Blob Thing Finds An Unexpected Play Area On The River Wansbeck

Blob Thing says:

Hello again.  Thanks for bearing with me in the days on which I haven't written.  My person has been wanting to help me but somehow there has never been enough time.  Or more accurately she hasn't made enough time for me.  I'm sure there was enough time to go round for the both of us.  Today there really isn't that much time because we're going on a little adventure soon.  My person joined a choir recently and they have their first little public performance later.  I'm going along with her and we'll take Winefride too and while we're there we can take pictures and generally have a very good time.  Afterwards we might try walking home even though that's a very long way.

Last time I talked with you I finished telling you about some adventures I had in Morpeth.  Today I want to start telling you about some adventures I had on the way to Morpeth.  Not on that day, no.  I didn't have any extra special adventures on the way to Morpeth that day.  I know that riding on a bus can be an adventure but I ride on lots of buses and I couldn't possibly tell you about every journey.  I mean, I'll be riding on at least one bus today but I'm not going to give details of every road it passes between the city centre and the choir.  That would be very boring.  Especially if I was to tell you about the journey every time I take it.

I want to tell you about a different day and a different journey to Morpeth.  In terms of miles I'm only going to focus on the last part of the journey.  The part after we got off the bus.  Because you don't need to know about how we rode on the Metro and then caught a bus.  Not a bus that went to Morpeth though.  Not this time.  This bus went to Ashington.  But we weren't going there.  Not that day.  I went there recently and we walked to the Woodhorn mining museum and to a lovely park with a big lake and Winefride and I got taken on a little narrow gauge railway which was very exciting.

That isn't the day I'm telling you about though.  This time we got off the bus at a little place called Stakeford.  I'd got off the bus there before, the very first time I got taken out on an adventure.  This time things would be very different on four counts:

1. My person was more confident about going on adventures.

2. My person was better at adventuring with me which meant that I wouldn't get forgotten about in her bag for almost the entire day.

3. We would be adventuring in entirely the opposite direction.

4. And this is a big, big difference and the most important one.  We would be taking Winefride.  When I first got off a bus at Stakeford, Winefride wasn't yet created.  I hadn't dreamed of having a sister.  This time she was coming too.  It was going to be amazing.

We got off the bus and my person had a definite plan for the day and only got slightly lost once.  Only slightly.  That's very good for my person.  Sometimes she can get very lost more than once.  On one walk we ended up in a village about five miles from the one she had been wanting to get to.  I'm not sure how she did that and think it was pretty amazing because she didn't completely meltdown over it.  I dread to think what might have happened if we hadn't found a bus stop though.

Winefride, my person and I walked down the hill from the bus stop until we came to the river.  It was very beautiful.  There's a modern road bridge over the Wansbeck at that point that's not pretty but you can stand on it and look both ways.

Here I am on the bridge.  Behind me is the river Wansbeck and it's flowing in that direction to the sea.

The bridge in the background is a railway bridge but you're not likely to see a train on it now.  Further along there's another road bridge, and then suddenly you reach the sea.  It's amazing there.  When I visited in April my person and I were the only people on the entire sandy beach and we had a little sing before walking the length of the beach to some rock pools and then up onto the cliffs to continue our walk.  I want to walk it again because, as I said, I spent most of that day in the bag and missed out on it.  I've also just suggested another walk to my person.  To walk along the whole coastline and use the road bridge to cross the river.  If we set out early and started at Tynemouth I wonder how far she could get before being too exhausted to continue.  My person isn't very fit.

Here's a picture of Winefride.  We had walked down from the bridge to the river and this is the view upstream.

If you follow the river far enough you get to Morpeth.  We followed it far enough.  Apart from a stretch where you can't follow the river and have to take a big detour to get round private estates.  We didn't want to have to take a detour but we found something amazing there.

We were enjoying our river walk immensely.  Winefride was taking everything in and behaving very well considering she was less than ten days old.  You can tell she's young.  We hadn't even thought that reins might be a good idea then to help her keep safe.

And then we encountered the first big surprise of the day.  Right there by the river, seemingly nowhere near anywhere we found it:

A play area.  A nearly deserted play area.  I couldn't have been happier and when Winefride saw it she squealed with delight.  She must have remembered the play area she visited in Rhiwabon when she was only one day old.  Her first ever adventure.  We just had to go and play and we all wanted to.  It was amazing and it was very peaceful, one of the most peaceful play areas in the world.  You could sit on the swing and watch the river pass by peacefully.

Here are Winefride and me, sharing one of the swings.  We couldn't see the river when this picture was taken because we were facing the wrong way for the river.  That's okay.  It was the right way for the camera.

Then we saw a slide.  I have to confess that I was slightly afraid of slides.  I've been on them now and they're okay.  Winefride saw it though and she wanted to see what it was and experiment with it.  She wanted to try everything in the park even though it meant we wouldn't get to Morpeth as quickly.  It was a change of plans and my person isn't always good at those.  She agreed though.  We would climb to the top of the slide and see whether it looked safe enough to use.

The view from the top scared me.  Was I really expected to sit on a big metal thing and trust it to get me to the bottom safely?  Wouldn't it be better just to walk down again?

My person assured me that I would be okay and Winefride was getting quite agitated because she desperately wanted to try falling down it.  She is so brave.  Here's my brave sister sitting at the top of the slide before her first descent.

She didn't get killed.  In fact she seemed to quite enjoy herself and when she got back to the top of the hill she was smiling even more than usual.  She huggled up to me and giggled and I decided that I might be able to try to slide too.  Here we both are at the top of the slide.

Winefride went first and then I took a deep breath and followed her.  It wasn't the most graceful of rides but it was quite a lot of fun and I wanted to go again and see if I could slide any better.  Winefride of course wanted to go again.  She would have probably stayed sliding all day, all night and into the next week if we had let her.  But then we wouldn't have reached Morpeth.  Maybe that would have been okay though.  Morpeth would still be there to be reached on another day and maybe giving Winefride such hours or days of happy joy would be better than following the plan.

Then I said to my person, "But what about you?  You haven't done it.  You should slide too."

It took quite a lot of bullying and cajoling and convincing and by the time my person agreed to ride on the slide Winefride had slid down and climbed up another four times and she was laughing so much.  I said to my person, "Look how much fun Winefride is having.  You could be having that fun too instead of standing around looking a bit bored and anxious to be walking."

