A Grand Day Out In Durham - 4: Sacred To The Memory Of ...

I was having a - mostly - wonderful time in Durham.  And the day was about to improve.  I've been wanting to post this ever since that day.  It just hasn't happened though.  I've been writing about Blob Thing instead, getting out to places as much as I can, and generally trying to get my brain working properly again.  The path back to decent mental health after eighteen very tough months is hard work.  I'm still not there and I have to accept that there are some things that will be with me for the rest of my life that I once would not have said were part of a suitably decent mental health.  The path forwards involves acceptance, embracing those difficult parts of me that I have both fought and denied for so long.

During the couple of days before visiting Durham a couple of news stories had come my way.  People were getting stunningly enraged about similar activities.  And I wasn't.  I was thinking that their rage was pretty daft and I couldn't see the problem.

News story one:  People were sometimes dressing up and having their pictures taken in an old graveyard.  Other people were shocked and dismayed?  How could anyone disrespect the dead in this way?  How could anyone be so dreadful that they would do this terrible thing?  I wasn't shocked or dismayed at all.  Instead I thought it was wonderful.  People were enjoying themselves.  Nobody was being harmed.  Great.  And they were bringing life and celebration and happiness into a place of death.

News story two:  Some children had been photographed lying in an old stone coffin, with their hands in a praying position as if they were corpses placed that way centuries ago.  People were shocked and dismayed.  The outcry on Facebook was great, far greater than it would have been if those children were photographed lying dead in the sea having drowned when their boat full of suffering refugees sank.  Okay, I might be a bit cynical.  But I might be right too.  How dare children do this?  And how dare adults encourage children to do something so awful?  And there were lots of comments too along the lines of "This would never have happened in my day.  What is the world coming to?  This generation are being brought up terribly."

I saw the offending photo and I thought it was really nice.  Children playing.  Being children.  Sweet.  And then I thought, "Hang on, haven't I seen something like this already?"  And of course I had.  A photograph of myself and my brother, taken when we were maybe about ten years old, probably younger.  We were lying down in two stone coffins.  Pretending to be centuries old dead people.  And at least one of us had our hands in that praying position.  Yes, it's true.  We were that awful!  Our parents were that awful!  And we were the precursor to this terrible generation of children!  We were part of the end of civilisation.

Except of course we weren't awful.  We were just having fun.  We played.  We didn't disrespect dead people by having fun.  I rather suspect that if those dead people in their graves could have sat up and watched us they would have had a good laugh and thought it great that children and families could have a good time even in such a place as a graveyard.

Those were the two stories.  Fresh in my memory.  And one phrase stuck out above the others because it had been spoken so often about both stories:  It's sacred.  You have to treat it a certain way because it's sacred.  You have to act with due decorum around anything related to death.  Because it's sacred.  So treat graves and graveyards like this.  It's THE way.  The ONLY way.  Those places are sacred to the memory of people.  That was said.  On TV.  On social media.  Sacred to the Memory.

And I was in Durham looking for a quiet cafe in which to have a drink before heading for home.  I'd walked up a road that led up from the shopping street.  A sign pointed up to a cafe and when I got there I decided that I wouldn't go there.  There didn't seem anything wrong with the cafe and I don't know why I didn't drink there.  Indecisiveness and the difficulty of making any decisions when overwhelmed and, if I'm honest, quite close to melting down or shutting down or somehow managing to combine the two in an impossible way.  Later I would be very glad that I had walked away from that cafe because I found another cafe that I loved.

Opposite the cafe that I didn't use was a church.  This was St. Margaret's.  I want to go back and explore the church building.  Parts of it date from the twelfth century and there's a lot to see.  When I was there a small choir were inside practising some sacred music.  I'm sure they wouldn't have minded me doing the full tourist thing inside and I was feeling fragile and didn't want to disturb them too much.  Exploration of the building can wait for another day.  It's been there for 850 years.  So I expect it'll still be there for me even if I don't return until next year.

On the far side of the churchyard is a gate.  And something within me piped up and said, "I wonder where that leads."  Sometimes you just have to go through gates.  And sometimes they lead to places that you would rather never have visited.  Other times they lead into wonderment and excitement and a place where Clare is happy and flappy and totally grateful to have explored.

