Following on from a rapid two day whizz oop North (where it’s grim), I can confirm that it is indeed cold and wet.

Time constraints meant I couldn’t visit anyone except close family.  Some may be glad at this eventuality, some maybe sad..

  The low point of the trip I’ll leave for another time.  The highlights, for me, were the picture I took of the weird and devilishly sharp solitary thistle growing in some rough grass at Stakeford; ( It’s gotta be an alien, it just doesn’t look earth-like!), and a video of my brother who has been dead for 15 years now.  It’s a part of a wedding video of one of his friends, and really lives up to the low expectations of the genre – I don’t think they’d think I’m being uncharitable by saying that….(sorry David & Christine).

Anyway, I haven’t seen my brother except in my mind for these past 15 years.   Antony (my brother)’s  best-man speech was pretty good.  He has a fine turn to camera, plays to the audience and pre-dates Jonathan Ross for hair and wit by a decade but without the cheap vulgarity.  I still miss him very much.

He coughed himself to death after suffering all his life from Cystic Fibrosis.  He was good-spirited to the end when I last saw him in the Brompton, forlornly waiting for a heart transplant.  David Graham was there – a true friend.

On the video, Antony is witty and only slightly unwell-looking……but….apparently he only just made it; some IV arm connections had come adrift as he arrived and when he finished his speech he popped off and a nurse re-did the drips.  I think everyone at the wedding party appreciated the effort he’d made by the way they treated him.

Some brrr pictures I’ve galleried here,   http://strangelyperfect.tv/nggallery/page-372/album-7/gallery-16.  Earlier ones of the bizarre Bearded Collie Club Xmas “do” I’ve have to edit a bit more.  Like the aforementioned wedding video, it’s another case of “you had to be there” as actually, they’re dull as dishwater.  It’s a peculiarity of the breed that Bearded Collies don’t photograph very easily  – we see constant motion, but a still doesn’t represent this feeling.

There was a bit of snow on the A686 up through Alston.  It’s always a  lovely drive, even in bad weather.  In winter, you can easily die up there – it’s like the Arctic!

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