So, my first blog post this year!… I usually collate some thoughts a few times a month, but since the new year things have just happened… that’s momentum I guess.
So here we are, seven weeks in, and a half-term week is with us (one week later than most of the UK).
I got a new bike at chrimble. After twelve years of commuting ~15 miles a day by bike in and out of Leicester, I’m now using an electric ‘pedelec’ pedal assist bike. It takes the strain out of bike commuting. The computer says we’ve done 552 miles in 7 weeks.
A pedelec is a type of low-powered electric bicycle where your pedaling is assisted by a small electric motor. If you stop pedaling you don’t go faster, read more here. You do still get a cardiovascular aerobic workout, it’s not a moped.
I could go on about how riding a bike transformed my outlook on things, but I have done that before, who cares? Clearly for the authorities, healthy personal travel is not a high priority, because provision for people on bikes is not much better now than it was 12 years ago. Hey ho. They say they are doing some stuff so there’s always hope.
The other thing I’ve been doing since October is a men’s yoga class. I’ve found it great. What can I say, a tad like my bike riding journey, I am discovering new things. A new perspective and outlook, and experiencing new ‘difference’.
When the brain is fighting with itself and your input channels are clogged with history, media, hopes, worries, expectations and dreams, remember you are not that stuff. Your heart is well. At the heart of things, all shall be well. It’s the peripheral noise that chokes, blurs, and angers… still angers. Shine the heart.
Where you can, be still… with choice thoughts, words, and intentions…
Over the last few weeks riding to work, despite many days double-gloved against the 7am -ºcold, the light has been getting slowly brighter. We’ve only a few weeks to go before we have more daylight than shadow (March 18th).
Brighter days…
Some words below from this week’s commutes…
Diversity
I looked upwards… diversity.
Jules P Richards
Three geese soar, whooping in formation,
while mallards scuffle below, with a shabby iridescent majesty.
Two moorhens totter across my path,
and a passel of pigeons mob a scattering of grain.
A rat sat beside the path, cleaning her whiskers, unphased.
Two squirrels spiral a tree trunk, as a brazen buzzard, watches from her regular perch.
Coots mending their nest make me smile; flappy feet.
A few swans still sleep, necks curled, dreaming; while others awake with a stretch and a flamboyant flap.
Multiple magpies bounce; joy, secrets, and gold…
New colonist; a little egret… two of them… three!
The old crows crow.
There was a time when there was nothing at all, just a distant hum…
As my yoga instructor suggested this week; “shine your heart”.
It is well…
PS: It is well…. It’s usually you, yes you… wonderful people that make it so!
PPS: The next ‘QT Theatre‘ play is in rehearsal.
Jules P Richards 