Through the gate.  Completely away from any tourist route in Durham.  I hadn't liked the Cathedral.  But the river was pleasing.  The little church of St. Margaret was pleasing.  And now I was to be very pleased indeed.

Through the gate I found graves.  And more graves.  And a large graveyard.  And it was amazing.

The two news stories came back to me and those comments.  You can't do that.  You can't disrespect the dead.  You can't PLAY near graves.  It's horrific.  All those comments.  And one comment in particular came back to me when I passed what was almost the first of the grave stones.

Sacred to the memory of ...

Because there were those words, on a grave.

Sacred to the memory of.   Sacred?

What does that mean for the site.  Does that mean that all graves and all gravestones should be treated with solemnity for the rest of history?  Does it mean that we should not disturb the sites, leave them in situ until the end of time?

If it's a heinous sin to photograph a child in a coffin or an adult by a gravestone, then why isn't this a heinous sin too:

All those stones.  Dug up.  Ripped away from their associated corpses.  And buried so deep that only half the inscriptions are legible.  What do our attitudes mean when this is acceptable but a fun snapshot is an outrage?

I walked further and had a choice.  I could either walk to the right of the wall, into open space with grass and pretty trees and graves in places through the whole quite massive churchyard.  Or I could walk to the left of the wall, down a path that probably wasn't really meant to be a path - or at least was becoming very overgrown and forgotten.  That way led into the woods and the wall continued to be lined with graves.

I took a decision.  Getting good at decisions now.  I may not be able to decide where to have a quick drink.  But I could manage to decide how to explore a graveyard.  By then I was feeling very happy and was loving being there.  If I hadn't wandered through a gateway and past some houses I would never have found this place of wonder.

Yes.  The graves continued.  Ripped from their original sites.  Separated from those people they were sacred to the memory of.  Buried.  And neglected.  I quite like neglected grave sites.  In these places life triumphs.  Death is not the end.  How can it be when there is so much abundance of life even in the dead places?

Further up the path it became increasingly overgrown - and there was no exit at the far end.  I loved it.  I loved the atmosphere, the light through the trees, the smell of the victorious nature.  These sacred sites were still sacred.  Perhaps far more sacred for being swallowed up in that victory.

I couldn't help wondering though why people would be so enraged by those photographs of fun when nobody was being enraged by realities such as this:

Again, Sacred to the Memory of ...

I looked up from the victorious life around the stones.  And I saw even more victorious life.  The trees of the wood, perhaps holding more wisdom than anything in that place.  The tree looked down upon me and said "In this moment all is at peace."  Peace.  Truly.

The beauty of the tree triumphs over the grave.  We all may triumph over the grave through the way we live as individuals, as a species.  Whether we triumph beyond it I will leave to your own beliefs about the soul of our glorious being.  And if we humans manage through our foolishness to destroy all the trees then the beauty of the Earth will triumph over that grave.  The universe will triumph until that too dies and is lost.  And then what?

From the dead end - very much a living end - I walked back from the not-path and back onto the path and I couldn't stop taking photos.  There are a lot.  Far more than I've included here.  I was filled with joy to be there.

This is in memory of Elizabeth and Thomas Eggleston.  They died nearly 200 years ago.  Is this a fit way to remember them?  After 200 years, should we remember them at all?  Should we imagine the lives they lived and the way they would have loved and struggled?  They must have had good times.  But they had sorrow too.  The stone tells of two children also buried, both of whom died in infancy as many children did then.  As many children still do across the world.  What does the sanctity of life mean when so many die so young?  What does the sanctity of death mean?  If it's acceptable to treat a grave site like this when Elizabeth died in 1826, can we treat a grave like this for an Elizabeth who died in 2006?  If not, what is the cut off point?

Truly the way we treat graves tells us a lot about ourselves.  One thing may be acceptable and another thing unacceptable.  And we will disagree about what those things are.

And all these things are just our way of dealing with death.  Our cultural ways.  They're not shared in other cultures where a corpse will be burned or left for vultures.  Where shrines are erected in homes to honour ancestors.  Where a body must be buried that day.  There are many ways now and there have been many others before.  Are any of them more right than any other?

