Missing in Action

Easter snuck up on me this year. While I was tapping away drafting a new otter 'adoption' pack, a colleague asked, "What are you doing over the bank holiday?" Bank holiday? I lifted my muzzle - sorry, head (I was deep in otter speak) - the puzzlement spread all over my face like a drunkenly smeared lipstick. 

They shook their head at my expression. "It's Easter this weekend."

Damn. So it is. And only 5 minutes ago, it was early March and this was happening:

A wild and woolly walk through snow flurries and slush as we went on a trip to one of the nature reserves the trust manages. It was beautiful and broke my new wellies in nicely.

Before that, it was the beginning of February, which is a dark, hard month, even for a seasoned Winter lover like me. Several times during that month, I opened up this blog intending to write something, only for the crush of words to overwhelm, and I would close it again. What was there to say? I was too busy, too sad, too dealing with the mess in my own head to write something down. And when I feel like that, there's only 1 thing to do. 

Wait. 

The olderer and wiserer I gets (apparently), the more I know this is not a permanent state of mind, merely a wave. Let it wash over me. Pick up sustenance when needed. Ask for help. Listen to the body. Rest where possible. I barely picked up a book that month, managing an exception for the Morville Hours in towards the end of it. 

If you know me, you know how much I love that book. I have reread it at least once a year since I brought it 15 years ago. My copy is dog eared, crumpled from bath-drops, stained from tea and buttery fingers. It is a balm, a tonic, a delight. Something has always held me back from visiting the actual garden though, back when it was open. What if the reality didn't match what I'd been seeing in my head? That was too big a risk. 

By coincidence, I finished the book the evening before I had a meeting in Bridgnorth, which is just a handful of miles from Morville, so I diverted my way home. The garden is shut, the owner and author ill (according to the people in that meeting who actually know her), so I didn't see it but the church is a delight, every corner containing a new wonder, the churchyard full of snowdrops and gravestones with the names of people mentioned in there. 

Finishing that book seemed to open the floodgates and a reading glut following: The Hours, Middlemarch, In Defense of Food, Mantel Pieces, The Rising Tide, Smiley's People, Notes on an Exhibition, Fried Green Tomatoes, A Life of My Own. I've been avoiding  buying new books (new anything really), so my trips to the library are more frequent, but its a nice walk through streets lined with trees and ivy and victorian terraced houses; past the park, the racecourse, the theatre. Once in, I browse at random, sometimes fiction, sometimes not. Maybe I'll look up a book from the list of ones I want to read on my phone. If I really want to read it, I'll pay the 80p to reserve it. 

 The no-plastic shop has moved to larger premises, so I no longer have to awkwardly squeeze past the beige-linened woman weighing out gluten free pasta with an expression that registers nothing but irritation at my existence, or repeat 'excuse me' increasingly loudly at the bearded young man who is expounding at length to his starry-eyed girlfriend (she'll learn) about how the toothpaste tablets are, like, really good for festivals, whilst blocking the one way system. 

Now there is room for us all to exist, to move, to fill our refillable containers without causing a blockage or bringing curses down on our heads. This does not make it any less of a discombobulating experience. 

I am always saying or doing the wrong thing. Wanting the rice when the rice container has run out. Trying to use the castille soap dispenser when it is near the end and issues noises like a dying rhino. Asking for peanut butter when the peanut butter machine is broken. Refusing a loaf of 4 day old bread on the grounds that I have no need of a weapon just yet, not even one with 10% off. 

At the end of a trip, I creep out, trying to make myself physically small, smiling to hurt my face while the owner scowls and moves scornfully onto the next customer, who hasn't been the idiot I have. It really doesn't matter how often I shop there, how much I spend, how nice I try to be. As far as I can see, there are 2 options: go in as mean as she does or stop going at all. 

But I like their peanut butter, and that my pasta is in nice glass jars, and the bread when it is fresh and chewy and delicious. I have been practising my entitled face so that I may swoop in next time, acting imperious and giving scorn back at her. However, N tells me it looks like I'm trying not to fart in her general direction. Le sigh. 

Speaking of faces, Mum and the Kid came over for Mothers Day. I cooked lamb from the organic farm and made a crumble. N is not a pudding man, but he does like a crumble. A traditional crumble. No fancy tack like oats or almonds in the topping. Imagine then, when he discovered this was a peach crumble. It was like someone had taken a favourite toy away from a small boy. 

Still, he suffered it down.  

