Head in sand…

Those who are my Facebook friends will know that I have become seriously tired of bad news. Of bad news online, on the TV, on radio and in the newspapers.

So much so, I choose not to engage with anything negative that is reported now.

Or anything negative, period.

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Yes, it might be ‘head in sand’ type stuff, but I don’t care. And this was underlined when a family member’s LinkedIn account was hacked last night and she received a plethora of images of the beheading. Such trauma inflicted on an innocent woman on the far side of the world – and presumably for no reason other than gratification for the perpetrator.

Today I’ve thought a lot about this time in which we live and I thought back to the time before I was born – when my grandparents and my husband’s grandies lived in small communities without TV and where every day was measured with small things and small achievements and life was good.

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My own grandparents lived in a town and at a seaside village. My husband’s grandparents lived in a rural village in the country and were of farming stock.

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All four sets worked for their family’s contentment and security. They worked for their village’s improvement and they lived and died within their regions. True, World War I happened within their lifetimes and World War II toward the end of their middle age. But their world was a narrower place and their contentment built on good old-fashioned values.

Their children, our parents, were a more forthright generation. But even so, my husband and I had stupendously free childhoods, rich in country and seaside endeavours and untainted by the horrors of today.

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It’s what we gave our own kids and if and when they have kids, I hope they won’t let the world’s unbridled cruelty impinge on this farflung place in which we live.

So how did I push my head into the sand today?

I woke to a sky blue day and packed a bag ready to go up the coast later.

I went to my embroidery group and had that wonderful moment of choosing threads – deciding on colours and types.

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And then sitting with needle and thread and chatting, joking and drinking tea and eating choccie biscuits whilst Sassie and Oscar, the shop’s corgie mascots wandered in and out.

I brought the BEST hamburgers for a BBQ dinner tonight.

I chilled out as I drove up the coast to House by listening to eclectic music downloads.

Once at House, OH and I walked the dogs off-lead on an empty beach whilst waves broke and hooded dotterels ran in front of us. And then we finished up with hot chocolate and melting marshmallows on our porch.

I sat in the sun on said porch and worked away at my WIP, inadvertently finding out that Richard Armitage  has joined Twitter. Wow! If I could, I would say to him – ‘Stay away! Keep your life uncluttered and simple. Put your head in the sand like me…’

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Then I drank a wine with my husband and we had a hug just because.

And now we plan to do our nightwalk and then come home and have a cup of tea and some chocolate whilst he reads, I embroider and we have Escape to the Country on in the background.

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See? Perfect head in sand stuff…