And our ways are changing too.  It wasn't long ago that cremation would have been totally unacceptable for many Christians.  The idea was that a body should not be cremated because then how can we expect it to be resurrected when Jesus returns?  So cremation was impossible.  That's changed.  You won't find many Christians now who would see the cremation might cause them any problems at all in their afterlife.  As faith changes, and as faith sometimes dies it's own death, our attitudes change too.

I think this century will be an interesting one as far as our attitudes go.  More and more we're entering into a post-religious society where many more people belief that physical death is the end.  We have one life.  And then it's over.  What difference will have have to the ways we choose to treat a human corpse?  At this point we're only just beginning to find out.

I've typed more than I meant.  The plan was to post a load of pictures of gravestones.  Then I started thinking.  A set of thoughts that lead me to questions but which haven't led me to answers as I've typed.

One last picture.  I left the overgrown wooded part of the graveyard and I met a friend.  She's called Kate and she was the most fluffy, friendly, joyous person I met that day.  She wouldn't stop moving for long enough that I could take photos.  There's just this one.  A beautiful bundle of joy who couldn't care less about death and graves and about what will happen to her own body when she dies.

Maybe Kate can teach us something.  Just get on and live.

You have this life.  Live it and embrace the moments.

The very gorgeous Kate

[2187 words]

A Grand Day Out In Durham - 3: Walking The River Wear And Finding The Joy

After all my moaning yesterday, today is not a moan day.

I may not like the cathedral.  I may feel pretty bloody awful inside it.  But Durham is not just a cathedral.  It's a city with much that I like and I look forward to going back and exploring some more when I have a day on which I have lots of energy sufficient for visiting a city rather than escaping to the back of nowhere on a walk.  Yesterday was a walk day and apart from tiredness, getting overwhelmed, getting giddy and losing my balance, and getting so lost that I finished the walk in a different place than I'd been planning, apart from all that it was excellent.  I found some amazing and surprising places and much beauty.  The surprises began minutes after getting off the bus in Chester-le-Street and they kept on coming.  Now that I know the way I can walk it again and not walk down the wrong roads and paths.  There are places on that walk I want to see again.

I want to see Durham again.  Maybe sometime soon I will.

After visiting the cathedral and having lunch in Alington House I walked back down the hill to the river.  I felt very tired.  The cathedral experience had drained me a lot and it was tempting to cross back over the bridge, get the bus, and just go home and hide in silence.  Instead I stood on the bridge and looked down at the river.  And I looked along the river too.  And Clare saw that it was good.

Blob Thing decided it was good too and he was happy to have his photo taken.  It was a challenge as he didn't want to fall into the river and couldn't balance on the bridge very well.  Blob said that he wanted to walk by the river.  I agreed that it was a good idea.  Durham sits on a big bend in the River Wear and there are paths on both sides (I think) that run from the road bridge at one end of the bend to the road bridge at the other.  It looked quiet down there.  It looked much more peaceful than the bridge we were standing on, more peaceful than a bus journey would be.

So I walked down to the riverside and looked back at the bridge we had stood on.  I've walked round at least part of the bend in the river before.  It was several years ago and I was with my parents.  It hadn't been the easiest day for me because I had a streaming cold.  My souvenir of Durham, by necessity, was a packet of handkerchiefs!  My mother hadn't liked the cathedral either and didn't have many kind words to say about the city.  She did enjoy seeing the river though.

It's a shame that my parents were not able to see my life develop in Newcastle or the discoveries I've made about myself.  My mother died of cancer a week before I was officially diagnosed by a psychiatrist as being transgender.  I didn't need a psychiatrist to tell me that!  But that psychiatric assessment and diagnosis meant that I was able to begin medical treatment.  Two years on and my hormone levels are actually starting to bear some relation to what they're meant to be.  My mother would have loved all the photos on my blog - and Blob's blog too.  She kept a daily blog for many years and it was often filled with photos of the places my parents visited and the people they met.

If you want to take a look at her blog, it's still at http://grandma-p-ramblings.blogspot.co.uk/

My dad, by the time my mother died, was in a care home.  He has frontal lobe dementia and the progression of that illness was horribly swift.  I haven't seen him in a year - my mental health has meant that I haven't been able to get to Sussex to be with him - but will be there at the start of September.  So far the thought of that hasn't caused me to completely break down as it did last time when my visit was booked and I had to cancel it for my own wellbeing.  I would not have survived the visit in one piece, of that I am totally certain.  But next month I will be there.