 

Rochdale was a surprisingly stress free trip at the end of March. From what Mum had said, from what the papers say, I was half expecting some lawless, Wild West of a town, which it obviously wasn't. It has problems, yes, but the people were lovely and my hotel clean. I admired the Victorian buildings, the incredible mosaic in this church, the efficient transport system (they have trams!) that would get you the hell out of there and into Manchester within minutes. I trained some volunteers in the art of giving good guided tour. I think they enjoyed it, although I'm never asking what their irrational phobia is as a warm up question again (mine is zombies, in case you were wondering) - it caused unexpected retellings of trauma and, in one case, a strange prejudice. 

I nearly detoured on the way there: Rochdale is not so far from Middleton, where Mum is originally from. I could, perhaps, have looked up her Grandad's grave, the street her Mum grew up in: the 2-up, 2-down terraced house where Nan shared a room with her spinster Aunty Alice, and left school at 14 to go and work in her Dad's bakery. But she's never gone back there and I don't know the places, the names. I'd have been wandering around a wet, Northern town, looking for ghosts in the dark empty streets. So I didn't.

At the allotment, we've had a flurry of action, ready for the rotavator man next weekend. Clearing the ground, strimming, digging out some stubborn root structures. N has been more involved recently, after I admitted that possibly, if I couldn't get on top of it, I'd have to give it up later this year, which would mean I would have more time to get involved with what he's doing in the garden at home. 

As a threat, it worked better than anything else I could have come up with. No amount of begging or weeping would have produced quite the same spring into action that the promise that I would be interfering in the garden at home. 

Later this month, I'm taking the Kid to Wales for a few days. He needs some time away, I need some time away, we haven't had a holiday together for a couple of years. I've picked an off-grid place, so we can read, eat bread and cheese, sleep. We'll visit our favourite fossil beach and book town (not the same place), walk about a bit. Admire the light-pollution free night sky (who's laying bets on cloud?) and stars. Take some time off screens and away from office chairs that are never quite supportive enough.

And some time off emails too. Do you have the same feeling of overwhelm with emails recently? Back in January, I definitely did: work emails, life admin emails, special offer emails and, biggest culprit, newsletter emails. 

I blame Substack. Lured in by the promise of a "new blog form", I signed up to several. But instead of picking and choosing when I read blogs, I found a steady flow of emails informing me of a new post on someone's Substack. The virtual equivalent of a child hopping up and down, yelling "look at ME!" And, because I hate emails building up, I would, clearing them all, only to log in a couple of hours later to find more demands for attention. 

In February, I tried an experiment, putting them all in a folder marked "Unread", with the plan to go through and read them once a week. Except that, by the end of the month, I hadn't. Mostly, I deleted them. 

My own curiosity is also to blame. I'm like the nosy neighbour peering through the virtual lace curtains to find out whats going on, only to find that not very much was going on and I really didn't need another carbonara recipe. 

So I've deleted all but 4. Now i open my emails and think "oh good, Helen's back, must be Friday" and I settle down with a tea to enjoy it. The inbox feels manageable now, a little corner of life brought under control.

Oh, and I cut my hair off. Rather, my hairdresser did. It had been long for a long time. Long enough for me to plait it over my head like some pastiche of the dinky little Swedish girl I am not. But it was heavy, gave me a headache if pinned up all day and took hours to dry. It also felt weighted with everything: pandemic, worry, sadness. It was grief hair. Time for it to go. 

Now its just below my ear lobes, a weightless easy to manage bob that looks better on the 2nd day.  The relief, as we move into the light, is considerable. 

Winter's Tail

Well, we made it. Imbolc has passed with its promise of fluffy lambs, fluffy mimosa, fluffy pancakes on everyone's horizon. The change in light and temperature has been noticable, even if the latter is only temporary. Like the Big Gloom that I am, every time someone says, "it feels like Spring!" as they cast off vests with gay abandon and start polishing their summer shoes, I reply with "yes, but it is still Winter. Isn't that wonderful?"

And it is. We have a whole 25 more days to while away with darker mornings, hibernation and soup. This is being typed by the person who didn't wake until a full 2 hours later than her summer waking hour and who has no intention of being hauled out of that drowsy nest or her big socks any earlier than necessary, thank you very much. 

Work continues a little bit crazy and has seen me whipping between home office, office-office, Gloucester, Birmingham and Ellesmere Port (for work) where I stayed in a lovely hotel with decadent food (pluses) and the hardest bed in Christendom (big ole minus). I am not kidding about the bed. Upon arrival, I dumped bags and jumped on, only to ricochet back off again as it refused to yield an inch. This was Victorian prison bed hard. 

So, I picked myself back up off the floor and headed down to the bar (no more work that evening). 

