Stuff

GYM
Well, all that working out seems to have made my back stronger already, as I was only incapacitated for a few days, rather than the usual couple of weeks. I can actually feel some of these new muscles. If I lie on my back it's like I'm lying on something hard, until I realise it's a couple of muscles that run vertically down the back on either side of the spine. Heh. I've lived all this time without noticing they were there!

The gym has big wide-screen tellies in all the rooms, tuned, with subtitles, to BBC1, a channel I hardly ever watch, apart from the 6 o'clock news. Why are all the characters in Eastenders so ugly? I thought it was supposed to be a reflection of real life, but real people aren't so consistently unpleasant to look at. I can't follow the story at all - no idea who is who or what is what, nor do I care, but you find your eyes being drawn to it as you pedal away furiously on the upright bike or run, boringly, on the spot on the treadmill.

The reason they need subtitles is that they also have piped pop music. I tried using my phone's built-in radio with headphones so that I could listen to something of my own choice, but it's not loud enough to compete. I see people using iPods, but I don't really want to splash out that sort of money just so I can listen to the Archers.

RIGHTS OF WAY
They've recently erected a couple of new signposts in the village, proclaiming a Public Bridleway between Crosby and Crosscanonby. It's been a Public Right Of Way for a very long time, and I've known about it since we've been here, but it's been more or less impassible. Seeing these new signs I thought, "Aha! They must have made some improvements to the path! Hurrah!"

Last time I tried this path, you had to go through a big gate and through the seemingly private drying-green belonging to a farmhouse, and then into a big boggy field, with nothing to show where to go next. If, by dint of much searching, you actually discovered the spot in the fence with the stile, you still had to negotiate deep mud and broken wooden steps over the fence. When I discovered this I had to go back the way I came as it was impossible to get dogs over this stile and there were no dog-gates.

Seeing it was now described as a 'bridleway' I assumed it would now be improved to the extent that you could get a horse through. Hurrah! Entering from the bottom of the path, rather than the top, we made our way across the field to the place where the stile had been several years ago. It was gone. The only way you'd know it's the place to cross the fence is the absence of barbed wire for a couple of feet. I guess I could have climbed over - I'm quite good at climbing over fences - but the dogs wouldn't. It was too high to jump, even for Ghyll, who's happy enough to jump over things of reasonable height. No dog-gates, no holes in the fence, no way to get through. And as for horses? Well, yes, I know some horses do jump, but they'd have to be pretty accurate to jump that little gap, and if they missed they'd be impaled on the barbed wire on either side, or crash unceremoniously into the hawthorn hedge.

They say that if we want to keep our Rights Of Way open, we must use them regularly. How are we supposed to do that?

NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS


Just when I thought there weren't going to be any noctilucent clouds this year, I spotted a nice display the other night, as I was on my way to bed. Dropped everything, grabbed me trusty tripod and took a few pics. It's amazingly hard to get a camera to focus properly when the subject matter isn't very bright but I did manage a couple of good ones, of which the photo above is the best. I could sit and watch these mysterious phenomena all night - they're beautiful and fascinating, and, interestingly, a pretty recent thing. They may be related to climate change, in which case we should be worried, but in some ways I feel sorry for my ancestors who may have had darker skies and therefore a better view than we have of the winter stars, but who never even imagined the possibility of these beautiful nebulous things in the summer sky.

A day in the life . . .

There's a Flickr group called A Day in the Life . . . which I rather like. Four times a year, on the summer and winter solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes, all the group members spend the day taking photos of their day-to-day lives. Five of these photos are posted to the group pool, and the rest in a folder on the member's own Flickr page. So four times a year we get a fascinating glimpse into the lives of ordinary people like ourselves, leading ordinary lives, but in different parts of the world.

Today is my 3rd DILO. My first was on December 22nd last year, and it happened to be the day I was driving down to Wasdale to pick up our free range turkey, so I had ample opportunity to take interesting photos. And being Christmas time, the sun came out from time to time. (Gone are the days when it snowed in December . . .)

My second was on 20th March 2008, on Chris' birthday. Not such nice weather, but I was in Cockermouth where lots of houses are painted in bright colours, and was also lucky enough to capture a bird flying over the Moon, which I thought was incredibly cool.

Today, being midsummer's day, it rained continuously. We're mostly quite pleased about this, as our veg garden has been parched and poor Steve has been marching up and down with buckets of water.

I took some midnight photos last night when the sky was still clear and starry and bright with the nautical twilight known in Shetland as the Simmer Dim - the one on the left was taken at nearly 1am.

Sadly, by the time I got up this morning conditions had deteriorated, and it all looked grey. We'd already decided on a trip to Keswick, as for once I didn't have to rush off anywhere playing music for morris dancing or helping people move furniture.

An unexpected phone call took us to Cockermouth first, though, as members of Steve's family were in town, so I took some photos of the little lad playing on his grandfather's electric chair (no, no, not that kind - this is the sort that raises and lowers the seat, making things easier for disabled people) and creating aged paper for the treasure map he was drawing. I was delighted when the neighbour's tiny black cat, Sammy, came wandering in, as I've been trying to capture her in a photo for a while. Today she posed beautifully for me, singing feline airs with gusto.