In the end she decided that she would have a go.  She would follow me and Winefride down the slide.  I made another suggestion.  My person should video the experience and then we could show my creator what we had all been doing.  I thought my creator would be very happy to see our escapades and our enjoyment.  She likes play areas and I know she would have encouraged my person to play.

So we all went on the slide.  And my person did take the video.  This one.  Another video for what will become the worst YouTube channel in the history of the universe.  That's what my person says anyway.

It was excellent fun.  Here I am at the bottom of the slide, just before we moved on to other adventures.

One more adventure in the park to tell you about.  We got to ride on a seesaw.

The seesaw was amazing fun but it was very difficult for us to hold on tightly and it was a bit unbalanced because my person is much heavier than me and Winefride put together and she had to be on the other end to do the seesaw work.  What would have been better would have been if my creator was there too and I could sit on one end with my person and Winefride could sit on the other end with my creator.  It would be incredibly good fun.

My person said it was time to move on.  She didn't let us stay playing all day and said that we had to continue the walk along the river to Morpeth even though some of the walk wouldn't be by the river at all.  Reluctantly I agreed and Winefride was surprisingly calm about being dragged away from the play area.  It was time to walk again.

Later we would discover an unintentional poem.  My person might have helped me with my blog yesterday if not for that poem.  She looked at the photo containing the words and just had to look something up and ended up browsing most of a book about the voting in Northumberland in the general election of 1841 and then she started reading about poor laws and all kinds of other things.  All very interesting I'm sure.  But it meant I had to wait yet another day to get this post written.  Never mind.  I've done it now.  Maybe I'll find another play area today on our adventure.  Maybe.




[1955 words]

Blob Thing Experiences The Wild Stepping Stones Of Morpeth

BlobThing says:

My person hasn't been letting me write my blog for the last few days.  And in the last week she has only taken me out on two adventures.  I don't think she has been feeling that great.  But I'm sure she will again and I think that next year will be even brighter than this year.  For me.  For Winefride.  And for my person.

The first of these adventures was to Morpeth but I'd just been talking about the bird that swallowed me whole and I felt a bit nervous so I spent almost the whole day hiding in the bag in case the bird spotted me again.  My person tells me that she did walk past the bird again.  I was glad that I was safe.

The second adventure was very special.  My person took Winefride and me to the Great North Snowdogs farewell event.  All of the dogs were there including the one that we hadn't been able to see because there was no public transport.  I hope that when another trail is organised in 2019 there won't be any inaccessible creatures.  At the event there were lots of signs telling us not to touch any of the dogs.  I felt very sad because it meant that I wouldn't be able to properly meet the last dog.  But then my person gave us permission to break the rules and Winefride and I sat on the dog and had a nice chat.  My person took lots and lots of photos that day and I'll be sharing them on my special Snowdogs blog, Blob and the Snowdogs.  But that won't be until February because I'm only sharing pictures of one dog a day.

On Saturday my person brought a new friend and he's now living with us in the house.  He's very lovely.  My creator named him Merghost on account of him being a Merghost.  He's got a tag with a name on it but I think Merghost suits him much better.  My person liberated him from a church fair at a very low ransom cost of twenty pence.

Today's blog, yes person.  [Keep it short, my finger is hurting a lot.]  I was telling you about my previous adventure in Morpeth, five whole months ago.  When I left you, which seems ever such a long time ago because it was ever such a long time ago, I had been walking in the park and had found my way back to the river after going up and down hills too many times.

I liked the river.  The water was extra specially pretty in the sunshine.  My person took a picture of the church and I like it so much that I've given her permission to include it here even though I'm not in it.

We continued along our route, past bridges, and then we got a view of Lord Collingwood's old house across the river.  There's only a very little bit of it there now but Lord Collingwood probably doesn't mind because he's dead.  Oh no, not recently.  A while ago.  My person says that we have seen a giant statue of Lord Collingwood at Tynemouth and a smaller statue of his head in the Anglican cathedral in Newcastle.  He's quite famous because he won a big sea battle.  Not only did he turn up first but he was the boss sailor at the end of the battle.  He won.  He took over leadership of the battle from a man called Horatio Nelson who died half way through.  Horatio is much more famous.  Even I've heard of him.

Then we found something very exciting indeed.  Stepping stones across the river.  I wanted to cross them, jumping from one stone to the next.  It was lots of fun.  A sign says that they're the seventh set of stones across the river out of seven and I want to make three points here.

Point One:  That means there are six more sets of stepping stones further up the river.  I want to cross all of them.  All of them.  And that means that my person will have to take me on some more adventures soon.  She got told that she would be able to walk along lots more of the river.  I want to do it.  Please person.  Take me back to Morpeth.  Let's walk and find stones.

Point Two:  The sign is lying.  I know it is.  Because I have crossed the stepping stones at a little village called Bothal.  That was an excellent adventure day.  I should blog about it.  We took Winefride on a walk that day from Stakeford to Morpeth and it was wonderful and Winefride made such happy and delighted sounds on the slide in a play area.  Yes.  More stepping stones.  An eighth set of stones.  The sign is most definitely lying and I have proof.

Point Three:  Sometimes the River Wansbeck floods at Morpeth.  The water gets high and covers up the stones.  Sometimes they are covered by feet of water.  My point is that crossing the stones was very exciting for a little toy but I wouldn't want to try crossing them in a flood.

That's enough points.  Here's a picture of me.  I am posing on the stepping stones.  What a thrill.

Here I am, sitting on a stone.  The river is behind me.  It's not the best picture but it's hard to take a picture of a toy on a stone like this so I'll forgive my person.

We walked along the river a bit more once I'd crossed the stones enough times.  I must have crossed them an even number of times because at the end I found myself back at the beginning.  We walked.  And we came to a footbridge over the river.  This is the view downstream.  When we were there last week a cormorant was on the river very near the bridge and it was playing and playing and having a lot of joyful time.  It's a very pretty place.

It's so pretty that we met a woman on the bridge who had come on holiday from a pretty and popular tourist place in the south of England.  She said that Morpeth was much nicer.  Here's the view upstream.  My person knows a woman who lives in one of the houses you can see.  It's a very nice house and the garden leads down to the river which is a brilliant thing.  The woman said she has seen otters and kingfishers from her garden.  And a terrapin.  I'd like to see otters and kingfishers.  I think my person would too.  Unfortunately a garden like that is a dangerous thing when floods happen because it might not just be the stepping stones getting covered with water.

