Funny how just going for it in life can put you on a sort of high. I am enjoying my job, getting into songwriting because that is the only way forward with regard to playing professionally and coming to the end of my adviser role with my lads education which I must admit is taking a load off my mind. I feel a lot more mentally relaxed now and I did not know really until recently just how determined I was in the nicest and most intelligent sort of way, because force does not work, that my two children would optimise the abilities that they have. Job done I think although like anything it could always be done better and I kick myself in the shin since I started thinking  like that because it really is: job done. Time to move on!

Miles my eldest finished his mathematics degree finals yesterday and on three out of four he thinks he has got over 80% and one of them 70% or above. He is applying for Masters courses next week with a good chance of getting on one of them and developing the mathematical skills to do a Ph.D. after that. He knows of course that even if he does a Masters and gets a Ph.D. it  still does not guarantee being a maths researcher because that takes that little bit extra luck  as well as talent.

Clifford's A-levels are going okay although I had to do a mega talk to the chappie about managing fear and not to worry about it because he cannot fail in the long run. If he blows it this year he does a handful of maths courses again next year  and then goes to university. I sometimes think the culture in this country of fear of failure is not too good and the kids should just be encouraged to do their best and accept failure which is inevitable in something or other but what is not inevitable is just sitting on your backside and not getting up and going again. Never give up thats what I say.

Fiona is definitely getting healthier and in a couple of weeks time we are going to hit the big hills and walk up them although we will not be doing the tops because we find them quite boring now  being into birds, plants and rocks. Clouds as well! I sometimes think outside of the sinusitis, she is just tired from 30 years of doing 60 to 70 hour weeks the last 16 of which have been very heavy indeed. Anyway, she is a grand lass and I love her to bits for her stoicism as well as determination.

Waffling done, time to see how my home-made pork burgers are doing and then we're going to watch a film called "Men of Honour" a film about the first black American Navy diver. I love watching these films which show the progress of racial unity one of the major foundations of achieving the unity between all human beings on the planet.

Just got back from a great walk in Buttercup filled fields around Durham City with Clifford and Fiona. It looked and felt ethereal, cool and heavenly because although there was a hot sun there was also a very cool breeze blowing from the north-east. Not many clouds in the sky but what we did see were fallstreak clouds where the ice particles are heavier than the surrounding ice particles and fall down ,  the whole thing looking like a bent  ice cream cone  flowing in the direction of the wind. Really exciting and it was the first time I had seen this phenomena. There were several   little ones as well. What was unusual was that there is usually a hole in a huge flat hozizontal cloud   but in this case there was no hole just this downward flowing  bent ice cream cone. Nice!

Pretty wild walk and Fiona got very excited when she spotted an extremely active tree creeper from  2 m away shooting up the tree looking for food. She also went to a second-hand clothes stall which has excellent stuff from the 80s and 90s and she bought a jean jacket which makes her look very cool indeed. So cool that I feel the need for a personal fire extinguisher when around her. For me that is . Oh well, who says life gets quieter as you get older.

Very unusually for our family, being into routine in an almost autistic way, we are having our Persian Rice this evening with sausages and green beans. I do believe we are going to watch " Nacho Libre" a crazy film about Mexican wrestling starring Jack Black.

Fiona took a couple of tumbles scrambling round part  of a wood and I am always impressed by her willingness to throw herself up and down things. She got into an  an argument with some brambles as well which she is busy combing out of her hair at this moment. A great afternoon out!

Yesterday when out in Richmond with Fiona, we sat on a bench with a lady and because she had a rucksack I inevitably asked her where she was walking   and it turned out she was a German lady called Verona and she loves Yorkshire and comes to visit quite often wandering around the place. She was based in York on holiday, a city she loves, and we had a nice conversation about walks around the northern part of Yorkshire. She had a huge book of Yorkshire walks and dutifully ticked  the ones I recommended. I gave her our card and I hope she gets in touch. She lives in Berlin at the moment and it is great there are Yorkshire fanatics worldwide. A very nice lady.

With the gorgeous Fiona I had a nice afternoon out visiting my mum and doing a mini trek around Richmond. My mum is in good fettle but she is weakening a bit as she gets older. Still, she managed an hour of my wayward sense of humour which  cheered  her up.

After this, Fiona and I did a nice 2 mile circular walk around the West end of Westfield's a nice roughly square mile of common land at the, errrr , West of Richmond . As we plodded up the hill there were huge fields full of Buttercups and Sedges which looked especially beautiful under a mostly blue sky, with very high cirrus stratus and a nice backdrop of gathering cumulus clouds over the North Yorkshire moors. It felt like paradise and Richmond is a very beautiful place.

Very strange with the cumulus clouds at the moment because they are not towering up to become cumulus congestus clouds they are merely staying fairly flat which is a clear indication of a lack of heat and not much convection. I personally think this is one of the first signs an ice age but I don't think anybody will believe me. Anyway, it will be a couple of thousand years before it really kicks in but if in my lifetime I start to see patches of ice still left on top of the Lake District peaks over the summer that would be a sure sign of global cooling not warming. Funny how ideas can get in my head and I go around thinking about this quite a lot. It is quite likely to be a wrong idea but it is good fun thinking it through.

Before we even went out this morning I had a really good session with my harmonica and singing and it is coming together quite nicely. I have been amazed that when I start to do some exercises with the harmonica it really improves my playing no end. I cannot do them for very long   like I used to when I did them all day but I only need a bit of seasoning these days I already have the body of practice done. A lovely afternoon out with my beautiful wife.

