After getting the right handlebars that don't hurt my gammy arm I had a great 6 mile Kickbike session with Clifford. Sort of insisted that he come out with me . Good dog! Totally embarrassed myself today , in part because of my mathematical whiz eldest lad maths machine Miles . My new handlebars turned up on Friday but I wasn't convinced they were the right ones because the one I wanted had a 45 degree angle from the horizontal to the bit you grip which is perfect for me because my withered arm has very little flexibility in it so ordinary handlebars aren't comfortable . So, Miles convinced himself and me that he could work out whether the grip part of the handle was 45 degrees or not thus " proving " that it was the right handlebars for Daddyo. We get a bit of paper A4 ( its a rectangle : first big mistake : the angles of the diagonal there are 60 and 30 degrees )and stick it under the handlebars all lined up with the longest side ans we both agreed , well I sort of let Miles do the thinking bit , why not , he's good at maths right?, so I agreed with his conclusion . Its not 45 degrees so the firm has sent me the wrong handlebar and just to confuse the issue they do two : one with a 45 degree angle and another with a 30 degree. "Its 30 degrees Dad its not the right one " So I ring up the firm today and tell them they've sent me the wrong product but they say I haven't but they will look into it . I ring up another firm who tell me going on the code on the handlebar it definitely is the right one so I ring back Manchester and go through my apology " Oh my God what an idiot I am " routine , well practiced up after 22 years being married to the lovely Fiona , and then get very irritated and decide to prove to myself it is 45 degrees something I should have done on Saturday without Miles in I'm convinced I'm right mode , jabbering away . Simple really , builders do it all the time of course its called squaring off and I got a square the top of a large muesli container, put it on the breadboard and placed the handlebar parallel with the top and the grip bit angling down over the square . If the bar cuts over the top diagonal and its opposite its 45 degrees alright: it did! " MILES" I dashed into the study room and told him about this and he denied he ever thought that angle was 45 degrees! Teenagers man : never listen to them !

This weekend has been one where the Saunders-Priem family has not done that much! This is mostly because Fiona was quite ill last week with a bad cold and has not felt like walking this weekend. I got out with the lads for a walk around Durham on Saturday which was just a quick brisk one to get some miles underneath our feet. I am still surprised at how little birdlife was around for this time of the year. They must all be sitting on their nests! There were very few students around either in fact the whole of Durham City Centre was very quiet. Nice! Yesterday, Fiona was still not well and my mother did not feel so good so we had an in day because Miles had had a good thrash around RKade Skatepark in Redcar during the morning . I spent the afternoon listening to chromatic harmonica players from around the world via YouTube. It amazed me how good a couple of them were but also how odd and limited most of them are. There seems to be an almost global phenomenon of copying jazz and rock licks and then just performing them without any thought to making them original again. It is interesting but I guess that it is one thing to want to play jazz and blues just because you want to "perform" and another thing to play jazz and blues because you want to perform in the way that the original people did that is in an original and distinctive manner. What I've just said in my view applies to a lot guitar players as well I know it is a fine distinction but I always try to create something different in my solos every time not just to grab the audiences attention but mostly to satisfy myself! I played at the Butterknowle Open Mike night last night which was very nice and it was a very good night. Good people . The people who go there, go there to enjoy themselves and that is the best thing of all! A subdued but actually quite pleasant weekend. The Saunders-Priem family has no problem rolling with the punches!

Yesterday was a good walking day. I got up really early for the Baha'i fast and again did not feel like doing any maths in the morning so I went down to York for a good 8 mile walk which is what I did last week. This time I got to York at quarter past seven and parked up at Clifton Green and it was sunny! I didn't shoot around as quick as last week because I knew that I would be going walking in Upper Teesdale with the family in the afternoon. A mega-highlight of the walk was seeing three Great Crested Grebes on the lake at York University. Two of them were a breeding pair and they were bobbing up and down in front of each other and weaving their heads around as part of their courtship ritual. Unfortunately there was no weed nearby because they also hand it to each other or should I say beak each other bits of weed. It made me feel as Fiona and I feel towards each other even after 22 years of marriage. There was a third Grebe nearby which I am pretty sure was one of the young from last year and very strangely when I was walking alongside the lake it started to approach me. At first I thought it may have taken some food from some people but Great Crested Grebes are strict fish eaters and as far as I know they will not eat bread. What I found unusual with a breeding pair was that the male had not yet developed its crest so it looked like two females from a distance! Also, because the sun was fairly low it was 8 a.m. the brown patch on the neck of the Grebe was a lovely dark rusty colour.

