HAPPY NEW YEAR!
01/01/2015
Happy new year friends!
I've finally decided to get into this here blogging milarky.
Sorry if this site is a little bare at present, as with most things in life - it's a work in progress.
Anyway, here goes with a real life 'test piece' just to kick things off - please start scrolling:
LETS START RIGHT AT THE VERY END
This is the public space on this beautiful place called earth that I love most. The vast, green, open, clifftop area at Foreness, near the end of our road, between The Ridings and the sea here in Cliftonville.
This picture is of a very special part of the land and was taken by me on a Christmas Day stroll just last week. It has a particular significance for me personally. It's the area that was formerly a council owned and fenced-off 'pitch and put' golf course and one of my last actions as the council leader was to agree the fenceing to be removed and the area to be returned to public open space. This fell very much in line with the new TDC corporate priority our administration introduced to protect, preserve and enhance our public open spaces.
The area between The Ridings and the sea has been a place of crazy fun and lively activity for me throughout my lifetime. I played here as kid myself and ran around the area day after day as a young man training for the first Thanet Marathon. I walked it numerous times with my children back in the 80's when I lived on the adjacent Palm Bay estate and today I repeat those wonderful expeditions all over again with our grandchildren.
Even more importantly for me, this most northerly tip of Thanet can be a beautiful place of serene solitude. Don't get me wrong, I'm a generally blessed individual, but on the rare occasions that life has dealt me the odd 'blow' a walk in this area has been the most perfect tonic for the soul. It's a place so very close to town and home and yet a huge expanse of nature that you could literally travel many miles in any direction to try and experience on anything like the same scale.
I also understand the artist Turner once said we here in Thanet had the most beautiful skies in all Europe and the totally uninterupted panoramic views of the heavens at Foreness are simply stunning.
So, on Christmas day last week I told my wife that if and when anything happens to me, 'I'd like my ashes scattered here please'.
It may be a little selfish but by doing this I know that on those very special days right in the depths of winter, at Christmas and New Year for instance, the only folk likely to 'visit' would be those who had truly and most dearly loved me.
No-one else would be crazy enough - that wind comes straight from the North Pole!
(Only joking - truly a wonderful place).
LAST ORDERS: It gave me great pleasure to get the fencing taken down.
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