 Oh yes, at the Goth weekend after we had had ice creams there was a very tall trim and beautiful lady who was wearing some sort of light brown plastic one-piece dress from her ankles up with a fairly low cut to the chest and plastic shoulder straps. I just had to get close to this lady to have a look at the dress as it turned out I got very close as I stood right in front of her whilst  several people were talking to her and taking photos. I am not sure a plastic dress like that is comfortable but she reminded me of the Borg Queen from Star Trek and she was just as pretty as well. I would have liked to have touched the material but I think that may be going too far although I could have asked. Sometimes I am shy and have a sense of decorum!

On 27th April I had a nice pre-birthday day out at Whitby with my family. The weather was nice and it was a bit cold but best of all after we had looked at our usual glacial weathering and the rocks in the glacial till and had walked down the beach into the centre Whitby when we noticed a lot of people wearing black and someone told us it was Whitby Goth Weekend .

So, all these people wearing black and some in a sort of military uniform carrying big brass guns were from the  Gotholithic period in the early 1980s. I loved the purple and blue hair that the very fine middle-aged ladies had and also some of them had daughters in tow who looked really stunning. My lads noticed them definitely! Unusually for us as a family we decided to have a cup of coffee in a very nice quaint picturesque Cafe which had quite a few Goths in there. At the coffee counter there were a couple of young ladies who looked like they would really like to talk to a couple of nice young man and my lads were with us so I invited them to go over and chat to them if they liked. They smiled but declined.

Upstairs there was a Goth mother and daughter pair and a guy and his wife, the guy being in a military uniform with a huge brass gun. Fiona ask them politely if she could take photos   and they were very obliging. In fact every one of the Goths we spoke to was super polite and didn't mind having photos  taken.  I'm  amazed at what can happen when you go out for a walk around Whitby to look at birds and rocks and then suddenly find this wonderful subculture laid out all around the streets. North Yorkshire is always surprising!

Nipping over to the East Pier I looked back at the cliffs and there had been a huge rockfall of a least 50 foot in width right from the top where all the detaic  rock sediments were from the period in the Jurassic where most of Yorkshire was just one huge delta with lots of sand and silt. It did me remind me rather uncomfortably that  walking at the bottom of those cliffs can involve a slight risk of thousands of tonnes of rock falling onto one's head. Believe you me it is worth it!

We had our usual fish and chips at Hadley's which was great and there were a couple Goths in there as well and looking out of the picture windows onto the street and all these amazing Goths around was quite something. What surprised me during this day is when we were at the cafe we all   hung out together for a change instead of moving on looking at stuff and that was really nice and something I want to do again. I feel the showing my children  something because it is interesting phase of my relationship with them  is coming to an end. Nobody was bored we were enjoying each other's company having a good laugh and talking about the Goth weekend and how amazing the people looked. A really nice day out and the best way I like to celebrate my birthday, because I don't like my birthday day, is  to do it before hand and have a nice time. Thank you family!

Now I have got my study room set up and soundproofed for music as well as recording stuff I woke up this morning with a feeling that the musical part of my life can go ahead at last. Or not, because I am writing and recordings songs to put out there to show to people that I can sing and write music and pretty shortly I will be putting out harmonica stuff as well to try to find a musician or musicians to work professionally with i.e. go out there and gig  and tour.

It is a  good at the moment because I am doing a day job working with Learning Disabled people and this fits my model of how any musician should conduct their affairs which is to pay your way doing a normal job and then have a go at being a musician as well. So, I am feeling pretty comfortable and this is the mental backdrop behind my walk today and feeling of contentment that I have.

Since about 10 PM last night it threw it down with rain and on my way up to Durham City for a walk around the town with Clifford and Fiona I was amazed at the amount of surface water . The tiny stream in the middle of Bowburn on the way to Durham had burst its banks and the road was completely flooded to a depth of about 18 inches which surprised me because we have not had that much rain and is an indication of how soaked the ground still is.

Walking around the banks of the River Wear was a delight and we went to look at the flood defences they are building and walked through a lovely part of the woods with many bluebells rising up the sides of the bank . Beautiful.

Because of the weather the city was really quiet, the clouds were very light glowing grey having discharged a lot of water and I could just see the condensation evaporating off the ground which will form haze and possibly mist  later. It is great getting into Earth Science books because it gives an explanation of what is going on around me.

Biscuit break was in Durham Cathedral Cloisters and was good fun particularly as we are sitting on the light side of the Cloisters facing West and I don't know why we didn't sit there in the first place years ago. Maybe us  Saunders-Priem's    like dark and gloomy places I don't know. Anyway, after hoofing it back to the car I went back on the A167 to avoid the flooding at Bowburn but there were pools on the road in several sections on the way back.

Miles is working like a Trojan at the moment meeting deadlines and getting really into his mathematics and I have been very impressed by his ability to get up at 6 AM and just crack on. Several times this week he has done 10 or 11 hours of maths a day. Good lad. I am supremely grateful to the Good Lord that I could get a job and show him that I can go out to work and it always worried me that he had never seen that side of me. I have always been keen to work at any job, I like to get up early in the morning and get out and  about.

Home-made pork meatballs, pasta , tomato sauce and garlic bread is progressing nicely as I write this and I have got a good evening lined up of writing lyrics   for two songs, melodies come really easy for me and then recording them for public listening next week. I am hoping to find a musician or musicians who want to go out and play professionally  but with original music not  covers because original music is the only way to make a half decent living. I don't think I'm going to be successful at this but the only talent I really have is  persistence, determination and trying. In fact Fiona finds me trying a lot of the time but I've realised    that is maybe why she loves me because I try for her and my family as well. A great day and I am about to watch Terminator 2 with my family and we have nominated Fiona an Honorary Boy for the duration so she can join us in watching it.