The Warden’s Hut

Scolt Head, Boxing Day Walk 2004
This was one of the biggest numbers of walkers for our Boxing Day walk that I can remember (dad is on the far left of the back row, I’m on the far left of the front row, crouching). The next year, 2005, there were only eight of us, dad, me, my husband, my brother Peter, Mel and two other chaps.

Ever since Boxing Day I’ve been fretting about some photos. This is one of them. When I met up with Mel and Peter and called in for tea, I found Mel looking through all their old photos looking for the ones of the Boxing Day walks. There was one year she couldn’t find after having all the albums out and searching. I reminded her that , every year, she had always sent dad a birthday card with a photo of the previous Boxing Day walk, and she remembered doing it. I told her that when I was sorting out the house I had come across all the cards that dad had religiously kept. I felt sure I hadn’t thrown them out. Of all the mountains of stuff that I’d sorted I clearly remembered these. I remembered taking them off the mantlepiece and I was sure i would have kept them. I told Mel that in the ‘final push’ to get everything cleared on time I had bags of stuff that got thrown together and ended up coming up to Cumbria with me … I’m sure it’ll be amongst all of that … somewhere. Of course, since then I’ve moved out of my old place into here. Yet more sorting. Everything all jumbled and what hasn’t been needed has gone to the back of a cupboard whilst I’ve been settling in here.
Since getting back after Christmas I’ve been gettIng a bag out after work and spending the evening sifting through with no luck. I started to doubt that I had kept them. I remembered exasperated moments when I was drowning under the sheer volume of stuff and had manic flurries of chucking, shredding and burning. I feared the photos/cards might just have been victims of one of those moments. 

Searching is a strange thing. There is a point when it becomes about something else. I was getting a bit obsessive about it and, with a feeling of some desperation this morning, I took a deep breath and made one final deep dive into the cupboard and hit upon one bag that I hadn’t looked through half a dozen times already. I nearly didn’t look in it at first, not wanting all hope to be dashed, but then I emptied it onto the bed, and there they were. I cried with ridiculous relief. Searching for things feared lost can be so bloody devastating and bring such profound absurd relief when found. It really is about something else.

Other than that, I did the chores this morning, some shopping this afternoon and a quick walk on Barton where the weather continued to be absolutely foul and I was peppered by hail and sleet.