Back to the river.

It was inevitable that I would spot a tree and need to take a picture of it.  A panorama.  My phone decided to do it like this.

If you stand on your head it might make more sense.  The top is the ground, the middle is the sky, and the bottom are the branches of the trees that were behind me when I started taking the picture.

Something I love about Durham is the amount of steps leading to different places.  Some are narrow passageways in the streets, each of which invite me to explore, experience and take pictures of.

Some are like this, pretty flights of stairs, stretching up into the distance from the river, rising through the woods.  For me, walking up or down a place like this is a far better experience than walking up or down the aisle and nave of a cathedral.  I look at the tree and get a greater sense of god which is creativity, life, beauty, and meaning than I ever do in a building.

And, though I am no longer a Christian, I find that my experience of the divine, of the ground of meaning, of that life giving source, and of the Christ that is within us is more "Biblical" than the construction of cathedrals.



For what does the Bible say?

Stephen addressed the Sanhedrin in Acts chapter seven.  During the speech he says this:

“However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:

⁴⁹ “‘Heaven is my throne,
    and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me?
says the Lord.
    Or where will my resting place be?
⁵⁰ Has not my hand made all these things?’

It wasn't a very popular speech.  Three verses later - just after he finally mentioned Jesus, "the righteous One", - he got stoned to death, the first Christian martyr.

I am not a Jew like Stephen was.  I am no longer a gentile Christian.  I don't believe in a personal God in control (or out of control) of things.  It doesn't matter whether that Biblical God is so loving everyone that he sends his son to save us or whether that Biblical God is so jealous and narrow that he commands his people to commit genocide.  The Bible says it's the same God and that God does not change.  No variation whatsoever in the Father of Lights.  And thus the Christian God is still the God of genocide, still the God who commanded all those things in the Old Testament that most of us would find utterly repugnant if they were preached today.

I don't believe.  And yet at this point I am in agreement with Stephen.  I am in agreement with Isaiah who Stephen quotes.  My god does not live in houses made my human hands.  No.  My god lives within me, within all of us, and in the spectacularly awesome universe around us.  No.  That's not quite right.  My god doesn't live.  My god is life.  Not just the life of a plant or animal.  But the life that is the music of the stars and the atoms.  My god is found when I stand and breathe deeply and realise that I am surrounded by wonder, filled with wonder with each breath, and that I am myself wonder.

Right.  Back to the river.  I apologise.  I didn't mean to talk about cathedrals again.  I didn't mean to divert into something that could easily have become some kind of sermon about wonder and awe and adoration and all sorts of other beautiful words in the life of a non-theist.

I don't just love trees.  I don't even just love nature.  I find that I am quite into bridges too.  Blob Thing has been getting into them and it's become something of an obsession with him to be photographed with as many bridges as possible.  That's another reason he wants to return to Durham.  He missed out on the pictures.  He's got pictures of himself by all the bridges on the Wear from the sea as far as Fatfield and lots of other bridges too.  But not the ones in Durham because he hadn't become obsessed by the time of our visit.

So here are a couple of bridges.  They are very different to one another.

This is Kingsgate Footbridge, constructed in 1963.  It is now a Grade 1 listed structure.

The second bridge, also Grade 1 listed, is Prebends Bridge, constructed in 1778.  Since 2011 it has been closed to traffic and is now just a footbridge.

There's a website I've come to love while starting to explore the area near my home.  It's http://www.bridgesonthetyne.co.uk and it's fascinating.  It also covers the Wear and several other nearby rivers.  When I write something about a bridge I've often found the information there.

It strikes me that people might think some of what I write is a little odd.  When I write "Blob Thing thinks ..." or "Blob Thing says ..." you may wonder if my sanity should be called into question.  Of course Blob is just a handmade soft toy.  Of course, objectively speaking, he's not really talking or jointly writing his own blog or even sometimes dictating the whole thing.  But that doesn't matter to me.  It's a much more interesting life to have Blob as a friend and much more fun to have a soft toy with attitude!

I'm not the only strange person.  Whoever sculpted this has to have been slightly weird too.  On the other side there are places to sit.  I would have sat too and listened to the magic of the river had the places not been occupied by other people enjoying themselves.