We finally left the river behind.  But we're going back aren't we person?  To walk further upstream.  And you promised you would take Winefride and me on the walk from Stakeford to the sea too didn't you?  That walk was my first ever adventure but my person wasn't very good at adventuring with me then and only got me out of her bag once in order to show that I was having an adventure.  I've spent this year teaching my person how to have adventures with me.  She's getting much better at it.

On the way back to the bus stop we passed this entrance wall.  It's another pretty thing.  We walked through it and circled the churchyard beyond.  We felt tired even though we hadn't walked very far.

All that remained were chips.  Chips and a bus.

It had been an excellent day.  It's been an excellent year.  Everyone is complaining about how bad the year has been.  I've heard lots of sad and scary things.  But my year has been far better than I ever would have believed it could be.  The Angel of The North told me I'd have excellent surprises coming my way.  And I have.  I think there will be even more surprises next year.  For me.  For Winefride.  For my person.  And for my creator.  I am looking forward to next year even though there are so many challenging things in the world.

In April my person was sent out and told to find one thing of joy.  That's my challenge to you.  Today.  This week.  This month.  And throughout next year.  Find things of joy.  I promise you that they exist.  My person wrote about some of them last week.  There are plenty more.



[1420 words]

Blob Thing Heads For The Hills After A Very Lucky Escape

Blob Thing says:  [He truly does.  This doesn't get written unless Blob is with me.  He can't shout loudly enough if he's stuck in my bag in another room.]

It was five months ago.  Exactly.  Well not quite exactly.  It will be exactly in about three hours as I am talking.  I was in Morpeth and my person and I were part way through an exploration of Carlisle Park.  It's amazing.  In three hours time I will be back in Morpeth again with my person.  Winefride will come with us today.  She's been to Morpeth before but hasn't seen Carlisle Park and hasn't seen the stepping stones over the river.  All she's really done in Morpeth is eat free strawberries and shortbread biscuits.  She enjoyed that though.  She was only eight days old and she got to eat her first strawberry.  The look on her face!  We did lots of things that day.  Had a long walk.  Went on a big slide.  Explored a graveyard.  Discovered some more stepping stones.  Now I want to talk about that day but my person says to carry on with talking about the five months ago day.  The later day was better because Winefride was there and she has improved things for me every single day since she was created.  Every single day.

Well.  We climbed up another hill.  We had climbed up a hill.  Then we had climbed down a hill.  And now we climbed up a hill again.  At the top of the hill I met a big metal bird.  My person wanted to include a picture showing the whole creature but I told her she wasn't allowed to because it was a rubbish picture and cut off part of the bird's beak.  She wasn't good at using her camera that day.  There are out of focus pictures.  There are wonky pictures.  And there's one where she cut the top off a church.  I think she's got a bit better at using the camera now but she still has the ability to go wrong.  And to be very wonky.  She's quite a wonky person too.  A week ago she had to go to a hospital to see a physiotherapist and I just sat there laughing as he kept listing ways in which her back is very interesting.  He said it's got at least five things wrong with it.  That's even more than I thought.  Luckily all five can be solved or diminished if I keep bullying my person to obey the physiotherapist's instructions. [I don't need bullying thanks.]  Yes you do person.  You'll never do them regularly unless you've got someone to remind you because you just won't.  You'll have some kind of executive functioning failure even more than other people.  You need me!  [Honest Blob, I'd do my exercises.  I would.  I would.  I WOULD!]  Please don't get in a temper person.  You've got a blog to type for me.  Get on with it please.

A bird.  It looked like quite a friendly creature and it sang a pretty song to me.  This wasn't just a magpie making a racket like the ones in the garden.  This wasn't even a nightingale.  I've heard that nightingales have a pretty song but I haven't heard one.  My person said she went to Berkeley Square once and even if a whole choir of nightingales had been singing she wouldn't have been able to tell because there was so much traffic whizzing round and round all four sides.  This bird was amazing.  Like the best of counter-tenors and it was singing something very pretty that my person says sounds a bit like Vivaldi.  She might be right.  I don't know.  I've only ever heard one thing by Vivaldi.  The Four Seasons.  Which hasn't got any singing.  And I've only ever heard altered versions of it.  My person got a bit obsessed in the summer by a version played by someone called Jacques Loussier who played the whole thing as part of a jazz trio.  I liked it but didn't need to listen to it quite so many times as my person's obsession dictated.  Over and over again.  She should change the CD more often.

This bird sang well.  I walked over to it and it invited me to sit on its back and then invited me to sit on its head.  And like a fool I accepted its invitation.

Why do I trust animals?  It's not as if I've never had difficulties with them.  You would think I might be a little more wary.  I've only just told you of two episodes when I nearly got eaten.  Some happier episodes too but being eaten isn't nice.  Unless you're a shaman.  I was with my person once when a shaman told her how good it had felt the previous week to be vomited up by a snake after being eaten by it.  I wouldn't like to be eaten or vomited by a snake.  It sounds very unpleasant indeed but the shaman seemed to have enjoyed the whole experience.  She said it had been a great privilege.  There are some privileges I can do without.

So there I was sitting on the head of a bird.  When suddenly it tossed it's head backwards and I was flung into the air before my person could do anything about it because she was still standing back taking pictures of me looking happy.  As I fell I noticed that the bird had stretched its neck backwards and its beak was wide open below me.

I landed uncomfortably in the bird's mouth.

And with one mighty gulp it swallowed me completely.

My person was very slow to react and was still taking pictures.  This is the last one she took and you can see that I have been swallowed.

I was scared.  Very scared.  What if I was digested completely?  How would my person ever cope without me?  What if she got sent to a physiotherapist and was given exercises to do?  Was there an exciting afterlife for small pink soft toys?

My person finally reacted and jumped to my rescue.  It was very fortunate indeed that this very strange bird had a very strange long neck leading down to a probably quite bizarre stomach below.  I'm glad I didn't ever find out about its stomach.  The strangeness of the bird was my salvation.

It's neck was not covered in skin or feathers.  It had lots of holes in.

I was too scared to move but my person ran up.  She stunned the bird so it couldn't fly off, by hitting it on the head.  And then she rescued me by reaching her hand into the neck of the bird and carefully extricating me through one of the holes.

I was free.  It took me a while to recover.  The bird wandered off looking miserable.  Serves it right.  Afterwards we learned that it was a Siren Bird, luring the unsuspecting to its shore with its singing and then destroying them on the jagged rocks of its stomach.  I hope it doesn't eat too many soft toys.

