Walking into Work

I am now home, finished work for 2014  a time for reflection.  Tonight is New Year's Eve and tomorrow is a brand new page, a new script a New Year.  We are the authors of our own success we will decide what goes on the page although sometimes serendipity lends a hand.  May blessings follow you all through the year to come and may I thank each one of you personally for following my blog and contributing and allowing me a voice.

These past few mornings as I have been walking into work has reminded me of when I was a little girl and we lived in Uppingham.  I remember Winters being cold and bitter nearly always white and most mornings we got up to a scenic white icing covered panorama which made everything look ghostly and etheral. And the cold was bitter really bone chilling bitter like it has been for the past few days.  Then we had one coal fire to huddle around to keep warm and to sit and dream in front of and it was in Winters such as these that I developed the arthritis.  

The worst Winter I remember is the Winter of 1963 when everyone got bogged down with snow, snow drifts, villages got cut off and the snow used to last for days Snow fences used to be put up both sides of each major road especially where the snow had a penchant for drifting.  It used to be the Farmer's job to pop the fences up each year.  These days they do not seem to do it.  Being on the top of the hill at Uppingham we always seemed to get a lot of snow anyway.  My father used to work for a local garage and quite frequently rescued people off Wardley Hill (he drove the breakdown wagon and was an engineer) frequently he used to bring visitors home for a warm drink to get them going again before taking them home often in the early hours of the morning.  It was a bright yellow large wagon and he used to take me out in it on a regular basis, but then everything seems gigantic to a child.

My father used to walk us everywhere in good weather and bad weather.  We used to be wrapped up with scarves, hats and boots and always walked for a good hour or so but it was not just the walking it was the closeness and camararderie associated with those walks, the rare conversations we would have and my father giving us nature lessons in that if it was deep snow we went out in then we would look for animal tracks and try and work out which animal the tracks belonged to; so indirectly we were always being taught something and being exercised in the fresh air. My father walked us like his father (my grandfather) had walked him as a child (and us) when we went to visit, but it was an opportunity more than anything else to communicate and discuss things to really talk.  My grandfather was a good communicator as was my father.  Apparently as a youngster my father used to have to leave out at 6am with his father to walk into Lincoln because the roads were blocked to traffic with snow - it was the only way of getting into work/school and then they had the same journey back of an evening.  Today we moan but we have had it easy compared to then and the country seems to come to a standstill at the mere sniff of snow.

Living here in Peterborough we seem to be a lot lower lying so if we get snow then it tends to be really bad everywhere else in the surrounding villages and we do not really see Winters like we used to.

As I tramped into work yesterday morning my first thoughts were that this cold should kill off a lot of the nasty bugs and insects.  The gardeners amongst us should be pleased, but then it should kill off some of the lurgey infections too. Here's hoping.

There is something invigorating with a cold frosty morning - yes its too cold but it gives me focus wakes everything up plus when I walk I think and put things into perspective sort things out with the internal filing system - it gives me space and we all need to do that from time to time in order for us to grow.

Wishing Everyone a very Happy New Year - see you on the other side in 2015.

Pattypan

x.