Yes. It's Prebends Bridge again.  From the other side.  Blob is wishing that he was in the photo too!

Continuing the walk round the river I looked up and near the top of the bank I spotted a stone structure sticking out.  There was a path leading up to it.  But not from the riverside.  The path and steps began halfway up the hill.  Here is a part of it:

I've just been looking it up and I am so pleased I did.  I found a webpage that talks of the ancient, healing and holy wells of Country Durham.  Just recently I've become a little more fascinated by wells and have lots of books about them on my wish list.  Blob's sister Winefride was named after a saint associated with a holy well in Wales.  And I am wanting to learn more about wells.  It's a great page and it tells me that what I had climbed to get to was St. Cuthbert's Well.  It also tells me that I have five more holy wells to find within Durham City.  That information is very exciting for me.  Now I want to go back possibly even more than Blob Thing does.  Woo hoo!  Wells!

St. Cuthbert's Well has the largest sandstone surround of any well in Britain.  The inscription on the well has a date of 1600 or 1660.  Of course we know that the remains of St. Cuthbert are in the cathedral but nobody knows anything of the history of the well.  In looking it up I've been led to another webpage and a site that is making me very excited indeed.  This one.  It says the well can only be reached with great difficulty.  I wouldn't call it great difficulty.  But it would certainly have been easier to stay by the river and not decide that I had to climb up to see what the structure was.

Here's the view from the well.  The top half is easy enough - although some of the steps are missing.  But the bottom half is just a steep and muddy slope.  I'm glad I made the effort.  Visiting the well was worthwhile.  And finding the two websites was joyous.

From there I followed the river to the next road bridge.

I had started my walk feeling very tired and dispirited.  I felt a lot better after it.  I was still tired though and decided that I'd done enough for one day.  I'd find a quiet cafe, have a quiet drink, and would then head home.  That was my resolution.  It turned out to be a resolution I couldn't keep.  Because Durham revealed something wonderful to me as I hunted for a suitably quiet place to rest.



[2154 words]

A Grand Day Out In Durham - 2: Moaning About The Cathedral

A quick post.  [edit: It's not quick!]

Two months ago I visited Durham and for part of the day I was a good tourist.  Well perhaps not a good tourist.  But I made the attempt and went to visit the cathedral.  It's famous.  The architecture is celebrated widely and it certainly is an impressive building.  I have to admit that.  But on that day I was not feeling much like celebrating buildings.  I also have to admit that I believe that these buildings were of their time but that time, if it has not yet passed, is passing quickly.  A building such as this, impressive though it is, is in the process of becoming an anachronism, a museum to the way that things used to be done - and that's not quite a way that I want to celebrate wholeheartedly.

Wow!  I'm a right grumpy creature aren't I!

Well I took a few photos of the main facade of the impressive building.  It's a good word isn't it?  Facade.  I'm not going to tell you which of the two meanings I'm most referring to either.

I couldn't take pictures of the inside of the building.  I can understand that it's a place of worship as well as being a tourist attraction and some people get annoyed with people treating places of worship as a tourist attraction.  Gotta have some respect.  Gotta honour God in that place by not taking pictures.  But it is a tourist attraction.  Most people there aren't there for the lunchtime communion service that takes place in the little chapel of St. Cuthbert.  They're there because it's an impressive building full of old things and some pretty things too.  I know my parents were very disappointed not to be able to take a picture.  Blob Thing was quite distraught about not being able to be photographed inside and we decided that five minutes walking round was more than enough for us.

And I can understand that such a building is expensive to maintain and that postcards and guidebooks earn more money than someone taking a photo.  Hey, here's an idea.  Charge a visitor a couple of quid and give them a photography permit.  That way the punters are happier and the cathedral gets some precious cash.  To be honest that is a problem I have with cathedrals.  They are expensive to maintain.  Much of the running of a cathedral has nothing to do with God and just with stonework.  I actually have a problem with religious organisations spending so much cash on maintaining property when there are homeless people begging on the streets below.  Wow, you've got a beautiful building there.  It swallows your resources, precious resources given by the people of God, lottery grants and profits from stocks and shares and investments.  I might be an extremist but I think that way of doing things needs to die.  If it's a museum, a lovely tourist attraction, then let it be one.  But I don't believe having such a building does anything to the glory of God that can't be done - and perhaps better - in another place.

