Willy cools off

I decided that Willy didn't really deserve to get blown up, so he is cooling down. He may be some what traumatised by the whole thing, but its in his nature to get bashed about a bit. Note of warning, don't be around me if I am in a bad mood, you never know what I might do.
Instead I decided to blow up some of the crap in my room, to make room for more erm crap.

Wordless View

*Remember to click on my face to see more hiking photo's and posts*

A message from Connor

Connor my nephew knows about my blog as my sister Jemma reads it over in Germany to keep in touch with what I am up to (its Willy she is interested in really,perv).
So on his visit this weekend he demanded to be filmed and put on the pooter, with a special message to you all. I have no clue what he is on about really, he looks damn cute though.

While they sleep

Who knew I would miss the sight of my nephews asleep so much, it was lovely seeing them this weekend and not just asleep.
Its only a few weeks till I get to see them again, this time I am going over there (Hamburg).

Exploding Willy

This weeks Manic Monday theme is explosive inspired by poor Mo's exploding arse, poor Mo.

*Check out other participants of Manic Monday here*

What was willy reading?

When he isnt hiking, drinking, over medicating, wrestling with snakes and other such mischief. There is nothing Willy likes more than a good read, but what is his book of choice?
The offended/offensive blogger put it too her readers and this is what they came up with in this post What was Willy reading?
Then the offended/offensive one and I whittled it down to these three beauties, well i bullied her into picking my favourite ones. She knows not to provoke me. So meet The finalists in this post.
Voting then started and finally the winner was discovered, click the Willy doodle to find out more.

Wooden

When I go hiking, I am always in seemingly treeless places. There are in fact quite a few trees but when your going up a mountain the trees tend to disappear.
So when it was decided that this week in PhotoHunt the theme would be Wooden, I thought what better than to post my favourite tree photos.

*Remember to click on my face to see more hiking adventures*

A nice surprise

I am not a person that likes surprises but this was a really nice one. My sister, Ste and the nephews arrived last night for a surprise visit.
I nearly cried I was so happy to see them, Ewan my eldest nephew ran straight up to me and hung on like a limpet.
For those that don't know they moved to Hamburg in Germany early December and its the longest I have gone without seeing them. They are my favourite people in the world and its weird not seeing them all the time like I use to.

Anyway today is homework day for me so I have to go and do some bloody work.

In the mean time look at the new improved stick me, well its a work in progress as I have a new how to draw cartoons book.

Okay I know it looks like an evil robot but its my first go.

Wordless Willy in Wales

Happy Birthay Mr Mo

Click on Willy and say Happy Birthday to Mo.
I forgot to say that Mad Mo is posting 41 posts in 24 hours one for each year of his life.
He is mad as toast!

Oopps I put the wrong link in over at Wordless Wednesday, this is last weeks.
Click here for this weeks Wordless View.

Hike Two, hot, sweaty but not muddy.

Yesterday was another glorious day in the world of hiking, I know its annoying to those of you surrounded by snow (haha). It was actually icy, but the sunshine took away the chill factor and well to be honest, the hiking gear and thermal undies helped too.
I have not been to Wales since we attempted this walk the first time round last year and I am definitely heading back to this corner of the world soon. The walk was from Llyn Geirionydd & Llyn Bychan to Llyn Crafnant. I cant pronounce it (its Welsh) without sounding like a Klingon.
To start the walk you have to find the car park which in itself was tricky and you have to force others drivers to reverse around corners in order to let you pass. Once at the car park, we discovered it was deserted, not many brave folks out today.
If you look at the mosaic above you should see a building, that was part of a disused mine which you will see in the video below. It says 'keep out', but of course I ignored that. It was a lovely spot to start the walk. The video is not the best quality and due to my naturally clumsy nature its not safe for me to walk and hold camera for any length of time. Hopefully you get an idea of the lovely scenery that we walked through.
The walk was 9.5 miles / 15.4 km graded as Moderate. The ascent was 1900 feet / 576 metres, but we may of added on a wee bit too that (due to incompetent map reading, again).
Although the hike was beautiful, it was not complete success as yet again the damn five bar gate alluded us twice! this happened last year too. It is mentioned in the directions, but we have never spotted the ruddy thing, so therefore must not have completely gone the right way again. That means we will be going back again to conquer it once and for all.

Notice in the title it says 'hot,sweaty but not muddy' this is in fact a lie. I was a bit muddy but I did not fall on my arse this time.

Click the link below to see the rest of the hikes photos over on my flickr page.

