The Fabulous Cemetery Gateway - Hulne Park, Nr. Alnwick, Northumberland

This is going to be a totally niche post and the first time I've posted something this year filled with photographs from a day out.

If you're not completely fascinated by the gateway to an empty cemetery look away now.  Or read on anyway.  Come to think of it that would be a decent writing prompt wouldn't it?  The Gateway to an Empty Cemetery.  Source of a thousand stories.

A couple of days ago, in a total fit of determination to not be ill anymore I went out walking, one of my little adventures to somewhere I've never been before.  I'd had a very miserable weekend and on Sunday night decided.  "Enough is enough.  I'm going somewhere.  Can't have another day of feeling like this."  So I got out the local OS maps.  Looked up to Alnwick.  And there, just to the west I saw a name.  Hulne Park.  Obviously a private estate.  No public footpaths marked anywhere on the copyright 2002 Landranger Map number 81.  No public footpaths at all.  But it was so close to Alnwick that it appealed as an easy enough place to get to.  So I looked the place up online.  Wonder of wonders!  Joy of joys!  There's public access to certain routes in the estate.

The park is part of the Northumberland Estates of the Dukes of Northumberland and is open most days from 11am.  The estates offer a single page PDF map that shows the permitted walks.  Without looking for a single picture of the estate I decided.  I was going.  I would walk the longest of the three routes and add on a bit so I could go and see this thing on the map called a tower.

I hadn't really got a clue what I'd see and I very nearly didn't see any of it.  While my bus was approaching Alnwick I formulated an alternative plan.  I was very close to using it.  Plan B was to catch a bus to Alnmouth and walk up the coast to Craster - about 8 miles.  I'm sure I'd have had a wonderful day by the sea.  I've seen a small part of that route before.  The paths pass through Howick where I was once taken by a friend.  The very first photos taken on my old phone on a trip out were taken in Howick.  That was a special day, the first day since moving here that I truly realised that I was blissfully at home in the middle of nowhere.  I lay on a rock by the sea while my friend went off and did her thing - something related to being a witch - and I felt more peace than I'd felt in a very long time.

How quick I am to forget that I belong in some way under the open sky or in the woodland surrounded only by the nature sounds and the life of the earth.

How quick?  Judge for yourself.  This was the first day I've gone out somewhere new this year and walked in peacefulness.

The coast walk can wait until another day.  Hulne Park awaited.  I'll share more general photos soon of views, discuss the walk and share lots of pictures of Hulne Abbey which is the oldest Carmelite settlement in Britain dating to the 13th Century.

Today though I'm showing you pictures of a gate.  In 2007 the Duchy of Northumberland established a new cemetery on their estate in the prettiest of spots.  The Percy Family Memorial Garden.  I'm told it's still empty which can only be good news for the family.  I have to say that if I had any desire for my corpse to end up in an attractive place then I might choose such a spot, high on a hill and looking across open land to Cheviot and, I guess, a little bit of Scotland might be visible too.  I'll show you the view next time.  For now though, the gate:

Aren't they great?  They were made by a blacksmith named Stephen Lunn although, as someone I talked to on Monday said, he's much more than a blacksmith.  The gates were unveiled in 2008 and the cemetery beyond is planned to serve the family for the next 450 years. 

The metal tree in the centre of the memorial garden, rooted to the rock.

Days Of Gratitude - Memories, The Woodhorn Train, And A Very Dodgy Back

I had a rotten week.  They happen.  This particular week included a moment or two of feeling like giving up completely.  It scares me that moments like that still arise.  Perhaps weeks like this one and moments like those will still crop up for the rest of my life.  I hope not.  But I have to be prepared for the possibility.

After three days of dren I wasn't going to put up with it so made myself go out.  That was a difficult resolution but it was worth it.  Pictures below!