By the time we left, the rain was well and truly settled in, but who cares? It may be wet, but it's not particularly cold.

Keswick was fairly busy, as you'd expect, as it's full of tourists at this time of year, and there's not much else for them to do on a rainy Saturday but wander round the market stalls or sit in cafés drinking coffee.

The DILO's theme this time round is green, and for once I'd taken very few photos featuring anything green, unlike my usual pics full of hills, trees and fields. We left the main road on the way home and parked up by the Bouncy Bridge, from where I could take some photos of the clouds settling down on the fells and the River Derwent meandering through the farmland.

You can see all my photos from today's DILO here

The day's not over yet of course - it's only 25 past 9 - but it's still raining, so I don't think I'll be finishing off with my usual flourish of a YABS (Yet Another Bloody Sunset).

I am keenly awaiting Chris' contribution to the DILO group. He's in the Czech Republic at the moment with Rudsambee, and they apparently spent the day on a trip to the local spectacular mountains. I guess I'll have to wait until he returns to the UK, as he doesn't seem able to access the internet at the moment, or even use his phone, which for him is probably worse than the pain he suffers from his sinuses while flying. I only hope his batteries have lasted.

Trying to be fit

I joined a gym. Those who know me of old might be somewhat surprised at this. At school I managed to skive off PT/PE for most of my secondary years by dint of taking Art which involved prolonged trips to Newhaven Harbour to do sketches of boats (and to hide behind the lighthouse smoking and drinking alcoholic things). This was a lot more fun than running round a cold playing field dressed in a divided skirt which showed off one's fat white knees when one was at just that age when one wanted to be admired by the opposite sex, rather than mocked by them. Interestingly enough they were far more inclined to admire someone who spent whole afternoons holed up behind the lighthouse, smoking and peacefully watching the tankers steaming up the Forth to Grangemouth.

It's not that I don't do exercise. I love taking the dogs for walks, and enjoy cycling, so long as the weather's in my favour. Swimming is a great pleasure, so long as it's out of doors in the sea or a nice cold lake, and I can dress in shorts and a t-shirt rather than a stupid swimsuit which does nothing for those with a larger waistline than they'd like.

So, what seems to happen is that in the summer, when it's warm and dry and good weather for cycling and lake swimming, I get sort of fittish, and lose a bit of weight, and feel generally pleased with myself. And then the winter comes, and it gets dark early, and it's cold, and it rains, and I'm too much of a wimp to go cycling in this stuff, and of course swimming in Bass Lake in midwinter would put me on a fast track to the West Cumberland Infirmary, so the only exercise I get is walking the dogs, and even that's not a lot of fun in the dark when you're halfway down the lane and meet strange scary people who shine torches in your face, putting the wind up the dogs and me.

Eight years ago I gave up smoking. Not because I didn't like smoking, 'cause I did. I really enjoyed it. But I knew I'd live longer if I quit, and somehow I managed it (this is another story which I might tell some time) and now feel there's a very good chance of living longer. However, round people tend to live shorter lives than lean people, and my biggest ambition is to live as long as possible, so the next unpleasant thing I have to do is to take more, regular exercise, and start now while I'm still young and fit enough to do it.

People who have had heart attacks and other life-threatening illnesses are sent to the gym to work out and recover, and some of them recover so well that they run marathons and all sorts of things. If they can do all that, surely someone like me who is perfectly healthy and whose only problem is not particularly enjoying repetitive exercise, can do it too! So I signed up at the gym.

I don't expect to enjoy it. But you pay a month in advance, and being a Scot I have to get my money's worth once I've paid for it.

So far it's been working out quite well. The place is full of machinery that looks like the contents of a torture chamber. There's a treadmill (the very name conjures up images of doing boring repetitive work, doesn't it?), an upright bike (i.e., a bike that goes nowhere), a recumbant bike (ah, cycling in a comfy chair!), and a couple of other bizarre things: one that feels like plodding through thick snow and one where you work your arms and legs together in a completely unnatural fashion and whose name I've completely forgotten. Oh yes, and a rowing machine, but I can't use that because I've got a wonky knee and the last time I tried one I was crippled for a week.

Having used this lot for a few days I was 'inducted' into the weights room, which is filled with even more extraordinary machinery. (Who invents these things? They're amazingly clever, once you realise they're not designed to remove your legs and arms, one at a time, in slow motion.) Funnily enough I almost enjoy this room. Each time I go I find I can move a greater weight, and I seem to have incredibly powerful thighs. Maybe I should have been one of those stocky Eastern European female weight-lifters or shot putters. I'll move on to the free weights in due course, which is good, as I've inherited a set of them, complete with bench, from a friend who was moving house, and I'm scared to try them until I've been shown the right way.

So . . . everything was going just speldidly, and then I managed to hurt my back. Nothing to do with the gym workouts, just the bit that tends to 'go' from time to time - I seem to have a bit of a weakness there. So frustrating. I'll need to leave it at least a week before I can get back to the weights, and I'll probably find I'm back where I started again. Buggabuggabugga . . .