This World of Contrasts

It has been time of contrasts and heaven knows that with all the terrifying sabre rattling that is going on in the world right now, at this moment, while I sit quietly and peacefully to fill the blank page of the diary before me today, listening to the last couple of days of the classic FM version of the pop charts where we are now inside the top two hundred as voted for by the loyal listenership.

The children are on Easter break holiday from school and families are sitting in the misery of the bank holiday traffic snarl ups. Steve and I are in a sort of reverse thinking mode (Why doesn’t that surprise anybody) because the very last thing we want to do on a bank holiday is the drive somewhere in the car suffering the torture of nose to tail cars supposedly out for a family treat.

In contrast to that numbers diminish to almost nothing if you count the souls making the annual pilgrimage out into the silent woodlands to witness the most pure beauty on the purple carpet that is spreading through the woods in Angmering Park that is accompanied by a perfume that can only have drifted down from heaven. The purple haze seems to rise slightly above the flowers themselves, spreading as far as your eyes can see through between the trees. It is a heart lifting sight, but it is as if it is a private club enjoyed by miniscule amount of visitors. On Friday there were no more than a dozen woodland wanderers and today again so few making a minimum of effort to see something so wondrous.

Having said that I have to admit that Steve and I and our friends and family visit our favourite local running and walking lands much earlier in the day, before many people have even got out of bed at the weekend.

Obviously people must giggle behind my back at the poor old deluded tree hugger, so in love with nature and beauty that to my complete joy is so easily accessible no more than two miles from my home.

We had a most enjoyable run along Monarchs Way and back on Friday morning breathing in that delicate air. There were deer a- plenty, Woodpeckers, Buzzards, Red Kites and of course the artificial amount of Pheasants. Joining with the Wood Anemones and the long awaited Bluebells there are now wild Violets and cowslips and tiny wild flowers that some people will call weeds that all add to my simple list of things that give pleasure as opposed to the military might that is being terrifyingly flaunted across the oceans of our marvellous world. 

The run this morning was very horsey indeed with the usual perfect forms of the fabulous race horses being taken out for exercise by the pop-pom helmeted riders plus many privately own more ordinary horse riding out for the sake of the owners exercise, in one of these small groups this morning there was a chestnut mare that was as wide as it was high one can only imagine that it was pregnant since it was shaped like a giant doughnut.

Although the weather has been on and off sunny/cloudy and holds the promise of summer it was quite cold again today as it was yesterday when we took a bike ride over to visit a friend Jørgen Christianson who had had an operation last week. We usually see him in swimming a couple of times per week and his wife Deirdre taking a gentle run on the seafront before meeting him after his swim exercise.  Jørgen was our first club treasurer and Deirdre was club secretary when we first founded Tuff Fitty Triathlon Club yonks years ago. Although Jørgen’s operation went well he had a few dodgy days afterwards and was transferred to St Richards in Chichester.

Steve and I turned up on their door step unannounced to check up on how he was doing. Deirdre managed to undo the system of locks and bolts that would not disgrace Fort Knox and seem slightly over the top for an average sized country bungalow. But each to their own level of security after all. Deirdre seemed pleased to see us after I had said that I hope we had not caught her in her Jammies but she went up the tell Jørgen that we had come to visit and soon he was decent enough attired to receive us and was positively beaming which was great. He was just about walking unaided and that was good to see. 

We stayed for a while and told them both all about our lovely two days in London and in detail about Madama Butterfly at the Royal Opera House and it was lovely to tell people who we know to be equal opera buffs to us. It was reassuring to see our old friend smiling from ear to ear but we did not stay too long for fear of tiring the poor chap and also we had a bike ride to get on with where we saw the pretty sight of a deer leaping across the narrow country road just in front of us.

As I am writing this we have the live webcam on the another computer upstairs watching April the Giraffe giving birth in a New York zoo that is being monitored by animal lovers the world over, watching every contraction as anxiously as her partner in the next stall who is pacing around nervously.

It is a world of Beauty and the Beasts of war who caused us to eat some of our Easter eggs today for fear of the world ending in a crescendo of The Mother and Father of all Bombs.