By: Blonde Two

I have been talking to some over busy youngsters (it is not just Blondes who are over busy) recently about stress and what they can do to relieve it.  As a fair few of them were not convinced that a wet stomp through Dartmoor bogs was the solution, I had to come up with some other suggestions.

My answer was to look up a couple of relaxation activities and we are planning to try one out soon.  The one we picked goes something like this:

Close your eyes … imagine … wake up slowly … sunny meadow … ancient forest … sunshine on sparkling water … dew on your toes … warmth of the sun … stretch out your finger tips …

You know the sort of thing.  All very lovely sounding until you remember the horse flies, sunburn and sweaty bits.  It got me to thinking about what sort of relaxation story the Two Blondes would write for those annoying weeks when we can’t get up to Dartmoor (it appears to be all or nothing as far as that is concerned).  Blonde One loves the rainy weather best of all and it is growing on me so ours would go something like this:

You step out of the pizza packeted minibus to feel the slap of a hyperborean (great word, God bless the thesaurus!)  Dartmoor wind on your face.  You wrestle with your hood but your hair is dripping wet before you get the hood unzipped and up … imagine the icy water trickling down your neck.  You leave the puddle ridden path almost immediately and can feel the squelch of a Dartmoor bog as the ground sucks at your feet … imagine the chill as the bog water creeps into your elderly boot. The mist comes down and you realise, once again that you have your map opened to the wrong side … imagine the whack of a wet map as it wraps itself around your head.  You keep going and find yourself balancing precariously on tussocks that get taller and taller … imagine the penetrating dampness through your less than perfect waterproofs as you fall to your knees over and over again …

If this doesn’t appeal to you or make your feel the least bit relaxed then you are probably just normal.  Weird though it might seem though, I think that if someone (with a lovely deep voice) read that out to me every night, I would sleep a lot better than I am at the moment.  Look, my eyes are closing already …