Yep.  I am grumpy.

It's odd.  I actually like some cathedrals.  In fact I like the majority that I've been in.  The two in Newcastle are great.  They feel like good places to be in.  And I number one cathedral, Westminster Catholic Cathedral, among my favourite buildings.  It's one where the primary reason for its existence is still worship rather than tourism although of course it gets tourists as well as pilgrims.  I have been both a tourist and a pilgrim in that place and every visit has inspired and lifted me.  All those cathedrals feel good.  I don't share the faith anymore but they feel good.  Whatever or whoever we think of when the word "god" passes through our head, there is something special in those cathedrals.  I walk into them and can feel it and my body and soul tingle.  Visiting Wrexham Cathedral a couple of weeks ago just felt strange.  I used to visit as a faithful Catholic and it was there that I experienced the "Rite of Election" that takes place before adults are received into the Catholic Church.  Visiting again after more than five years brought memories to the surface.  Things I look back on with pleasure.  And things it is easy to regret.

In general I enjoy visiting churches.  If I'm somewhere and there's a church open then there's a likelihood that I'll go and look round.  If there's a church open I'll be disappointed that I couldn't go in.  St. George's Jesmond was great.  Visiting St. Andrew's churches - Catholic and Anglican ones - in Newcastle is a joy.  And Blob and I had a very good time indeed in Hexham Abbey.

But Durham Cathedral?

Nope.  I just don't feel that when I walk into Durham Cathedral.  I know a lot of people love the place.  But when I walk in I feel oppression.  I feel squashed.  I feel very uncomfortable indeed.

So once I'd done my tourist duty and walked once around the place, I left.  And I think Blob thing was very pleased to leave too.

I liked Durham.  I honestly did.  I liked it.  And my liking for it increased and increased in every moment after leaving the cathedral.  I enjoyed finding somewhere very different for lunch.  I enjoyed walking by the river.  I enjoyed exploring and the art gallery.  I enjoyed the church I entered later in the day. And I especially enjoyed the graves and graveyard I found.  I took a few cathedral pictures.  I took about a hundred graveyard pictures and felt immensely good there.

So here.  Some pictures of the facade of the cathedral.  Impressive, isn't it?!

I have to admit - three admissions in one post - that I really like the cross on the war memorial.

Sometimes my phone does very strange things when I take panorama pictures.

I assure you that the towers of the cathedral are not at this angle.  If they were the building would be even more famous, outranking Pisa in tourist destinations for people desiring to see a wonky building.

I cheated, I cheated.

This was taken withing the cloisters of the cathedral.  Yes, I broke the no photography rule.

Within the main building it would have been harder as if any of the many volunteers would pounce on you angrily if you dared to take out a camera and try to take a picture of your child.  Or your soft toy.

And this isn't the facade.  The camera has been weird again.  The building is not curved.  I like it though.  I think it's far funkier as a curved structure!







So that's Durham Cathedral.  Maybe one day I'll be there again and might suddenly fall in love with the place.  Maybe an enthusiast will take me there and try to show me why they're so enthusiastic.  Maybe God will appear to me and there will be some kind of major epiphany and I'll find myself transfigured by the work of the Supreme Being.  The first two possibilities are more likely than the last.

Tomorrow - or when I manage it - I'll continue to talk about Durham.  One thing I can promise you is that I won't be moaning about the rest of the day.  Yep.  Clare won't be such a miserable old grouch when it comes to discussing the river and the graves.  By the time she reaches those graves she'll be in celebratory mood and, although you can't see her as she types, she'll probably be happy flapping about it just as she was when she found the place.

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.

A Grand Day Out in Durham - 1: Walking in the Places

I say this a lot.  But I am very behind in my quest to write blog posts.  Very behind.  Today I'm going to start writing a little about a day out that feels like it was a very long time ago - June 3rd.  By the time I finish writing about the day more than two months will have passed since that day.  It's a strange thing.  On the journey back to Newcastle I was planning out what to post about the day and I was really looking forward to posting the pictures that I'll be posting in a few days time.  I had it all planned.  I had even linked it to a news report from that day and the horror people on Facebook had been expressing over something that I didn't find in the slightest bit horrific.  I found the reactions quite crazy if I'm honest.  People have a lot of ideas about death and about what should happen to a corpse and it seems that they count it a terrible thing when people have innocent fun in a graveyard.  But that's not for today.  You can look forward to lots of pictures of graves in a few days.  A bit of excitement for summer!

