There’s a ship in the day that you just had to see to believe. It’s got 3 masts and it’s absolutely huge. At a guess I’d say it has to be 200 feet long.

It’s a square rigged ship. That means that it has booms on the masts and the sails hanging from the booms and blow out underneath them. I counted the booms and there’s 5 of them on each of the masts.

It is stacked with sails. It’s just got sails everywhere and it came up the bay with all of the sails up.

It was quite windy so it was going quite fast, you could see the waves coming off the bow. It just looked spectacular sailing along out in the bay all by itself.

I asked someone who was also watching it where it came from and they told me it came from Holland. It’s what is called a sail training ship and they take young people out sailing for a few weeks on the ship to give them experience of life on board an old ship.

I would just love to go on that ship.

But whilst I’ve decided that it’s a great day you may not think so. Maybe you’ve decided that it’s a terrible day. Perhaps you’ve had something nasty  happen to you today, maybe something terrible. Your day just isn’t working out so that’s how it’s going for  you.

It’s all subjective isn’t it? To me it’s a great day, I cant see any reason why it isn’t a great day. But that’s just me isn’t it? For  me it’s a great day but for you it may be terrible.

My point is that everything is totally subjective. What is a great day to me seems obvious. It couldn’t be anything but a good day, for me. But that’s only me. I love the day but if you don’t then its a terrible day.

Maybe you see terrible things in the day, all bad, all sad. The best day for me is the worst day for  you.

Surely the only explanation is that it’s all in our minds, the day. We see the day through the filter of our own minds. We don’t see the day, we see what our minds tell us the day is like. We filter  the day through our minds and our experience.

I even think it’s quite possible that if you and I have the exact same experience of the day we awill see it totally differently. You come for a drive with me and we see different things.

You see all the same cows, the same sunshine, the same people, but maybe you don’t even see them at all. Maybe you see something completely different to me. Your mind registers the same things as mine does, and records it, but it filters it all through the experiences  you’ve had in the past and mine does that too, and that makes our experience of the day quite different.

Even if you have the same experiences as I do you may well see it totally differently, depending on how it is filtered by your mind. You might drive through the same countryside as me. You might see the sun, the cows, the kids, but your mind may not even register them. Your mind might just be seeing the downside to everything. And thats because your mind filters everything according to past experiences.

What has happened to you in the past is all recorded in your brain and it tempers every future experience. So even though you’re seeing the same sunshine, cows and kids as I am seeing your past experiences are different from mine and so your mind uses the  past to filter what you’re seeing right now.

Isn’t writing a lot of fun? I love to write and I’ve done writing for a long time. And I still love to write  now. I remember when I was younger and at primary school I wrote so many stories, I suspect my teacher got bored reading all of my stories. And he was amazed that I could write quite so  much when I was so young. But I’m not sure that I’m any good at it, I just like it lots.

When I got older  I did a degree in the Arts but never concentrated on writing, and now I wish I had now. If I had my time all over again  I would take my time to study what I loved to do then and still love to do, and am doing.

It’s an  interesting question about whether I could ever have become good enough at writing to make money from it. Who knows? But if I had the chance then I should have tried, after all if you don’t try then you never know if you can really do it. I should have tried.

I’m quite  convinced writing is a skill that can be learned by anyone. Of course not everyone can learn it because there’s other important things too. I think it’s essential that you love to do it. That’s like everything. If you don’t love it you’re unlikely to keep at it long enough to learn the roght skill.

But if you love writing like I do then writing is just something that needs time to develope. It is a skill that you have to work on every single day. I work on it every day myself.

I have this website and this is where I’m going to practice my writing. I have it on the Internet as it’s a convenient place to have it, but I really don’t want lots of people to come along and read it. It’s just about  me and what I do every day, so it’s probably pretty boring to anyone else.

But if you’re someone reading this  then I have at least one other visitor other than me, so thanks for visiting my websiteand I hope you enjoy my writing. It’s written for me.

I like my  cows. Theyre so big yet they’re really gentle. In all the time I’ve had cows Ive never had a bad moment with them. They arent aggressive and they are even tame enough so that my kids can pat them a  little, though they don’t like being patted too much, they tend to pull back a bit when you pat them. Just pull back a little  thats all.

The very best time to pat them is when you feed them hay. They just love their hay, and when the grass growth is getting slow because winter is coming you need to supplement their feed  with hay or something else. I have hay for my cows.

