Monday should have been the first day of three interesting weeks of travel.

As, like a goodly proportion of the rest of the world, we currently can't travel further than our feet will take us, I felt I needed a substitute for the novelty bit of the travel equation.

So, I decided I was going to fill the next three weeks with things that are NEW.

It's not that I'm bored with what I routinely do -- as I've said many times, we're really lucky here, with a spacious place to live in, adequate internet, and quiet footpaths nearby. We're incredibly lucky, in fact.

But I was definitely craving NEWness, and this was my answer.

We'll see how it goes...

I can't quite remember if I'd made this resolution by Monday, but anyway that was the day with an exciting new bit of beach in it.

Apart from that, so far this week I've/we've:

1. Watched the sun rise. This was a lovely little expedition, starting on the cliff right behind our flat: a cold, still morning; a huge moon; the sun, drifting lazily upwards, and glinting off the windows of the town; and, as soon as we had warmed through (because, seriously, it was COLD that morning), we stood looking out to sea near the pier, eating our packed breakfast (cold beef sandwiches, with lots of butter).




2. Found a new windmill. It's actually a pretty old windmill, first appearing on maps in 1826, but though we'd walked this way many times, we'd simply never spotted it...


3. Started learning Manx. This is the language of my birthplace, of course, but I knew only a few words and phrases. I was never taught Manx at school, and although I tried to teach myself when I was about 15, I didn't get very far (there was a real lack of materials back then, especially recordings, and the language was competing with the French, Latin, and German that I was learning at school). The last genuine native speaker, Ned Maddrell, died in 1974, when I was still on the Island, but in recent years there has been a real revival of interest in the language (and it's interesting to compare this with what is happening with Maori, the language of one of my other homes). I'm following a Radio Vannin course that I've owned for a while but never got round to using, and the Manx Language Network offers a vast array of supplementary material.


4. Discovered Malaysian poet/lawyer/activist Cecil Rajendra. Writing poems that are charged with energy and super-engaging, he'll no doubt feature in a Velvet Cushion post in the near future. (POSTSCRIPT 17 April: He did.)

5. Started a NEW BLOG! Yes!! Purple Tern and The Velvet Cushion have now been joined by Vintage Travel. The first substantive post is about Benidorm.

6. Climbed Incleborough Hill. Eminences in these parts are modest affairs, altitudinally speaking. But hey, this feature was formed when a glacier from Norway met another glacier moving from the west. That's a whole lot more travelling than we're getting to do at the moment. The (new) views from the top were lovely, and the linnet was the icing on the cake.





Of course, the un-new continues.

We exercise.


We shop.

Unfortunately, our keenly anticipated Holland and Barrett delivery (scheduled for 3 April) has still not arrived...

We walk.








We celebrate.

Wednesday marked a whole year since we collected our MM2H visas. There was some sense of irony in our celebration -- who knows when we'll get back to Sarawak? -- but we marked the occasion all the same.