Happily, in February, the furthest afield I go is Birmingham, which is absolutely fine with me. Let us not yet dwell upon Rochdale in March and Manchester in April. There are weeks till then. Months.

This month we are moving The Kid into his new flat in Banbury. Since taking a job in Oxford, his current living arrangements deep in the darkest part of the shire have not been ideal, especially with train strikes (solidarity to the strikers and a big old pox on the bosses that have spun this out for their own ends), so a move was on the cards. 

Closer to work with an alternative bus system, but without the crazy crazy Oxford prices. Even without those, he's paying the same for a 1 bed flat as I did 4 years ago for a 2 bed house with a garden. Which merits at least one 'crazy'. The sooner the revolution occurs and morally bankrupt private landlords are banished to the moon, the better. 

But the important thing is that his commute time (and cost) will be halved and he will have his own space in which to stretch and grow. Virginia was right, a room of one's own is vital. 

Last month I read Burntcoat by Sarah Hall. I'd absolutely loved her previous Wolf Border, and like the way she changes topic and perspective with every book. They are all distinct whilst remaining completely identifiable as a Hall. This one is short and thought provoking, at points a little distressing. Too soon after the pandemic, after Dad, after everything? And I think I'd been expecting more about the house; it was what the book was named for, after all. 

After finishing and staring into space while I let the feelings it brought up recede, I had to agree with myself: a short, slightly misleading, wee bit distressing Hall is worth a million exquisitely detailed Ian McEwan's, so I still highly recommend it. 

I haven't watched any tv of note, resisting all calls to Happy Valley or The Last of Us on the grounds that I cannot be doing with that level of stress on a Sunday evening right now, and at no point, ever ever, no way Jose, will I ever watch anything containing creatures remotely resembling zombies. I don't care how well you write it, I like to sleep at night. Instead, we've indulged in radio comedies, specifically Cabin Pressure, which I absolutely adore, along with the belly laughs it provokes. If you've never heard it, promise yourself a treat and get stuck in.

Something rather special has been happening this month: my desk at the wildlife charity overlooks a field, hedges and a reed bordered stream. Every day I'm there, I raise the blind and settle down to work, keeping a quarter of an eye open. Every day, unannounced and barely noticeable (unless you had that quarter eye peeled), a gloriously chestnut coloured vixen trots across the field. Her coat shining in the low winter light, she weaves across, stopping to sniff the ground, the air, the black tips of her ears twitching. Sometimes she sits and looks directly at the window. 

At those moments, I hold my breath as long as the gaze between us lasts, not daring to move. Seconds before she hears something that sets her jogging slowly on her independent, self-sufficient way. She is beautiful and elusive and, I feel, a good omen. Maybe this might be, just might, a good place in a good year.

Inhale Deeply

Hello! Well, it has been so long since I last blogged that, coming back to it this morning, I couldn’t remember what I’d last written and consequently lost myself for an hour this morning, rereading, following back, plunging into that memory pool, occasionally asking myself if I’d really meant to write that. 

Generally yes. What I mean to write, I write. 

April and the 1st week in May were…bonkers. So much so that I’ve reached 7th May and fallen at its feet, kissing the ground with gratitude. I think I will lie here for a little bit and recover. 

treated myself to some freesias because why not?

Truth is, I did something I’d promised myself not to do since going freelance, and I’d over committed. In order to fit it all in, I worked over the bank holidays and weekends, push-push-pushing words into those coherent sentences that funders like.  

So. Many. Damn. Zoom. Meetings. Daily, twice daily, thrice daily. Finally, at the suggestion “we catch up via a quick Zoom”, I snapped and demanded an old fashioned phone call instead, unable to face another disjointed conversation full of “oh you’re frozen again” or “hang on while I share my screen.”

And I physically zoomed too: one 7 day stretch saw me dash between Birmingham (again), London and Gloucester. I have seen more train interiors this month than I have in the past 2 years. I have driven to Ely. 

But. Now May is here and the deadlines have been met. I have felt the weight of them fall from my shoulders like a heavy overcoat. 

sweet peas planted out in April

N is cantering through his last month of work. In September he starts a Masters in landscape architecture. No one chooses to be made redundant but there is no denying the freedom, once the period of adjustment and mourning has been got through, to go in a completely different direction that it gives you. 

Speaking of which, never have I ever heard so many tone-deaf comments as I did when the news was first announced. Redundancy is up there in the list of the Big Life Stressors (bereavement, moving, illness, divorce, redundancy, etc) and yet his shoulder rang with the metaphorical thumps of people saying “think of all that free time!”, “wish I could be made redundant!” and “it happened to me and I was over the moon!” 