The day out was good but it didn't end the bad week and a pretty rotten weekend followed.  Another week has passed since then.  I have been completely determined to live.  It's bloody hard at times.  People ask me if it's anxiety.  In part, it is.  But it's not just regular run of the mill anxiety.  It combines with how much work it is to get through any social situation, even the ones I desperately want to be a part of, due to aspects of autism.  It combines with all the sensory issues too.

Here then are five days of gratitude including an unexpected train ride and a reminder to myself that I need to keep being obsessive over an exercise and to obey a medical professional in order to lessen my physical pain and prevent it getting worse as I get older.

21^st November

Written on 24^th November

Today has been good. Head is knackered now but I forced it to have a pretty good day.

The last few days felt very atrocious but I want to catch up with gratitude posts even though I didn't take photos.

For Monday.

Grateful for happy anniversaries. 1 1/4 years since meeting Amanda and arriving at the pretty life changing Autscape.

Grateful to have an Autscape mug and that each time I drink from it I can bring happy memories to mind. Grateful too that I now have a Snowdogs mug that will bring more happy memories with each mug of tea.

The photo is from Autscape - with added sunny lens flare to obscure faces. A wonderful time spent in a park in Settle with two wonderful friends.

22^nd November

Grateful yet again for the NHS. With the addition of a preventer inhaler I now have six things on repeat prescription. Without the NHS these two things would be true:

A. My physical and mental health would be much worse.

B. I would not be able to transition in any medical way through hormonal treatment.

Also grateful for the response of someone from this group when I moaned about feeling crap on Facebook. Thank you!

23^rd November

Grateful to have managed to get to town long enough to have a bit of a haircut before coming home and conking out for the rest of the day.

Grateful that I can now see without knocking hair out of my face continually.

My head couldn't cope but there is always much light (house). Picture from 3 weeks previously on a day that brought insight and clarity. Always there is light in darkness.

24^th November

Grateful for my wander to Woodhorn.

Grateful too that Amanda and I have located a fresh supply of salty liquorice toads.

25^th November

First physio appointment today.

Apparently I have a very interesting back with at least five major issues to sort out. And that's before thinking of the knee problem.

Grateful though.

It's begun. It will be an uphill or up-escalator-at-Monument climb and lots of work over the medium term probably.

But he thinks we can sort the issues.

Days of Gratitude - Art And Autscape And Sparklies In The Dark

Five more days of gratitude.

The first of them really did go wrong.  I had good plans - to go and sing shape note music in a chapel at Beamish Museum.  Due to a miscommunication they didn't come to fruition and I was left at home with a packed bag for the day.  I could have stayed at home.  But decided that they would be another plan.  So I went out and let the plan develop as it happened.  The replacement plan didn't go to plan either in many ways.  But I was still able to have a really good day and visited somewhere I've never been to before.  The art looks great on the walls of this room I'm sitting in.  The cheap art.  Very cheap.  The total cost of the five pictures was £4.50.  I'm actually quite proud of finding the bargains.

The five days ended at Autscape, the conference/gathering of autistic people that runs each year.  I must point out at this point that the friend mentioned who couldn't get to Autscape was not a Dalek.

13^th August

Today's plan went completely wrong. An excuse for inventing another plan.

I walked on Hadrian's Wall.

I sat by a river.

And I bought cheap pictures.

14^th August

Tynemouth Market

Grateful for a poetry book and a few pretty stones from Tynemouth followed by a short wander.

The gateway to Tynemouth Priory.  We didn't go inside.

I was too tired to actually walk by the sea as planned.  But that didn't matter.  Seeing the river was good and those two obviously enjoyed it.



15^th August

A half cheat.

Grateful for socks. Grateful that in the last year I have stopped wearing black socks every day and now wear all sorts of colours. And sometimes giraffes.

 Grateful (and this is the cheat half) that within the next 24 hours (tomorrow) I will be at Autscape for a few days of autistic space, something that is a very rare thing in an allistic majority world. Last year's Autscape changed things for me in unforeseen ways.

