The Bear Minimum

Our 10th anniversary approaches, so I’ve thought long and hard about just the right gift for my wife.

Just after our ninth anniversary my wife and I decided that for our tenth we would take a vacation. We agreed that we would get each other a gift as well, but that we would also plan a trip together. After careful thought, we decided on a Mediterranean cruise, and we’re both highly anticipating our ten-day cruise for our tenth anniversary.

After scrutinising some savings news websites, we set up one of the cash ISA savings accounts and deposited money consistently until the cruise was paid off, and we also had a nice lot left over for spending money whilst we’re on the cruise! We considered an account with Nationwide Savings and Investments, but ultimately the ISA was better for us.

The traditional item for a tenth anniversary is made of tin, but more modern times have seen this become the diamond anniversary. I wanted to keep to both, so got her two presents. I’m sure she’ll love them both and I’m very much anticipating watching her reaction as she opens them. The tin item I wanted to have an antique feel, and be something she ornamental. I got her a tin floor vase, with filigree, which is something she loves. I’ve ordered it from the U.S. and a friend has agreed to ship it over to me. Expensive process, but well worth it. For the more modern item, I wanted it to have a modern touch, and I got her a pair of snowflake diamond earrings. She loves snow, and snowflake motifs, and drop earrings, so this was an obvious choice.

All in all I’m very happy about my choices for her, and this has been one of the easiest years to shop for an anniversary gift. I’m also looking forward to seeing what my wife has found for me. She often finds the most amazing antiques or collector pieces for me, and it’s always a treat to see what amazing piece she’s discovered!

Let me spin the tale as to why my week has felt so very long, and has been so very rewarding.

Some five years ago I gained a new patient. Not an unusual thing, I’m often gaining new patients and fondly saying goodbye to those I’ve already helped. This patient, however, came along about the same time that Skype started to become well known. Why would these two things coincide, you might ask, well that’s because this patient approached me via email at first, and then once arrangements were made, our sessions were over Skype.

This patient was, well, still is, an agoraphobe. She had some underlying anxiety, which because it was left addressed, grew into fully fledged agoraphobia: she was afraid to leave her house. At all. When her and I first started our sessions, she’d not left her home in eleven years. That’s an amazing amount of time. Her adoring husband had taken care of her that entire time, as well as working a full time job, and now that her husband was retiring, she wanted to repay him with his ultimate dream.

For as long as she’d known the man - a good thirty-eight years at that point, I believe, he’d wanted to visit the Pyramids in Egypt, and he wanted to do it with his wife by his side. He’d never begrudged her for her disorder, but it was still his dream. So one day, when my patient heard about Skype - she was a proficient internet user already at this point - she decided it was now time that she could and would get help.

For the last week I’ve spoken with my client nearly every day. Three years ago we had our first break-through, in that she was able to go outside and collect the post. She’s collected the post every day since. A few months later she was able to garden outside with her husband - something they’ve both flourished with and both love heartily - and now their roses are incredible. Two years ago they started taking short walks, only a few houses up the street at first, but this was incredible, and my patient was so excited, and her husband so proud, that she’s just flourished in the past two years.

Early last year the two of them took a weekend away at a nice bread and breakfast by the sea, and now, just last night, very late last night, she and her husband boarded a plane for Cairo, to see the Pyramids. My patient was frightened to go so far from home and her comfort zone, but she bravely pressed on because of her love for her husband and his life-long dream. I couldn’t be prouder of her, and I’m so happy for him. They’re a wonderful couple, and I look forward to hearing about their journey when they return.

It’s not all that long, but it’s not all that soon, either.

It has gotten to that time of the year where the holidays are well past, and you start to look forward to your vacation in the Summer. I think, dear reader, that being cooped up most of the day in a dim office can have that sort of effect on one’s psyche, where they spend their free time dreaming of warm days and fields to walk in and beaches to lay on. Then of course, once you get there, you remember why you don’t like flies and the smell of cow dung, and that sand inevitably gets everywhere. But that’s all part of the charm, isn’t it?

This year my wife and I want to have planned our vacation well in advance, and we want to try things we’ve not tried before. She suggested we go windsurfing, which sounded like a lot of fun, but not to be outdone, I suggested zorbing, which sounds like even more fun, though perhaps dizziness will be a slight issue. You do roll down a hill in a giant ball, after all. Much like those little hamster balls.

We then thought about toning it down somewhat, so she suggested wildlife watching, which would be very nice in the Summer, and I suggested Gorge Walking, which seems like an amazing activity to me. I love the variety of locales here in our fair Britain, and I am looking forward to stepping out this Summer and seeing some places I’ve never seen before, and doing some activities I’ve absolutely never done before!

I do hope that you too, dear reader, take the opportunity to do something out of the ordinary, positively extraordinary, this Summer like my wife and I are!

Well, I didn’t really, but that particular line from that particular song seemed apt considering my topic today.

Yes, it has happened. The earth has moved a 8 centimetres off it’s previous axis due to massive earthquake in Chile last week. It’s a very strange thing to contemplate, but those in the know over at NASA have calculated and said that yes indeed, that massive quake has altered how the earth sits on it’s axis ever so slightly, which has shortened the day by a tiny 1.26 microseconds.

There are some more obvious affects to the earth after this devastating quake, including the island of Santa Maria, just off the Chilean cost, having risen approximately 2 meters out of the ocean! I do find all of this fascinating on an intellectual level, however I’m also very, very aware of how those in Chile will be feeling right now. It feels like only a short while ago the world was rallying to aid Haiti, and now Chile is facing similarly grim times ahead. I do hope people are still in a giving mood, as both of these nations will not be able to recover quickly - or at all - without the aid of the rest of the world.

It does seem to me that the world is facing more and more extreme weather and geological events in these modern times. Oh I’ve no doubt that events with tremendous and terrible repercussions occurred in the past - the eruptions which buried Pompei and the palace at Knossos come to mind - but we seem to be getting these devastating seismic events more frequently in the past decade or so.

Perhaps, dear reader, I’m just getting old, and ruminating on such tragedies a little more. I do love this big blue world of ours, and hope she continues to safely ensconce all her children for yet a few more millennia.

It has been a very long hiatus, has it not?

Ah, what, you may ask, have I been doing in all this time!? In the past three and thirty weeks of drought that I have put you through? Well, it has been a trying time, in all honesty, but one that I am most happy to be past.

My most recent months have been filled with caring for a very sick ageing relative. An old great-aunt that I spent time with when I was growing up. She had a small property by the seaside, a perfect getaway for the intrepid youth looking to fill his Summer vacation with all sorts of activities, from hunting crabs and the like in rock pools to discovering badger dens in the nearby forest, it was a wondrous place! It’s a place that I love to share with my wife, we found time to walk in the snow-laden forest most days we were staying at my aunts cottage.

We were staying with her because, alas, age had taken it’s toll, and this favoured great-aunt had taken very, very ill. In her frailty she had been struck with pneumonia, and I and my wife have spent the better part of the Winter caring for her, and getting her well and truly healthy again. I am very happy to report that my great-aunt is well recovered, and fiercely putting her house to rights after the two of us ‘youngins’ had disordered her neat little cottage. We hadn’t actually made a mess in there, we’d just moved certain things to make it easier for us to stay there and trying to help her when she recovers. She’s an amazing cook and had a stock of huge pickling and jam jars in a top cupboard, and we moved all these sorts of things that we know she uses regularly uses to lower cupboards. She’s all mock irritated with us over it. It’s a fun game.