Today with Fiona and Clifford I had a nice 3 1/2 hour walk around York. It was quite interesting because we ended up talking with Clifford a lot about some apprehensions he had about the work he was doing in the sixth form college in Darlington. A parent has to go from fun and be interested in this mode please to a more serious one at the drop of a hat as soon as the kid raises an issue. We switched modes very quickly! We consulted and sorted it out as we often do in this family in a very short space of time, consult thoroughly, full frank and unfettered and then decide on the course of action and act in unity. We have done this right from when Miles was born and it works. I could not care less if anybody says to me "Oh, that's what Baha'is do" because in actual fact I have seen people from all sorts of beliefs and no beliefs do this and it does work. The lad is back on the virtuous circle or academic treadmill depending on how you look at it! Circle, circle, circle..........! From what I noticed of York Minster walking round it talking quite earnestly with the lad and Fiona it is still there, it is a wonderful spiritual building full of lovely geological specimens and packed full of tourists today which however much people lament the tourist, after all we were tourists today, they are a jolly bunch and definitely brighten the place up. We had our usual Original Cornish Pasty washed down with some nice coffee and just as we were heading back to the car along Birdcage Walk it started to really throw it down with rain so it was umbrellas out and the only interesting part of that walk was spending some time looking at the River Ouse and some really strange very large patches of what looked like slushy ice floating down the river but what we worked out was some sort of interaction between the large raindrops hitting the fast flowing current, the raindrops creating ripples that cut across each other and then the wind sweeping straight across the lot and giving the illusion of patches floating down the river. It was a very beautiful and almost transcendental effect that has us gazing wondrously and thinking furiously at the same time. As I said to my youngest doggie Clifford "If you can understand the interesting explanation we are coming up with kid talking about this there is no way that you are not intelligent!"! Good lad and a nice end to a lovely little walk with our family furthering and progressing as it usually does after a minor hurdle has been passed. God bless good old reason. And tough mindedness!

Today with Fiona and Clifford I had a nice 3 1/2 hour walk around York. It was quite interesting because we ended up talking with Clifford a lot about some apprehensions he had about the work he was doing in the sixth form college in Darlington. A parent has to go from fun and be interested in this mode please to a more serious one at the drop of a hat as soon as the kid raises an issue. We switched modes very quickly! We consulted and sorted it out as we often do in this family in a very short space of time, consult thoroughly, full frank and unfettered and then decide on the course of action and act in unity. We have done this right from when Miles was born and it works. I could not care less if anybody says to me "Oh, that's what Baha'is do" because in actual fact I have seen people from all sorts of beliefs and no beliefs do this and it does work. The lad is back on the virtuous circle or academic treadmill depending on how you look at it! Circle, circle, circle..........! From what I noticed of York Minster walking round it talking quite earnestly with the lad and Fiona it is still there, it is a wonderful spiritual building full of lovely geological specimens and packed full of tourists today which however much people lament the tourist, after all we were tourists today, they are a jolly bunch and definitely brighten the place up. We had our usual Original Cornish Pasty washed down with some nice coffee and just as we were heading back to the car along Birdcage Walk it started to really throw it down with rain so it was umbrellas out and the only interesting part of that walk was spending some time looking at the River Ouse and some really strange very large patches of what looked like slushy ice floating down the river but what we worked out was some sort of interaction between the large raindrops hitting the fast flowing current, the raindrops creating ripples that cut across each other and then the wind sweeping straight across the lot and giving the illusion of patches floating down the river. It was a very beautiful and almost transcendental effect that has us gazing wondrously and thinking furiously at the same time. As I said to my youngest doggie Clifford "If you can understand the interesting explanation we are coming up with kid talking about this there is no way that you are not intelligent!"! Good lad and a nice end to a lovely little walk with our family furthering and progressing as it usually does after a minor hurdle has been passed. God bless good old reason. And tough mindedness!

