about this, or it was someone else’s dream entirely.  It wasn’t altogether too bad at all really, maybe I should drink more fizzy water instead of beer.

Tune in later for a tale of Benny’s bad behaviour, which is an unashamed cliffhanger to try and boost my ratings.