The problem with comments like that, as well meant as they may be, is they diminish how the person actually feels. That period of mourning and adjustment as you realise the future you thought was secure has just been snatched away, that the small work ‘family’ you’d been part of will soon all be moving on without you, is necessary. Trying to cheer someone out of it just makes them feel worse. 

And now he's through that - jubilant to be leaving a work environment that had steadily grown more toxic over the past 2 years, coming out of meetings with deep sighs, shakes of the head and a wondering "I don't have to worry about that any more". There are plans for the future, university in September and then the wedding at the end of the month. We’re in a good place. 

Shelves at the Coffin Works. One of the helter-skelter visits I did. 

My poor allotment. I managed 1 trip up there, nearly 2 weeks ago. To be fair, the ground was so dry, it needed a mattock to break it up (it's a clay soil so when it's dry, it's solid). It needed the recent drenching. Tomorrow, recently nadgered ankle withstanding*, I'm planning a few hours up there, taking my sandwiches and my time over the jobs to do. There are seedlings ready to go in, another brick path to be built and, no doubt, strimming to be done. I love No Mow May but if I went with that at my plot, I'd never recover the ground. 

I have alpines to plant on the tricky dry bed, cornus cuttings that have rooted and need a place to be, a couple of achillea that 'fell' into my basket and a honeyberry (lonicera caerulea) which I also failed to resist. 

May is full of green and so beautiful that, now I have the time, I'm standing to stare. Trips to garden centres that are bursting with lushness. Going to see friends one evening, the lanes were so soft with new growth, bluebells shyly scattering the grass, that I had to stop the car to stare properly. I'm going to do that more, not just now, but this year in general. 

Things I have read and seen:

• Earthed by Rebecca Schiller, Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym, Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James and South Riding by Winifred Holtby, which stayed with me for days afterwards and I'm recommending all over the shop. 
• Dinosaurs: the Final Day with David Attenborough. Just mind-blowing. Astonishing finds and research pinpointing the moment of asteroid impact that did for the dinosaurs. And continuing the asteroid theme, Don't Look Up. Funny and poignant, Meryl Streep acting it up a storm. An allegory for our environmentally-stricken times that can also make you laugh. 

There are 3 more weeks of May left before we tilt into the birthday pell-mell of June and July (our families seem to cluster around here and November-December for birthdays) and I can allow myself the luxury of Days Off. Things I will do in May:

• Eat asparagus in a variety of ways. 
• Ditto new potatoes
• Make elderflower cordial
• Inhale deeply when I'm around flowers
• Admire the wisteria at the allotments
• Watch butterflies
• Quit Twitter because, ugh**
• Yoga
• Write

What does May hold for you?

*the arthritis means that when I've been too much on my feet, I get unsteady, leading to Undignified Trips and, in this case, Falls. I've been resting this thing since Wednesday. Lots of ice etc. 

** Done!

PS If I've missed any of your posts and/or comments, I'm sorry. Slowly getting myself back into order. 

Sprung Days

Caster sugar with rosemary flowers for which to make biscuits.

Not cookies, biscuits. 

This afternoon, I am going to write for pleasure. This is after having spent yesterday trying to write for cash and failing miserably, (and having written most of this post TWO DAYS ago). Sometimes, I do not feel able to dredge up yet another metaphor for "this is a really good project! People will like it! Come ooonnnnn!" and yesterday was one of those times. Better to knock it on the head at 4 and take myself off to the allotment. 

Where the rosemary is in full bloom, narcissi are springing up and there were ladybirds clustered around the new growth of the fennel. The skies were blue, the birds were singing, it was bliss. The woman who runs the nature reserve CIC on the site stopped for a chat, looking almost drunk on the swelling of spring. 

"I'm not on drugs!" she proclaimed loudly. "It's just, in there, it's..." she waved her arms back in the direction of the wood and trailed off. "Just wow." Safe to say, her serotonin levels were off-the-chart high. I have rashly agreed to help write some funding bids so I now have to find new, unpaid ways of saying "this is a really good project! People will like it! Come ooonnnn!" but it's for a good cause, so I don't mind that. 

After she'd gone, N and I dug and raked for a while before calling it a day. I was extremely pleased to find my arms still working after the weekend. For the new wardrobe had arrived last Friday and the long postponed redecorating of the Retreat got underway. 

There was a day of painting, a weekend of construction and a further day of finishing touches. And my arms, oh those poor arms: I wasn't able to do anything with them other than flail around like Father Ted and his fake arms for at least a day. 

It was exhausting, and not exactly the fun weekend the Kid had in mind when he came to stay and found himself deputised to holding important pieces of the new wardrobe while N cursed and drilled and banged, but it is done and I'm so pleased with the result. 

