21.05.11 – Magic Moments!

Business has been very mixed of late but I have a large group today for the Cliffs and we have a couple of private tours next week so we are surviving. Our competition have cut their price below us but I honestly don’t care, we are as cheap as we can be and if this is a race to the bottom we are going to continue paddling! Lets get away from business and take ourselves out into a universe of positivety. One thing that is really lifting my spirits is to see how Chris – my very own free spirit has coped with all that has hit her this winter and is still positive and smiling. Chris is a very spiritual person, not really in a religious way but she is a great believer in destiny and that we all have someone watching out for us. Lately she has taken to occasional quiet meditation and it really seems to be helping her stay focused and upbeat. She has even given me my own crystals for stress, I don’t know if they will work but I have a feeling this season will test them out! The death of Chris’ mother has really focused us and inevitably we find ourselves looking back into collective memories not just of her mum but times in our life that were special and I have been thinking about those times. Sometimes special memories could be of the mundane, one of my treasured memories is the two of us on the overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai in Thailand, we were just lying on the bunk in each others arms watching lights and little houses and villages flash by, we were listening to “Chasing cars” by Snow Patrol on the ipod and the world just stopped and seemed rather magical for a while. But on the other hand someone else on that rattly old train was probably worried about being late for an appointment the following day and cursing the slow progress – you see magic for some, mundane to others! I often wonder when I run a tour is there a magic moment for someone on board, maybe when we stop down on Galway Bay and the wind is howling and I’am secretly cursing the weather while somebody might be leaning into that gale, taking great lung fulls of Atlantic air and thinking how marvelous it is to be alive. I really hope so if I thought I could create a magic moment for somebody then it would make this job seem more than worthwhile. If you have had a magic moment on a Barratt Tour let me know I would love to hear it, I suppose I’am becoming a bit spiritual in my old age! If I receive one magic moment I promise I will share one of mine from a tour – it really is a good one!