It was really early, but I had something good to get up for so it wasn’t so bad. But even so getting up when it’s still dark doesn’t do it for me. At 5 in the morning it feels like it’s about midnight. There’s not even any birds, they’re still asleep.

I picked up my friend and we got started. He had a lot of stuff to load into the car and we took longer to get going than I thought was a good idea. Because we were meeting  some other cars there and the meeting was at 9am, so we had to get started and get there on time.

It was raining by the time we got there which was a pity. That was a shame as it has been such good weather lately, the one weekend I want good weather its raining. But that’s weather, you can’t do anything about it can you?

We were camping which is pretty unpleasant in the rain  and so we had to get there and put up the tent and so on. We were lucky that by the time we got there most of the rain had stopped, which was great. There was still a little but nothing like the rain we had on the way. It’s not nice putting up a tent in the rain is it? And it was a long drive there so it was good the rain had stopped.

And the speed limits were all reduced so we had to go slower.

But have to say that it was a good weekend even though it rained quite a lot. I caught a good fish which was a real bonus. I’m not the greatest fisherman although I do like it. And eating fresh fish is so healthy too and so we got to eat fish for the evening.

Last week was school holidays so I took may family, (I’ve got kids), away for a few days. 4 days in fact at a small resort about 6 hours drive away. Unfortunately there was a really strong wind and heavy rain when we left and I thought it was going to be a really nasty drive but the wind dropped and the rain stopped after about a half hour, the sun came out and it turned into a pretty nice day.

It was a really nice resort and the kids loved it. So many things for kids to do and kids always need a lot to do. The killer of a good holiday is bored kids, if you’ve got bored kids then they aren’t happy, and if they aren’t happy you aren’t happy. But here there was so many things to do for the kids.

Bored kids can really be the worst thing you can do for your holiday. They are annoyed and unhappy and keep hassling you all the time to play with them, when all you want to do is to sit and relax and read a book. Kids hassling you doesn’t mesh well with bored kids.

But the kids were really happy over the weekend, thankfully. There were so many things for them to do, including jumping up and down on this huge plastic blow up thing, and they just loved that. That alone kept them happy.

And there was a good games room and they played in there for hours. There was this huge tv and every night there was a kids movie for them to watch.

And of course there was the swimming pool. I can’t believe something as simple as a swimming pool keeps kids entertained for so long.

But I mentioned my boat. I took the boat along because there was a river there and I could take them on the river. And it’s useful for taking stuff along too. The kids bikes wouldn’t fit in the car but no problem getting them in the boat.

So the boat was really great. We did a couple of days in the boat. One was on the local river just looking around, a little time spent sitting on the river bank having lunch and giving the kids a swim. More swimming! And we could sit there in the sun and read our books.

And we did a day on the lake near us too. I bought one of those tire tube toys that you pull behind the boat and pulled the kids around the lake on that. They loved it and wouldnt get off. If you  have kids and love water you’ve got to have a boat.

So a boat is a huge bonus for us all. Use it to take the bikes and have the kids entertained along the way and it all works. I’m really glad I took the boat along with us.

And I love birds too, and one of the best things about living in the country is the birds, they’re everywhere.

There’s really a huge number of birds out here, so many you can’t believe it. Maybe it’s because there’s so many trees out here in the country. The birds live in the trees and pick off the pods from the leaves and eat them, you can see them doing it all day long. They pick them off with their claws and hold them to eat.

Although I do like birds they do make a mess of my trees unfortunately. When they break off a small branch to eat the pods they drop it on the ground and it looks like a battlefield under my trees, it’s a real mess, bits of branch everywhere.

They have great colors. They’re colorful parrots and all parrots have stunning colors I think. And they like to sit on the window ledges and veranda poles around my house and look in at me, and I find that if I sit really still then they don’t fly away, they just sit there, and that’s such a treat. I love having them around.

There’s damage to the trees like I said but it’s still great having them around and I love seeing them. I could send them away when they start damaging the trees and then I wouldn’t have the damage but I’d rather let them come and sit on my veranda. If I shoo them away they might leave for good and I don’t want to do that .

Out here in the country is just great. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t get parrots in the city like I get out here, at least I haven’t seen them. There’s no trees there for them to eat and so you wouldn’t see them. And there’s too many people too.

And it’s not just the birds, there’s so many animals, and as I love animals I’m happy when they’re around. I’m surrounded by animals and birds out here too.

Its good for the soul. Having all these birds and animals around is a part of nature and a part of life. Its not sterile like in the city. Birds and animals for me any day. Just right now as I was writing this a whole bunch of them flew right past the window. I can see one of them sitting on the verandah in front of me right now.

Country life is the best life for me!

I did a university degree when I got older, but it didn’t include writing, a shame, though I wish now I had. If I was young again and going to university all over again I’d think about doing some real study about the art of writing. I studied what I needed to to get a job, I just wish I’d studied what I liked to do.

