Wednesday.
My services are sometimes booked to be a proverbial pain in the rear end; to be blunt, to push where some pushing needs to be done. Today was one of those days, and I had to attend a meeting.
The interpreter - the one I've used the most in the past 5 years - noticed my annoyance. I guess after interpreting all my hospital appointments, most meetings, etc they pick up such things. My exasperation wasn't at the issue, but how stupid and clueless some people are.
Okay, let's not to attempt to label all people with the same brush here. However, more looking outside the damn box should happen. Instead we're presented with cannot see the wood for trees; totally naive as far as contextual stuff goes. Sometimes people are so mainstreamed, they just never question and cannot rethink to save their lives. And what's more, they cannot see they have their head immersed deep in the sand. The fact that I'm having to go into such a situation, when I would much rather be doing something else far less stressful. I don't mean to sound arrogant here, and I get learning is a two way street, but ARGH!
To be positive about this, there was some cool people there too. Lots of nodding in agreement happening, people wanting to talk afterwards with good intentions but does so much spelling out need to happen? I'm sure rattling boats - someone needs to do it - doesn't paint me as the world's favourite person.
Afterwards I escaped to the beach, complete with an obligatory ice cream.
Unfortunately the tide was in, so I had to make do with hanging out on the Dyfi Estuary, but damnit I didn't have any binoculars with me.
Then onto Eglwysfach for grave spotting. I've previously blogged about my great grandfather, here and here. From this post:
Remember this entry, the vicar at this funeral saw my grandfather's grave and then asked me about the number of Bryans buried at another churchyard, were they related to us by any chance. Yes, he remembered something like that. The fact that my g grandfather had 19 children just might have something to do with the 6ft under take over mission.
So I thought I'd go and check this out. I'm related somehow to half the cemetery; since the family moved to the village and its not a common surname, we're related.
I failed to find my g grandfather's grave, but found that of his first wife and about one million Bryans. I took photos and showed them to dad later, and conversation went like this:
"Who's that?"
"Er, I don't have a bloody clue"
"Who's that"
"I don't know who they are either"
"Well they're related to you - I think your cousin," and so it went on.
"My grandfather had two families [married x2 - first wife died], I didn't know the one half. I don't know our half either"
For argument's sake, lets say there's 36 auntie and uncles from my dad's father's side, most of them with offspring. You get the picture. The sole reason for world's overpopulation could quite possibly be blamed on my family.
My g grandfather took up the post of Head Gardener at Ynys Hir Hall, here's the grounds from the gate:
Queen Victoria owned the place when he worked there. But sod that, what I want to know: how the hell did he cut all that grass?
En route home, just in case you needed convincing of the number of hills in Wales:
To get how high I am, Snowdon is around 70 miles away and in that photo you can see it on the horizon. The ability to see vastness, just blotted with the odd wind farm makes you extremely lucky indeed. For that puts everything into perspective.
More photos in this Flickr set.