My Diet Begins...

Tuesday. 16 April, 2024

Second day back at work, though an early finish allowed me to do a little extra writing on my next novel, Familiar.

Also, I started my much-needed weightloss program today with an official weigh in. Gonna make it public in the hope it encourages me to make good progress on it. I'm healthy again, and back in work, so should hopefully be a lot more active again. I just have to keep off those addictive crisps!

As I finally left work, I couldn't help but take another Shadowme pic with this interesting shadow:

A New 100-Day-Project

 Saturday, 30 March, 2024

It was one of my better days yesterday. It started with me vising the marsh to get some shots of the high tide, continued with us almost completing the removal of all our things from the upstairs and attic of our charred house, and, after an evening's drive back to the caravan beneath the most fantastic of skies (see yesterday's post if you want to see it for yourself,) we watched continued watching the brilliant 3 Body Problem on Netflix! And in between all that, I finally picked up the courage to ask Tara, the daughter of my favourite author, if she would let me publish one of her Dad's unique manuscripts I have in my collection in my forthcoming tribute book to him. I cannot describe the elated feeling I got when she gave me her blessing 🙂 I am turning this venture into a '100-Day-Project', and the clock starts tomorrow. Time to plan...

In the afternoon, I finally took some pics of these trees by the Swansea dump I've been frequenting for the past few weeks.

We drove along the marsh road on the way back to the caravan and I stopped off briefly to take a short video of the small church there with it modern tweeting Swift boxes:

A beautiful evening ended the day, reminding us to always make the best of bad situation:

Family Planning

Saturday, 23 March, 2024#

One of the good things about staying in Llanrhidian is being able to see my brother acting just a few minutes down the road from me. Stepped out after the play to an amazing night's sky!

A Neighbourbood Walk

Saturday, 02 March, 2024

Unfortunately, the wonders of my fortnightly meds have worn off now (apparently it takes 16 weeks for them to build up in your system so that their effects last the full two weeks between injections). And so I am in a bit of a pickle again. At least the return of sleepless nights means I can increase my work on my Cold Comfort novel.

In the meantime, I am just going to try and keep myself as busy as again and try and take my mind off physical discomfort. With that in mind, I forced myself out of the house this morning and took a short walk around the neighbourhood:

The magic of a Spring sunshine

Last Christmas

The weathered paintwork reminded me of an atlas of long-lost continents

I visited my favourite Yew tree yesterday

 July 26, 2023

My day job is getting VERY stressful, and I can feel my anxiety issues starting to peak again. And so, even though I only have a couple of days of my annual leave remaining (until March 2024!), I needed to take a half day from the place to sort my head out. And so, accompanied by my good friend L8, we head down Gower for the afternoon, during which I visited my favourite Yew tree in the old graveyard in the tiny hamlet of Ilston.

Before the Chop

The entrance to Whiteford Burrow, the Gower Peninsula

I took a weekend constitutional down Whiteford Burrows last weekend - my favourite place on  the whole of the magnificent Gower Peninsula. My mission - to photograph the pine woodland there, much of which is now facing the chop!

Chilling amongst the trees, whose death knell has been sounded

The 16,000 step (thanks Fitbit) walk was something of a salutary experience, given that a large number of the trees I wandered amongst were going to be killed, some of them as soon as the following day!

Woodland at Whiteford Point

Chilling, Whiteford

Whiteford offers one of the quietest and more remote walks on the whole of the Gower Peninsula. And its pine trees, which have been a feature of this landscape here for a century, have been a much-loved  aspect of this area. So much so, in fact, that I have already made plans to have my ashes scattered amongst the trees here when my number is finally called. And although there appears to be sound ecological reasons for their decimation, I could not help but feel rather downhearted as I wandered amongst their soon-to-be decimated number.

Owl pellet, Whiteford Woods

Anyway, I will post more photos of the Whiteford's atmospheric woodland for posterity before the felling begins over on my Explore Gower website. {I will update this post with a link to that Explore Gower page when it goes live}....

Twmbarlwm ~ Into the Woods

The woodland looked more than enticing from the summit of Twmbarlwm. So much so that it would have been impolite to ignore the invite:

Twmbarlwm Summit, view from the woodland

A growing carpet of shamrocks

My walk through the wood was dominated by a solitary tree, which lay uprooted by some previous gale. The tree appeared like a fallen leviathan of the beast and my hungry camera devoured the scene with real gusto:

I spent quite a while investigating the fallen beast, and completed my exploration with a look at it large root system, which had been upended in whatever foe of a gale had toppled the large tree. There, snuggled in the gloom of the earth and tangled roots, I found this beauty of a fungi had found itself a new home:

I ran into a bit of trouble leaving Twmbarlwm Woods - a bit of a tricky situation with locals filling the entrance/exit to the woodland with dozens of bin bags, which they ceremoniously set alight. I luckily made my escape at the onset of the fire, squeezing past the growing flames into the entrance clearing, where I found myself amongst some youth mass gathering. They had obviously decided to make this their meeting place for their evening enjoyment, and they seemed genuinely shocked to see me emerging from their humungous camp fire and appearing amongst their midst. There was no further trouble and they were all apologetic and I moved swiftly on...