I got home that day.  Ready to write.  And then wrote something else.  Oops.  And then kept writing it and writing more and more of it.  For June 3rd turned out to be the day on which Blob Thing began his blog.  I managed to keep up my own blog through June with photos of other days out and even some writing.  But Blob's blog has grown and these days he is almost impossible to shut up.  I don't mind too much.  People say that a writer should write something each day.  Something.  I'm not sure that when they say that they quite mean free writing a long ramble about a soft toy.  At least it is something.  I am writing.  And for that I am glad.  Blob's blog has now happened every single day for sixty days and I am surprised by this.

But I am very behind.  And so today I want to say something about a trip to Durham and post a few pictures taken at different points in the day.  From tomorrow I'll be posting pictures of some of the places I walked round that day.

Blob Thing has already posted about the day.

Now it's my turn!

One thing you notice as you walk round the old city of Durham is the number of little alleyways and passages and narrow staircases.  I find things like that quite exciting.  I dare say that there will come a day when I will attempt to explore every single one of them.  There's one with a special radical bookshop at the top and next time I'm in Durham I want to pay that a visit.  On this day I explored a few.  The main street up to the cathedral was very busy and I wasn't feeling great and it was a pleasure to leave the people behind.  Some steps led up here and I just wanted to enter into the quiet.  Newcastle has some great steps hidden away that run to and from the riverside but I think the narrow steps of Durham are almost more joyful.  What do you think of this?

At the top of those steps the path turns a corner, runs past and under the buildings and then turns again and leads here.  I was really very pleased to find this.  The main street could wait.  This was worth exploring and I wanted to know where it went.  I confess that as I turned the corner and saw this sight I got a bit happy flappy.

So where did the steps lead?  I will tell you.  They led along a narrow path.  The path continued.  And then it turned and went down a path.  Down some steps.

And straight back to the main street up the hill - assuming it was the same street which I'm not sure of as I haven't quite mastered Durham geography yet.  I walked round the city centre during that day.  And then on a later day I arrived in Durham after a long walk and found myself in the city centre and didn't recognise anything.  It was a large piece of city centre that I had entirely missed when exploring the first time.  For a while it was quite confusing.

Yes, I walked up lots of steps.  I walked down lots of steps.  I passed no ways off the path that would lead anywhere.  And I arrived almost back where I began.  Worthless?  No.  It was well worth it, for the journey not the destination.  I often think that about towns anyway.  The journey means more to me than the destination.  If I hadn't explored I wouldn't have found a sight that made me happy flap.

Back on the main street to the cathedral I had no choice but to follow it.  That's not true.  I had choices of course.  But I wanted to get to the cathedral and walking back down the hill wouldn't have been an efficient way to get to a bit building at the top of it.  So I walked up with all the other people.  I was on the proper tourist trail too.  Which was fine because I was being a tourist.

At the top of the hill I spotted a post box.  There is a long family tradition to photograph post boxes and who am I to break that tradition.  I quite like them too although I am not a true post box nerd and can't give you the serial numbers of all the different types or spot which foundry made which box.  I liked this box.  It's a Victorian hexagonal post box.  They're quite rare.  It's not the only one I've ever seen as there are at least two in Newcastle.  One is in Jesmond and the other is in Chinatown.

After visiting the cathedral (photos taken outside will follow in the next post) and the cathedral grounds and not particularly enjoying the experience I wanted lunch.  I wanted it to be a cheap lunch.  And I wanted it to be somewhere quiet.  Walking back down the hill I struck lucky.  I spotted a cafe sign pointing into a building.  This was Alington House, a place used by lots of community groups through the week.  It was definitely quiet.  There were two other people there.  And it was cheap.

It's true that the menu was very limited.  Very limited indeed.

