Alnwick, Bamburgh, Beal, Ulgham and Warkworth

Places in the North-East that we have visited over the past week and a bit.  We've been having a really marvellous time, but today the energy has run out a little.  There are only so many days out one can have before one burns out.  So today we are still sitting in the house at lunch time.  No castles today, no beaches, no gift shops.  Actually, that's not true, because we're going out for a walk around the town of Alnwick this afternoon.  The town is two streets away from the house we're staying in, 'the lady's house'.  I wish I did actually live here.  It's beautiful.  Beautiful aesthetically, but also beautiful because beautiful people live here and beautiful people holiday here, and the whole place just feels good, feels nice, feels pleasant.  It's idyllic really, and now that I think about it I cannot remember how it happened that I decided to book a holiday here last year.  I remember trawling through websites of cottages, but cannot remember why I looked at this part of the world.  Perhaps it was on a recommendation.  Anyway, I'm glad that I did.  I will live here one day.  I don't know if it will be soon, or if it will be in a couple of decades' time, if it will be with my family or if it will be alone, but I will live here one day.

I have pretty much no photos to share at this time, because all of them are on Kev's computer because his Apple has a card slot and mine does not, and I didn't bring my lead.  I have only this one, from Bamburgh beach, which I managed to pinch from Facebook, where Kev left it.  This is me in the pit that Thomas asked me to dig - this is only a half-dug pit, we managed to make it quite a lot deeper, and reached the water table and turned the pit into a pool.  But the boys soon filled it in again, because they are destructive (I love my boys, but I do not like their destructive sides).

Oh, now that I see this picture again I can see that the water is just visible at the bottom.  This is as deep as it got.  Funny how this angle of this photo makes the pit seem much shallower than it actually was.  From another angle you can see that the pit is almost as deep as I am tall.  When the boys were in it the top came above their heads.  Matthew made himself some steps to get out :)

We're expecting some rain, so our planned trip to Bamburgh beach tomorrow may be cancelled.  I would have liked to have had one more beach day, since the beaches here are so much nicer than the 'beaches' at Morecambe, but if we can't, we can't, and we'll have to do something else.  No matter.  We'll be back :)

Ahhhhhh, sigh of deep contentment.  I just wish we could stay for an extra week.

More photos next week, when I get home to my lead.

Not my usual Monday morning

Usually, on a Monday morning I'm full of beans, and looking forward to a good week, and bursting with ideas and creativity.  Not today.  Today I am boring.  Today I have no energy, and I'm annoying myself.  What I should have done is got up early, piled us all in the car, and taken us off to the Lakes for a good walk.  But I didn't.  I just didn't do anything.  We watched the final Harry Potter DVD in preparation for watching the proper last film at the cinema this week, and then the boys tumbled out into the garden and played in the rain.  They're still there now, though the rain has stopped, much to their disappointment.

I have done nothing.  Well, I have done boring stuff, such as the washing up, making lunch, and folding some clean washing.  Now I have itchy hands.  I'm not allergic to washing up liquid, no, I just need to do some writing.  It's been a good month since I wrote anything worth showing to anyone, and I do start to feel a bit down when I haven't produced anything good for as long as that.

The solution is clear, as it always is: I must make the most of my evenings.  When I produce good writing of an evening, my days are always better, and I always have more patience with the kiddy-winks, and I always feel more motivated to play with them.  I must start tonight.  I must get something written.  I will do it.

Though I'm a little worried that I haven't got time in my life for writing, and cycling as well.

SLAP!!!!

That was me, giving myself a slap.  I know better than to say things like that.  How ridiculous - of course I've got time for cycling and writing.

In fact, I could do some writing now, since the boys are happily playing in the garden, and actually do not want me to play with them - who could blame them, when my face alternately looks like this:

zoned out,

clinically depressed,

pathetically mourning the loss of a dear pet rat,

discovering the pair of dirty socks stuffed down the side of the couch,

noticing that someone has folded the towels incorrectly.

I'm only looking like this very occasionally:

a little bit demented, on discovering the chocolate hidden at the back of the cupboard 

(it's past its use-by-date, but we're not fussy when it comes to chocolate).

Aren't you, reader, in luck today?  You've been given the rare treat of seeing me sans hair products!  What a blinkin' state I look!  An uncanny resemblance to Cliff Richard c. 1963.