After that my day improved.  I soon found my smile again and I had my picture taken in front of lots of trees that had lots of different colours.  Very pretty, like the whole of the park.  Just beware of the birds if you ever visit.

We walked down the hill onto the grass and had a little rest and then wondered what to do next.

"I know," said my person, "Let's climb up the hill."

Up.  Down.  Up.  Down.  And now Up.

Up these steps.  The hill was called Ha'Hill.  At the top was the spot where the first castle in Morpeth stood.  Nine hundred years ago.  It wasn't there any more but we still went to see up.  Up these high and difficult steps.

It was worth it though.  I have to admit that.  Just look at this view down to the old court house and part of the town.  We could see all sorts of things.  No wonder they built a castle up there.

And then we looked out the other way.  It was wonderful up there.  But what was that building in the distance?  It looked a bit like a castle.  I wanted to go and investigate it.

And investigate we did.  But that involved some more walking.

First we had to climb down the hill.  Then we had to climb up another hill.  And this is what we found.

It's not actually a castle.  It nearly is.  It's just part of one.  This is the gatehouse of a castle.  It was built in 1342 by William de Greystock.  150 years before someone sailed across the ocean, got it all wrong, and accidentally discovered there was a continent there.  When he discovered it he began a tradition that continues to this day of treating the native population very, very badly.  You can read about it for yourself.  It's a very horrible story.  Even today, this very day, people of the tribes who were in America before that man arrive are being treated badly.  Today.  This exact day.  You can read about that for yourself too.

Anyway.  It was a gatehouse and I wasn't able to go inside and explore it because now it's someone's house.  They might not have appreciated me ringing their doorbell and asking to come inside to explore and take pictures.  Who knows?  They might have let me come in.  I will never know because I didn't try.  Would you let me explore your house if I rang on your doorbell unexpectedly?  I'm not sure my person would let a random person with their soft toy come in and explore her house.

After seeing the gatehouse there was only one thing left to do.

Climb back down the hill.

We walked a long way through the park after that with only some little bits of up and down.

It began to rain quite a lot which meant we had to hurry up and we couldn't go to the play area.  My creator said that we should have played on the swings even though it was raining.

Eventually we had reached the river.  Back to the river where we had begun.  And not much further upstream.  We could have just walked along the river for a few minutes to reach this point.  But I am glad that we didn't.  Very glad.

Even though we had walked up, down, up, down, up, down, up and down.  Rather than just along.


[1760 words]

Blob Thing Goes Gardening With A Herbalist In Morpeth

Blob Thing speaks:  [Honest, he does.  People don't seem to believe me that he is the one writing all this and that I am just the one typing it for him.  He's very clever.  For a soft toy.]

I've asked my person what I should talk about next.  She didn't know.  She would probably prefer it if I didn't talk about anything for a while so she can write the things she wants to write.  My person has her 250th blog post to write which is quite a milestone.  She also wants to finish writing the draft of a Christmas story that my creator got her to write.  [No.  You know that isn't quite true Blob.  You know she only gave me a half sentence prompt and I did the rest.  And you know she only gave me the prompt because I asked her to.  So don't blame your creator.]  That doesn't matter.  The point is that you're writing a story and I think you would prefer to be doing that right now not typing my words.  [Well you're right there Blob.  So get on with it.]

Last night we had a look at some photos of my adventures and we made a list of some of the adventures that I haven't talked about yet.  I didn't sleep well last night and they don't make sleeping tablets for soft toys so at three o'clock I found myself thinking about it.  Should I write about the beach at Alnmouth?  Should I write about the Sunday Assembly?  How about the time Winefride and I did a fun dance in a cafe with one of my creator's friends?  There's even a video of that one.  Or maybe I should finish my description of Greenbelt because I want to do that.

No.  None of those things today.  I have decided to write about an adventure day I had five months ago.  Five months ago tomorrow to be exact.  That was the day my person took us to explore some of Morpeth.  The first of July.  The start of the second half of my first year of life.  Ooh. Wow.  That's exciting.  It's just a month until my birthday.  I wonder if I'll get any presents.  My Morpeth adventures seem good to write about because tomorrow I'm going to be going back to Morpeth and I think I'm going to be fed cake too.  This time Winefride will be there too.  I hope she likes it.

This has been a year in which we have walked to Morpeth - another adventure for me to write about and there's a video from that day too.  It's of me, Winefride and my person playing on a slide.  It was a wonderful day and we got to eat strawberries at the end of our walk.  Also this year we have walked from Morpeth.  That was one of my first ever adventures.  Just about.  My person took me out with her and then she forgot that I was there so I remained marooned in her bag until over half way through the walk.  Don't worry though - I've made her go back again so I could see the things I missed out on first time.  And this has been a year in which we have walked in Morpeth.  That was a very good day too and we discovered lots of pretty things.  I wanted to play on the swings in Morpeth but it was raining at that point and my person didn't let me.

We arrived in Morpeth on the bus and walked down the main street to the river.  On the way we passed the Bagpipes Museum.  Yes.  It's true.   Morpeth has a museum devoted to bagpipes.  We went in and had a quick look but I have to say it wasn't the most exciting part of the day for me.  Bagpipes are okay in their place, which isn't necessarily in the main shopping street of Newcastle.  I like some pipe music and we even own some CDs with pipes of different kinds.  My person is telling me that we should listen to her Kathryn Tickell and Davy Spillane albums again.  I hope she spelled those names correctly because I wouldn't have been able to do it.

Then we crossed over the river.  We didn't use the busy road bridge because behind the bagpipes we found a quiet footbridge.  My person took pictures from the bridge.  When she blogs about the day she can include them all.  I don't want to post them because none of them show my happy face.  I am happy to show some pictures that aren't of me.  But not all of them.

Here's one not of me.  Taken from near the bridge.  This shows the River Wansbeck.  It's a weir.  It's been at least two days since I last included a picture of a weir.

We followed a little lane from the bridge and entered a park.  This was Carlisle Park and I got a bit confused because we weren't in Carlisle.  I want to go and explore Carlisle one day.  It's a very long bus ride away but that's no excuse and my person should take Winefride and me to see it.  Next year.  When it's a bit warmer.  All we would have to do would be to get the bus to Hexagon and stay on the bus.  I want to go back to Hexagon too.  Maybe next time I'm there I can be very brave and go into the prison even though that's a very scary place.  Yes person, you must take us to Carlisle.  It won't cost you anything.  So don't make excuses.  I promise we'll behave on the bus and I'll help you look after Winefride if she gets bored.