16^th August


We are at Autscape.

This year I know some people already, have child with me, and a friend from Newcastle.

Two pictures from the day.  The first was taken at the informal badge decorating.  The second was taken at Sparklies.  Photo credit to @quarridors

Check out this Vine video of what the lights look like through my heart glasses.  Through my difraction glasses they look even more crazy.

17^th August


Grateful to be at Autscape.

Maybe most grateful for the hours spent NOT at Autscape.

Amanda and I went to spend a couple of hours in Settle with a friend who couldn't make Autscape this time.

 And then we paddled in the river.

Days of Gratitude - Desolation, The Sunday Assembly, And A Touch of Skulduggery

I am typing this on August 1st.

It's been a rubbish day in my head.  I've done my best.  A Blob Thing post got written.  A Clare post got written.  Something got read.  Puzzles got solved.  Furniture was rearranged.  But it's been very difficult indeed.  Some days are like that.  Leaving the house was not an option today and for a while I was physically shaking.  Yeah, it's been bad.

And that's one of the reasons I keep this gratitude diary going.  It's one of the reasons why I have posted in it one 204 out of the first 213 days of the year.

Because on the crap days, on the days when it hurts even to budge off my bed, I can look back.  And see how good the good days can be.

Maybe today was so bad in in my head because of yesterday.  For Clare, I did amazingly well at the Sunday Assembly.  By Clare standards I was bloody brilliant at social and at dealing with it all.  Hey, I rocked!  But even on that good day it was hard and tiring and maybe it wiped me out more than I realised last night.  Or maybe today was just one of those things and the crap isn't related to yesterday at all.  Maybe.

And that's another reason why keeping this gratitude diary has been good for me.  Quite a number of the days have been difficult.  It's sodding hard to live them.  The best days are hard, but the difficult ones are sodding hard!  But the diary is a discipline.  I want to post things I am grateful for on every day if I can.  I've missed nine days.  But not because they were all bad.  Some of them were very good indeed.  To find the gratitude on the tough days is worthwhile.  Because then a day that I could just mark down as bad can be shown to not be all bad - and often can be shown to be pretty good apart from the sodding hard bits.

When the idea of a gratitude group was suggested by someone from the Sunday Assembly Newcastle I readily joined.  It's become important to me.  Even if I was described yesterday as the person who keeps the group going.  Sometimes it does rather feel like the Clare show with a few guest stars popping up.  I wonder, if the group ended, whether I would manage to keep up the diary on my own.  I hope so.

So here we are, it's August.  I have much to look forward to this month.  But it's got off to a very rocky psychological start.  Never mind.  The final three days of July contained a heck of a lot of awesomeness.

29^th July

Grateful to get out and have lunch with someone today.

Grateful for sunsets, this from my front door tonight.

Grateful to have finally started to read Desolation, by Derek Landy.

And grateful for what I coincidentally read on Facebook just before getting on a Metro and starting that book. Derek Landy announced that Skullduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain will return. Isn't that exciting? A whole year of waiting, of anticipation. So awesome.

(Everyone should read Skulduggery. Everyone. Except the strong evangelical Christian I know who found the first book to be so evil that it became the only book she ever burned. Yes, it's THAT good. It's worthy of burning!)

30^th July

Grateful for the surprises on today's walk:

A deserted play area.

A graveyard. And a found accidental poem on a gravestone that may one day become a writing prompt.

Stepping stones. I got a bit happy flappy. Okay, a lot happy flappy.

Free strawberries, cream, shortbread and tea. And a quiz and some music too.

Also for trees.

And for the way a river changes so much in just a few miles.

And for this phone and its camera, bus routes, bus passes, and the book of stories bought in a charity shop.

Yes. It was a good day. The list of positives could get very long.

31^st July

Well this is an obvious one.

I am grateful for the Sunday Assembly.

Guess what Blob Thing will be blogging about in the near future.

