It's 9 am, it's dark and rainy, I'm holed up in my bedroom, still cosy underneath my Christmas bedding with summer light patterned sheets and outside the rain threatens to fall at any given moment, it's January, it's damp and the light levels are perpetually low, usually at this time of year I start to feel the pangs of seasonally affected disorder.  There's just one thing, this year I didn't have any post-Christmas blues, I haven't been hit by any great overwhelming urge to hibernate, well no more than I usually do and yesterday I went out for my first big 10k walk of the year!  It was a joyous affair with Looby and her best friend, Holly Bobbins loved every second, granted she still managed to be what I'd like to describe as a big fat barky pants when I was Skyping Mr France last night but that's kind of normal.

Whenever Mr France and I Skype Holly has a weird reaction, I'm sure that she recognises his voice but she can't quite work out where he is so she barks and barks and then she gets bored and goes to sleep, hopefully when they meet it means she'll just wag her tail a lot and she'll love him to bits, I'm sure she will, anyone with even a grain of sense adores Mr F, he's the sweetest, kindest, loveliest man, Looby spoke to him last night and I do believe he even stuck up for her and said I should have let her build a fort in my living room, ok, maybe next time I will, she apparently made one in her bedroom and then cleared it properly although I never saw it so I can't be entirely sure!

I do love that Looby thinks Mr F is a magical centaur, it's a big relief when you meet someone and your teenagers approve, she was even heard to be telling her best friend all about him yesterday, suffice to say I'm sure if he comes to Newcastle this year (which I truly hope he will) I don't think I'm going to have any problems introducing him to anyone I know because kids, friends, everyone who's spoken to him thinks he's just right for me.

Last night we were talking and I was telling him how much I love telling our story when all is said and done it's truly beautiful and unique, I don't know anyone else who's met in the same way as us, if you are reading this and you have however do get in touch as I'd love to hear from other people and maybe share their stories too (with permission of course) maybe we could do some happy relationship stories in time for Valentines Day?  

I may have rambled a little (I'm well known for it, ask Mr F) and digressed from my initial point which was that it's the first year I can remember where I have entered the year with so much hope and excitement for the future, my walk yesterday with Looby and her best friend felt magical and joyous, it did end up costing me a lunch and a Starbucks in bribery to make sure they stayed happy for the whole 10K but it was a pleasure just to feel the winter sunshine on my face and that gorgeous golden glow of the light which we always get around this time of year.  the days may be currently short but when we get beautiful sunny ones, the light is the most special you'll ever see, by the time we got home from our walk the hues of orange and red made the whole of the world pretty as the sun dipped it's head behind the horizon as it climbed into bed for it's longer winters nap, I adore the long heady days of summer but this year I am taking the pleasure and joy in the every day, something to hold up high and cherish.

We have so many moments in our life and we cannot remember them all, that's why I write in the way that I do so that I can look back and remember some of them, sometimes there are small pleasures in the minutiae of our daily lives and it's only when we can look back at a later date that we remember just how defining and life changing some of them were.  I don't know where you started when I embarked on this great adventure with Mr France, maybe you were there on that first day when I put my dating profile on my blog, or the first time I described him as Mr France, maybe you came along to find our story half way and have followed some of our weekly Skype dates?   Whenever you first came by to read our story, I hope you'll stick around because this, right here, is just the very start of something very special.

Snow, Holly Bobbins and Seasonally Affective Disorder

I've had seasonally affective disorder for as long as I can remember but in the last 10 years of being a photographer and self employed I find it's the only month of the year when I want to hide myself away and hibernate until spring.  I've found throughout the years that I have formulated various coping strategies ranging from actually hiding way like a hermit until the light improved to going out as much as humanly possible, I bet you can guess which worked best.

I recorded a video out there yesterday morning in the snowy sub zero temperatures but I would have had to walk Holly Bobbins anyway and I wanted to embrace the snow, feel some light on my face and get my circulation going.

This is the start of my weekly vlogs and I hope that you'll tune in either here or over on my YouTube channel

Obviously as we get further on I hope that my videos will improve but at the same time I think I just want to keep it as one woman sharing her thoughts on life, love and everything in between, it's the same as my blog really but now you'll be able to see me a little more.

The best thing about my job and my life as it is now is the travel element, I'm due to go away to a luxury cottage for a weekend in Alnmouth on a travel assignment at the end of January and I can't wait to share that with you in photos, in writing and also in video.  I've recorded video snippets throughout the last 10 years, my favourites are the ones of the girls growing up, especially the ones of Looby in our living room when she was a tiny dot, I did those with my first ever video enabled camera, it wasn't even a DSLR, it was a Fuji bridge camera which was terribly heavy and really not very good, I only had it for about 6 or so months before getting my very first DSLR, a Canon 350D, fond memories...

When I think about the way I live my life now I notice the one big change that brought about so many other little changes, it wasn't becoming a single parent in so much as it was about becoming myself and the arrival of a certain 4 pawed arooing beagle by the name of Holly Bobbins, I love my dog, she truly healed me in many ways than one, she saw inside my heart and reached into my soul and embraced every inch of her human mummy.  I will never stop being grateful for her love.

