Born Free

Many bloggers were very patient with me while I was away on my holidays.  I have shared a good deal of holiday spam with you already and long waffling accounts of my footsteps around the north of England and Wales (I am not very good at being succinct!)…but the photo prompt from   The Haunted Wordsmith brought to back a place I have not shared with you yet.

Photo credit Free-Photos @ pixabay.com

Our home town was a new town.  It was built in the 1960s as an overspill from Liverpool, although it was built in the neighbouring county of Lancashire.  The population of the town were mainly Liverpool folk moving to where there was affordable housing, although the quality of some of the construction may have been a bit dubious in places.

But the construction quality of the assortment of boxes we lived in mattered not to us – and what is a house if it is not an assortment of boxes of various sizes in which you store stuff – some useful and some useless?  We lived for the school holidays and the weekend -when we were FREE…free as the wind blows, free as the grass grows, free as the river flows…free to gallop wildly through fields and swing from the tree-tops and splash in muddy puddles.  Free for adventures of every possible variety!

Born free, as free as the wind blows
As free as the grass grows
Born free to follow your heart

Born free, and life is worth living

Behind out house was a path that led underneath a major dual carriageway road.  Five minutes of running and we entered “The Beacon Country Park”, which was the perfect playground for us as children, our pocket of paradise, where we were able to run free!

I have lots of photographs, similar to the one above, of the grassy fields and trees that were our playground throughout our childhood years.  We played hide and seek, we played pirate and spy games, we had races with each other and lots of football or rugby.  We climbed trees.  This was my tree.  When I visited my home town this past month I climbed it yet again and looked out on the view of the Mersey basin.

How I would love to have a day of childhood over again…with all of my siblings and the neighbour’s children.  We would go on another of our adventures up to the Beacon and run with unbounded energy through the grassy fields and climb trees.  Aaaaah!

 

 

https://thehauntedwordsmith.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/worth-a-thousand-words-15/

via Succinct — Word of the Day Challenge

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/succinct/

The Feathered Friend Who Upset This Water Baby

Here I am chilling out with a scrummy breakfast and catching up on the last episode of “Poldark” which somehow I missed…don’t worry I won’t say a word about what happened just in case you are planning to watch it at some point.

The photo prompt from Meet The Bloggers just popped up on my screen and I thought I would take a closer look at the photo.

Share photos or stories of how you chill out

There is no doubt that for me water definitely helps me to chill out.  I am a total water baby!  My sisters and I were competition swimmers…but for the most part now swimming helps me to relax.  I had a taste of scuba diving in Turkey – extraordinary!  I would love to have the opportunity to try that again…and again and again!

I love boats.  Any kind of boat really.  Some of my friends own narrow boats which they keep moored on nearby canals.  Many a blissfully peaceful afternoon has been spent on the canal.  Other friends have sailing boats which which we have used on holidays up in the Lake District.  Or I love just hiring a rowing boat with a friend and relaxing in the middle of a lake.

Dream of a life-time: building a boat with my husband (who as of yet is an enigma and does not know I exist) and then sailing around the whole world as slowly as possible so we can get to know everyone along the way.

When I zoomed in on the middle of the photo I spotted a pelican…which sent my mind down this direction:

At the moment circumstances do not allow me to build a boat…but I still make sure I spend plenty of time near water and boats.  One of my top films of all time is “Finding Nemo” (I may have mentioned this once or twice before, but how could I resist giving it another mention with a photo prompt like this?)

Apparently, an oyster catcher is sitting on top of the boat in the photo above.  But when I first looked at it I thought it was a seagull.  Which again brought me back to “Finding Nemo“.

Seagulls are one of the few animals that I am not on the friendliest terms with.  I always found them a bit intimidating on trips to the seaside…but after we were mugged in Llandudno (in North Wales) by a gang of seagulls – they are really in my bad books.

Alright, maybe “mugged” is a bit of an exaggeration.  But they were flying into us and trying to seize our sandwiches out of hands while we were eating lunch.  We have a video of a seagull who glided in and snatched a chicken drumstick out of the hand of a friend of ours and flew down to the wooden boards of the pier and tucked into it, just a few feet away from where we were sitting.

Ha – feathered friend indeed!  More like feathered foe!  So yes…I feel totally chillaxed when I am near water…until any seagulls appear that is!

via Tuesday Photo Prompt – Chill Out — Word of the Day Challenge

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/30/tuesday-photo-prompt-chill-out/