The walls glow like apricots in Mediterranean sunshine, the space where I work is screened off from the spare bed by a bookcase, meaning I no longer look like I've rolled out of bed and straight into a Zoom call. Well, I do, but that's more a matter of unwillingness to use a hairdryer than it is to do with the fact there is a bed in the background. I keep leaning to one side so people can clock the improving titles on the shelves behind me and be suitably impressed. 

Part of the finished (almost) room. That green

painting, bottom middle, was one the Kid painted when 

he was small. 

N's Mum is finally out of hospital. I didn't mention this before as, until we knew she was going to be okay and home again, it wasn't my place to. She was in for 8 days after a series of falls that no one was quite sure of the reason for. Was it her MS, or maybe mini strokes, or - oh no, there it is, dehydration. So easy to dehydrate when you're elderly, disabled and the idea of having to hoick yourself around is frankly exhausting, how much easier to refuse that cup of tea, ignore that glass of water. I know my Nan often did the same thing. 

Anyway, she is better now and back home with a full care package that has been much needed but not set in motion before because his parents are quiet people who do not want to make a fuss or be a nuisance. And the quiet, no-nuisance people always fly under the radar. It's been a worrying time. 

In the greenhouse, seedlings are unfurling ever skywards. Rocket, cabbage, cauliflower, lollo rosso, sweet peas and other flowers, spring onions. There are even 2 tentative tomato shoots. On the windowsill, a new batch of seeds are beginning to germinate, including radish, parsnip, dill, basil, courgette and, rather exotically, luffa. Oh yes! This year I am going to try my hand at luffa growing, then I shall have a ready supply of scrubby cloths. Will keep you posted on that progress. 

Tiny Wee Mabel is also infected with the joys of spring - we've barely seen her for the past few days. She comes in, shouts, eats, leaves. Eventually returning late at night to sleep. The fox sounds have died down now and there have been limited sightings of the evil tabby who used to persecute her, so she's making the most of it. 

Tiny Wee Mabel: slightly boss-eyed, 

extremely shouty

The Great Boo, on the other hand, has taken no more notice of spring than he did winter. Still sleeping in the radiator hammock, still sitting silently by his food bowl and attempting to look half starved, still regarding Outside with suspicion. The only change has been that he now sits on the lawn and occasionally we hear a small thud which is him smacking at tiny flies in the grass. 

The sky is bright again today. This morning, awake very early, I decided to take myself off for a walk. Unsurprisingly, my footsteps took me along the canal where the birdsong was a delight. Standing there for a few minutes, no one around but the woman failing to bring her spaniel puppy to heel, I could quite understand why you feel a little drunk after a day spent in the middle of it. 

Sadly, that wasn't to be. I've been back home and ploughing through my to do list since 8am. Feeling like a 4pm knock-off is in order. 

The Great Boo: off his tiny rocker on catnip

Oh, I've just read that Dagny Carlsson, the world's oldest blogger has died at 109 (you can, if you can read Swedish, read her blog here). I love that she was referred to as a 'blogger and influencer'. Better her than one of the Kardashian nitwits. I wonder if I'll still be blogging at 109? What a thought to start the weekend on!

Patience is not my virtue

Oh the rain, the rain. It raineth every bloody day. Or so it feels. And I do remember, insufferable wise woman of the woods that I am, saying back in March that it had been too dry all winter, we were overdue rain. 

Next time I feel moved to say such a thing, N has permission to throw a bucket of water on me, yelling "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?" a la Crowe in Gladiator, but damper.  

I did manage to get up there once this week, for about an hour and a half. I finished edging one side of the top-long bed, carting the mass of grasses, roots, dandelions, sodding-bindweed, bramble roots and other assorted plants that have No Place there down to the compost heap (aka the place behind the pile of fallen elder that's holding back the Japanese knotweed - the knotweed that the council and the CRT are currently arguing over who's responsibility it is). 

But, I mean, just look. Yes the grasses are beautiful and dance merrily in whatever meagre shaft of sunlight we're granted but it's So Bloody Long. Seriously. Knee high in places and the strimmer can't get through while it's this wet. Trust me on this.  I have strimmed before in the rain, for a summer when I worked for my Dad and needed the cash: strimmers don't like doing it in the rain.  

However, all this wet has meant that the soil is easier to turn, shake loose from roots and rake to a beautiful fine tilth, almostly exactly the consistency of a properly crumbled cookie. There is a strange satisfaction to be had from getting your soil to this state. As I rehung the rake in the shed, it was with a feeling of a job well done. 

