Fate, choice, and keeping a positive mindset!
I’ve always believed that life is mapped out for each and every one of us – but I also believe you can choose which path to take and which mind-set to employ; positive or negative.
That statement is possibly contradictory, but my mind works in strange ways; I often contradict myself, question my thoughts, change my mind on all kinds of things, and am often (mostly) predictably unpredictable. Yup, that’s me!
I really feel as though ‘something’ has been testing me lately. So many plans have been flipped on their head, so I decided to put pen to paper (so to speak).
Tom, Rosie, Martha and I were due to set off for York a few weeks back. We had planned to be in York for around 20th March to enable us to get a dog-sitter, hire a car and pop back for the wedding of our son Ian and his lovely OH Emily. Here we are on the 15 March and we are still moored up at Tardebigge. Oh my life! We then (somewhere along the line) discussed the possibility of getting to Nottingham instead of York for the 20th, but that is now impossible too.
This is how we arrived at our current (still in Tardebigge) situation…
Back in February, some personal (family) challenges meant that we ended up delaying our start date. This was a choice – and a good one – albeit we didn’t know then, this was the start of several delays!
Next, as most of my readers are aware, we lost our beautiful dog, Rosie. If we had set off on our second ‘planned’ date we wouldn’t have had access to our regular vet, plus we may have been too remote to get Rosie to a vet; she would probably have been stressed and in pain at the end of her life – instead she was calm and just went to sleep. Fate had intervened here, and thank heaven she did.
Next, due to almost seeing the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ (re a long-standing difficult and stressful situation) we delayed again and pencilled in 7 March for setting off. Tom and I then had a conversation, coming to the conclusion that our help was needed on Monday and Tuesday of this week (school runs) so decided to change our date of planned departure (again) to 14 March.
Two days before this date it became evident to us that a couple of ‘jobs’ needed attending to. We decided (again) to delay our departure. Sensibly, we chose a date after the wedding – after all it is easier to get dog-care near home – and thank heaven we did. On Monday we received some worrying news, then during Tuesday night my grand-daughter, Katie-Cakes, was poorly. Because of our latest ‘planned delay’ I was here to look after her yesterday, while she was off school. It appeared that fate had intervened again; I was so glad we hadn’t already set off.
If we had diarised yesterday as a departure date, we couldn’t have gone again; a local boater, who had been moored on the cut just over from us, set off towards Alvechurch, and, literally, a few minutes later he was dead. As NB Louisa cruised through Tardebigge tunnel, her owner either suffered a heart attack or hit something under water that caused his tiller to flip back, forcing him to fall into the canal. Absolutely tragic. Of course, the canal was cordoned off until today whilst the police did some investigating.
Whether fate, or choice, these delays have led to us being here to give support to those who need it…and I wouldn’t have it any other way. When recounting this to the guy that rents us our mooring at Tardebigge, this morning, he said, ‘You always have to remember, the windscreen is larger than the rear-view mirror; there is a lot more to see ahead of you, than behind you’. I like that metaphor!
A real positive of our delayed adventure, is that we will miss all the stoppages. Yay! We can cruise a more direct route with few locks than anticipated. However, I am not sharing a departure date just yet…let’s see how the next couple of weeks go!
Hugs,
Leigh