Monday 30th September 2024

 

The alarm went off at 7.30am, I hit the snooze button only to then wake properly just before 8am. I'm on my way to work ( though as I discovered later I'd actually booked today off as leave but then forgot about this additional day).

However my mind immediately thought of time passing as the theme for this final post. I've been on leave, that's in the past now. Each second is in the past a second later, and life as I age dwells more on the past as the years advance.

I arrived in the office and logged onto the work system. It was 9.42am, as I write this it is 13.40 and I'm sitting outside on a very dull day with rain spots in the air. Somehow another four hours have passed in my life, tik-tok-tik-tok. That journey from birth to death is never ending. 

Though all has changed while I've been away and a huge reorganization of BBC Audio division is now going to happen. I'll need to reapply for my job in March as all 42 production management roles are closing in their current form. The BBC as I joined thirty one years ago is gasping it's last breath as time has finally caught up with it.

As has happened with coal power. Today the UK finally switches off it's last coal fired power station, and in doing so effectively ends the Victorian driven industrial revolution in many ways. 

If I return to this blog when approaching 65 I don't expect to be working at the BBC, so this image of two grapefruit (for breakfast this week) and my lunch on the BBC's Club terrace will be the last ever one I mention on here. It's an interesting feeling, my last sit on the terrace and noting what I do on my lunch hour. To my right as I sit I can see my old NHU Radio office, the window directly above the bay window. We had the attic rooms too. It was sitting in that office in 2015 that we were told NHU Radio was going to be dismantled by the then Director General, Tony Hall. Actually we weren't told, the closure only appeared in the transcript and picked up by Sarah Blunt. That closure came as a huge shock to us all including Julian Hector our Editor as he hadn't been told. Since then there's been a lot of changes; some good, some bad, most just different.

And now as I approach 2pm my lunch break comes to an end, and so must this year long blog. It's been a fascinating twelve months, challenging in some ways, but as I write these last words I feel in myself it's a time of personal change ahead of me. No doubt some of this will be good, some bad, most though will be just different. So will I return in the autumn of 2028 and begin this a fourth time? We'll see. 

The leaves of autumn are beginning to steadily fall now, they are blowing in the breeze, their usefulness to trees now at an end. A similarity with my time on this spinning Planet, the feeling that my usefulness to society is coming to an end. Soon I'll be a burden. But keep looking forward, that's the key, spring is just a few weeks away now, the first early daffodils will flower in 12 weeks or so. 

With every new step I now take then remaining unrecorded here, it is au revoir, not finis prope.

Sunday 29th September 2024

Caught up with Annali today down on the Somerset Levels. So great to catch up for the second time this year, after not seeing each other for years and years. It's not quite half way between us but the Avalon Marshes hub was our rendezvous point.  After a coffee then it was off for a walk, retracing our route in July to Canada hide but then pushing on to the Hawk and Owl Trust site which is where the images were taken. Autumn really is settling in now and on our return the wind was whipping up, removing a number of leaves from the trees. A few more windy days and the foliage damage will be evident.  Friendship is important as is catching up regularly with friends.

Saturday 28th September 2024

 

The reason I took this image of the M5 between Clevedon and Gordano is that nearly eleven years ago I spent three hours stationary here after the motorway was closed due to an accident. Then I was on my way into the office and it developed into what was the second ever posting on this blog. Today I was a passenger, quite unusual for me, heading to the Watermill Theatre near Newbury. I just had the urge to mark this spot years later as we drove by.

The image gives away the theatre production we'd come to see, the King's Speech. We got here just after 12 noon, with a lunch booked before the performance. The restaurant here does a lovely pre show menus, today Julie had roast vegetables with chickpea pie followed by fruit salad, and I went for the chicken followed by apple and bramble crumble.

We had around an hour to kill before the performance so sat outside in the sun just absorbing the atmosphere. The play was superbly acted, possibly the best performance we'd seen at the Watermill. It was truly outstanding. How this small theatre puts on brilliant productions time and time again I'll never know, but they do. And that is recognised by the trade as this year they've won the Stage's Top Theatre of the Year award. That's some achievement for a theatre that's lost it's Arts Council funding too. 