 The anenomes have proved themselves to be the gift that keeps on giving this year. Red ones at home are surviving the deluges, and even this delicate little purple one has thrown out yet another bloom. In fact, the sloping space at the top of the plot is being furiously productive. Aquileiga, antirrhinum, a magnificent fennel, poppies, marigolds and nasturtiums are all throwing out buds.

But the undoubted stars of the sloping space are the Japanese Wineberries. They were here and spreading triffid-like all over the place when I took on the plot. Not entirely sure they were safely edible, I left them the first year. Last year I cut them right back in an attempt to tame them. This year, well...

 

 There are 4 of these. Shall I make jam? Compote (runny jam)? Wine? Gin? Or just eat them, ripe from the branches, warm from the sun, watching the clouds scud overhead and listening to the birds. 

Very possibly just that. 

In other plot news, the beetroot have been planted out, the onions still aren't ripe (how long do these lazy things need??), the potatoes were showing leaves until I earthed them up again, the rhubarb has tiny adorable stalks and the raspberries are small but gamely producing leaves and little buds. 

At home, French climbing beans, borlotti beans, chard, tomatoes, courgettes, lollo rosso, spinach and rocket are all waiting for the sun to claim dominance over the skies again. They are strong and healthy, clamouring to be OUT, but as more than one person has told me how their tomatoes have been smashed to a green pulp by hail and torrential rain, the seedlings will just have to wait. 

Patience, I keep telling them. Patience, I tell myself as I stare at the rain, gripping a coffee mug too tightly for comfort. Patience, N tells me. Patience, rustles my plot neighbour's wisteria; a few years and everything here will be as magnificent as me.

 

Show off.
 

Bechamel Smechamel

I have no idea how the title for this post came about. I often have ideas for posts without having the time to write them, so I drop a title into a draft, fully intending to come back to it some point soon to finish my rambling, usually nonsensical thought. 

This time I didn't. Bechamel smechamel? Clearly I was making my famed (in my own kitchen) sort-of-bechamel sauce at the time, and clearly something had been said or occurred at the time of making it. Can I remember? No. And I've been wracking my brain for weeks. 

Oh well, we will no doubt learn to live without my pithy and no doubt witty conclusions on the topic of bechamels. A sad conclusion but we soldier on. Instead, I feel it's time for a book update. 

Oh yes, I have started reading again. After being genuinely concerned that I may never do so again.  Hallelujah. Praise be to whichever deity you prefer. 

It was Twitter what did it. On that entirely rational (not at all a shit-show of crazies crawling out of the woodwork *rolls eyes*), Joanne Harris was tweeting about Chocolat and I realised I hadn't read that in years. 24 hours later, I was still thinking about it, so I picked the book up and started to read. 

Hurrah for Chocolat! What an indulgent read that was. Harris herself has said it's not the best book she has written but it is so very evocative nontheless. I could smell the food she described and see the characters. Obviously having a pre-sleaze, pre-greasy-looks-like-he-needs-a-wash-and-a-good-talking-to Johnny Depp as your point of reference for Roux is always going to help. 

 I then decided I wasn’t ready to leave Europe and headed off to Italy with Extra Virgin and Ripe for the Picking, both of which I’ve read multiple times before (I find it weird when people only read a book once - “oh, it completely changed my life, here you have my copy, I’ll never read it again.” Bizarre. ) but needed for the sunshine, good food and a life that is completely removed from mine. I am now seriously considering an olive tree.

While N watched an umpteenth game of football one evening, I read Cold Comfort Farm. This is my lovely Folio copy with illustrations by Quentin Blake. How perfect are these? I love the book without them, but they are the edible-gold-covered-cherry on the light and fluffy cake. 

I then disappeared to run a bookshop, grow up on a sheep farm, catch up with a journalist/recipe blogger, follow Death's assistant around and laugh my self silly at the monstrous Poppy in The Unfortunates. She may be my favourite appalling character.  

"I said 'We'll probably put you in the Pomegranate Rum, unless the P of W is expected, in which case you'll get bumped to the Willow Rum. And Bobbity will be determined to find you a congenial horse, but you must stand up to her, because no such animal exists. Tell her you have an allergy. I'll tell her. Also, she makes unspeakable soup so be prepared to fill up on bread. And when we have people staying to hunt, be sure to take your bath early. If you don't there'll be nothing left but a miserable trickle of lukewarm water.'"

All of the books are on my Bookshop.org affiliate page (see that link there, no not there, there - top right of this blog...there we are, well done), apart from Ripe for the Picking and The Unfortunates. 

