Winter begins to beckon

As winter begins to beckon, and the days start to draw in, thoughts of Christmas beckon, and with them the prospect of work. I know that one of my colleagues has requested time off, as she has to rely on public transport, which makes travel difficult, and Coran and I have arranged to go away for the weekend immediately before. This is a  busy time at the nursing home where I work, with the residents party to arrange and families visiting, so I was lucky to get the time off. Happily my days off coincide with 21st December, which this year marks not only the Winter Solstice, but also the end of the Mayan calendar, and in spiritual terms, the beginning of a whole new era, so Coran and I have taken advantage of that to make it the equivilant of a long weekend.

Coran and I did try to get private access to Stonehenge, but sadly it was already booked, so Glastonbury being our next choice and the Chalice Well also being booked, we have booked one night in the Travelodge at Amesbury and one at Glastonbury, the idea being that we can kill three birds with one stone - Stonehenge, Avebury (which is always open to the public no matter the time of day or year), and of course Glastonbury Tor. The Chalice Well would have been nice, but in some ways this is better since we will be able to just stay in our own private space, unencumbered by the energy of others. This is the last holiday I will have this year, so it is important to make it as restful as possible before the changes start to take place, and I get the feeling that there will be a lot of them.

I predict that during the weeks and months that follow, many more scandals will come to light, and not just in politics and banking - for as those on the path have no doubt known for some time, what we have thus far witnesssed is the tip of a Titanic sized iceberg, and if the bankers and so on think that their whole world is changing and crumbling around them now, they ain't seen nothin' yet. I include my own boss in this, who as an ex banker has been behaving  somewhat erratically of late. While I understand that much of this is borne from fear (he was a Director of the investment arm of a bank whose name I shall not mention during the years that marked the LIBOR scandal), it is not the easiest thing to show him compassion when he is shouting the odds and making your life difficult. Still, it is what it is, and no doubt his (and my) lesson to learn.

Nine weeks into the New Year, on February 18th, I go for my first holiday of 2013, to the island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel. This time I am staying for 11 nights, flying out on the Helicopter from Hartland on a Monday and back again the following Friday. It will be a good to have an extended break after a long winter, and even better to have almost 2 weeks worth of lie ins!