By: Blonde Two
You may have noticed that the two Blondes spend a lot of time walking in one particular direction at the moment. You would be forgiven for thinking that we are obsessed with our visits to the Dartmoor Christmas Tree. It happens to us every year, as the days draw to their shortest and work becomes its most exhausting, the Blondes feel inexorably drawn to Dartmoor.
For many reasons, the Christmas Tree is the perfect Winter Blonde spot (like a blind spot but easier to see). For a start, we can leave work, get changed and just about be there to watch the sunset, even on the shortest day. Today, for example will only have 7 hours and 30 minutes of daylight; just catching fifteen minutes of those would be worth the bit of rush it takes to get there.
I don’t know about the rest of you but for me, this time of year feels a bit wobbly. Nothing is running to routine, expectations are high and emotions are all over the place. One of my favourite days of the year is Boxing Day; the day when it no longer matters that you are not ready for Christmas, the day when you can get out for a walk with your family and eat what you want to, exactly when you want to.
With all of this wobbliness in the world, the attractiveness of something as big and solid as Dartmoor becomes almost overwhelming. I find myself staring at it longingly from my kitchen window, I even climbed two sets of stairs at work yesterday just so that I could glimpse it at lunch time. The Dartmoor Christmas Tree knows all about the importance of solidity and has rooted itself firmly into granite. The Two Blondes’ Tree experience usually involves sitting on the same granite, underneath the tree, facing the sunset.
We have experienced all kinds of emotions there. We usually giggle, there have been tears, many times we have just sat in silence. If anyone else happened to be up there, they would think it was a very odd sight; two ladies sitting sipping tea in the dark. I imagine that, even if they stayed and listened for a while, they would not be able to make much sense of our Blonde-Speak. But for us, it all makes sense and nothing more so than being back on solid Dartmoor watching the sun set on a world that is constantly changing.
A particularly moving piece carefully evoking the difficult to define atmosphere surrounding this time of year. Boxing Day is specially poignant for me and mine – I lost my wife to motor neurone disease in 1997 on that day. Although that has its influence, we, that is me son and daughter, and now two year old granddaughter, have a quiet and less stressful meal and exchange Boxing Day presents.
Enigmatically my wife’s father, although I never knew him, also died on a Boxing Day, and my mother on a Christmas Eve.
Back to a recent post of yours, it does seem strange to be sharing these personal thoughts with people I have not met, but that has come about by the caring and decent perceptions you have conveyed.
With best wishes for Christmas and the new year to both of you.
Thank you for your Christmas wishes, Conrad. We send them wholeheartedly back to you and yours.
It is good to ‘know’ you!
Blonde Christmas wishes back to you and yours too. It is a strange time but one that I think, when you balance all things up, we would be worse off without.
B2, you have explained it perfectly (as usual). At this time of year I tend to be a little overwhelmed with things: work, emotions, stuff. You have summed the situation up with your usual mix of honesty and emotion without being gushy. Nice post B2!
“hope that you disapprove”. What a world of inveiglement there is in that. You got there first so you’re entitled to the final e, and the initial cap – but only when using it about yourselves. A capitalised verb I am less happy about. But it’s time I got away from December 17, I seem to be spinning my wheels in the mud while the Blondivity surges ahead.
Other options steal in. Blondississimo! (The screamer being mandatory)
A key element in the Blonde Walking style is, of course, an ingenious and adaptive way with the word blonde. But you could, I think, go further.
In America I was paid to make articles by US academics (from MIT to UCLA, from Notre Dame to Purdue) read more “englishly”. Amusing given that by then the UK was regarded by most Americans as Third World. “Never mind,” I said, “I am part of the international culture the USA has sworn to protect.” Arguments ensued followed by broad brush assertions. Like: any noun – any noun at all – may be converted into a verb. Thus, a gun may gun down someone. Less felicitously but more imaginatively the sentence: “I have been supermarketed to death.” communicates the special type of exhaustion that ten minutes in Tesco induces.
Straight away I find myself toying with “blonding it.” which I take to mean overwhelming someone by sheer exuberance. Or perhaps something more violent: “blonded by superior forces on the Lustleigh bypass.” I rather like Lustleigh, a sitting target for wordplay. South Zeal even more so.But perhaps all this is old hat.
I am getting a bit excited now about this latest idea for playing with the word Blonde (I hope that you approve of the insistance on capitals; or do I hope that you disapprove?). How about taking it even further and discussing “the Blonding of Dartmoor”? Blonding is a great word because it negates to need to debate with oneself over the final “e”.
I too like “Lustleigh” for a whole host of reasons but find little to appeal in “Crapstone”.