*More Pictures HERE*

Hiking is worth it.

Free Willy!

Quite a few of you witty/mad/perverted and crazy folks have jumped on the I Love Willy bandwagon and proclaimed him to be a free willy when he is out on hikes with me. I can't tell you what my hiking buddies think of me bringing willy, because it involves a lot of swearing and exclamations of WTF!!! They don't understand the world of blog and that everything in life is bloggable. I know what your thinking, WTF! am I doing hanging around with these people for? Its a good thing they can drive and make me nice sandwiches.
Today I am off hiking again for part two of the great getting it right this time challenge. This is where we attempt to not get lost when on previous attempts we have, today's second attempt is in Wales, this one.The previous attempt, so while I am off conquering the hills you can gaze at this photo from last week.

So while I am foot loose and fancy free in the hills , check out the others from this weeks PhotoHunt.

Happy Valentines

Well folks I spent valentines with Willy, I even put lipstick on to look all pretty. I didn't get dressed though because I can't draw clothes yet and I am sure most folks prefer nekkid cartoon Claire.

Wordless Willy Hiking

What has Willy been up to?

I have been roped into helping out one of my mums friends to make leaflet thing for their group, got loads of college work and general boring stuff. That means not much time left for posts on here.
Willy on the other hand is living the life of Riley, the little bugger. He was very popular in his first guest post over at the offended blogger, in whats Willy thinking caption contest. This led to some rather depraved thoughts, I loved them, I mean Willy Did. Read the depraved entries here What was Willy Thinking?. The winner of that competition was disclosed here Most Depraved.
Now Willy is at it again, so if you want some Willy action hop over and say hello from me in the all new What's Willy Reading? contest.

Willy goes Hiking and Willy meets Beaver is coming to this space soon, maybe even today.

A few blisters popped later....

As you can see from the photos, yesterdays hike was indeed worth it! Even the pus filled blister i have just popped, hasn't diminished how beautiful it was yesterday.
I shall start from the beginning of this adventure so you can appreciate the full wonder of it, as i forget that people actually want to know where i have been and not just stare at my awesometriffic photos ( i am rather chuffed with them).
I awoke about 2 minutes before I was getting picked up and had to drag my still asleep/dead body around the house, legs half in pants, half out, whilst brushing my teeth and making coffee. My chums arrive on time, the buggers, so i open the door and use various hand gestures to communicate that i was running late.
Once i finally got my shit together, i dumped my stuff in the car boot and onto Sedbergh we went. Sedbergh is located in North Yorkshire (England) and its not the first time i have been to this particular spot. Every time we, as in Aly, Chris or me, pick a walk its normally a random thing guided by where has the best weather. This walk was a return to conquer a past failure, Sedbergh had defeated us on a previous adventure, due to bloody fog! (Previous attempt). With this in my mind, i wasn't looking forward to this walk at first.
This is the roughly the path we followed The route, sometimes we go slightly off track. It was a ten mile/16.3 km slog , graded moderate (my arse). The ascent was to the dazzling height of 2300 feet / 697 metres.
As yesterday was my first hike of 2008, you could say i was a wee bit out of shape, okay a bloody lot! Aly and Chris both have kept up with fitness like stuff, i on the other hand hibernate for winter. So while the start of the hike was great, i was even happy. The towards the middle bit where we had to ascend up the side of that bloody waterfall, I could of quite happily died. Aly and Chris wanted to kill me because I apparently had a face like a toddler about to throw an almighty wobbler. I hurt so I could feel like that if i wanted, don't get me started.
To combat the pain and well basic unfitness, I took many a photo stop. Taking photo's is a great excuse to stop and get your breath back.
Humour was restored once we reached the top and everything was downhill from there literally.

Funny notes of the day: I fell over twice, both times landing on my arse in mud. The first time was early on in the hike so my pants had dried and Chris fell over whilst laughing at me (Ha!). Unfortunately the second incident happened at the end of the walk and i had to walk through the village of Sedbergh looking like I had crapped myself.

Watch the video to see a wee bit of what it looked like on the way down, it is set to some lovely music.

PS: Willy was there but he will have his own post :)

Hot, Sweaty and covered in mud.

I am back from my little hiking adventure, hot, sweaty, tired and covered in mud. Did i mention pain? pain all over my body.
Was the pain worth it?I will let you know tomo when i feel like updating this post. Here is one of many shots I got today.