Last Monday, with the family we had a really good trip over to see Veronica at Barrow in Furness in the southern lakes. Before we visited her we had a really nice walk around Ulverston looking at several of the houses and walking around some of the backstreets. Fiona had to stop a couple of times because she felt dizzy! Poor girl! But town walks are so interesting. When we got to the old people's home we got Veronica a wheelchair to take her down into the reception area where there was a lot more room and she really enjoyed herself talking to the boys and looking at the photographs that Fiona brought. We saw it as bringing part of her old life into the new one because she does not get out of the special care unit that she is in at all. A sure sign that she is happy in that unit was that she felt a bit out of place at first away from her lady friends and the people who look after her. It was really funny at times because Veronica had no problem concentrating on what Miles was saying at all and had a really good dialogue with him but when she was talking with Clifford she just could not keep her concentration going and she kept on turning away from him and talking to me and Fiona which left Clifford looking a bit miffed. A very humorous and delightful moment! The lads enjoy visiting her and it is nice to know that she is being looked after well although she does keep falling over at the moment and reflects on that herself and just accepts it as part of her frailties . It is a straight 100 miles over to Barrow but it is a very interesting and nice journey and I hope to be making it for many more years to come. God bless my dear mother in law.

Yesterday with the family we had a nice little walk around Richmond in Swaledale, North Yorkshire. We were supposed to go to see Fiona's mum, Veronica, over at Barrow in Furness in the southern Lake District but Fiona woke up feeling like a dead dog in part because the antibiotics the doctor had given her have now stopped but she has no other medicine other than painkillers to deal with the sinusitis. Illness is a hassle sometimes! Anyway, instead we went over to Richmond to have a romantic walk around the town and I sent off our two doggies to walk and talk over any walk they like around Richmond so long as they met up with us on Richmond Castle Walk 90 minutes later. We just lolled around looking at the great 18th-century houses in and around the centre of Richmond and had a good look at the Yoredale series of rocks down by the river and this geological feature is always interesting because it can be very inconsistent even within the same few metres horizontally of rock. They are known as cyclothems because you get a series of sandstone, shale, and limestone reflecting the different conditions at the time of deltas, shallow ocean and deeper ocean. There were some good plans made yesterday as well. We spent some time just gawping at a very nice house/cottage which we decided we would buy if it was still on the market five years from now, the garden was big enough for Fiona to enjoy but not too big that I had to suffer it and the house was small enough that when our lads came back with the grandchildren they would not stop to long, so there was much hilarity, half serious thought and a nice view over at Billy Banks Wood to contemplate. Nobody was in the house so we just had a good stare into the Windows! My line has always been, "If you leave the curtains open I will look!" I do this when I walk around York all the time and get an interesting insight into just how much better people live compared to Fiona and me in terms of the fabric and furnishing of a house.We are still slumming it as if we were students basically. I do not stare all the time of course I just notice occasionally! Anyway, after having a good look at some of the stones in the River Swale Fiona started to get dizzy and I had thoughts of romantically catching her in my arms when she fell over in a dead faint but that did not happen thank goodness so we sauntered up to the Castle Walk and after wiping all the rain off the seat sat there and had a glorious cuddle looking at Billy Banks Wood from a higher point this time, but also with some lovely drizzle blowing in the wind in vertical sheets from the North and that was a very nice sight wet enough to enjoy and wet enough to be moving on after half an hour which we did when the boys turned up but only after I insisted they sit for 10 minutes to just morbidly enjoy the wet view. Nothing like getting damp together to foster family unity! They thought that was quite funny but we all got a bit soggy after 10 minutes so it was back to the car, home and ham and chips, Star Trek and as Pink Floyd say "One day closer to death"! Miles and I always have a good laugh about Pink Floyd lyrics and he thinks the band, the music and the lyrics are totally brilliant. I agree with him.

