Happy Birthday Boy

Window-Monsters
Originally uploaded by :mrMark:.

Amazingly (to me) , my youngest turned 13 today. Thirteen .. TEEN .. my youngest. And me just over adolescence myself (mostly).
This dawned on me and the current (for last 19 years) Mrs Kelly as we lay talking in bed a couple of nights back, we joked as people do, around the fact that the years are going quicker, that it seems only yesterday that they were all toddlers, then junior scholl kids etc.. then we both kind of fell silent and both obviously had the same melancholic thought of 'shit, they really ARE getting older and time really IS accelerating'.
Here he is looking cool and kindly indulging my photographer pretensions..
I'm really happy and proud to say he's a top boy and will make a decent man when he's (all too soon) at that stage.
Happy Birthday Ronan.

Day Dream Rock Balance
Originally uploaded by :mrMark:.

I had tiring week last week , ill for much of it with a throat and chest infection, aching limbs but in work for all but one day doing pretty frantic 12 hour stints. And then I got stuck in traffic on Friday night after a long client meeting, got home quite late with a headache and woke up saturday morning feeling really crap. ho hum. I took the dog out the same day and the sun came out through the clouds so I perched myself up high above one the rivers that flows through Marsden.. and made this small but quite tricky (I promise) to balance pile of rocks.
Actually, some of the rocks are old degraded bits of brick and ceramic from when there were railway sidings and buildings in what is now woodland.
The dog chased rabbit scents, (she's down below in this shot) and I sat crossed legged and forgot about work for a while. And the headache mostly cleared as well :-)

Turbulence

I've been wrestling with how to cover off / discuss or detail recent events at work which essentially meant that two of the team sat opposite me a couple of Fridays back and were given their marching orders. A really unexpected bad experience for them (I've sat that side of the desk in the past and its a shocker, no doubt), for which I'm really personally sorry. An unsettling time for me (its not about me I know, I still have a job, but it is my blog, be fair) and a confusing and demotivating period for their friends and colleagues at work. This is a personal blog not a work / corporate vehicle so I'm going to wish them both the best for the new path before them and leave it at that, other than to quote what Si emailed as a goodbye on Friday just gone: "Guys, It’s been emotional, but I’m a glass-half-full kind of a guy. I hope the next few months are less turbulent and more exciting than ever before."
Si's sanguine take on that does him credit and for all kinds of reasons : amen to that.