Have ya seen a haggis?

It has been a slightly off the schedule kind of week. I took my day off over Sunday afternoon and Monday morning so that I could help out on the YHA pitch at the Keswick Mountain Festival. It was great to meet up with some of the other staff from across the Lake District, chat to folk wandering past, and of course - getting a one-armed-hug from Alan Hinkes (my mum is well jel). 

Back at the hostel however, Fiona declared it to be a 'comparatively normal Mick night'. She then pulled out a box full of handbags and shoes - trying to pick out an outfit for her trip to London. I looked at the box, and said, "this makes me feel like I've failed as a woman - I don't have anything like this." Mick then chipped in, "does that mean I have succeeded at being a woman? I have lots of shoes and bags!"  

I went for a run (jog/slightly faster than a walk) one afternoon, and found a discarded fishing net (the cheap seaside type) down by the river. Thinking that some animal may get caught in it, & that it would make a good glow in the dark pooh sticks catcher, I carried it back with me. This, combined with the running, attracted some rather strange looks. So, to confirm my status as some sort of lunatic, I asked one group of passers-by if they'd seen a haggis - I lost it about ten minutes ago near the church. No reply.

Mick and Rachel have some strange ideas about proportional revenge. I threw a scrap of screwed up paper at Rachel, Mick later threw a bunch of keys at my head (and wandered off chuckling to himself). Rachel has declared herself to be Jesus (mark two). "God had a son the first time round, and for the second coming he had a daughter. It explains why I have special powers and you don't." She also said that it was God who pushed me when I nearly fell off a bed - getting me back for throwing things at the chosen one. And when I hit my head she simply asked me, "Do you feel more or less intelligent now?" I work with some really caring folk. 

Meanwhile, at the Woolpack....Harry took a break from mowing the grass to show me the latest arrivals - six tiny ducklings only a few days old. And Tom is planning some sort of secret pilgrimage on donkeys to a place with no roads. (Tom also mentioned how he wanted to have a code name in this blog. So, from now on, he shall be known as Tom-Tom, which shall undoubtedly conceal his true identity).  

Sometimes you think the day is over. That you've done everything you'd set out to do. Then you stop somewhere and are duly reminded that life always carries on. There are no cut off points, no divisions of time - if we plan life too rigidly the unexpected will always be a nuisance, and never a miracle. I've been reminded of that a few times of the past couple of weeks. & it's usually the people we meet by sheer chance that really brings it home. I watched the sun set over Crummock Water with a couple of near-elderly ladies from the Whitehaven ramblers club. I wandered around Fitz Park with a dinner lady from Keswick after her dog had come to say hello. I chatted to a woman from North Carolina while I was helping out at the Keswick Mountain Festival. It has taken each of us millions of years to get here, millions of years to be created by the universe. A million years, but one second out & we would have had different friends, different lives entirely. It's a miracle, it's magic, to walk alongside the people that we do. It's possible that we share atoms that once made up a former star, it's probable that we share the same soul & heartbeat as the entire world. Life is a marvel, life is in each & every moment, and this is the true wonder that is reality.