We walked up a hill in the park and I started to feel good about being in Morpeth.  Already the park was proving to be a richly rewarding revelation, reaping righteous rewards.  [Er, Blob ... I think perhaps you're taking alliteration a bit too far there.]  Having walked up the hill we looked across to a big castle.  At least it looked like a castle.  But my person says that it isn't a castle at all.  She says it used to be the court house.  Not any more.  Now it's filled with apartments.  Expensive ones.  The kind of apartments where your towels are washed for you and someone makes your breakfast.  I think it should be a castle though.  A castle with a very strict court that makes you clean the roof and look after the park just for dropping one sweet wrapper on the pavement.  I dread to think what the penalties might be for dropping a takeaway wrapper.

We had just walked up a hill.

And we stood at the top of lots of steps.

But what was at the bottom of the steps did look interesting.  So we climbed down all the steps.  If we had known that we were going to end up at the bottom of the hill we might not have walked to the top of it.  We might.  People do that kind of thing.  Anyone climbing a big hill knows that in the end they will be back at the bottom of the hill.  They do it anyway.  For fun.  For the view.  For the satisfaction of having climbed to the top.  I want to go up some big hills one day but it's difficult to reach them from here on a bus.  My person should work out how to get to some bigger hills next year.  Perhaps she will go to a bigger hill one day when staying in the Manchester home.  There must be bigger hills near there that she can find using a bus.  Or even a train.  I like trains.  I don't think I'll ever climb Everest though.  But wouldn't it be amazing if I did?  Just think of all the photos I could bring back from the Himalayas.  I could be the first small pink soft toy to climb Everest and I would get in the record books.  I could be.  But I won't be.  We haven't even finished exploring Tyne and Wear.  It's a bit soon to think about exploring Nepal.

And we did find something very nice indeed at the bottom of the steps.  We found a pretty garden named after a man called William Turner.

The plants in the garden are mainly ones that William Turner put in his book.  Turner was born about 508 years ago in Morpeth.  He didn't stay in Morpeth as an adult but Morpeth is proud that he was born there.  He wrote "A New Herball" the first clear survey of English plants.

Turner also wrote a clear survey of wines.

Here are some pictures of me enjoying the garden named after him.  It was very nice.  I preferred being by the river later because I like rivers but this garden was pretty and I liked it.

Here are some more facts about William Turner:

He was famous for teaching his dog to steal hats from the heads of bishops.

He published the first printed book about birds.

He was imprisoned for preaching without a licence.  He later got a licence and became a priest.  And then he was thrown out of the priesthood for his views.

He died at a place called Crutched Friars.

After exploring Turner's garden I felt I needed a rest.  Especially as I knew my person was about to make me climb back up the hill.  There was a highly suitably place to sit and I basked in the sunshine, taking advantage of it because I didn't think I'd be seeing much more of it.

I was glad that my person had taken me to Morpeth.  It was proving to be a very surprising place.  The best was yet to come.  Stepping stones.  I like bridges.  And I like stepping stones.  I am glad that I'll be going back to Morpeth tomorrow.  I'm looking forward to it and I think I'll get to see the stepping stones again too.  I like stepping stones.

There.  Finished.  Now my person can get on and do some of her own writing.  If her fingers aren't too tired from doing all of my writing.  Okay my person.  We can stop now.



[1723 words]

Blob Thing Completes His River Irwell Expedition In The Rain

Ooh.  It's quite exciting.

I've just booked to go and see my creator.  She lives a long way away from me.  I could never hope to flap my dress and fly that far.  Not in one day.  I think if I did try I wouldn't go the way the coach goes to where she lives.  I would take a more direct route.  It's much prettier.  And it's much shorter too.  It would probably still take me three days to fly though.  At least.

This week is going to be very exciting too because on Friday Winefride and I are going to be taken to the Great North Snowdogs farewell event and we will see all our dog friends again.  I'm hoping that we get to see the dog called Patchwork who lived in Kielder which is also a long way away.  We want to have our picture taken with Patchwork.  We would also quite like to sit on the dog who lived at The Sage because he was on a big platform that made sitting on him impossible.  I wish the people at The Sage hadn't forced their dog to live on a platform where he couldn't go for a walk.

It's all quite exciting.

The day I've been telling you about in my blog was quite exciting too.  I'm not sure I want to repeat the excitement of nearly being eaten twice but there were plenty of other exciting things to smile and whoop about.

We had been walking along the banks of the River Irwell, a short river that starts in some hills that I want to go and see next year and ends in the middle of Manchester where it flows into a big canal.

As we walked we looked through a very long fence to our left and kept seeing graves.  Lots of graves.  My person likes graveyards.  She does and she doesn't care if you all think her strange.  She says graveyards can be very pretty, very peaceful and very calming.  This particular graveyard had ever so many graves.  We passed a section of very plain gravestones, all exactly the same size and shade of grey and then came to a section of much more ornate graves that had been decorated with all kinds of things, like shrines.  This was a Roman Catholic section of the graveyard.

My person said that she wanted to visit the graveyard.  Not that day because it was already raining quite hard.  But one day.  And we've done it too.  We've been to the graveyard.  On a much drier day.  We took Winefride with us and we all had a lot of fun except my person started crying at one point when reading some of the inscriptions to infants who had died.  I had to comfort her.  Winefride ran off and played and we thought that would be okay if we kept an eye on her.  But then she climbed up a tree stump and got stuck in a hole in it and I had to rescue her.  My person was useless.  She didn't help me at all.  She just stood back and made me do all the work to extricate my sister from her unfortunate situation.  She just stood back and took pictures of the scene.  I'll blog about it one day and show you just how unhelpful my person was.  The pictures are nice.  But I think I would have preferred some help and my person could have helped in an instant.  Sometimes I wonder about her priorities.

So that first day we just walked past the graveyard.  It was raining quite a bit and we knew that after the graves we would come to a road.  My person had looked on the map on her phone and spotted that there was a bus stop nearby.  She had decided it would be better to stop walking, catch a bus, and go and get dry.  No more adventuring for Blob Thing that day.  I agreed with this decision.  For once my person was being sensible.

We got to the road okay.  We got to the bus stop okay.

