Val's internal interminable monologue as she no bakes no bake gravel flapjacks

 So before the Cancer Research UK 29 day yoga challenge started, we left Dave pondering - well, pondering all kinds of things out on the moors.

I expect he was having a mid-life crisis-style-event.  Or not.  Because I don't believe in mid-life crises, myself.  Staring old age in the face as I am I've gone through enough 'crises' to know they don't just occur in 'mid-life'.  There's nothing special about mid-life, that requires a crisis of its own.  They happen all the time, depending on circumstances.  Twenty five or sixty.  Age makes little difference.  Sure, you learn a bit as you go through life. Menopause?  Nah, bollocks to that.  Likewise the andropause.  But you forget a lot also.  Although, if I understand Hegelian dialectic correctly (laughter) nothing is ever really 'forgotten'.  It's merely subsumed into the whole, creating the being we are forever in the process of becoming.  Hegel would lose the 'forever'.   

But I digress.

Back at the yurts,  Val was not baking her specialty -  'no bake' hardcore smashed gravel flapjacks.  Her fifth batch that day.  She was breathing heavily and muttering to herself as she smashed gravel with a large mallet and mixed it with golden syrup and rolled oats before pressing the mixture into a tray lined with clingfilm and refrigerating it overnight (full recipe not available, sorry).

'I know Dave's testosterone levels have plummeted.  Plummeted from, let's be honest, a very low base, to the infinitesimal.  He's not the man I thought I married.  Or is he.  Perhaps I was just stupid.  Blinded by his facility with a trailcam and his knowledge of all things otter.  I wonder if I should DIVORCE him!'  Val smashed the mallet extra hard as she said 'DIVORCE'.  A fragment of gravel flew ceiling-wards and clattered into the uplighter.  'Or perhaps he's experiencing the andropause.  Maybe I should cut him some slack.  Or perhaps NOT!'  Val's mallet hit the dwindling pile of gravel again and the hand-crafted kitchen table - hand-crafted by Dave, from local sustainable sources - i.e. the small stand of coppiced oak behind the yurts - shuddered.  Val paused, as she remembered Dave diligently sanding planks of oak and whittling the table legs out in the shed on cold winter evenings with only a small brazier and his fingerless gloves to keep him warm.

'Perhaps Dave's not so bad.  Perhaps it is the andropause and he just needs some more hot stoning, and an ear candling session to rev him up a bit. And a double strength boiling goji berry oil colonic irrigation is always a good answer no matter the question.  Mind you,  Dave's been going through the andropause ever since I met him thirty years ago.  Never mind.   If he ever returns from the moors I'll make a new man of him.'  

Val threw her mallet into the air and caught it deftly, before pressing the final flap jack mixture into its tin tray and popping it into the refrigerator.

more later - when Dave returns from the moors in a spiritually enlightened state, loses his bobble hat and gets a surprising job offer...

My Book Seapenguin

 

I published a paperback in 2017 - it's got almost all the original blog posts in it.

https://youtube.com/shorts/YdNHC7NbbtA?si=KRYs-reVcmWGKwPq

Above is a link to a Youtube short regarding the book.

And here is the link to my Amazon author page. https://www.amazon.com/author/katesmart

 I'm taking a pause here because I have something else going on writing-wise and I'm unsure whether to place it here or whether to start another, temporary blog.   I'm having a quick think.

Meanwhile, apologies for the truncated Dave post.  He is currently Hereabouts in a yurt-cum-sweat lodge - Val found him on the moors, ending his brief burst of freedom and accusing him of having 'mental health' that required immediate intervention with hot stones, a goji berry enema and three weeks in the sweat yurt.

More on all of this later.  

Dave's Hurting Soul

'Dave.  You need to spend some time alone mate.  You need to reconnect with yourself.'

Dave thought back to when he was a teenager.  Endless hours spent listening to Nick Drake on dull winter afternoons, smoking endless cigarettes and thinking endlessly dark thoughts.  It was always late autumn or winter back then, or so it seemed.  Everything grey and brown and muddy.  Mirroring how he felt inside.

He remembered longing for a cleansing frost.  And a homely house in the countryside with a welcoming fire, books, and a patchwork bedspread.  Instead of the damp featureless first floor apartment in the brutalist concrete housing estate where he was brought up.  

Was he connecting with himself, back then?  It was hard to say.  It was just the way he was, back then.  Friendless.  Introverted.  Relying entirely on his own company.  Escaping on his bike to bits of scrubby ancient woodland still hanging on amidst the concrete and rubble of new roads and shopping centres on the outskirts of town and finding solace for his hurting soul in a bit of birding.  

I haven't changed a bit, he thought.   I live in the countryside and I'm married to Val now, so I'm not on my own.  

But my soul still hurts.