Saturday saw the anniversary of our move to Cumbria, on a wet and windy day 7 years ago. Weather-wise, it sometimes feels that things haven’t changed much during that time, but the storm last week battered the coastline of my village of Arnside, depositing tons of rubbish onto the pavements, roads and coastline wherever they happened to be close to the boiling tide.
For the last few years, I’ve made a weekend habit of clambering up Arnside Knott, heading over to Far Arnside (I wave in the general direction of the NWEM’s HQ from the top, honestly) and walking back home along the coast. I’m easy to spot at the top of the Knott – I’m the one that looks and sounds like an asthmatic lobster.
I’ve done the walk in a variety of challenging weather conditions from freezing rain and lethal icy surfaces, to sunshine so pleasantly warm I even felt the need to reveal my legs to the world (to the ramblers who had to witness that horror – I hope the therapy is working).
I’ve slipped and slithered through mud, and recently fell so heavily on wet rocks it probably registered on seismographs, or led the anti-fracking lobby to fear work had started despite their protests. It certainly fracking hurt the next morning, that’s for sure. I had assumed I’d find a few fallen branches on my walk, and I certainly did, plus some trees at less than optimal angles, and more whose thrashings in the gales, and proximity to field boundaries, had left dry stone walls levelled.
When I reached the edge of New Barns Caravan Park, amongst the mess of windswept debris was an unfamiliar bench, its timber clean and new. The plaque on it commemorated the life of someone who had died this year. Sad, of course, but the shock for me was that the year they were born matched mine. I had never come across this before, and walked on rather shocked and sobered.
My disturbed state of mind was echoed by what I found along the coastline. Firmly trodden paths on the stony shore were jumbled as the stones were churned by the angry tide, or obscured by mountains of twigs and branches, leaves and litter, plus other flotsam piled high by the waves.
All the foliage was flattened, and my stroll through familiar territory was now a jumbled wander through a rearranged and battered landscape. As if my storm-fed melancholy wasn’t bad enough, a dead sheep stared blankly at me from amongst the mess.
Normally I wish my walk alone with my thoughts could last longer. I was glad when this one came to an end.
Nature and life have a funny way of reminding you that your sense of cosy security can easily be destroyed in the blink of an eye of a storm.
This post first appeared as my 'Thank Grumpy it's Friday' column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 13th of December 2013. You can view the edited version the paper used here In case their readership couldn't work out what 'NWEM' stood for, they altered that to 'Evening Mail', and removed the line where 'fracking' was used to imply a different word...
One more column to go before Christmas. Then it all gets a little complicated. I normally submit my text for the Friday edition on Wednesday, but due to some big events taking place on those days, the paper's offices won't be operating, so I'll need to get copy to them on the Sunday beforehand.
This does present a slight problem around commenting on how nice Christmas was on Friday, when it hasn't even happened when I write it, or what an exciting New Year we had, when I've still got a few days to go when I'm sat in front of the laptop.
On the bright side, I don't tend to do topical stuff, so I can do what I usually do; grumble about something, and if it hasn't happened yet, just assume that it will have been dreadful and depressing.
That's the great thing about being a miserable sod - you can dispense gloom constantly, without having to worry if it's current or not.
(Still compilationing it. In a rare bit of trendiness, today's is "The Chillout Session" from 2001, featuring what were, then, quite happening tunes. Yo.)
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