The Stell sculpture.

A few days ago my niece sent me a text asking if I had any nice  photos of her grandad, my dad, as she wanted to do a present for her dad, my brother.
I told her I would have a look and get back to her. This is one of the photos I found of my dad and his dog “Lady”. We’d been having a weeks holiday in a log cabin on the side of Kielder water in Northumberland, just me and my dad. We had a good time and my dad really enjoyed staying at the cabin and the countryside around it. This photo was taken at a place called falstone not too far from Kielder water and it’s a sculpture of a seating area, I recall we just came across by accident.
If it hadn’t been for my niece asking me for photos I’d have not looked at this photo and subsequently wouldn’t have remembered the good times we had that week. My dad was a lot healthier then although if you look at his ankle you can see it looks quite swollen, he could walk ok but it did hurt him at times, later that year (2010) he had an operation to try and put it right, unfortunately it didn’t really work and his ankle would cause him problems for the rest of his life. He never really moaned about it though and it didn’t stop him doing things, but it would hurt him. As a family it’s one of the things we have mentioned about my dad, despite everything, the pain he was in and his mobility issues, he didn’t moan, he just seemed to accept that’s how it was. I miss my dad a great deal and the last few months of his life weren’t the last few months of his life I would have wanted for him, but my dads life won’t be defined by what happened in the end, it will be defined by all the years leading up to that point and the sheer joy and laughter he brought into his family and friends life’s.
So thanks to my niece I remembered a good holiday and now I’ve shared it with whoever reads this blip. X