I love...

Sunshine, Sleights Moor and sea views

Saturday July 25

I feel very lucky because I don't think it has rained on any of my walks this year. And so it is, amid one of the wettest summer spells I can remember, my wander around Sleights Moor above the east coast fishing town of Whitby is hot and sunny.

There's not a lot to the landscape here, unless you're the archeological type. Then I imagine the celtic waypoint stones and ancient barrows that dot these moors make it a fascinating place. For me, though, it's just lovely to feel the sun on my face and get a few more miles under my boots.

Everywhere is lush and verdant. Hardly any of the footpaths I've pre-plotted on the GPS are actually visible on the ground and it's not unusual to be stumbling through tangles of shoulder-high bracken. Thank goodness for technology because I'd have been lost several times without it. The only downer comes when there are no fish & chips to be had in Whitby. That'll teach me for not coming down off the moors til nearly 10 o'clock. Oh well, you can't eat it but a good sunset still does the heart good.

Where there's rain, there's brass

Sunday July 19

My daughter Sal worships at the shrine of My Chemical Romance, Green Day, McFly and The Used. She's got me very familiar with the MCR 'Black Parade' album in particular. And I think I get it. Just as I understand her fondness for Gerard Way and all the other pale, tatooed and interesting poster boys that festoon her bedroom walls. And how she is labeled an 'Emo' by the chav kids at school. That'll be nothing to do with her predilection for black eyeliner and skinny jeans and black nail polish, then. At 15 she is well into her music and I love that she is. Just as I love that she's reached grade 5 piano, plays drums a bit, along with the Cornet. In short, my Sal rocks. And so does her band, Poynton Youth Brass Band, for whom she plays her main instrument, Tenor Horn.

It's been a journey, through the beginners' band (think strenuous focus on melodies like 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star') via the intermediate band (onto more complex material like the theme to 'Pirates of the Caribbean') and now the 'senior' band which is 'proper' brass band stuff. With all those stirring sonic layers and full on volume.

As it happens, their outdoor gigs tend to be plagued by inclement weather. But none of us proud parents care much about that.

I 'threaten' her that she's going to be appearing on YouTube. But, sparing her 15 year old blushes, I don't focus on her. Her contribution to the music is enough. My Sal is adding to the mid-range textures here and I'm proud as f**k.

Bedraggled beauty

Sunday July 19

Eagle Owl. Aged 21. A bit bedraggled. But then again, who wasn't, these last few days.

On display at one of those 'summer' events that the words 'stoic' and 'indomitable' were invented for, in relation to the British determination to persevere in the face of elemental adversity.

She flew low over the heads of small children in return for small pieces of dead domestic fowl.

Apparently her manoeuvrability is compromised by wet wingtips. Still, she looks like she could take on her handler and win...if she chose.

Return to Pike Lowe

Monday July 13

The moors above Langsett reservoir feel a world away from my last wanderings up to Candlerush Edge and the Bronze Age burial mound of Pike Lowe. Back on the afternoon of New Year's Eve the temperature never rose above minus 6 and a temperature inversion created a spectacular sea of cloud all around.

Today it's sunny, warm and breezy. The views are still spectacular. The hares are brown once again, in their summer coats. I wonder who lies beneath the cairn and how they lived their lives. What vexed these folk? What made them laugh? How did they love? What stories could they tell us...

Moorland music

Saturday July 11

The perfect 'rehearsal and songwriting studio'. Warm breeze, babbling brook, a mile from the A635 at the foot of Black Hill.

'Black Hill Song', for acoustic guitar and female voice, took little more than an hour to write.

There was a lot to say. And the melody came easily.

Something about these moors speaks freedom from normal worldly constraints.

It always pays to listen in these spaces.

Sometimes it's the little things

After several years of languishing in the crime-blighted and socially deprived wasteland of Leeds 9 I am now blessed to wake each morning in my own little rural idyll, well away from all that. Here I watch Buzzards hovering over pasture instead of listening to burglars screwing my doors. Evenings see me watching bats and Swifts from my patio. Or hay-baling on the farm up the hill from my garden. Squirrels wreck the neigbours' arrays of bird food, which bring in more garden birds than I've seen since I was a child; Bull Finches, Robins, Thrushes and other birds I haven't yet identified or managed to capture on camera. I used to have to escape home to see beauty and feel safe. Now I wake to the muffled sound of bullocks munching on the pasture just across the lane. Instead of groggy and reluctant to get out of bed each morning I'm alert and calm, drinking an al fresco morning brew as the sun breaks through the trees.

Feeling safe at home is not a big deal. But then again, it is. And it's a reminder that sometimes it's the little things that are great. Like these, all enjoyed over the past week without even leaving home.

 

And these, seen elsewhere. My favourites are the 'raggedy crow' who's adopted my friend and 'BT' the floppy cat who's adopted my dad. Maybe something fluffy and cute will adopt me.