And then we encountered a problem.

There were no buses on a Sunday.  None.  Not even if we waited for three hours.  None.

What to do?  In the rain?  On a road with no buses?

The sensible thing would have been to walk up the road.  It would perhaps only have taken us ten minutes and we would have reached another road.  And another bus stop.  With regular buses.  Even on a Sunday.

That would have been the sensible thing.  We stood in the rain and my person pondered what to do.  Should she be sensible?  Twice in one day?

She decided to be not sensible.

She decided the best thing was to carry on walking along the river.  In the rain.  With no jacket.  Because that's just the kind of woman she is.

At the time I complained and asked her, "Why don't we just walk to another bus stop?  It's only just up that hill."  She said, "It's okay, if we go this way it's just another few miles and then we'll be somewhere I know we can find a bus stop."

So we carried on walking and in retrospect I am glad.  We saw lots of pretty things that day - things we took Winefride to see too after seeing the graveyard.  The rain didn't spoil the afternoon.  But I did hide away in the bag quite a lot.  My person didn't have a waterproof jacket.  But I haven't even got waterproof skin.

We crossed the Irwell at the road and found ourselves in Bury.  We're not in Salford anymore Dorothy.  A sign announced that we were at the edge of Drinkwater Park.  I didn't want to drink the water but I like parks.  So it was a thing of gladness to find that our route entered the park.  To be honest it wasn't in our route.  My person knew where we were going.  There was a signpost pointing to where we were going.  It wasn't through the park.  It wasn't even on the same side of the river.  But the park sounded more fun, even in the rain.

We saw pretty things like this.

It might have been pouring with rain but I still wanted to take time to pose for a photo.  I'm glad we've taken Winefride to the park too and she has seen what I saw.

We saw this plant.  Cow parsley.  I think, although it seems a funny name for a plant that doesn't look like a cow.  It's very pretty.  That's not to say that cows aren't pretty.  I like cows and met some near another lake we walked to.  But cows don't look like cow parsley.  Unfortunately we saw a lot of another plant too and took photos of that.  It was called giant hogweed.  There's a lot of it there.  The Wikipedia article about Drinkwater Park has a section about flora and fauna.  The only photo there is of giant hogweed.  Horrible stuff.  This plant was much prettier.  And much less evil.

We carried on walking and passed a wide flat area.  It was still very wet but we were happy.  I was surprised by how happy my person was being.  She was having fun and being very obvious about her enjoyment of being outside.

The rain kept getting worse.  I sat in the bag mostly and didn't even take time to have my photo taken.  Not even when we got to this part of the river.  My person had to jump from the river bank across a deep gap to the top of an old wall to take this photo.  She did it again when we went back with Winefride and she took some very nice pictures of us there.

We reached the second of those bridges.  It was time to cross the river again.  The bridge once carried a canal but the canal had gone.  The view was still there though.

We crossed and followed a tow path high about the river.  It was very muddy and we could hardly tell it was a tow path because there wasn't much evidence that there had ever been a canal.  Never mind.  And it was very wet.  The tow path seemed to go on for ever but I know that was just our imagination.  Eventually we reached the end and reached our destination too:  Clifton Park, back in Salford.

We didn't take time to explore the park, deserted because of the weather.  There was only one car in the entire car park.  We left the park quickly - it would still be there another day - and climbed up the hill back to a bus stop.  My person was right.  This bus stop had buses on a Sunday.  Lots of buses.

And so we returned to the house and got dry.

All that was left to do was to drink tea and smile at what had been a very lovely day indeed.



[1512 words]

Blob Thing Nearly Gets Eaten Again And Asks A Pertinent Question

Blob Thing speaks:

It was being a very lovely day.  A very lovely day.  It's true that a greyhound had kidnapped me and my person had nearly ended up calling the police.  It's true that a wolf had nearly eaten me.  But it was a very lovely day.

You remember that.  Next time you have a day in which you are kidnapped by a greyhound and nearly get eaten by a wolf.  Remember.  That though there might have been some difficult moments there can still be a great deal of blessing and beauty in a day.  I could be moaning about my day.  I could.  I could say it was a very bad day indeed, what with the kidnap and the near death.  I could then point to the heavy rain that began to fell during the events of the post ahead.  I could even point to the fact that I nearly got eaten twice that day.  And I could tell you it was a rubbish, rubbish day.

But I'm not going to do that.  I'm going to tell you it was a lovely day.  I met geese.  I crossed the river on the back of a black swan.  I saw some beautiful things.  I spent time with my person and we were under natural light.  We saw lots of plants and only one of them was one that could bring my person out in big blisters that need treating in hospital, just from one touch.  [It could, but fortunately it didn't.]  Yes, that plant is everywhere.  My person says that she has seen far, far more of it this year than she has ever seen before.  I think that's partly because my person has been outside far, far more this year than she ever has before.  But I also know it's because that horrid evil weed is spreading quickly even though we also saw signs that people are trying to control it.  We saw lots of giant hogweed that day and I had my picture taken with it and I even considered writing an educational blog to teach you the difference between giant hogweed and cow parsley.  You can find that out for yourself though.

It was a lovely day.  How could I pretend it wasn't when we saw pretty places like these.  These two photos we taken in the same place.  We were hardly out of the major urban areas.  In some ways we weren't.  If you were to look away from the river you would see housing estates beginning quickly and they rose up to Pendleton and Salford Shopping City.  We were still central.  But it was very pretty.  And it would get prettier - we found a massive park that's officially in Bury.  Just look at this.

And just look the other way.  How are you supposed to drive your boat up the river Irwell when it does things like this?

Oh, okay.  Just one giant hogweed picture.  Here's some.  Somebody has been here trying to control it.  When we went back to the river with Winefride we saw that somebody had been working very hard to control it.  They chop off the top of the stalk - which might be several metres tall - and pour poison inside to kill the plant.  You can't just spray this plant with something from the garden centre.  You have to pull out the big poison guns.  And even with all that work there was a lot of hogweed, with new hogweed sprouting everywhere.  I found it quite scary.  Maybe next year we'll go back and have a look to see whether all the hard work has worked or whether the entire river Irwell is just a mass of giant hogweed with it's evil stalk that oozes demonic fury from every patch of Satanic red.  I don't like giant hogweed.