Now that means  that youre committed to feeding your cows every single day. Once there’s no more feed in the field then they need hay each day without fail. So you can’t just go away for a few  days and leave them or they starve. So you’re committed to feeding your cows.

I deal with that. I like my holidays so I’ve got to have a good way of going away without leaving the cows to starve. So this is what I do now.

I  have a number of different fields fenced off. I have  a total of 4 fields fenced off. And if I have lots of grass  in some then I shut the gate so the grass doesn’t get eaten and keep it there, then when I go  away I’ve got a great field with lots of grass. Ican open the gate and let the cows in there for a week or so and I’ve got my cows all fed while I’m away.

Theyre not allstupid. They know there’s grass in the next paddock. So once they see the gate open it takes them no time to get in there.

And  then I come back from the holiday and my cows are happy. And I take them out of the grass field and put them back in the main paddock.

I feed them after breakfast. They know exactly when I will feed them and when I come out to feed they’re sitting right in front of the shed with the hay in it waiting for the breakfast. I usually give them about 1 1/2 bales of hay. Sometimes when I feel generous I give them 2 bales.

In fact this morning I gave them 2  bales. But it’s getting warmer soon and the grass is beginning to grow faster and that’s good because I don’t have a lot of hay left. But that’s ok because I’ve got more grass coming soon.

And my  cows are always happy when the grass is getting longer. And the grass is getting longer, so my cows are happy.

And if my cows are happy then I’m happy.

I have a small boat, it’s not huge. Just a small aluminum boat, about 10 feet long. Its got its own  trailer so I can tow it behind the car, I don’t need to put it on the roof.

I took my family away last weekend. It was school holidays so everyone had the extra time off. We decided that we didn’t want to stay at home for the  whole holidays so we decided to get away for a few days. 5 days actually, (we cheated) which was nice. It was great though it was raining and there was a really a strong wind when we left, though that all went away after a few hours. And then the sun came out and it was really nice for us.

The resort was nice too. I chose it because it had lots of things for kids to do there. Kids always need to be busy, so if you go somewhere where there arent any kids facilities then you’ve got a big problem. Bored kids.

There really isn’t  anything worse than bored kids to kill a holiday. They get really grumpy and annoy me and my wiffe and as I like to read a book it’s no fun being hassled by kids all the time.

But no problems this weekend, bored kids weren’t a problem. There were so  many things for them to do, table tennis,  a huge jumping thingy that they loved. A swimming pool that was outdoors and heated, and they love to  swim.

And in the games room there was something that the kids liked too, a huge tv that had a kids movie showing every night so they just sat in there  in the evenings.

And it’s amazing  how something like a simple swimming pool can keep kids happy for hours and hours. I can swim for a little while then I get  bored.

But I mentioned my boat. I took the boat along because there was a river there and I could take them on the river and the lake. And it’s useful for taking other stuff along too. The kids bikes wouldn’t fit in our car but no problem getting them in the boat.

So we ended up doing a few of days out in the boat. One along a local river, just puttering around looking at the nice scenery, a nice picnic on the bank of the river, some swimming for the kids, and a nice shady spot for us to sit after lunch and  read our books.

And the local lake was really great too. Last summer I bought an inner tube and rope and  towed the kids around with it so I brought it along this time and they loved it just as much. In fact it was difficult to get them off. They just wanted to spend the day  there.

So that’s our holiday with the boat, we enjoyed it hugely.

For me the country is the best place to live and I’m happy to say it even if you live in a city. Of course you may disagree with me.

And I love  birds too, and one of the best things about living in the country is the  birds. Out where I live there’s so many birds

Out here there are just so many different types of birds. Dozens and dozens of different types of birds. It must be because they  like the trees around me because theres always birds and they sit in the branches of each of the trees and pick off the pods with  their beaks and hold them in their feet and eat them one by one slowly .

I love birds but it  is a shame to see them damage all my trees, and they do damage them breaking all the little bits off. If you look under the tree you  can see all the tree lying there. Well not all  of it but a lot, there’s broken tree all around.

Mainly they’re parrots. They are so colorful that I just love to sit and watch them sit in the  trees. I even get them sitting around my balcony, sometimes if Im lucky I get them sitting right on the window  sills. And theyre so colorful that I just sit still so I don’t scare them away at all and watch them.

There’s just so many benefits of having parrots around the house that you  just have to put up with all the damage they do to your trees. I could just run  out and shoo them away from the trees but I just put up with it because I want birds around.