When I got back home I went out with the family into Upper Teesdale walking from Bowlees to a couple of miles before Falcon Clints just underneath the Cow Green Reservoir. It was a wonderful walk in the afternoon slightly cloudy opaque light. We saw a lot of nesting Lapwings and the last time I saw them was at Saltholme RSPB reservation in the Tees estuary where there were flocks of several thousands of them periodically all of them rising up into the air as a peregrine falcon swooped near them. Yesterday they were having a more sedate time the only problem being getting food. Fiona asked me me what they eat up there and one of them sort of told us when it pulled out a 15 cm worm from the ground and just woofed it very quickly. We were walking alongside the River Tees and for most of the walk we were looking at the Whin sill a dolerite rock intrusion which started out somewhere near Edinburgh 295 million years ago and then rose vertically but stopped rising and pushed out horizontally right between layers of rock. This thing was about 50 m wide (it may have been a lot bigger in places) and it just forced open the Carboniferous rock melting it on either side. Hadrian's Wall is built on the Whin Sill and the reason that it is at so many different heights is because in the last 295 million years Britain has risen up and down a few times as well as faults have developed and all of the waterfalls on the walk yesterday were caused because of the faults. When we got about 2 miles away from Falcon Clints we had already walked over 4 miles I realised it would be too far to go. It looked like only a couple of miles further but it was pretty up and down through gullies. Of course, when I suggested that it might be worth turning back now because we may not be back home until much later than teatime Miles as always just piped up "come on lets do it I want to do it!" Good lad. Clifford, being more of a consensus builder was more interested in what everybody thought! The trouble was the country had got a lot rougher and we had slowed down and I reckon it would have taken about an hour to have walked those couple of miles if they were a couple of miles because it is hard to estimate when the country was so up and down and I wanted to spend some time when I was there to look at rocks so we decided to turn back! For a lad who has been quite ill this week with a bad cold Miles had a remarkable amount of energy yesterday! Then again so did I because in total I walked over 16 miles and never ate or drank anything between sunrise and sunset. I think one of the reasons I'm having trouble losing weight at the moment is I have just got to fit and I do not burn that many calories up when I am walking around! Anyway that's my excuse but I need to lose about three stone and get Mr Trim back not only to increase my long-term good health chances but Fiona might close the bedroom door! Aren't men driven by simple motivations? This one is anyway! A great day and we are going back up there again next week to get to Falcon Clints from the Cow Green Reservoir end!

Last Sunday I had a really nice day . In the morning I took Miles down to RKade skatepark in Redcar and 2 of his mates were there Luke and Joseph and they all had a great ripping session. Miles was doing his footplant off a raised box on top of the halfpipe which is quite spectacular for such a large lad to be doing . He races up the side of the ramp and then when his board is just about to hit the box he puts his foot on it and jumps back into the ramp still on his skateboard : hopefully . Good job the lad knows how to fall which is a big part of getting good at skateboarding as well as enjoying it!

In the afternoon we had a quick 2 mile walk around the town in Richond and the hazy , lazy sunshine was nicely matched by the town being very quiet and there were hardly any cars parked in the market . Back in the '70s Richmond used to be like that all the time in fact even quieter . We visited my Mum who was in good fettle and we had quite a laugh there which always cheers her up and leaves her exasperated as well , occasionally exhausted , usually because I feel so naughty there what with my wife being there as well. Its nice to know that Mum blames Fo for my exuberance because she reckons that I was a quiet lad until I got married to Fo . I'm sure a lot of my old friends in York from the '80s would really disagree with her . But nice to know its not my fault ! After all those years of good parenting reminding my lads to take personal responsibilty for their words and actions do I really want to say that ? Yeah I do! A good day .

