Category: Musings
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Clearances . . .
I’ve spent the past afternoon and again this morning clearing up my laptop’s desktop. Not only does the struggling machine, uncluttered, work much faster now that all the accumulated images are whisked away, but the space is neat, tidy, and restful for my busy mind. The extended display is open for new material, while a…
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Measurement, a never-ending joy
I made a little investment, a year or so ago, in a small measuring wheel. Its first use was, finally, to measure within a meter or so how long our track is from the road. Turns out to be 495 meters, half a kilometer in other words, which makes us quite happily isolated from any…
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A slight discombobulation . . . perhaps a good stimulus
So I began the day on a different schedule: quick coffee, then a dash to the dump (aka Household Waste Recycling Centre) in Allendale so as to get back for my beloved to have time to return to the village for choir practice and the knitter-knatter group. But the rain was pouring down, and it…
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But umm, now what?
Ah yes, there’s a reason why all that stuff was up in the loft, out of sight and out of mind. Apparently, there’s nowhere else to put it! But up there, it was more than just out of mind; it was also inaccessible. With a little perseverance, and diligence, we can sort things out and…
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Thinking: ?Cognitive reflex?
I’ve been thinking this morning about the way a cognitive stimulus travels, the journey it provokes. We’re sending off a little package to our grandson today, a print-out of my historical fiction short story and an accompanying letter. Maybe he’d like to do some illustrations for the piece? The stimulus way back over a month…
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The pleasure of a contemplative review
For beloved friends who do not have internet access, I’ve taken to printing out the previous week of musings from these Roads To Joy. Though it feels odd, looking at the week in a spread like this, it seems that it’s instructive too. Sometimes I’ve been really stretching, grasping and flailing around trying to find…
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The amazing grace of song
We sang with some abandon in the Sacred Harp/Shape Note tradition, the resonant chest voices arcing through the air, yesterday evening, though my joints were slightly aching after the bout of wood stacking. The SongWave Choir members are gearing up throughout this term, and then into the next, for a series of Christmas concerts, so…
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Golden dawn . . .
Dawn is something that I rarely experienced in my youth, but as winter draws near it’s an increasingly frequent delight. This morning’s golden hues evoke a sense of optimism that is frankly at odds with the prevailing climate, economic and political situation here. Often, when showing visitors around the place, I point over to the…
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This too shall pass . . . the joy of foreknowledge
Feeling just that extra bit stiff and sore this morning — my joints and muscles don’t really want to move around very much. We had our fourth Covid jab yesterday afternoon, the Moderna bi-valent one. I reckon our immune response to the immunological challenge is mobilising, from the lymph nodes draining the injection site, where…
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The season’s change brings joy
Finally, as the end of September clambers into reach, it feels like autumn here high up in these North Pennines. The sun still shines with warmth, and the sky is still blue, even though the winds have started up again after the prolonged respite during the hot summer. It’s the beginning of the end for…
Roads to Joy 