Fortunately it's not all hogweed.  Here's the river, the path and another bridge.  I like bridges.  That's another reason we need to go back.  So I can have my picture taken with every single bridge we pass.  I'm not even in this photograph. We could start walking the Irwell at the Manchester Ship Canal and I could have my picture taken with the bridges and then I could find out about them all.  I'm sure my person wouldn't mind doing that for me even though there are so many other places she wants to explore.  [Yes Blob, I think I'd prefer to explore them than to revisit this walk.]

A very lovely day.  But then we had an episode that I don't care to repeat.  If ever I get to see the bridges again I don't know what we're going to do about this section.  Maybe there's a path on the other side of the river and we wouldn't have to pass this way.  Or maybe I could just hide in the bag and keep an extremely tight hold of Winefride's reins.  I don't want to lose her.

The walk had been going so well apart from the kidnapping, near eating, scary geese, scary hogweed and getting lost before we had even found the river.  It was a lovely day.

But.  Then up ahead I saw this creature appearing from the undergrowth:

A tiger.  A tiger!

It wasn't on fire like the burning bright one in the poem.  And I didn't know whether or not it possessed any fearful symmetry because at that point I could only see one side of its body.

A tiger.  A most fearsome beast.

But this one looked quite friendly and I decided that I should have my picture taken with the tiger.  My person got her camera out and pointed it at the tiger and I got myself into the shot and my person pressed the shutter.  This was the result.  I was smiling and very happy because I hadn't ever met a tiger before.  It was all going so well.  I thought.

There warning signs were there.  Just look at the tiger's face.  Can you see how it had changed its expression between the first photo and the second?  The difference is small, just micro-expressions.  But I can see them and I'm sure a well trained human would be able to see them too.

I should have paid better attention.

Because it was at this point everything went a bit wrong.

The tiger suddenly pounced, a massive shape landed on me and for the second time that day I was held in the mouth of a fearsome animal.

That would probably be enough to spoil most people's days.  But not me.  It was a very lovely day even though I spent some of it in the mouth of a tiger and some more of it involved in a three way fight.  Me and my person versus a tiger.  Two against one.  That hardly seems fair.  It's true that the tiger's claws are bigger than my person's and that I haven't got any claws at all.  But it still seems a very unbalanced contest.

I don't need to tell you the details of our battle.  Maybe another time.  Not now because I need to go out soon with my person and she's not even dressed yet.

All you need to know is that eventually I got free and that the tiger crawled back into the undergrowth.

It was a most frightening experience so you can probably see why I wouldn't want to walk along that path again.  I don't want to be dinner for a tiger or for anyone else.  I am not anyone's dinner.

I confess that though it was a very lovely day I felt a bit sorry for myself.  I'd got lost.  I'd found my route shut due to a closed footpath.  (Not that this stopped us in Chester-le-Street when we ignored the closed footpath signs.  And then later got lost twice.)  I'd had my way blocked by an army of geese.  I'd been nearly eaten by a wolf.  I'd been kidnapped by a greyhound.

And now this.  The indignity of it all!

It was a very lovely day but at that moment I started to cry and cry and cry and I kept asking one question and I was wailing loudly, asking my person again and again:

Why?  WHY?  WHY?

It was a fair question.  Why?  There didn't seem to be any good answer.  Because there wasn't one.  Sometimes bad things happen to good small pink soft toys.

My person sat down on the riverbank with me and held me tightly.  We rocked together and she squeezed me.  And she sang a quiet song to me.  We rocked gently and I buried my face into my person and cried some more.  Slowly as she stroked me I calmed down.  I still didn't know why things kept trying to eat me.  We stayed like that on the riverbank for quite some time before I felt able to continue my walk.

We were glad that I was able to continue.  And we set off once again along the Irwell.

It was at about this point that the rain begin to fall more.  My person looked at the map on her phone and discovered that quite soon we would reach a road and that there was a bus stop not too far away from our crossing point.

We would get to the road.  Wait for a bus.  Go back to the home.  Get dry.  Drink tea.  And relax until my creator arrived and then relax some more.

That seemed like an excellent plan to me.  And it seemed like a top rated plan to my person.

An excellent plan.

A plan that would fail.  Catastrophically.

But that's something for my next blog post.  Don't worry.  We didn't die or get eaten.  But we did get very wet.  [No Blob, we didn't get very wet.  I got very wet.  You hid away in my waterproof bag and made me carry you through the bad weather.]




[1662 words]

Blob Thing Meets Lots Of Animal Friends By The River In Manchester

My person is a silly woman sometimes.  I don't think it's her fault.  She just is silly.

This morning she took Winefride and me to a church fair.  She planned it all carefully.  I think we were going to have a good time and that we would meet some of the people my person used to go to church with when she was a preacher man and when she used to write sermons sometimes.  That was a long time before I was born.  She believed the words she said in her sermons.  I've read a couple of them.  Some of what I've read I agree with.  All the bits about being good to each other.  Some of it I don't agree with.  Back then she still thought that believing in Jesus - and believing lots of things about him - were an essential for her life and for the futures of other people too.  She doesn't believe that now which is good because I think I would end up having lots of arguments with her if she did and then Winefride would get upset.  My person still quite likes Jesus though and still owns more Bibles than most Christians.  Strange.

Anyway.  I was telling you how she is silly.  You might think she's silly for believing the kind of things she used to believe.  You might think she's silly for not believing it now.  You might think she's a very silly person for allowing me to dictate all these things about her and to happily keep typing about her own silliness without telling me off and chucking me across the room.  But it's okay.  Most of the time she doesn't mind being as silly as she is and she is learning to laugh about it.

Today we went to the fair.  My person checked the time of the fair.  She checked the date of the fair.  She read those details.  She checked again.  And again.  She must have checked half a dozen times so that we would know exactly when to leave the house.  She had worked it out to the nearest minute.  Nothing was left to chance at all.  Nothing.  My person can be like that.  Work it out thoroughly so that she knows exactly what belongs where and when it will get there.  When a journey goes wrong it can be majorly stressful for my person.

We went to the fair.

And we arrived at exactly the right time.

But we arrived at exactly the wrong date.

Yes.  My person is silly.  She took us to the fair a whole week early.

She had read the date over and over again.  But it was in her head that the fair was today.  After all, a fair somewhere else was today so surely this one would be too.  Her head did that.  And once done, no amount of reading and re-reading the correct information could change the wrong information engraved within her.

That's the way her brain works.  Fortunately she laughed about it, even though she had missed the other fair to go to the one that wasn't on.