Last Saturday I had a lovely 4 mile walk around the Durham Woods with my younger son Clifford. Fiona was not feeling well so she stayed at home and Miles was busy with his Star Trek writing so he kept her company. It was a quiet overcast day and the river was up due to the rain all sediment and soil from Weardale. About a mile in my trusted excitement point, a pair of Goosanders , appeared and that was great. The female was quite twitchy and flew off immediately but the male has now got used to people and just floated off down the stream ignoring us. We saw another pair which I think were under a year old looking at the feathers , just beneath the weir downstream from Prebends Bridge. Because it was Christmas Eve I couldn't have a Starbucks coffee with my younger doggie but we were quite content to have biscuit break perched on the steps in Durham Market as usual. Because I wanted to get back to listen to the Carols at Kings College Cambridge programme on radio four we shot back over the town and when we got home we were all happy and glowey from a good walk. Clifford is very good company!

This afternoon with the family we had a trip down to Whitby to look at rocks and birds and just enjoy the ambience of what I knew would be a very quiet place. When we got there it was and we had a good little discussion about the reason why the East Cliff of Whitby is about 50 m higher than the West Cliff of Whitby and it is due to a fault running right up the middle of the River Esk. The lower part of the Cliff being the down throw of the fault we think although we're not quite sure about that yet because just because it is down doesn't mean it has fallen down anywhere it may have just stayed in place while the other side rose up. Geology it doesn't always make sense! The next interesting thing which was completely ordinary but absolutely totally amazing. A little while back when I was reading up about Buzzards I found out that sometimes small flocks of buzzards will walk across a field scrunching their claws into the earth to get worms to rise to the surface and then they can eat them. This odd little fact has been rummaging around in my brain and when I went to get some writing paper paper for the boys a few days ago as I was driving out from Staples on Teeside I saw a seagull stood on one spot but running up and down and I thought to myself that it was doing the same behaviour that the buzzards were in order to bring worms to the surface and then it would be dinnertime. We saw the same thing today walking down to Whitby Harbour but this time we watched the seagull for about five minutes and eventually it dabbed its beak into the ground and pulled out a very long worm. My hypothesis was confirmed and it was a totally magical moment because I am just as interested in the behaviour of birds as I am in just looking at them. Anyway as we trundled down on to the beginning of the West Pier of Whitby Harbour I saw what I knew I would probably see even I don't know why which was a very large Duck looking animal which I knew immediately was an Eider Duck. We whipped the bird book out to confirm it. Total magic. I never believed that I would see one of these without travelling up to the north-east of Scotland where there are lots of them because that is the first landfall for them when they come down from Iceland as well as from Tundra Arctic regions as well. When we went down to the end of the West Pier we thought we saw Scoters but they were too far out at sea to completely confirm this but apparently these birds and Eider Ducks are often found together. We also had a good look at the sandstone blocks at the lighthouse at the end of the pier which showed some excellent examples of cross bedding which is when the sand is deposited by the river at an angle to the river flow and obviously the steeper the angle the faster the river and this indicates river delta conditions which is what happened over the North Yorkshire Moors at that time around 180 million years ago during the Jurassic. May need to check that date up. I do all this stuff from memory by the way. We then stormed over to the east Pier and joy of joys I met my good friend and ex-girlfriend from the 1980s Tony Bunnel the folk musician, hurdy-gurdy player, and ferretologist, because she has a PhD in polecat ferrets and that was really good not least because I had not seen her for about 15 years. We will be going down to York to see her within the next week or so. I also met her husband who is called Paul and he is a very nice man. So that was great. Going out onto the East Pier we saw absolutely nothing but a gorgeous sunset spraying clouds and meaning across the West Side of Whitby. Beautiful! We got some take-away fish and chips and munched them in the car which was really nice. It was then home, Star Trek, ice cream and to this point in my simple little life when I am about to go to bed. Why go to bed early after 23 years of marriage? Because I'm tired of course! But not that tired!