That’s why I love the country where I live, things like parrots around. And other animals as well. You don’t get parrots in the city and that’s  sad, there’s not enough trees and too many people there. Far too many people in fact. Nothing for the  parrots to eat and people to scare them away.

And of course there’s lots of other animals too, not just  birds. Animals are just as good to have around as birds are. They’re all great to have  around.

Its good for the soul. Having birds and animals around is all a part of nature and a part of life. Its not sterile like it is in the city. Birds and animals for me any day. Just now as I was writing this a whole bunch of them flew right past my window. I can see one of them sitting on the veranda in front  of me right now.

I live in the country and I’m happy to do it. Where do you live?

But it’s over now, the weekend is all finished. It was  just fantastic to get away, I need to get away more often, it’s good for my soul. But it was a little  tough starting quite so early. Too early for me I have to say.

It was really  early, but I had something to get up for so it wasn’t so bad. But even so getting up when it’s still dark doesn’t do it for me at all. At that time of the morning it feels like it’s about midnight. There’s not even any birds singing.

But I got up anyway, headed over to my friends place and picked him up and off we  went. There was quite a bit of gear to load up and the car was packed to the roof and it took quite a while to get going, longer  than I expected and as we were meeting other people we had a time limit to keep to.

And what can you do about bad weather? Raining. And for the last few months  it’s been so good, warm clear weather, just my luck that when I go away it’s raining. Really irritating.

We had  to drive to the place where we were camping. It was raining all the time but by the time we got to stop and get out it had pretty much stopped raining. That was good as I don’t like putting my tent up in the rain, and everything gets wet trying to get it all  into the tent.

And the speed limits were all lowered so that slowed us up.

But if you asked I’d have to say that it was a great weekend even though it rained quite a lot. I caught a nice fish which was a real bonus. I’m not the best fisherman although I do like it. And eating fresh fish is such a good part of going away.

I love weekends away.

Here’s a treat coming up for me soon, I get to go away this weekend. What a great treat, it will be really nice to get away and have a holiday.

I get to go with  a friend because my family all have some sort of concert to go to and they can’t come so I get to go with a friend of mine. Last time I took my family, but not this time.

We are thinking of camping. I have a good tent, canvas, water proof, big enough to  be comfortable and its forecast to rain, so I may need all of that too. I hope it doesn’t rain because rain isn’t what you need to have when you go camping.

We leave Friday morning at about 4 am. We’re meeting some other people at 6 and it will take about 1 hour to get to where we’re meeting. I don’t really like getting up early, good thing I don’t have to too often. In fact I hate early mornings.

But it’s not much of a drama really getting up early if you’ve got a holiday to get up  for. And I’m looking forward  to it so it’s not that much of a problem to me.

I hope the car does ok, its not really old but its not all that new either and Id hate to think the car let me down and didn’t make it.

I broke my old fishing rod a while  ago and I bought a new rod this morning because I plan to do some fishing on Saturday. Saturday  is planned to be a free day and so I’m off fishing. And so I needed a new rod because I’d broken the old one.

My old broken rod was one I made a long time ago. I bought the fiberglass blank and all  the runners and made it myself and I’ve used it and used it. I was pretty impressed with myself that  I managed to make my own fishing rod myself.

It was a sad day that day I broke it, I’ve used that fishing rod a lot. And the silly  thing is I still don’t know how I broke it really, I was just walking through a patch of trees and I looked down at my rod  and saw the tip hanging off. I have no idea how it happened but I was really annoyed to say the least.

It wasnt worth a lot but it was to  me. I mean I made that rod myself. And I broke it. So today I went back to the fishing rod shop and bought a rod.

Not that fishing rods are all that expensive now. It was only $35 so I can’t complain. It  was just that that fishing rod was my own rod, no one else had a rod like mine was.

I suppose  they’re all made in China now, thats why theyre so cheap here. Hope it lasts. So thats my weekend  coming up. I hope I get a few good fish and it doesnt rain too much. Ill write about it soon right here.

France is a fantastic place and I would love to live there all my life but unfortunately that’s not life is it?

I’m lucky enough to live in the country now and I just love living in the country. I’ve lived out  here for a few  years now, more than I care to remember actually. And I grew up in the city but I wouldn’t really want to go back there  again.

There’s just  so much to living in the country that you just can’t find living in a city. Here’s one example. I love  cycling and do it heaps out here. It helps keep me fit and that’s important and I really need to keep fit. And it gets me into some beautiful outdoors locations.