 I've already started reading The Lost Gardens of Heligan. A very small to-be-read pile has been allowed to creep back in. It consists of this, a Susan Hill and a PG Wodehouse. That's as many as I'll allow myself just now.  

As I type, the rain is absolutely throwing itself at the window like tiny watery kamikaze pilots. I've taken a quick break from work which has taken off like a rocket thanks to some work from quite a large organisation. My intention to take my foot off the accelerator has been forgotten and I'm pinging from one email to another. But I'm loving it.What bliss it is to schedule my days to my best times of day (note: not between 2 and 3pm). 

Much like Aunt Ada Doom. There be a countin' coming...

The Shed Makes An Appearance

Saturday was a very momentous (can something be "very momentous"? Surely the "momentous" cancels out the "very"? I'll stop now before I tangle myself in linguistic knots) day - for it was Shed Day. My brother-in-law - owner of the only van in the family and a man who seems to have forgotten the purpose of Saturdays (i.e. that it is probably the law that people are not forced to leave their houses before 8am) was arriving at 8.30 with necessary help. 

 

Thank god I know him of old and was in fact already at the plot and ready to rock when he arrived at 8.15 (we are a family who can't bear to be late - or even on time - to any appointment). I'd actually been there since 8, ferrying stuff down from my car and pausing to appreciate the quiet and the view. 

 

The skies over the city were beautiful, that wispy blue that promises bearable heat later, the Malverns crisply outlined. As all normal people were still in their beds, or their pyjamas at least, it was so quiet, nary a car or a clang of deliveries to break the spell. It was so quiet and early, the plot fox trotted unhurridley along his regular route home without even giving us a second glance. 

 

One big downside about my plot is it's location. It's at the bottom of a steep slope down to the canal (the shortest route) and a good 500 metres from the main car park (the flattest route). We opted for the shortest and then spent 20 minutes (it felt like much, much longer), lugging shed panels, fruit cage sides, bags of tools etc down. And then going back up it a further 3 times as the need for different screws/nails/opportunities to prolong the agony arose.

 

It is funny listening to boys constructing things though. The chants of "to me, to you" which never gets old, the gentle ribbing about the right way up to hold a shed panel, the banter around roofing felt and the nailing down thereof, the bordering-on-heated discussion about the right way round to put the fruit cage...

 

While they bantered and "discussed", I stayed out of the way and got on with putting a small fence made out of tree stakes and green-covered wire at the top of the plot. This is for the sweet peas that are currently running rampant at home as we wait for the frosts to be done, to climb over. Then I used my new edging tool (new tools!) to edge the beds and try to halt the gradual grass takeover.

 

Luckily, the work I'd been putting in in digging the area, raking, digging it again, raking it 500 times more in an attempt to get a flat space on sloping ground, really paid off, as you can see from the jaunty angle the door of the shed is leaning at. Bugger it all. 

 

 

But actually, I don't mind too much. I'm just so pleased to have a shed! Finally, a place to store tools so I'm no longer carrying them around with me. A place to store a deck chair so I have somewhere to sit, instead of plumping down to the ground and then trying to lever myself back up again. A place to store a little camping stove so I can brew myself some coffee! 

 

By the time the boys left, we'd been there for 3 hours, and I spent some time afterwards just sitting and smiling around myself, strangely reluctant to leave, enjoying the peace and quietly making plans. 

 

 

The first plan is to paint it. Bless my Dad, he was a man of practical thinking and his practical thought had been to paint only the bits of the shed that people could see, not the bits of shed that were inconveniently against the hedge. This is a school of thought I fully subscribe to, but as it's completely exposed on all 4 sides, I need to paint them. I've managed to find a Cuprinol wood paint of the same shade he had already used for the front (a rather subtle Green Orchid), so I spent a happy half hour yesterday painting the left side. I shall be away up there again this afternoon to do more. 

I haven't gone mad with populating the inside just yet. I want to paint the interior and put up a handy potting shelf before I do. I'll also get a sowing guide up in there as I'm quite bad at remembering when things are supposed to be sown. 

 

By the way, if you're looking for allotment inspiration, I can do no better than recommend this episode of Gardener's World. Our allotment Facebook page quite lit up after it's airing and there was a healthy debate about whether we'd like little doors and closed off plots, or whether we'd miss the chatter of other plot holders. I do like the chatter but sometimes, after the 14th person has said "you need a rotavator on there" to me, I can see the appeal of a little hedged off, door closed area. 

 

It's amazing how much happiness this 6x4 wooden structure has brought me. I'd rather have not had it and still had my Dad around, that much is never far from my head, but having it here feels like having him here. Not in a creepy looking-over-my-shoulder way, but in a reassuring way. He's not there but a piece of him is. And that's quite nice.