Yes, my person is silly.  Frequently.

Enough about her silliness.  I want to share a little more about my exciting day out when we walked along the River Irwell.

I'll let you in on a secret now.  I have walked the second half of this walk again.  A couple of months ago my person took me back there and we took Winefride too.  We walked along the river again.  A long section was hard.  The first time we walked along one side and it was very muddy under the trees.  The second time my person decided that the route along the other side would be better.  It wasn't.  It was worse.  But we made it.

And then after our exciting walk - since my creator wasn't going to be home for hours - we went to a place called Farnworth.  We all like Farnworth.  The chip shop has good chips.  The cafe is very friendly and doesn't play horrid music.  There's a shop selling very rubbish imported toys, bad enough to disappoint even the least discerning child.  We like looking in that shop.  And most importantly, there are some very good charity shops.  My person has always bought at least something in Farnworth.  That weekend we bought a unicorn just like my friend Adduno and we gave him to my creator.  Last time we went my person bought a skirt which made my creator very jealous indeed.  My person says it's ultra-swish.

And then on that day, after Farnworth we went to visit a shrine.  My person was very silly there too.  We walked into the shrine and people were praying in front of what is either the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus or a wafer depending on your beliefs.  They were being silent.  And then my person failed to turn off her phone properly and suddenly, at the highest volume the phone could manage, came some not subtle at all Southern blues-rock by a band called Gov't Mule.  My person is silly.

But that's not the day I want to tell you about.  Maybe one day I should take pictures of Farnworth and show you what a wonderful place it is.  I could go to a big park there too and show you that.

On the day I'm telling you about I had just avoided being eaten by a wolf and then met some very spiritual worms.  It will be obvious to you that I preferred one of these experiences to the other.

We left the worms behind and I met lots more creatures and they let me have my picture taken with them.

First I met a caterpillar and lots of ladybirds.  I liked the ladybirds because they had arranged themselves in the right order.  They should have been in a straight line too but at least they were in the right order.  There were nine of them and they had different numbers of spots and they were using their counting skills well.  My favourite ladybirds were the second, third, fifth and seventh because those are prime.  I also liked the eighth, because he was a cube number and he also proudly told me about being part of the Fibonacci sequence.  The sixth said that he was a much better ladybird because he was perfect and because it's much better to be a triangle than a cube.  But how can you make a judgement like that?  I like triangles.  And I like cubes.  Which is better?  Neither.  They are both needed.  It's like asking whether an autistic person or an allistic person is better.  Neither.  And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Walking onwards I met a duck.  I'd already ridden across the river on the back of a black swan that day so didn't need to ride on the back of a duck but it let me sit on its head and we walked around for a while quacking together and singing an amazing song about a duck.  Nooooo.  Not the one with the lemonade stand.  The duck didn't like that one and said it got quite annoyed because people kept wanting to sing it.  A tip for you:  Never sing the duck song to a duck because it's likely to bite you on the nose if you do.  A second tip for you:  Never sing the llama song to a llama.  I haven't actually met a real llama but I think llamas must be very fed up with hearing that song.  Try to be original if you meet a llama.  Sing them a song about Jesus.  Sing them a song about a different Jesus who joined the circus and worked part time as a pancake juggler, part time as a daredevil motorbike rider, and part time as the woman taking the admission money.  This different Jesus is a girl Jesus you see.  Or both a boy and a girl.  Jesus is big enough to be both.  If other humans can be both then it would be no trouble at all for Jesus.

My person is shaking her head at me.  Because she can't quite understand how I got from meeting a duck to talking about a gender-fluid Jesus in a single paragraph.  It wasn't hard.  I got there because I am extremely clever for a small pink soft toy.  I'm far more clever than my person expected I ever would be.  Sometimes I say things that she wouldn't ever think of.  Good going for a toy.  She is amazed sometimes because she thinks it is a simple matter to have this blog.  Just share a picture like this - of me riding on a dog - and that's that done.

But no.  Because I have my own voice and my own being and I like to use it.  Sometimes when we're out my person lets me choose what we're going to do too.  She would never have ridden on the narrow gauge railway if I hadn't said we should.  Next time we go I want her to spend the extra money so that I can drive the train.  They allow that.  And I want to drive a train.  Not many small pink soft toys get to drive trains, or ride on swans, or have blogs, or tell the world how silly their people are.  I am the luckiest small pink soft toy in the world.  By a long way.  And I've got Winefride too.  I am the luckiest.  And Winefride is the second luckiest.

And then I got to ride on another dog and that was very exciting indeed.  Because the second dog was a racing greyhound.  I had to hold on very tightly because she ran so quickly.  My person couldn't keep up at all.  I think the greyhound was showing off a bit.  Like I was in the last couple of paragraphs.  She wanted to show me how fast she was and she ran all the way back to Manchester Victoria station, where I had started my walk.  That was a bit worrying because I was now miles away from my person and that's a frightening prospect unless I am at home.  Fortunately the greyhound listened to my request to run back along the river and so we got back to my person who was still standing there looking very anxious and panicky indeed because she thought she might have lost me.  She already had her phone out and was going to phone the police to report a missing soft toy.  She gets scared if she thinks she has lost me and checks regularly to see that I'm still there.  I don't know how she would cope if she did ever lose me.  It doesn't bear thinking about.

After the excitement - and worry - of the greyhound, sitting with this calming creature was a big relief.  She looks a little bit like by creator's cat.

I met one more animal that day.  An owl.  Owls are meant to be particularly wise creatures aren't they?  This one wasn't.  This one was as dotty as a fruitcake.  I couldn't get him to say anything sensible at all.  But he did make me laugh as he danced around the path and sang about hobgoblins and tigers and sea anemones and the light of the moon.  A very mad owl.  But harmless and very cuddly.

We left the owl and continued our walk along the river.  For a while we saw no more unexpected animals.

The river was beautiful.  It would get more beautiful.  It would also get a lot more wet.  Well, the river wouldn't get more wet.  You can't get much more wet than a thing that is water.  But the air would get more wet.  Soon after this it began to rain.  And it didn't stop.  It rained more and my person - who had no coat - got quite wet.  She didn't mind.  And neither did I because when it got too wet I went and hid in the bag.

Next time I'll tell you more about my river adventure.  I'm afraid that there's another very frightening thing to talk about.  But don't worry.  I survived.  I am still here to tell you these stories.  It's okay.



[2056 words]