I ride past so many wonderful things to see. I love to see cows and I see sheep and other animals as well. I even have my own cows and they give me calves which is great too, because I love having calves.

There’s lots of advantages to living out here and cows and calves at my  place is just one of them. It’s nature and I love nature, and seeing nature.

Now it’s summer  and it’s really hot and I can feel it right through my feet. There’s been some very hot weather and it’s getting on top of me, I don’t like the heat much. Of course it would still be hot if I lived in a city but here it’s still better. I see nature, I see the seasons come and go over time and I see things like the grass start to grow and stop and the leaves fall off the trees and  regrow again.

I see the leaves of the trees turn different colors too, there’s so many wonderful colors. I see the new  trees growing underneath the old ones when the seeds germinate. I see the old and the young the dead and the living, I see the new and the not so young.

All of these things cycle, just like me. They go round and round and I really see what  the seasons are.

Maybe if I lived in a city I’d have a little garden, maybe even no garden. And I might not even have a tree at all. Maybe all I’d have is some concrete in my  back yard and no more, except a BBQ perhaps because I do love to ahve a BBQ.

And unlike  here I probably wouldn’t get to see the seasons change like I do.

The city is so sterile really. I spent a lot of years there  so I know what its like and I don’t like it. Now of course thats just a personal view, but thats how I feel about it now.

Of course all my family lives in the city and they love it. My brother is a  doctor and hes single, so he likes all the social life of the city. Theres things to do there that he’s into, and it suits him.  But the city is not for me at all.

Its a shame that I spent so many years of my life in the city and wasted them. No thats not fair, they werent wasted  of course, I lived my life and that was what I did then. But now that I’ve found the country I prefer it here. Maybe I should talk to  my brother and suggest he moves out here some time.

Ive never even suggested it to him, but the he gets out to my place and he’s seen it here before, if he  wanted to move then Ill be he’d have thought about it before now.

Give me the country. I’m a country boy now and you’ll never get me moving back to the city.

And losing weight, because hopefully getting fit will involve losing weight as well.

So I’ve decided I’m going to take a bike riding. Cycling has to be just one of the best ways to get fit and feel good at the same time.
Ive said it before but I just love cycling.

I started cycling quite a while ago. Well not that long ago actually, considering that I’m not young.  I knew I had to do something to keep fitter.

I tried swimming a few times. Can you believe how  boring swimming is? Up and down a pool, hour after hour  after hour. Well actually it was probably  never longer than 20 minutes but it felt like hour after hour to me, if not 2.

Underneath there’s  this black line and you just watch that black line, there’s  nothing else to do other than swim of course. It’s really very boring and I just couldn’t keep at it.

If you really  want to get fit you  need to swim at least 3 or 4 times a week, probably more than that. And if you find something boring then you’re  not going to do it 3 or 4 times a week and keep at it are you?

And that’s doing at least a 1/2 hour. You need to swim  for at least a half hour to get enough exercise and it just feels like such a waste of time.

So I was in a bit of a bind. I used to jog and found that just as boring as swimming and so I was a little  stuck. But then I started to think about riding.

But I had a problem. No bike. Well I did have a bike but it was outside the shed in the junk pile and all rusted. Way too old. So somehow I had to get a bike and it isn’t cheap to buy a good bike.

So I went and talked to some of the  people in the local riding and found out that there was a new recreational cycling group starting up and that I could join it if I wanted to. So I figured that all the stars were lined up  and it was time to just go out there and by a new bike.

And right from the start once  I joined the new cycling group I loved the riding. They changed their rides and did longer and shorter ones. But I  did find that the pace of riding was not quite right for me.

Now I’m not young, 53 actually, but even so I wanted to go a little faster. The ride was more  social than a workout and I wanted a good workout as well. Eventually I dropped out to ride on my own  because I needed to ride a little harder to get a real workout that was good for me.

The club also had another riding group that went out on Sundays and it had much better riders in it, some racers, and so I decided that I would try and join the Sunday ride, but was worried that I would never keep up.

But the bike I had  bought was a hybrid bike, half mountain bike and half road bike and they all rode a road bike so I  would have no chance of keeping up with them riding my hybrid. So again I was stuck  without a bike. But I knew I like riding now so I bought a good road bike and joined the. They’re good riders and  sometimes I can’t keep up.

But what I wanted was a good hard workout and that’s what I get on the  Sunday ride.

I’m getting fitter every single week and that’s why I’m doing it, but I enjoy it as well.

That’s how I’m going to lose weight.