Woodland

Walking under a canopy of green, taking deep refreshing breaths of the pre-autumnal forest air. Meandering along dirt roads, strewn with fallen pines, taking in the familiar smell of the forest that evokes childhood memories of Sunday afternoon walks.

Dappled sunlight breaks through the canopy, dances on spiders webs, casts a rainbow.

The ground littered with life; bugs, fungi, spiders - the longer I look the more I see. Passing patches of ferns the aroma shifts, the next course of the sensory feast is served.

The aged and weathered trees stand firm, gnarled roots stretch deep into the ground, the trunk clothed in lichen and branches draped in Ivy.

The noise of the world outside is dampened, absorbed in all the undergrowth, the serene call of birds is carried through the woodland and the soft scuffling of unseen animals emanates from the road side.

Blackberries on the verges are sparse enough to make it feel like an earned reward while snacking on them through the journey.

A yearning grows, the desire to remain. To rest in the lush, vast green of this sprawling world. The urge to sing, to smile and enjoy the creators handiwork, to revel in its beauty and celebrate its complexity.

After a thoroughly enjoyable perambulation we headed back home for a cuppa. Thanks to you my friends who organised the trip and drove us to the forest of Dean.

Title font used: 'PlAGuEdEaTH'

Cold Cold

Define: Cold

/kōld/

Adjective

Of a relatively low temperature when compared to the human body

Adverb

Completely; totally

There is much to be said for the cold. I think that the first thing that comes to mind when I think of coldness is 

beauty. Stunning snow capped mountain range vistas, delicately formed snow flakes and white gilded leaves.

Winter is an amazing season, I have fond childhood memories of going for walks all wrapped up like the

michelin man. The crunch of frozen ground under foot. That feeling of crisp cool air against your cheeks and

the satisfaction that I still get of being able to see your own steamy breath reminding you that you are still

warm on the inside.

However there is another very prominent association with the cold. Death. Those white gilded leaves are not

on trees, they are on the floor. The reason I am able to enjoy walks in the cold is because I know that it will

be followed by a warm house and probably tea. If that was not the case then a definite sense of fear would

accompany the cold bite of Winter knowing that before long the cold begins to hurt and if left untreated is

irreversible.

Cold has also long been aptly used to describe our spirituality and emotions. There are many parallels; the

brittle nature of things that are cold, numbness or lifelessness, close associations with darkness and of course

pain. 

The difference in the parallel is that we don't always know where home is. This kind of cold is internal, we

can't just run away from it because we are it. We start to dislike our reflection and muffle the sound of warm

words.

And before you know it you are cold cold. Absolutely, completely, totally cold. Dead. Like a leaf on the floor.

 If you are reading this and you are cold cold then know this, Winter is a season, that's good news. And just

like the seasons you are not in control, no matter how you strive they will last as long as they do.

Fortunately there is one who does control the seasons and he knows you. You might not know him yet but

he is inviting you into the warm to have a cup of tea with him. The choice is yours.

Title font used: 'Freezer'

Oh Happiness

This has been the soundtrack to my life for the past couple of days - I managed to get my hands on my South African visa on Friday, over a month after submitting it and that made me feel happy ... very happy.

I didn't realise how stressed I had actually been about the whole thing until I had been relived of it. I have just become aware that I have not really been functioning properly for at least a couple of weeks not really being able to focus on organising myself because there is always the niggling thought that I might not actually be going. That said it has definitely been a 2 weeks well spent praying that the visa would come through and it did! How much sweeter the South African air will taste now that I have had to endure to obtain it. I am now extremely excited about the next 6 months and all it has in store for me. Bring on the balmy 30 degrees (centigrade for all you american readers)

Getting currency was one of those things that the niggling doubts prevented but on my way home from the South African Consulate I picked some up and now all I have left to do is pack - which is fairly easy given that I can pretty much fit everything I own into a couple of bags.

It's quite strange collecting currency, there are few times when one is walking around with plies of cash in ones' hand and for good reason. It was a little unnerving to have a small line of people behind me listening to the cashier count out rand into the thousands. If they hadn't heard that it was Rand they could be forgiven for thinking that I was loaded. On that note - I think it would have been far more unnerving to have the same situation in South Africa where robbery is somewhat more likely ...

The conversion rate from sterling to rand is about 1:12 but even though I know that I have never felt so bad ass carrying a £20 note I mean seriously - it has a cheetah on the front!

O.K, moving on from money ...

... and on to tea

This is a retake of a photo I uploaded to Facebook recently stating that I had had a productive day except this has a significantly higher stack of tea bags than that one did.

 On a separate but related note about a month ago now I was kept up for the first time due to the affects of caffeine, a bizarre and strange happening as it had never happened to me before despite regularly drinking many cups of tea immediately before bed and if you know me or have read certain posts here then you know that I drink an awful lot of tea and this made me think that the amount of caffeine that I take in cant be great for me and now that it is actually affecting me I should do something about it.
If you combine this thought with the realisation  that for a month my house mate and I had mistaken the decaf jar of tea for the normal tea and as a result had drunk and given all our guests decaf tea for that length of time without noticing then you come to the realisation that you should just drink decaf and so that stack of tea bag you see up their it doesn't represent and caffeine at all.

O.K this is starting to feel like a couple of posts rolled into one and 'Oh happiness' may have finished now, depending on your reading speed (I read super slowly) and if that is the case then you should just go here and listen to the rest of the album and then buy it because it is amazing.

If that does not take your fancy then let your ears suck on this:





There is quite a bit of music getting a mention and that is because I have been preparing for the epic amount of travelling that is going to take place which means that a good amount of non repetitive music is a must.
and on that note check out  this album by Switchfoot - Hello hurricane at only £4 it is a steal.
and this cover by James Vincent McMorrow is better than the original - Higher Love

I think we are done here enjoy - it may be a little while until I can post again.

Title font 'Travel Typewrighter'

Tea

Hello internet, it's been a long old while. It got busy and I got photo-ed out but I'm baaaaack! :D so I think I'll start with a Cuppa.

Recently I tried to calculate the volume of tea that I drink on an average working day because doing it by the cup is not that accurate given that I tend to use larger than average cups. On a good day I estimate that I get through about 8-10 of the above cups which works out at 2.8 -3.5 Litres of tea!

 Of course this is 'good' day rather than an average which would be about 1.5L Suffice it to say that I drink a lot of tea and yes I am drinking one as I type this out.

In other news Google+ has gone public, if you don't know what that is then you should, if you don't like what that is then you will. I dislike Facebook but not enough to stop using it, it was a necessary evil until now because Google have entered the game bringing with them the + button and the most visited website in the history of the internet. So if you haven't joined Google+ then do so, it combines Twitter, Facebook and Google and is as simple as you would expect a Google product to be.

One of the main reasons I dislike Facebook is the constant change, not because of the change itself but because the change is not intuitive, you have to re-teach yourself how to use it every time they redesign the homepage which feels like every week. It took me under 5 minutes to get to grips with Google+ it has an Apple-esque feel to it by which I mean it looks good and is easy to use, anyway back to the tea ...

Last but by no means least - a rainbow in the steam, my favourite

Oh and if you think this is good then don't 'like' it ... + it