My mother has always recommended taking a walk whenever you are feeling less than buoyant. But this is not any old walk. It’s a very specific type of walk. This is a ‘Blow Through’. This is the kind of walk that you have to work a little bit at. Bracing your self against the wind, up and down a few hills or a big favourite of hers and mine, a walk ‘along the front’. (The ‘front’ being the sea front for those not familiar with ‘Doris’ language). So when *Lisa* phoned overwhelmed with sadness and I was unable to speak at that moment because of an impending client, I suggested she had a ‘blow through’ and that we speak later.

There is something about a blustery walk that really does change your state of mind and truly does blow away quite a few clinging cobwebs. It may not change anything that is happening in your life, but whilst you are getting ‘blown through’ your mind can’t help but makes space for new thoughts and perspectives.

Just to check that this is still a strategy that works, I went on my own early evening ‘blow through’ to the deer park near my home. I was just thinking about Lisa’s problem, (which I will tell you about in another blog), when I came face to face with an extremely large cow! Now I have no idea what a large cow was doing in the deer park, but ‘to whom it may concern’, this is a disconcerting experience when you are out for an innocent blow through and if the person in charge of cows in Stanmore is reading this, please can you sort it out. I don’t know what the rules are regarding the by-passing of cows, so I stood still for quite a while hoping it would not notice me, and then I sort of sidled past it within inches of the fenced in deer and the cow itself. By this point I was slightly less in favour of blow through’s and hoped that Lisa* had not added to her problems by facing any large cattle on her own walk.

I phoned Lisa* who as it turns out benefited greatly from her windy walk and had worked a few issues out and was much calmer. I phoned my mother who was in the midst of having a ‘Doris Day’, bless her in a world of her own that always includes whistling (bit of a comfort thing). She said she had never had that kind of experience personally but knew someone who had come across a dog the size of a horse. (You really don’t want to go there. This is a woman who made me put in a lipstick in my school’s ‘harvest festival’ package which I think was winging its way to Biafra or somewhere experiencing famine and drought, on the basis that if a woman puts on a ‘bit of lipstick’ she always feels a lot better!).

Anyway, the point is that if life is getting in your way right now, get out there and take a walk. You never know what adventures you may have on the way.

Till Monday,

Love Francine