Lifting my spirits........

 So, there has been so much isolation and restriction on our lives over the past couple of years, that it has had quite a detrimental effect on my mental health. Between boredom, poor health, spending too much time stuck in the house with all that entails, I have decided to make some positive changes to my life style.

I love cooking, but sadly, TOH doesn't necessarily want to eat what I want to cook, or what are the healthiest foods. So I thought, why do I have to eat what he does? We eat out a lot when the weather is good for riding, which means I can generally find something suitable for me. At home, I've been exploring different cuisines, and I either cook food for me and freeze the extra for later, or I pop the surplus round to the offspring to try.

Craftwork - I found myself with two huge sacks of wool and cotton balls left over from various projects. So I set to over the winter months and made various throws for our sofas, and various items for the charity shop over the road.

We quite often use a small cafe, run by a very nice family, who between them, have 4 girls of varying ages, and several assorted Barbie dolls. So I got myself a cheap second-hand one off Ebay, and started using the remnants to make clothes for her. I finally had a collection of over 100 outfits, everything from knickers to ball gowns. I took them down to the cafe, and the girls divided them up between themselves.

Other hobbies, I've been using YouTube to explore pieces of music that were unfamiliar to me, and I've found some real crackers to add to my playlist. I also 'found' Randy Rainbow - probably the funniest musical parody maker of the American political system. I just wish he'd come over here and let loose his wit on our poor excuse for a Government. I've just started to read his first book 'Playing With Myself'. If you watch his videos, that title will make sense

Finally, I realised that I actually need some serious 'me' time. With all that has happened, accommodation prices have rocketed to the point where I really cannot justify going away by myself anymore. I also need to get more physical exercise, but I'm not one of those people who can just go for a meaningless walk for the sole purpose of fitness.

I need purpose and something to distract my mind. Then deep joy, I came across QuizTrails These are little books, each one focused on a specific local town, which have a set route to follow and questions to find the answers to as you follow the trail. There are also lovely little explanations and enhancements. At the moment, they only cover Kent, and a couple of towns just over the border into East Sussex. So far, I've done three - all places I thought I knew well, but now realise I don't! I'm so impressed with them, I've purchased the entire range, and aim to do one every week. 

I ride to the town, park up, spend 2-3 hours walking around for up to 2 miles, answering the questions and taking lots of photographs (to be found on My British Isles blog) I then find an attractive route home. For example, when I did the Sandwich one, I rode over there (about 40 miles), parked up and did the trail, plus a little extra because the weather was so lovely. I then took a different route home, around the coast. That was a round trip of just over 100 miles and a 3 mile walk

I'm going to enjoy these!

Random considerations of education

I'm currently reading Clive James - Cultural Amnesia. In the chapter on Gianfranco Contini, he makes the point that the art of learning by heart has all but disappeared from the British Education System. System? Don't make me laugh!Contini made the point, that if you didn't learn to recite poetry by heart, how could you possibly understand how a language should flow. He wasn't wrong.Growing up in the 50s, a lot of my schooling was learnt by repitition. Almost all of what I learnt has stayed with me throughout life. Not just poetry, but mnemonics for important stuff like math, grammar and spelling."i before e, except after c" et al.
I'm a heavy user of an internet forum, and at times the grammar and spelling are so appalling, I have trouble deciphering the meaning of some of the posts. How hard is it, to learn the difference between 'they're' 'their' and 'there'. And why, oh why, do people say 'would of' 'could of'. It's WOULD HAVE and COULD HAVE!!!
I don't consider myself particularly well-educated, but I do consider my education to have been a great deal better than it is today.
Yes, knowledge is more accessible today than it has ever been, but there's a world of difference between knowledge and understanding.
Mobile phones and the internet have a great deal to answer for. To partially gloss over mobile phones for the moment, text speak does nothing to make people conscious of either grammar or spelling.
The Internet is, I believe, harmful in a sense to understanding. How often, needing to know something, do you 'Google' for it? That's fine. The Internet is a totally brilliant way of getting instant access to all kinds of information that has previously passed you by. I use it myself, a lot.
However, most of what it gives you are facts, not understanding.For instance, look someone up, and it will tell you he did this. What it doesn't tell you is why that person did whatever. What led him to do it? Was it something in his earlier life?
Most of this sort of detail generally comes from books. An in-depth understanding of a person usually comes from a biography, not from a Wiki on the 'net.
There is also a feeling among some education specialists, that the instant availability of information is discouraging people from reading books, and further, is actually harming their ability to concentrate on a passage of prose for more than a few minutes.
Reading and a love of books was instilled in me at a very young age, by both my mother and my teachers. I still love to read, fiction, non-fiction and poetry all have me enthralled.
It will be a sadder world, if our future generations lose love for their language and for in-depth study.
A world of just facts will be a sadder place.