Author: mdk

Lancaster Castle in the Sun

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Cider Bottles

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A Big thanks to Mikey for providing the drinks 😉

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Pies Again

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These are lamb mince, cranberry and rosemary pies that I tried as a first recipe from a book dedicated to cooking with mince.

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Beautiful Sunset

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Taken from a serice station on the Motorway. I had a glorious 40 minute drive through Cumbria with red skies abounding. ‘I looked into the sky, and it was red and the whole of my life was in it’, to paraphrase Jean Rhys (Wide Sargasso Sea)

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Even more beer bottles

Begining to look like an alcholic now…

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Oh well if the cap fits…

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Manchester Town Hall

A small example of some of the architecture in the town hall. I really must find a way to go on a photography trip around this fantastic building.

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Mountains of Things

I read a recent article that I shared on Socia Media about just turning up. The main thrust of this is that you need to do something each day in order to move forward. The article was in particular reference to lethargy, which can also be depression or demotivation.

It was a little coincidental as I also attended a Social Media workshop (I know, it sounds like a waste of time, but the presenters were very good and I learned a great deal). In that workshop they also stressed the need for doing something each day. There reference was business connections and interaction.

However, the main principles seem to be the same.

1. By making a targetted list we can have achievements and they give a value to what we are doing.

2. It need not be a major accomplishments. In fact it is better to break tasks into small chunks to give little victories that are doable no matter what the circumstances. It is easier to find 10 minutes, or motivate for a 10 minute task, than an hour.

3. You must do something every day. This is psycholoigically benificial as it gives a sense of value as you consistently achieve. It also allows you to keep momentum and pace.

4. Don’t restrict what is a task and what isn’t a task. Almost every chore you need to do, every small thing that gives a benefit in some way to someone, is a task. So you may only benefit by getting it done, such as introducing two of your contacts to each other to benefit them. The importance is in achieving, and there is no bad side to getting people connected, at the very least you have helped someone. That has real value.

So I have decided that I should try this approach. I will be making a task list of lots of tiny tasks that I should repeat regularly and then making a chart of what gets done.

I realised my life is filled with too many variables, small children being the biggest factor, to assign strict time slots to specific tasks. Better to have a large list of potential tasks and then find the most appropriate one by circumstance. If I keep a record of which tasks are done I can ensure the frequency of occurance is appropriate for each task.

One of the tasks was making sure I write as regularly as I can, not just blogs. But a little piece of writing each day if possible.

This was one of them, it took two sessions on two days. But it is marked as done 🙂

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My Fail Whale

And my whale has a dinosaur riding it…

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Going Underground

Surfing around on the underground on a Friday evening before seven and the spectrum of disinterest follows you as people flee to avoid even a casual glance.

There is something unnatural in the close confines that draws this behaviour, happily exacerbated by the frequent travellers.

Londoners have mastered the art of individuality in motion, to be the island in a sea of familiarity. There is hostile element lurking in the attitude. One could call it a brio of aggression tailored with just the right essence of disregard.

The observer might feel this to be the aura of the disinfranchised, the spectrum of unengaged in a learned defenisive stance. I, however, feel this response is an act, a show or display, like a badly fashioned peacock with an alcohol issue. Londoners preening themselves to the call of the distanced, the unresponsive and the indignant, a badge of honour with a million closely confined standard bearers.

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Motion-Less

I have discovered that I no longer like sitting in the back off cars on long trips. There are two parts to why this has happened.

Firstly it is a matter of a lack of control. Since learning to drive I don’t enjoy being a passenger much at all.  When I sit in the front I can at least pretend I am affecting my destiny better and this pretence is lost when I sit in the back. It makes me a a little tense and irritable.

Secondly if the car has poor oscillation dampers (shock absorbers) and they are soft making the car wobble I get a little nauseous. It is probably because I am tense about the driving so my stomach is knotted.

A drive from San fransisco airport to a hotel in San Jose with a driver who insisted on accelerating rapidly and breaking hard was the first time I noticed a feeling of motion sickness that these two elements combined can make. It was not a good drive, the traffic was heavy, the car was old and smelled badly (it was not that clean which seems to be common in some cities) and I was travel weary. All of those were contributing factors but the primary two reasons were principal.

The only other time I have felt motion Sickness was in the back of a very cramped Mini in the 80s that had a strong smell of petrol which was making me sick.

Learning the triggers will likely help me in the future in combating the effect, but the fact that it exists at all is a new development.

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