Be careful what you wish for...

Pictures from our walk last Sunday - a brilliant sunny afternoon in the White Peak. It's a totally different environment to the Dark Peak, all limestone walls and pasture land rather than gritstone and heather moorland.
Stark but beautiful in its own way. The Hills in the distance below are part of the Dark Peak - Win Hill and Bamford Edge.

This is the Lafarge Quarry at Castleton. It's a classic blot on the landscape but provides work, pensions and social facilities in the middle of the High Peak so not to be sniffed at.

The view toward Castleton with Mam Tor in the background.

I have been guilty recently of wishing my life away. Wanting to get onto the next stage and not necessarily appreciating what I’m doing in the here and now. It might be something to do with the season I suppose. I know everyone is supposed to love spring and I do, I do but I’m not so keen on the phony faux-spring. Where you feel as though spring is neeeaarly here but in reality nothing has changed beyond a bank of snowdrops and cheap daffs at the corner shop. So, you spend your days yearning for warm, light evenings and sunshine but they’re still months away.


Well, I’m a bit like that in the rest of my life at the moment. We’re moving house at the end of the month and now, finally the date is set and we’ve secured the place we really wanted. This is great news but the work involved in our getting into the house is daunting to say the least. Packing up my current house will be bad enough (and we’ve only been in for 6 months!!) but Richard has been in his flat for 10 years and needs to get that emptied packed up by the end of the month as well. Yikes! So I’m fast-forwarding to the point when we’re actually in the house and can enjoy life.


But of course nothing is that simple. I still need to do a load of works to the old house so that it can go on the market in April. I had taken a week off this month to make a start but life intervened. D had drained down the system so no water or heating and didn’t respond to my queries about rebooting it. So that was that opportunity to make concrete progress stymied. So that means I’m fast-forwarding again to when I can get on with those works which will probably be at the beginning of April. Frustration and delay.


Then there’s the Three Peaks Challenge. We’re booking weekends through April, May and June in readiness for the big event in July. All of which points forward. Although this matter is much, much more pleasurable than moving house or selling a house, believe me.


And finally there’s my weight. I’ve been blithely looking ahead to the point when I will be miraculously thinner and fitter. Expecting this to somehow happen. But I haven’t really been putting in the work to make it happen. Not living in the present. So, obviously, I’ve not made any real progress. I’ve not gained or anything but have hardly lost anything either. It requires real commitment, not just dreaming about the future, Lesley!


So, I sound a bit glum don’t I? But I’m not, not really. Just a bit overwhelmed by how much I have on my plate. Yesterday I felt genuinely glum and work was very hard but I told Rich and, when I got home, had a massive hug and lovely quiet evening in with a bottle of wine and football on the telly (Bah! Blasted ref in the Barcelona-Arsenal game…!) and now I feel much stronger. And Monday night was dancing. You really have to live in the present at dance class!! We did new steps in the cha cha…quite a long, complicated sequence and it was brilliant to re-connect with the dance we started off on learning on that very first day. We’re playing golf on Sunday morning with his brother. The dogs are loving all the training walks. Work is busy but interesting. We saw friends at the weekend. There are loads of things to be grateful for and to enjoy so I just need occasionally to lower my eyes from the horizon and look at what I have in my hands.