I still have seasonally affective disorder now but I have great friends who come over and with whom I go out with and I go out and make my legs work and my heart pump when I walk Holly in the park, sometimes I even get that winter sunshine on my face and I can feel it tingling in my soul promising me that one day soon the warmth of spring will return once more and I'll feel on top of the world.

Bad days and holidays

Good windy morning to you dear reader, I have to first apologise for my absence this week, it's been the first week back at work and I've been trying to catch up to date with actual work, you know the stuff that pays the bills so I've been beavering away and I have 3 tasks left on my to-do list, 1 of which was blogging so well done me!

Yesterday was a thoroughly crappy day, the girls are going to Majorca in August with their dad and to say I'm not dealing with it well is an understatement, I can't stand to think of them so many miles away having the time of their lives without me, it's quite heartbreaking and I haven't found a way to deal with it yet.  I've asked them not to mention the holiday or anything about it because it just makes me cry and it's not that I don't want them to always be happy and have new experiences but I think it caught me off guard and it's just another realisation that life has changed forever.  I had been looking at holidays myself but more along the lines of a week in a caravan in Berwick, it's hardly likely to be able to complete with Majorca is it?  Even worse is the fact that I can't seem to get 2 weeks away because of when Paul has booked and my summer schedule for weddings so a week in a cheap caravan doesn't even slightly compare but I want to be able to take Holly with us, I want her to have a holiday too, I think I would miss her smelly paws (and they are smelly) without her by my side, you know they talk about dogs getting separation anxiety, I think with Holly and I it's definitely the other way around, I hate leaving her and miss her so much when I am not with her, this is her current position next to me - 

I think one of the problems is fulfilling everything on my needs list for a holiday, it's got to be dog friendly, child friendly and accessible by train or public transport plus not too long a journey as Holly will need toilet breaks and she can't exactly nip to the loo like us!

I think yesterday was just confirmation that I'm still not especially in a good place and it's January which of course amplifies everything, I've always hated January, it's the worst month of all for Seasonal Affective Disorder which I thought I was doing ok with given that I walk Holly every day but it really seems to have hit me this week and I am struggling to stay on top of it.

Do you ever feel about running away to the circus and not coming home again?

One thing I do know is that I am going to have to have some kind of massive coping strategy for when the girls are actually overseas because at this point when I think about it I fear for my own mental health during that time, I'm so glad I have Holly at least, she's the one thing which stands between me and the cloak of madness!

Abigail and Looby are both staying at dads tonight so I need to give myself a shake and go and do something with Holly or I'll just end up sitting in a corner and crying and that's not going to help anyone.

Hopefully by the time I write again (which may well be after the weekend and then I promise to get back to a regular schedule) I'll be feeling better.

Always Remember To Gallop...

So here we are on the 2nd of January dear reader and my house has been restored to non Christmas reality, well apart from burning a Christmas candle I just found and eating the Christmas cake I made and then promptly forgot about.

The year has gotten off to a great start really, Looby and I did a 10 mile round trip walk with Holly and our lovely friends Aggie, Alan and their kids and dog yesterday, in fact I think Holly has a walking hangover today, she's been the quietest beagle in the world, Iain took her out for a walk earlier and ended up carrying her because she refused to, well, walk!

I go back to work tomorrow with a sprinkling of photo shoots throughout the weekend and then Monday, I'm back at work proper with a ton of editing, admin and other such joyful tasks, I shall miss just getting up in the morning and then taking Holly out all day, I have no idea what we'll do actually as she favours a nice easy 9am getty up and a leisurely breakfast with an extra helping of cuddles from Looby before she'll even contemplate doing anything.

I've never been a big fan of January, the light levels suck and my SAD is usually at it's worst but I have to say for the first year in a long time I'm feeling ok in the SAD department, I think going out on big dog walks every day really does help more than taking vitamin D tablets ever could, it's also just a lovely thing to do, I love walking with Holly, a time to contemplate and I often chat to her on the way, i'm sure that makes me seem a little barmy to passers by but to be honest, they probably thought that anyway!

I think for this year (after watching Miranda and knowing we share a love of galloping, I thought that was just me) I need a necklace or bracelet with "Always remember to gallop" written on it.  I caught the last episode of Miranda last night and I have to admit that I had tears running down my cheeks at the end, I love that she finally got her happy ever after, I think the tears may have been my sadness that I didn't get mine too, well at least not this time anyway, I guess there's still time. 

One of my goals for 2015 is to write more and hopefully make more of an income from writing, I haven't exactly decided how I'm going to make that happen and one of my January goals is to work out that conundrum.

If you're not back at work until Monday why not take the time to think about your goals for the coming year, business or personal, you could even do what I've done and Join lovely Amy of Whiteacres' Goal Setting Collective, after all a group mind is better than a lone one!  You even get a free A2 wall planner and speaking of that, I need to dig mine out now that Christmas is cleared away and get it on my wall, 2015 is all about goals, making them, meeting them and hopefully smashing them!