I could have a ham and cheese toastie.  Or I could have a cheese and onion toastie.   Or I could have a ham and onion toastie.  That was the entire menu.  But that's OK.  I like toasted sandwiches and they allowed me to have something that wasn't listed on the menu:  A ham, cheese, and onion toastie.  It was well filled and well made.  The food and a good mug of tea only cost £1.50.  For my purposes it couldn't have been better for lunch.

After lunch I walked down the hill the rest of the way and decided that it would be very nice to walk round the outside of the old city.  The River Wear in Durham bends almost back upon itself, with the cathedral at the top of the hill in the middle of the bend.  If it had bent back much further then the cathedral would be sitting on an island.  I walked from the bridge at one end of the bend to the bridge at the other end and enjoyed it a lot.  Photos will follow in a later post.

I could have left the river.  Not far past the first bridge, heading up from the riverside path, there were these steps.  Another of the many passages to explore.  And there were paths and steps and passages scattered all the way along the route.  At one point there was a path that only began half way up the hill.  I just had to explore that one because it was only half a path.  It led up to a well of some kind.

After walking by the river on a warm day and having explored the charity shops too - in which I bought one CD, an album by Beccy Owen that I've played quite a bit - I was tired.  I wanted to have a drink.  And then I wanted to go home.  I'd had enough of Durham for one day.  So I walked up a hill because a sign pointed to a cafe - not that I went to the cafe, but the sign pointed to it.

Part way up the hill was another sign, pointing to the Crushed Chilli gallery.  I was knackered.  But I decided I'd take a look.  I liked it.  The owner makes lots of things out of glass and she allows other local artists to exhibit and sell what they've made.  She was very friendly.  One day I might go back and join in one of the workshops she runs and make my own glass item.  Blob Thing enjoyed himself too.  He blogged about the gallery a month before blogging about the rest of the day.  It was his fourth ever post back in the days before he started to develop a life of his own and an ability to talk more than is usual for a toy.  That post contained only 241 words, almost the shortest of any of them.  This morning he dictated 1700 words to me.  Yes, that toy has taken over my life!  Here he is, enjoying the gallery.

From the gallery I (we) walked further up the hill.  There was a church there and inside the church was a choir practising sacred choral music.  In that church, unlike in the cathedral, I could have taken photos.  But I didn't want to disturb the singers too much.  This is the church of St. Margaret and personally I preferred it to the cathedral.  It felt more real.  In the background you can see Durham Castle and the cathedral.  The cathedral had drained me.  A lot.  St. Margaret's didn't.  I was feeling a lot better.

Blob has already posted pictures of himself outside the church.  Here's the one he took of me.  (Or perhaps I took it myself and am only pretending that a soft toy can take photos and dictate long blog posts.)

Here's the church from the other side.  That path leads to a gateway.  I decided to explore and see what lay beyond.  I am immensely glad that I did.  The resulting photos will form two blog posts in a few days time.  I absolutely adored the graveyard beyond and the fact that so much of it wasn't clean and sterile and uniform like a war grave cemetery but was overgrown and many of the gravestones weren't in their original position.  I loved wandering.

Yes, I like graveyards.  I do.  I spent time in one just a couple of days ago and maybe one day that will form a blog post too.  Maybe.  Bothal churchyard was great - and yesterday I was regaled with stories about how the whole village is owned by one man who chooses who to rent the houses too and how there is a tale that the entire place is a large witches coven.  It's a good story.  As for me, I may write a story based on the place - or at least based on the inscription on one of the graves.  It happened to rhyme and I think playing with it might be enjoyable.

After all that exploring I felt a lot more energetic than I had done after leaving the cathedral.  But I still needed that drink.  And it really was time to get home.  Up another hill I found a wonderful place for a drink.  This is the Jumping Bean.  I recommend it.  At that time of day it was quiet too.  I decided that it would be a good place to return to when I'm visiting Durham.  And so I bought a customer loyalty badge.  Blob has blogged about it.  He enjoyed being there.  I think I'll be blogging about it too.

So that was Durham.  Serious advice:  If you're there then wander quickly round the cathedral.  And then explore.  There are surprises to be found and I personally think they are a heck of a lot more thrilling than the atmosphere of the cathedral.  I felt quite oppressed and squashed there and was so glad to get out of the building again.  Tomorrow I will write of it.  Or I will write of it when I manage to write of it.  Blob Thing might take over again!


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