Just a lovely, lovely day in West Berkshire by a chalk stream, watching a fabulous play.

Friday 27th September 2024

On the final 'proper' day of my weeks leave the weather turned out to be lovely. Thus after a relaxed morning, which included paying the final £685  balance of the refurbished kitchen, Julie and I walked to the Owl in the Oak cafe for some exercise. They've been donated a new bike for their entrance this week, nice to see though I'm slightly saddened this 1950's bike will now just rust away and never be ridden again. Sadly too we got there too late for any food but thoroughly enjoyed the 3.3 mile walk we did, complete with the only rain shower during the whole day which was typical for this week of being caught in the rain.

After all this exercise it was back home to flick through my latest book purchases which arrived by courier this morning. The Dixon's Cubs book is interesting in that this 2003 reprint was for members of the John Moore Society. Only 350 were printed, this one is number 36 and signed by John Moore's widow Lucile just six weeks before her death in September of that year. A lovely connection to Moore himself as she held that book briefly, knew Moore of course and therefore connects me. Fanciful thought maybe but that is how history works, by association and direct contact however tenuous.

Thursday 26th September 2024

 

The forecast today was 'a respite from the rain before the next wet spell arrives'. So where to go and what to do on my penultimate day of leave this week? The top option was to go to Bossington near Minehead, ahead of that I checked the three webcams I look at now. Lyme Regis above, Porlock Weir below and Boscastle Harbour below that. Something said to me record each view at around 8.30am. Which I did. As you can see there's not much happening at either place.

Bossington it was then. Somehow we managed to avoid all the rain showers that we could see trundling over Exmoor, just the odd spot on the wind reaching us. There's a lovely cafe in Bossington which did soup with cheese on toast, and unusual combination but delicious. Thereafter a walk up to the coastguard hut on Hurlstone Point, with a return to Bossington via the beach which is where we sat for a while, with four ravens overhead to keep us company.

As we sat we watched the rain barrelling in over from Foreland Head so we decided to head back to the cafe (avoiding the school party on a field trip) where the rain only lasted for a moment, and we were under cover with a hot chocolate and pot of tea. That was the last rain of the day. On the way home we drove to Bossington Hill as we're booked to do a dark skies event there in November. I'd never been up there before but there are stunning views. 

All in all a very good day dodging the rain which has battered many areas between the M4 corridor and Nottinghamshire. Some areas of Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire have had three times the September rainfall amounts in a few days.

Wednesday 25th September 2024

I'm now into the final week of this year long blog. Fitting then that I'm on leave from work to do some interesting things during the final week. Today I was in Wells having lunch at the glorious Good Earth cafe, a cauliflower cheese with a red wine gravy, absolutely delicious. My parents discovered the Good Earth cafe thirty years ago and the quality hasn't changed at all, so I did think I'd record today's menu, on the blackboard.

Home and a flick through the papers, followed by Jane Eyre, the 2011 version on DVD which I bought in the Oxfam shop for £1.99. It was very good indeed. I also bought the Kings Speech and The Way We Live Now, Oxfam did well today while I was on holiday.

Tuesday 24th September 2024

This is most peculiar. On September 11th this year I visited Boscastle in Cornwall for the first time in eleven years. Today I returned to Boscastle, with Julie this time, just 13 days later. The top image is  from an even earlier visit, 10th May 2010. The one below from today. What is remarkable is that the rocks around me in 2010 are identical to 2024. Now if course you'd expect that in geological terms but with all those tourists milling about up there and windy eroding weather you'd expect some change in 14 years. However apart from the change in coat colour and hat, everything looks the same, even the vegetation.

Sadly the improving weather forecast didn't materialise and it remained cloudy for most of the day, except that is when we popped in the Riverside at 3.30pm for a late lunch. While we were in there the sun shone down. After Julie had enjoyed her fish finger sandwich we headed back up the hill to the viewpoint. By the time we'd reached the top the sun had disappeared to be replaced by cloud.

Whatever the weather though, being at Boscastle is perfect.