Adjusting to summer

The absolute blowsy nonsense of peonies. 

Rewatching a favourite film in the oldest cinema in the UK. 

What happens when no mow may gets out of hand (the camera is 2 feet off the ground)

First strawberry joy.

Tiny wee Mabel seeking cool spots. 

Trying to overcome my distaste for summer (so sweaty, so much flesh on display, enforced outdoor activities) and recover some time for blogging. 

I hope you're all well. Does this year feel like a mad rush for you too? So many of us feeling like Alice's White Rabbit. 

But there are peonies and peas growing sturdily and long evenings with wine and birthdays coming up. 

 

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. 

Weather Advisory Service

On the way home from the train the other day, I took a shortcut through the dripping allotment grounds, the grass and earth squelching under every step, causing an inadvertent squeal whenever my footing slipped a little and I was forced to grab at fence posts and overhanging branches to stop from slipping over in my work clothes. 

Unbeknownest to me, there was someone else there, my plot neighbour, dropping off some vegetable peelings from home for the compost. Or so he said, lurking out at me from the gloom and causing another squeal. His collie grinned at me. 

Once I'd recovered from the shock, we were both in agreement about how the ground meant it was far too wet to do anything other than deliver vegetable peelings to ever hungry compost heaps until March at the earliest, and that (for me at least) it was nice to be free of the guilt of Not Doing Enough. Until spring anyway. 

This week, I started a new job at the local conservation and wildlife charity, 2 days a week. A chance to help in an area I believe I can do some actual good in, and to move my focus away from museums which are becoming increasingly politicised. I work in the main office, based on a farm, with walks surrounding it. Each lunchtime, I've ventured out (yes, slipping and sliding and squealing again) to explore, loving the architecture of the trees, their sculptured branches stark against skies heavily pregnant with rain. 

I soak this up all, like the mosses do the damp. The light makes everything look impossibly velvety, a bright witch's cloak thrown over the landscape. When the sun does break through, sending shafts so piercing you can do nothing but squint, it etches it all with silver. Sometimes, I have to close my blinds against those beams, which feels like a criminal act. Sunsets and sunrises are much more vivid, splashing their oranges and pinks across the dusk, showily predicting the weather like a stage magician. 

And I have been taking my cue from them. From the rain and the cold, the wind that bites into your skin and the wild things: this is not the time of year for adventure. 

January is the gift of slowness, of slowing down. We may rail against the dark and the woollen layers and the hot water bottles, but they are necessary reminders to SLOW. Stop the rush. Put the plans on hold. Sit for a while with yourself and your home. Patch the things that need it, mend with looping visible seams or with precise invisible ones. 

My weekdays may be full of work, but my weekends and evenings have been reclaimed from busyness. After the hustle and rush up to Christmas, it is good to see the empty spaces and we fill them with things that need doing around the house: shelves to be made, pictures to be hung, cupboards to be emptied and letters to be written. We get ahead of ourselves because there won't be the time to later in the year. 

And January is the one month where I can sleep late in the morning, the light slowly creeps through the blinds to pat me gently on the head around 7am, and suggests that, maybe, I would like to get up for that first cup of tea? Maybe, I would like the start the day too? There's none of summer's sharp poke in the retina at 4.30am; now I burrow down under the duvet, catch the last remnants of hot water bottle warmth with my toes and sleep sleep sleep. 

I bake for the first time in months, make pancakes and deep Yorkshire puddings. Stews and risottos. Apple cake, honey cake, cutting through the sweetness with a sharp lemon. I flick through seed catalogues, make lists, mark sowing days in the diary, let myself dream of abundant crops.

Sometimes we venture out for a long walk, preferably one with a gentle-ish slope so there is a point to work up towards and a slope back for tea. Coming back with reddened faces, hair whipped into witches nests by the wind, stiffened fingers and legs that ache just enough: it mades the hot chocolate and cake end of the day more of a celebration. We eat them curled up under blankets I have made. 

So listen to the weather, take its advice. This is not the time to be rushing. This is the time to be slow and close to home.

October at the Allotment

As you can imagine, there is something about a wedding that gets in the way of allotment time. Apart from flying visits during the day where I'd dash up there, water and chat to the sunflowers, I didn't really linger. Certainly, my habit of taking a coffee up with me and sitting down to watch the insects fell by the wayside. 

But now we're in October and there is no big event to plan and make metres and metres of bunting, or stamp seed packets, or sift wildflower seeds, or source vintage jugs, or panic-source tablecloths for, so now I can switch my attention back to the place that brings me most peace. 

I'm planting red and white onions that will ripen over the winter. Garlic and broad beans too. The kale is still going, so I'll leave that in situ, but mainly this month is about tidying down. 