I wrote this on my Facebook wall:

The Sunday Assembly was great today.

I wasn't overwhelmed. I could deal with it and actually talk with people and not rush off quite quickly afterwards. That's so much better than I've been in a long long time.

A wonderful talk about science and art.

A person talking about writing and that was an encouragement to plough on and get enthusiastic about writing for myself.

A person in amazingly cool clothes complimented me on my clothes.

 

A conversation about names and I said I had dreamed my own and they hadn't had a clue that I would ever have changed my name.

One of these days I'll get properly involved with the Sunday Assembly and do something useful rather than just drinking tea, eating cake, and occupying a chair. Perhaps it should be soon.

It is what it is. I think enthusiastic people will build it into something better. A true community rather than just a group of people meeting for an event sometimes - something most churches don't manage to become.

Maybe the Sunday Assembly in Newcastle can do church better than the church. I hope so.

Days of Gratitude - The Loss of Towels And The Gaining of Oceans

Here goes, some more days of gratitude to bring you to the 210th day of the year.  It's been a struggle sometimes but I've still only missed posting on nine days.  And I started two days early.  So that's 203 posts I've shared in this blog - plus another eight when I filled in all but one of the gaps.

I am pretty amazed to still be doing this.  My usual commitment and dedication and discipline doesn't often last this long.  I know full well that the diary has been good for me.  And seeing the posts from other people has been good for me too.  All hail the happy group of the Sunday Assembly Newcastle!

Five more days of gratitude.  And they begin right away with things going wrong!  We planned something.  And then got to where we were going and found we couldn't do it.  Then we remade the day and it was good.  A broken plan is not the breaking of a world.

24^th July

Grateful that when plans went wrong we remade them into something good.

25^th July

Grateful that my bed awaits me tonight. Lots of sleep would be appreciated!

Grateful that there is much living to be done now I am back in Newcastle.

Winefride enjoyed the journey back. She was excited to have the front seat on the coach.

26^th July

Grateful that most days I am not this tired. Grateful to have a bed and a sofa and easy access to luxuries like a kettle and tea.

And grateful that today Blob Thing went public with the news that he has a sister.

Here's his post: https://blobthing.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/blob-thing-has-some-extremely-good-news.html

The picture was taken in the play area in Rhiwabon. It was Winefride's first adventure outside and she seemed to enjoy it a lot.

Later we went into Wrecsam and popped into the Catholic cathedral, a place I had to go to when preparing to be confirmed as a Catholic in 2005. It's fair to say that it felt very strange to be back.

27^th July

Grateful that on Monday, exactly two months after Towel Day, Amanda forgot her towel. A non-event in the history of home showering.

Image from http://arghink.com/…/wear-the-lilac-and-remember-your-towel/

Grateful for the place Douglas Adams has in my childhood.

And grateful that the forgetting of a towel, something solved with ease within a few seconds, inspired me to open up the word processor and write "She had forgotten her towel."

Yesterday I wrote some more and today I finished a draft version of a little story from that writing prompt. 3800 words. Even though the story had formed in my head on Monday, sometime during the coach ride home from Manchester. it took me by surprise.

Grateful to be allowing myself to write and that, whatever the results may be in the short and long term, I am finding joy in the writing.

28^th July

Grateful to have been mentally able to leave the house after two days closeted safely indoors.

Grateful that plans can change so many times before reaching a destination.

That destination surprised me by being Alnwick even though I had been on the Metro to North Shields.

Charity shops to visit, Barter Books to browse and decide there wasn't anything I wanted to buy, and a free freshly made waffle covered in lots of strawberries, banana and blueberries - free in exchange for filling in a two minute survey about a museum I will probably never visit.

Winefride thinks the books are about cookery.  I am not going to correct her error.  She doesn't need to know about these things at her age.

Then the sea called and so I spent an hour in Alnmouth too. I want to go back there for longer and my head is planning walks.

Blob Thing and Winefride had a great time!