Yesterday I got up at 5.30 am to get my breakfast on board before sunrise to do the Baha'i Fast . I was wondering what to do then so I traipsed off to York (nearly popped up to High force in Teesdale to look at some rocks but I wanted a town walk) and got there at 7.20 am and had a lovely 8 mile walk around the very quiet town. It was magical and the low subdued winter light just mellowed it out into striding along in a fairly dream like state . When walking up the River Foss next to the old York Press works I was amazed at how loud the geese were honking away but the sound was just bouncing off the buildings . I felt sorry for the residents and reminded my self not to buy a flat there if or most likely when we reside again in Ye Olde Yorke! Around the University there was hardly a student out and the ducks and geese have still not returned to the numbers they were last year. When I got back to the family it was straight out to Durham for a 4 mile very brisk walk because Fiona and Miles need some speed walks at the moment to help them get over the bad colds they've had . Its amazing how quickly you can lose fitness ! The River Wear was up and the steady rate of the river being in spate is nicely washing the debris away from the banks which make it easier to see the medieval embankment underneath at least that's what I think it is because the structure looks identical to what I know is medieval embankment further up . No doubt some Durhamite will put me right when I ask. Fo was blooming when we got back to the car . Just what she needed . The combination of a 12 miler of walking and no food or drink for just under 12 hours left me feeling thinner by the end of the day . A scrumptious meal at sunset was good though !

Yesterday we went over to Dalton in South Lakeland to visit Fo's Mum. We only walked for 40 minutes in Ulverston where her Mum used to live because we got there late due to taking an interesting diversion ummm shortcut ! via Lunedale a Dale that runs out and up from Teesdale the head of which is actually a Pennine Pass dropping down into the Eden Valley. Nice yesterday but very nasty in snow! Its amazing that over the 90 miles to Dalton we saw rocks covering 250 million years of geological time from the Silurian in the Howgills and the Lakes to the Carboniferous in Teesdale and then red colored Permian desert rocks bottoming out the North East end of the Eden Valley . All the flora growing in the soil in these different areas are roughly similar but with notable exceptions that reflect the chemistry of the underlying rock . Grass is super bright green on limestone and a lot duller on Silurian rock . Even within Limestone country you get different shades of green because of a lovely sequence of rocks rustically named the Yoredale series which is limestone then shale then sandtone then back to limestone . because the shale erodes many times faster than the other two you get benches of erosion covered in glacial till that have grass on them in three different colors . It certainly makes the Dales areas very distinctive and actually unique in terms of global geology . Could be making a tall claim in that last statement but I think that's right! I do this from memory !

Veronica was in good health but had fallen over hurting her arm which was nothing serious . The lads spoke and engaged with her beautifully they're getting really good at keeping the conversation going with humor and zest . I had Veronica laughing quite a lot because even though she has vascular dementia and short term memory problems she likes short jokes and comments and fully understands them . Her laughter is always a reassuring reminder of how sharp she was once and in terms of the slightly wicked and pointed comments I made she responds totally normally that is she laughs her head off ! . It has made me think that as I used to do loads of playing music to old folk, mentally ill and mentally handicapped people as well as senile dementia patients and in one case to the terminally ill , to put in a humor routine as well . Song and laughter a really good side to life from the beginning to the end ! A nice afternoon and early evening out and the walk in Ulverston was very interesting due to a huge chemical plant opposite us on the other side of the canal which was very interesting and a flock of wild swans including a few of last years signets. Good weekend .

With the family I had a nice mellow walk around Durham today which should have been a walk in Teesdale looking at rocks and plants around the Cauldron Spout area but I mentioned to Fo about crossing the Tees to look at rocks on the other side but in the absence of a bridge and the certainty of getting her feet wet and some very low cloud she said "No" and " Lets have a walk around Durham instead". After we parked the car we went by what I call the Singing Hedge because of all the birdsong that comes out of it due to dozens of sparrows having taken up what looks like a permanent residence . Noisy birds . The River Wear was quiet and a translucent color which usually means little sediment in the water and it gives off a feeling of milky soothing calm. Not many people around today and few birds as well. In the town I met the market man who put up a stall for me a few weeks ago when I did a Baha'i Stall and he was pleasantly moaning about a large group of Libyans last week who formed a circle and danced and chanted for about two hours right in the middle of the market area. I'm on the Bahai Fast at the moment, 19 days of no food or liquid between sunrise and sunset and biscuit break was sitting there looking at my family munch their biscuits . I love the physical side of my religion but its up to the individual whether they do the Fast or not . After the fairly brisk walk it was back home to a great tea and two episodes of Star Trek. A mellow , nondescript and totally satisfying day!