Appreciating The Familiar
Last night I started with a cold, which as tends to happen triggered a little bit of a flare, which in turn brought back to life a bad bruise on my leg which had me limping around. I decided that my best option was to relocate tomorrows walk to St Annes, take some extra strong pain killers, switch off the alarm and hope for the best. When I woke up it was just past seven, I’d had an extra hour in bed and slept well, my bruised leg still hurt, my throat still tingled, but I was feeling a little better.
I decided to stick with my swimming ladder and take the next 2 length step up to 22 and I managed that ok, but waking late meant I’d missed my Caffe Nero window seat so sat by the swimming pool and read for an hour before cycling to the Beach Terrace Cafe for some quality reading time with a view.
Paul met me at ten and we did a circuit of the prom and I took him to Toby Carvery for breakfast, this was his first time there and I think it’s a certainty that he will be going back. We walked off breakfast with another circuit of the prom before heading back to my house and car. I’d offered to drive him down to PC World and we had a good wander around, checking out the PCs, tablets and TVs.
I was particularly taken by the HP Pavilion X2, the model in PC World had a 32GB SSD which is too small, but online for not much more I could pick up a 64GB model and pop a 128GB SD card in it, it would make a great carry laptop/tablet with excellent battery life, the ability to charge over USB-C and good expandability. I read some reviews and watched some videos, but for now I’m still waiting to see if Apple deliver an iPad Pro next week, but if they don’t I think I will be going for this much cheaper – £279 – option, paired with an iPhone 6* it would be a great combination.
While we were driving Paul mentioned how easy it is to forget how lucky we are and fail to appreciate the lovely area we live in. I’ve been guilty of this in the past, but over the years several life events have brought it home to me just how fantastic St Annes and the Fylde in general is as a place to live. I wrote a blog post about this a few months ago before I’d decided to retire and before the small holding scenario was being considered. I really can’t be reminded enough though to appreciate what I have and we won’t be leaving this house in St Annes unless we are very confident that it will be for the better!
After dropping Paul in the square, I walked back to the Beach Terrace Cafe to collect my bike and cycled home and did some gardening. I took some cuttings off my blueberries and gooseberries and planted some of my blackberry shoots too.
Then after a bit more pottering, a nap and a bit of browsing I ended up sufficiently frustrated by Facebook’s terrible search to extract the Facebook comments from my favourite blog posts and attach them to the actual posts, preserved forever I hope.
Fortunately Tess and Lewis made up last night after backing down from their hurt stubborn positions, so all is well in the Richards family again!
Finally one of my friends – Lewis Richards – posted a picture of him and his daughter on the beach for the first time, it reminded me of my first trip to the beach with Steph, 22 years ago!
