Walking and deep thought

Had a bad night’s sleep last night – there was a rave going on in the nearby woods and they could well have placed the speakers outside my bedroom window it was that loud….Not that I object to anyone enjoying themselves, et cetera, et cetera, but when you’re woken at 4am and then can’t go back to sleep because of the banging bass….it wears a bit thin…
Anyway, beautiful day today (Easter Sunday) decided to go off for a bike ride – aimed to do around ten miles and take in a couple of big hills (I’m useless on hills) – did around four miles – mainly because I ended up at the woods where the rave had been held..no was still being held….and decided I would be taking my life in my own hands trying to negotiate the huge amount of traffic and the large police presence…So back home and a rethink…
Decided to drive down to beautiful Graveney (near Whitstable), parked up and went walking along the sea shore. I thought it would be relaxing and I do love to walk alone with just my MP3 player for company – pretty much regardless of the weather this always cheers me up no end. I walked along the coast past Seasalter – private beach, big houses and lots of speed boats, reached the outer edges of Whitstable – Islington-on-Sea, a total Cath Kidson overload on the beach huts, but admittedly it does look very pretty. Ended up in Whitstable High Street, thought I’d go for a coffee somewhere and then stroll back (actually I never stroll unless I’m with someone, my walking pace is not far off Yomping…so I’ve been told). Wandered past the Whitstable Oyster Bar (very famous, very small and rather pink)
and couldn’t decide upon a café – there were only two that I could see and neither looked terribly Single Woman friendly…Daft I know, and it doesn’t usually bother me, normally I’ll go in wherever I chose, but for some reason – maybe because I was hot and sweaty from the walk – I just didn’t fancy going in and sitting alone – I also didn’t have a book to read or a note book and pen either with me.
So I ended up retracing my steps and going back. On my return journey I started to think about endings again…something I know I’ve touched on before here. How we say goodbye to people, things, parts of our lives….I can’t remember what it was I was listening to something by Jack Johnson I think – it’s appropriate music as he’s a surfer…and yes, I know Whitstable isn’t known for surfing, but it is known for Windsurfing….and his music is ideal for walking along a beach.
Lives are just about change…it’s the only certainty in life – that everything will change, sometime. How you handle that change is up to you and partly dependent on your previous experiences. Sometimes it takes sheer force of will to deal with change in a different manner.
What am I talking about?
Say for instance that when you leave a job or for that matter a friend or partner, you usually cope very badly by either falling apart or by treating everyone involved very badly – leaving by sending a text for example. Anyway the result is always the same – that you never manage to keep the thread of friendship from earlier parts of your life.
Now, say you’d like to change that – you want to stay friends with your old boss or your old boyfriend/girlfriend….You can’t change other people’s behaviour – you have no control over them – the only behaviour you have control over is your own. So that’s where you start – you change fundamental things in your own behaviour – you don’t give someone the push by text, you discuss it with them like adults. You write a nice letter of resignation thanking your boss for all the support (it is appropriate to tell a few white lies or embellish at this point) during your period of employment.
And the result? You get a really good reference from your old boss and he/she takes you out for a leaving pub crawl too…And your ex boy/girl friend wishes you all the best and you remain on reasonable terms…even if it’s only to say “hello” politely when you bump into them at the local pub (while you’re on that crawl with the boss)…And who knows, maybe the exes (boss included) may still want to have something to do with you in the future….
And you know, I’ve still not managed to discuss what I really wanted to talk about here…
I wanted to talk about how sometime it’s just time to move on….How sometimes friends that you thought you’d have forever just don’t end up being that…..How sometimes one day you wake up and realise that it’s just not meant to be…How sometimes life just doesn’t turn out the way you’d hoped….And how hard it is to both recognise these things and act on them. It’s easy to maintain the status quo – keep things as they are, just ticking over, but everyone ends up sad and lonely that way…change is the only way forward, for better or worse.

And the song that kicked all this off was Jack Johnson’s Bubble Toes from Brushfire Fairytales – I could give you all the links to the lyrics, but I’m not going to this time….If you’re interested you’ll find them and maybe you’ll know something more about me….