A very (very) long break since our last post, so here’s just a glimpse of a big moment looming in our life, as Daisy2 our tandem prepares to be collected tomorrow, Monday July 11 2022, for delivery to Robin Thorn in Bridgwater to be, yes, electrified.

I guess we’re feeling a bit like Bob Dylan fans when he first started playing an electric guitar, and it’s amusing to learn that in the world of e-biking, ordinary bikes without a motor are actually (by some, anyway) called “acoustics”.

We’ve pedalled the length of New Zealand (see the Blog menu at the top to browse our reports from there) in 2016, Warsaw to Tallinn in 2017, down the Danube to Budapest in 2018, and on Daisy1 way back in 1979 all round the Highlands and Islands in Scotland.

But all pre-electric, and all of course when we were younger. Now seriously into our 70s, needs must when we think ahead to tandeming all round Germany next spring, in 2023.

The motor from Pendix in Germany will be fixed to the front pedals, adding a rough seven kilos and quite discreet. Cycle now while stocks last…

An extraordinary, touching moment at Weybourne came when I asked a fellow beach visitor to take the photo at the top of this blog, and noticed semi-colons tattooed into the side of his hands.

What were those about, I wondered?

“Suicide survivor,” he said.

I hadn’t known of this symbol, worn to signal a decision to return to life by some who’ve pulled back from the brink of ending it.

“Roger” (not his real name) was once a high-flying executive in the London City.

Sinking under the pressure of performance targets some years ago, he was about to become one of those “persons hit by a train” we hear about all too often as we travel.

Thinking at the last minute of those whose ordinary journeys he would interrupt, and especially of the train driver whose life would be changed for ever, he allowed himself to be talked down.

The semi-colon? A sentence, a life, interrupted but continued – an invitation to live and read on.

As psychotherapists, Jutta and I are acutely aware of suicide in our work with clients.

I “lost” a lovely but deeply tortured young man three years ago whose despair even 60 sessions of EMDR couldn’t touch. His childhood wounds were too deep, and he’s now at peace.

I’d never heard of “Project Semicolon“, and we’re grateful to have met Roger, who as a former military man himself also works with veterans struggling with PTSD.

Random conversations.

Back to Daisy, and to a challenging spring (both of us have had bronchitis, knocked out for the best part of two months), readers might enjoy a small selection of images at the end of this post illustrating what an amazing part of the world we live in.

In which context I might note that Roger, as a professional photographer, was rightly sniffy about the idea of taking pictures with even a good smartphone, Google Pixel 6 in this case, admonishing me politely for leaving my Sony Alpha SLR at home.

So, enjoy this WordPress slideshow, with a random alpaca or two in Sheringwood up the road from our house thrown in, plus views of Beeston Common and of our two gorgeous Siberian kits/cats Rodion and Sonya.

(Note that here in North Norfolk, Slow You Down is the imperative version, captured below outside Muckleborough military collection in Weybourne, with Czechoslovak anti-aircraft system in the background.)