Dawnbreak over Hangingstone Quarry

Thanks so much for all the concern and advice from yesterday. I didn't heed any of it of course! Eventually got to bed at 1am with things mostly sorted out. The weird effects we were witnessing are now seen, as always, to be linked through a perfectly logical if somewhat convoluted causal chain of events. I was at least able to catch up with a few you while I waited for scheduled processes to run. I love dropping in on people to see what they've been up to, peering through that blip peep hole which we each provide on our lives. The trouble is, as we all well understand, once you start it's very hard to find a point to stop! It seems that I'm not the only one around here who is sleep deprived.

It's great this time of year that you can actually catch the sunrise by sleeping in - which is exactly what happened this morning. I took this shot rather absentmindedly, but as it happened the weather quickly closed in and it's turned into a particularly nasty kind of day, cold and unremittingly grey. This is all I have to offer. Regulars will be familiar with the outline of the quarry. It's midway along this ridge, just behind the line of the trees, that Sunday's Ancient Connections was taken.

Feeling a bit like those clouds today, fluffy are rather floaty, a result of insufficient sleep. But some of you have agreed that this is indeed a good time for creative thinking. Following on from yesterday I'm becoming more and more fascinated by the processes in the mind that are going on beneath the level of our conscious awareness. Day after day I seem to be brought to the right place at the right time to get a good blip. Is this the result of my unconscious mind making decisions from a base of knowledge to which I have no normal access? Perhaps a lifetime of walking and running and cycling has given me an intuitive understanding of the weather, one that is simply impossible for me to know in a conscious sense because it's not accessible through language.

It's not so far fetched. We have all sorts of bodies of such instinctive understanding. The most obvious is knowledge of the keyboard. If I asked you to tell me where a certain letter is positioned I suspect you would struggle. Our fingers go to the right key without a thought but we have to work very hard to describe that knowledge in words. The position of the keys is not something that we really have any conscious awareness of. The knowledge is in our hands! Gosh, I'm in the state of mind where I could ramble on like this for hours. Fortunately, I have to stop here and blip early because it's our Christmas 'do' tonight. Looking forward to some relaxation and lively banter with our very international team and their equally international set of partners! Have a great evening yourselves.

PS In case there was any doubt, yes, we did get our names into the Guinness Book of Records, for one edition only, until three Aussies beat us, after which they discontinued the record for reasons of safety to health!