Yesterday I had a lovely three hour outing in York with my lovely wife and youngest child Clifford. What I most wanted to see was York Minster and I had taken my loupe a geological magnifying glass to look at the stone in the Minster where there are some very nice stones which are also specimens of the rocks I see when I walk out in the hills. I was not disappointed. Well I was a little bit because to see some of the dark corners I needed my headlamp which I did not have. Bad dog. Most of the black stone inlay on the floor of York Minster is Frosterley Marble which comes from Weardale, is also found in Durham Cathedral, and has a lot of fossil coral. Again in the Frosterley limestone because that's what it is it is not a marble I saw some sort of worm burrows, what I think are called trace fossils, and they were nicely laid out flat on the floor underneath the East Window like little elongated 2 centimetre long egg shaped lace all grouped neatly within around 20 cm square. Magic! I also had a rather stupid red herring. I was staring wondrously and as it turned out totally deluded looking at some slightly spattered conical shapes on the rock which I swore was some sort of fossil. Fortunately I like to get my hands on the rocks and I always stroke across any rock that I come across just to feel its texture and even though I had seen these things about half an hour earlier and it had been rummaging around in my very small brain it was only when I went back with Fiona and Clifford to show them these wondrous little items and I got down on my hands and knees and scratched across it with my fingernail only to find out it was spattered wax. Oh boy. My stock had descended in the eyes of my loved ones even further, indicated quite clearly by the bellows of laughter! Fiona was a bit better yesterday and only needed a rest after every mile roughly every 20 minutes so that was good. She and Clifford went off on a whole York Minster history tour whilst I did my geology bit and she also had a look at the Chapter House which she had never seen before and that open wondrous look on her face staring round was a sight I will never forget. Beautiful! A nice walk out in a cold, overcast, but always very nice and interesting , York. God bless the place.

Last Thursday, Fiona and I had a neat little outing to Saltholme RSPB Nature Reserve in Teeside. It was very quiet the weather was cold and overcast and there were not a lot of birds close to the hides but what there were, were totally amazing, huge flocks of Pochards, Widgeons, Lapwings and Canada geese. I usually associate Pochards with York University Lake but I have not seen one there for years which is possibly because they have all emigrated further north to the Teeside area! Because Fiona is still not well with her sinusitis we did not do the whole of the Reserve and the soup and roll at the RSPB Centre were excellent as usual. A nice way to restore a not well woman! After a quiet walk around we decided to go but had a look in the Teeside Birdwatching Groups new hide right next to the car park overlooking a small pond. Well, what a surprise because there were two Godwits about 15 m from the hide and I never believed I would ever see Godwits in my life they are sort of like tall elegant curlews but with long straight dark pink looking beaks which they ram in and out of the ground really fast to get their food. Even though we were both pretty cold because we could not walk around too fast and work a sweat up like we normally do we sat there for about half an hour gazing wondrously at these two fine animals of which when I first saw them I thought they were Snipe but one of the resident RSPB experts put me right on that and then told us an awful lot about Godwits and other birds on the pond. A magical end to an entrancing 90 minutes in a heavily industrialised part of Teeside with a nuclear power station 2 miles down the road but also thousands of acres of brilliant nesting, feeding and resting ground and water for some of the world's birds. Even though the industry dominates the landscape over the last around 7 miles off the Tees Estuary in fact it only accounts for about 20% of the total acreage so there is plenty of room for birds and other animals. We also see Deer down there as well!

Fiona and I had a nice stroll around Saltholme RSPB Nature Reserve right in the middle of Machine City aka Teeside! It was fairly cold but that didn't affect the birds at all. I mostly wanted to see a Marsh Harrier and there was one around but we did not see it. We did see a Short Ear Owl perched on a gate and that was brilliant! Over at the Saltholme Hide we saw several Pintails and White Fronted Geese. Fiona got a bit tired and dizzy after a couple of miles but felt a lot better than she did a couple of weeks ago.Home-made soup and a big pot of yoghurt went down well at the cafe there and Saltholme RSPB Nature Reserve is well worth a visit so get yourself down or up there. I must say I find that bird watchers as a subspecies of the human race are a very nice and talkative people in fact they are a bit over informative but I really like that!