Expedition of the Springiest Kind

It is hard to resist spring, for all it's wild and woolly weather, waking up to snow flurries, winds to take your ears off and glowering skies, only to have it completely change within the hour. That first glimmering of weak sunshine appears to apologise for it's lateness before getting onto the serious business of warming your bones.

Easter Monday, I and 4 friends set off for a walk in the Malverns, a little known area of it, judging by the few people we saw. I had expected hoardes of them, maddened by incessecant insiding, squabbling and puffing their way along the ridge, but my friends are wiser than me, and in charge of the route, so we made our way downhill from the northern side of the town, through a farmyard where the tractor appreciators among us (me and 2 others - I'm not the only weirdo) were in seventh heaven. Plus there were lambs and gambolling to witness. Is there anything more cheering to the eye than lambs, wobbly on their legs, leaping at each other?

This was, by a long shot, the longest walk I have undertaken for at least 2 years, but determination and cabin fever will carry you a long way. We set off in snow that was whipped into tiny frenzies by a wind that clearly had a grduge against something. The copse was a welcome relief from it, even if it did rattle the tree branches furiously: they sounded like bones outside a witch doctor's, clacking together in a gale.

There were loved-up trees that had twisted together in unbreakable embrace, snakey roots to trip the unwary. No bluebells (too early) but wood anenomes and violets in carpets, and the smell of wild garlic hanging around like an open air deli. We didn't pick any. Instagram feeds are full enough of wild garlic pesto - they don't need me adding my 2 penn'orth.

I liked the tiny mossy bolt hole under this tree and instantly wished I could live in it. Or at least write about the tiny person living in it. She would be called Minnow Brown and have wrens for friends. This is a story that first cropped up when my son was small and I wanted to tell him stories. Given that he's now 22 and I've still not written a word, I think Minnow Brown may have to remain in our imaginations. Which is probably for the best.

By the time we reached the quarry, the skies had completely cleared and the sun was making up for lost time. The wind stayed and when we stopped for shelter and lunch (and to look for fossils), it rattled the bones-branches even more furiously.

Apparently, this quarry has been rigoursly plundered for fossils over the years. The Earth Heritage Trust maintain it now. I loved the layers of the rocks in the quarry walls above the lake (sadly small - there has not been enough rain, even if it feels like there has), each delicately resting above the next, subtly shaded differently. This is, according to geologists, stratification, but I think it looks like the layers of a piece of delicate French patisserie. 

I may have been ready for my sandwiches at this point.

Not so ready that I couldn't join in with turning over rocks to see what there was in them. To be honest, I don't need to be in a fossil quarry to do that, I can lose hours looking over gravel or at the stones I turn up at the allotment. Geology and fossils are fascinating, so this was like being in a candy shop. We found mostly traces of tiny sea creatures, or rhynchonellida brachiopod, if you're feeling fancy. I brought just 2 home and they are now with the rest of my small collection. One day I shall catalogue them and then I shall really have gone over to the dark side.

Everywhere were signs of green and new growth. Tiny leaves on trees, distant hills wearing a gauzy cloak of green over their brown winter pelt, blossom petals drifting down. It is most cheering after this winter. As was the glow of satisfaction at having made it so far without legs buckling. It is good to be active again.

That said, the above was taken when we lost the path, my feet were complaining and I really really needed a wee but don't like wild weeing. It's amazing how grumpy a previously sunny tempered, entirely amenable person can get in that situation. Imagine how bad I was then. 

Heading back to the cars, we passed fancy drains, fancy landscaping and fancy outside art.

I have never stumbled more gratefully into a Waitrose loo than I did that day. 

Of course, across the land, things reopened yesterday but we failed to jump into action at the calls to spend spend spend to save the economy. I did go to a garden centre at the weekend, and that will do me. Despite being half vaccinated - people can talk to my left side only - I'm reluctant to throw myself into crowded situations, but that's me on a normal day, let alone Right Now. My natural reluctance to be jostled in stores has stood me in good stead so far, I see no reason to change it for the moment. 

That said, I miss bookshops and charity shops, so I may only last till my invoice is paid and then I'll be poppin' off to the shops. 

This week is all about preparing as there is a big weekend coming up. Oh yes, this coming weekend is Shed Arrival Weekend and I am already excited. So many plans for what will go in there that my brain can't contain them all and I keep coming across scraps of paper where I've scribbled "wallpaper?", "where potting table?", "make seed store", "canes too big - storage!". 

I will, of course, document the whole installation in tedious detail. You have been warned...