I don’t  know if I could ever have become good enough at writing to make any money at it, who knows, I just like it. But perhaps I could have tried if I’d thought about it. If I had my chances again I’d try, but you never get it again do you?

I’m really quite convinced writing is a skill that can be learned. Of course not everyone can learn it because there’s other important things as well. For example I think it’s essential that you love to do it. That’s like anything. If you don’t love it you’re unlikely to keep at it long enough to learn the skill.

But if you love it like I do then writing is just something that needs time to develop, it doesn’t happen at once. It is a skill that you have to work on every day. I work on it every day, like now.

So I have this website and this is where I’m going to practice my writing and learn how to do it. I have it on the internet as it’s a convenient place to have it, but I really don’t intend for lots of people to come along and read it, I’m not fussed about that. It’s just about me and what I do every single day, so it’s probably pretty boring to others. But if you’re someone reading this then I have at least one other visitor other than me, so thanks for visiting my website and reading my writing.

Now of course it’s winter coming now and the grass is short and won’t grow much and so there isn’t lots of it for the cows to eat you have to feed them hay. I plenty of hay. And that’s the time to pat them.

Now if you’re feeding your hay to your cows then that’s the time to pat them, but it’s also a bit of a drain. You have to feed them every day, each day, without fail. Even if it’s raining you have to feed the cows their hay. If you don’t they starve for the day.

I like to feed the cows myself, but I like holidays too so when I go away I have to make some other arrangements. This is how I do it.

I have a good system. I keep a couple of my paddocks fenced off with the gate closed so that when one has lots of  good grass in it I can keep it that way. The cows eat my hay until I have to go away and then I can open the gate and let them in there and they have plenty of food for a week or so and I can go away knowing my cows aren’t starving.

And when I open the gate to the paddock with the grass they’re in there as fast as they can, because they’ve seen all that grass when they look through the gate.

And then I come back from the holiday and my cows are happy. And I take them out of the grass paddock and put them back in the main paddock.

I feed them right after breakfast. They know exactly when I feed them and when I come out to feed they’re sitting right in front of the shed with the hay in it waiting for their breakfast. I usually give them 1 1/2 bales of hay. Sometimes when I feel generous I give them 2 bales.

In fact this morning I gave them 2 bales. But it’s getting warmer soon and the grass is beginning to grow and that’s good because I don’t have a lot of hay left. But that’s ok because I’ve got more grass coming.

And my cows are always happy when the grass is getting longer. And the grass is getting longer now, so my cows are happy. Don’t you just love cows?

There’s so much out here in the country that you’ll never see living in the city. Here’s an example. Cycling. I love to ride and it keeps me fit which is so important. But it’s great for so many other reasons. It gets me outdoors to places that are so great to be in.

And riding gets you out where you can see so many things that make it worthwhile. I love to see sheep and cows in the paddocks. Actually I have my own cows and I love that and I even get calves from time to time.

It’s just one of the best things of living here is that, I get to keep cows and calves. I love that and all of the nature around me.

Its summer right now and its hot. We’ have had some really hot days lately. Now of course if I lived in the city it would still be hot. But here I see the cycle of the seasons so well. I feel more at one with the seasons and with nature now. I see the grass wilt and die when summer comes, I see the grass regrow and get green again for winter. It see snow, I see drought, I see rain.

I see the leaves of the trees turn sorts of colors, there’s so many wonderful colors. I see the new trees growing underneath the old ones when the seeds germinate. I see the old and the young, I see the new and the not so new.

All of these things cycle, just like I cycle too. They go round and round and I really see what the seasons are.

If I lived in the city I may not even have a tree or shrub to watch, or grass. Maybe I wouldn’t even have a garden, I might just have a concrete back yard. If I didn’t have a tree or some grass I’d miss it.

And unlike here I probably wouldn’t get to see the seasons change like I do now, all the time.

It’s really sterile in the city and I spent a large part of my life there so I’ve been there. Of course it’s just me that thinks it’s sterile, others don’t.

Of course my family lives in the city and they love it as well, so everyone is different. My brother is a doctor and he’s single, so he likes the social life of the city. There’s things to do there that he’s into, and it suits him. But the city is not for me.

I lived in the city for a long time, I grew up there and I really feel now like I’ve wasted so many years. What a shame. Now of course I didn’t waste them I had my time and I lived my life but it feels like wasted time. I should ask my brother if he’d like to live in the country, it would be nice if he lived nearby. But even if I suggested it to him I doubt that he’d move here.

Give me the country any time.

I found cycling relatively recently. I was getting unfit and I didn’t want to be unfit, and I was getting older. I knew I had to do something.

I tried swimming but it just never worked, I never took to it. I just found it really boring and it was a real effort to get up in the morning and go swimming. You just go up and down and down and up and up and down and a minute feels like an hour.

There’s that black line underneath you. You just go up  and down the black line. Its mezmerising. Its meaningless, its so boring. I cant believe how boring it really is.