Heavy

I have been feeling a little heavy of late, just damn lazy and this bloody weather doesn't help.
So today I am finally getting off my arse and hiking the hills once more, follow this link to see where I am going: I am going here!.

Guess who I am taking with me?
As this is a PhotoHunt post, I better add a photo. This is from last years jaunt in the lakes, click on my face below to see more wondrous hikes.

Funny as fook

The Lord continually amuses me, now you can see his glory in this wondrous video.
Here is the warning:
Now, dim the lights and unzip your trousers: for I now present for your viewing pleasure Lord Likely: The R-Rated Trailer!
Enjoy!

I didn't make this video, just in case you thought I did, I just posted it in order to get some more of the lords affection.

Doodle do!

You should know that I have gone doodle mad, so when there is a competition about doodles, I am there faster than flies on shit (nice imagery eh?).
I hate that I am not brilliant at it, but its still fun! So why not hop over and have a go yourself? If you do and you happen to win, then if your not using entrecard you can give the credits to me.

Never enter a battle of wits unarmed :)

Station Atomica! via kwout

I am facing competition from Chelle and Asara, but quite frankly i think mine is the bestest!!!
Hop over and judge for yourself :)

Click on my face

I generally forget that this blog is visited by new people and they haven't read it from day one (where have you been!).
So here is a brief explanation on how to navigate this place, this is also to help the non bloggers that read this blog from work and stuff (waving at you and you!). Yes there are people out there that don't blog and are scared of this interweb stuff.

So for those that haven't been here long enough to see my fantabulous hiking posts, click on my face to see my hiking adventures so far in the glorious United Kingdom. New adventures will be added as and when I do them (or not).
(thats me in my woolly hat)

This button is permanently located on my right sidebar.

The same goes for anyone interested in my counselling homework, every time I do a new post it gets tagged and added.

I guess I need to make some new buttons for 'Cartoon Time' and 'Willy Time'.

I also try to label most of my posts with something hence the rather large word cloud, so if you are bored you can always click on them.

I am lazy!

Just thought I would post one of my hiking shots from last year as I feel bloody lazy! Maybe gazing at this will inspire me to get off my arse this weekend!

I am working on it..

The update to the counselling confidentiality post is taking far longer than I thought it would take. It is really hard to put into words the importance of confidentiality, the reasons for it and the rare occasions it needs to be broken. It comes across as rather legal and cold, which is of course not what counselling is all about, so i am taking my time on it.

In the meantime a lovely blog bud of mine JD has helped me come up with a way of summing up how important trust and confidentiality is within the counselling relationship. He also emphasised that once that trust is broken it is hard if not impossible to build up again, but that doesn't mean all counselling relationships will be like that.

'You work hard to build a sandcastle, make it solid, even decorate it, then a wave comes and just washes all that hard work away. You can't build the same sandcastle again but you could build another one'.

Hence the cartoon up there. I hope that at least made some sense?

What was Willy Thinking?

Who knew Willy would start to influence the blogworld already! Chelle over at the OffendedBlogger is most probably his number one fan.

She has come up with this cool competition.

The Offended Blogger: The "What Was Willy Thinking?" Offensive via kwout

I urge you to go over and have a go, there will be a wonderful Mr Willy award for the winner :)

Ever had your Willy Constricted?

For this weeks PhotoHunt the theme is Narrow, which is a strange coincidence as Willy has had a Narrow Escape!
A snake somehow managed to get into my bedroom, onto the computer desk and overcome willy.He bravely fought on, but it was stiff competition.
In the end he was overcome and succumbed to the constriction. I don't think he hated it though.

Confidentiality

As most of you know and for those that don't, I am currently training to become a counselor/therapist.

A big topic on this course is confidentiality.

Before I write about what I have learnt so far, I would like to ask you a few questions about this subject.

1.If you were going to counselling does the issue of confidentiality concern you?

2.Would it matter to you if this counselling was arranged through your place of work, would that sway your level of concern either way?

3. Do you wonder about the notes your counselor has or would make?

4. Do you know what would cause a counsellor/therapist to break confidentiality?

Thanks for reading this and any contribution you care to make. Any questions feel free to ask me and I will try to answer them.
Why do I want to know this? Well I will be going out and working with clients in the very near future and anything that will help me put someone at ease the first time they step through that door would be invaluable to me. If anyone has a had a horrible experience with a counselor/therapist I hope to learn something from that mistake and not through too many of my own.

UPDATE:
I really appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions and I am working on the rest of the post :)

Some interesting things have come up in the comments.