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Kyle's Longest Ride

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  Saturday 1 st October 2022. This was the day that Kyle had trained for, doing his longest ride to date, 50 miles. Kyle wanted to raise money for the RNLI, so I had set up a JustGiving page. Donations soon came flooding in. Kyle would regularly check the page. We would often hear “Wow!” or “Crikey” as Kyle saw the latest donations. After school, Kyle has been getting home, changing out of his uniform and going out again on his bike. I say again as by default, his bike is his way of getting to and from school. At the weekends I had been doing some longer rides with him. At 14 years old, he’s growing faster than a sunflower in the summer sun. My clothes from my slimmer days now fit him, a weird switch around between our anatomy’s. He’s now taller than his mum and as tall as me, with height comes strength. No more moaning about hills, he now flies up them like a 14 year old Chris Froome. 6:30am on the day of the ride, I lay awake in bed. As always on a day of something fun, I ...
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Kindness - An Essential Ability

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" Some of the most generous people have no money. Some of the wisest people have no education. Some of the kindest people were hurt the most" - Steve Wentworth I'm reflecting on yesterday, (26/2/2022 ), where I encountered two extremes of humanity, the abundance of kindness and also the occasional lack of it. ----------------------------------- At the time of writing this, it's the morning after a very difficult night. I've woken up thinking about the horrific dream that I just had, only to realise that it was reality and unfortunately not a dream. It’s one of those times when life throws a huge hurdle in your way, one you may try and jump but not succeed, but you have to try. I long for a better day, they will come, but today may be one of the worse, it's a waiting game. Yesterday, while driving along a country lane, I spotted a lady on the other side of the road in her car. She had stopped as she had a hefty branch wedged under her car, I can only imagin...
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A Night on a Norfolk Beach in December

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The opportunity to ' do something'  for a night had arisen, the 28th/29th December 2021. Due to a few factors I was going to be home alone, I say alone, I would have been with Nora, our cat. She's great, so affectionate, funny, completely stereotypically lazy yet also completely scatty and can flip between these extremes in a split second. As a family, we all think the world of her, as I'm typing this now at 6am in the morning, she's cuddled up against me on the sofa, snoozing, dreaming and purring. I got this sketch (below) recently drawn of her by a great artist, Ruddy Muddy, as a Christmas present for Dawn. Check out Ruddy Muddy's fantastic work  here  and order your own if you fancy one of your own pet.  Back to the opportunity, I could have stayed at home, watched Forest Gump for about the 53rd time (that honestly is a guess but probably about right), ate some more of the chocolate and biscuits given to us over Christmas and gone to bed underneath the new t...
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Walking 26 miles in a day, just because I can

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  “What kind of idiot are you?!” said my mother-in-law after I told her about my 26 mile walk on the Suffolk coast the previous day. I laughed and said “I’ll take that as a compliment, if you said I was boring and lazy then I would be offended, but being an idiot is just fine”. And I guess that simple, yet honest exchange of opinions sums up the principles of the walk and a lot of my life at the moment; do something silly, something fun but most importantly, do something that I haven’t done before. I have never walked 26 miles, I had never walked further than about 11 miles in one go so it was a good idea in my mind and I was right. The idea came from just sitting and looking at a new Ordnance Survey (OS) map (Explorer Map No. 231) that I had recently bought. Just sitting and looking at OS maps is amazing, there are so many new things to look at, things that you had never noticed or things you had noticed and wondered what it is or where it goes. Even on maps like this one whic...
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