So after trying swimming I knew that wouldn’t work. I knew I couldn’t spend 4 or 5 days a week putting some swimming into my day. Because if you’re going really to keep fit you’ve got to do it about 4 or 5 days a week or you’re really just wasting your time.

And so you’ve got to do about a half hour minumim. Less than that and its a bit of a waste of time.

So I was in a bit of a bind. I used to jog and found that as boring as swimming and so I was a little stuck. But then I started to think about cycling.

I didn’t have a bike although I used to ride to work many years ago. My old bike was up at the shed  but its so rusted that its unusable. I knew I had to get another bike. And a new bike isn’t cheap.

There’s a cycling club near me so I went and talked to them and found out that they were starting a new group of recreational riders and so I figured that the universe was telling me that it was time to buy a bike, that it was the perfect opportunity.

I found the pace of riding wasn’t exactly right for me, but enjoyed the rides. They did longer and shorter rides and I enjoyed it.

I’m not as young as I would like to be but even so I would have preferred that they rode a little faster, it was a bit too slow for me and so I began riding on my own to try and get a better workout.

So after a while riding on my own I found that it was nice to ride hard but a little lonely. I was getting a workout but on my own. So I made some enquiries and found out that there was a riding group that rode out of town a few days a week that used road bikes and rode hard. It went on sundays and I decided to go along.

But the bike that I had already bought was a half mountain bike and half road bike, called a hybrid, and so I had the wrong bike again. So again I had an issue with no bike that would do the job, but by then I knew I really liked riding to I bought a road bike and joined the Sunday group. They ride pretty fast and sometimes I keep up, occasionally I don’t keep up.

But what I wanted was a hard workout and that’s what I get on the Sunday ride.

I’m getting fitter every week and that’s why I’m doing it, but I enjoy it too.

I get to go away with a friend because my family all have some concert to go to and they can’t come so I get to go with a friend. Last time I took my family, but not this time.

We are going to take a tent and camp, as I would normally do with my familynormally. It’s a really good tent, about 10 foot square and canvas and really good quality so worth taking. Its heavy but I have a lighter tent that’s smaller but it’s forecast to rain and I want a good tent that will keep the rain out.

We leave Friday morning at about 6 am, early, grr. We’re meeting some other people at 9 and it will take about 3 hours to get to where we’re meeting. I don’t really like getting up early, good thing I don’t have to too often.

As much as I hate to get up early if you’re looking forward to something you just get up and go anyway, so it’s not so much of a problem.

Unfortunately my car is pretty old and I’ve got all my fingers and toes crossed hoping it makes it up there ok. It’s done 540,000 miles so it’ done a lot of work, but it goes fine.

Saturday is going to be a free day. Nothing planned at all, just a hang  about day to do what you want. I plan to take fishing gear along and do some fishing, in fact I bought a new fishing rod this morning. Sadly I broke my old fishing rod a while ago.

My old broken rod was one I made a long long time ago. I bought the fiberglass blank and all the runners and made it all myself and I’ve used it and used it. I was pretty impressed with myself that I managed to make my own fishing rod.

I have no idea how it broke. I was just walking through a patch of trees and then suddenly I looked at it and the tip was broken off. What happened? Who knows. But it was a pretty sad day as I had used that rod so much.

I found out today that it wasn’t worth a lot of money. That’s because I went to a fishing shop and bought a new one and it wasn’t expensive. But it still had sentimental value to me, after all I made that rod myself.

And I couldn’t believe. 25 bucks for a new fishing rod. They certainly aren’t expensive now to buy. But the new one isn’t the one I made. I’d rather my old one than a new one.

So there’s the news about my weekend to be. It won’t rain will it and I will catch a fish won’t I?

I’ve decided that it’s a perfect day but maybe not everyone would agree. Maybe for some people it’s just a terrible day. Really bad. Maybe you’ve had some really bad news or something isn’t working out for you at all or maybe you’re sick, so it’s not the best day at all.

Now of course that’s my interpretation. For many people today might be a terrible day. Perhaps youve just had some bad news for example, or just feel bad. Maybe youre trying to do something that isn’t working out. Maybe you just don’t feel well, really. For whatever reason you mightn’t agree with me.

What is it that makes it a great day for me but is really not the best day for someone else? Why is it that I see the sunshine and the cows in the fields and the happy people? Why is it that you may not see these?

Maybe you see terrible things in the day, all bad, darkness. The best day for me is the worst day for you.

Surely the only explanation is that it’s in our minds, the day. We see the day through the filter of our minds. We don’t see the day, we see what our minds tell us the day is like. We filter the day through our minds and our experiences.

Even if we have the exact same day you see it differently to me. Lets say we both go for that drive together. We both see the happy people, we both see the sunshine, we both see the cows, but we still have a different experience of the day. Because our minds filter what we see through the experiences of the past. Perhaps you don’t even see the cows and the sunshine

There’s some of my silly rantings. I was just thinking about this stuff today, that’s all.

Just a few thoughts for the day. Bye.