The courgettes are done, so I dug those up at the weekend. The french beans too, but I'm letting those die back before lifting them as they're good for setting nitrogen in the soil. The potatoes are all out now too. Only the sunflowers really remain, defiant against the dropping temperatures. And I'm reluctant to cut the raspberry canes down just yet as the bees are still bimbling amongst them, finding nectar where I thought it was all gone for the year. 

We got to try our first ever home-grown red cabbage. Shredded thinly, served with beetroot and red onion (likewise) with feta and a standard vinaigrette dressing, it was delicious. Red cabbage salad is one of my favourites. Good job really - there are 5 more cabbages in varying stages of readiness up at the plot. 

I've wound the hose up for the last time and strimmed all the long grass down with my inadequate strimmer. It's battery only lasts about 5 minutes, so it takes a good 4 trips to get the whole plot done. A little frustrating but a good excuse for short breaks from the desk this week. I've cleaned the tools and managed not to scream at the spider that wanted to know what I was doing, lifting its comfy trowel out of the dark corner. 

The plan is to let everything die down and settle down until November when we'll start making plans for the raised beds. the 4th growing area will be going no dig for next year as I just don't have it in me to dig over another large area like that. I always end up damaged and with large physio bills when I do. Instead, we've been gathering cardboard like there's a world shortage and will soon order in the tonnes of topsoil we'll need. 

Then it's the simple task of building the beds, getting the topsoil to the plot, lifting it into the beds...I'll stop there. I already feel the need for a lie down. 

Luckily my brother-in-law is a gardener for hire, with a van and the quiet winter period looming, so we'll rope him in with promises of tea, sausage sandwiches and a day's pay. I think the latter may be a more convincing bribe. If we can get my sis and her kids involved, it'll be like an Amish barn raising. Without the barn. Or the beards. 

Then it'll be time to move our sights to the far end of the plot. By February, I'm hoping to have that cleared of knotweed, fallen tree branches and accumulated nonsense so the polytunnel can go down there. In short, there are plans afoot. 

N and I spent a good few hours in the garden on Saturday. It was looking raggedy around the edges with drooping tomato plants, pots piled everywhere and the corpses of plants that didn't make it through the drought standing like little signposts of guilt about the place. 3 hours later, everything dead or about to be cleared, pots washed and piled neatly, mini greenhouse cleaned and scrubbed, a big yup of stuff for the tip gathered, roses and honeysuckle pruned, we toasted our efforts with mugs of tea and a sit down. 

I once heard that Sophia Loren's advice for staying youthful was to avoid 'old people noises', those groans and whimpers and oohs and aahs people of a Certain Age make after physical exertion...or just standing up from the armchair. I'm sorry Sophia, but I made all the old person noises on Saturday. Worth it though. 

Into the August Mix

So far in August, apart from staring glumly into our rapidly emptying water butts and asking each other who's turn it is to cook ("I'm sure it's your turn", "Can't be, I did it last night", "we had sandwiches last night", "yeah but I made them", "that does not count as 'cooking'" and so on until we agree to have sandwiches again), we have enjoyed the simple pleasures of a drought and a looming wedding. 

I have discovered that swimming at my nearest salt-water lido early in the morning is a delicious, if breath-sucking, thing indeed. The birds are still yawning, the trees cast elegant shadows over the pool and lawns. Swimming capped ladies of a certain age, knobbly and soft with life, bob alongside each other, chatting. "I told him, it's no good you saying that Steve will fix the tap, we've seen hide nor hair of him for weeks; he'll only show up again when his latest fancy piece kicks him out." "Ooh, you never said that!" "I did, I'll not put up with idleness."

Afterwards, I reward my fortitude with hot chocolate and a toasted tea cake. Sometimes I go in the evening, a welcoming cool down, but the conversation isn't the same - it's more likely to be that Steve and his fancy piece, plus approximately 5 billion kids and a similar number of teenagers casually trying not to catch each other's eye - and the cafe is closed. 

Trees at the Lido park

Bridesmaids dresses have arrived and are hanging in my wardrobe ahead of the Big Try On. A froth of netting, embroidery and chiffon, with a sprinkling of sequins, in blush pinks and creams. I can't decide if it looks like a cupboard some sinister fairy Bluebeard would have, or as though Tinkerbell sneezed in there. Either way, the nieces will look twirly and special on the day, which is all they're really worried about. I have threatened both nephews with a lovely peach satin page boy outfit, complete with dicky-bow, as spotted (and photographed for future sartorial threatening) but am graciously holding back on that reality. 

N and I have started a new Friday ritual where we go for a walk somewhere lovely and rural. After the other week's epic, uphill, flying ant experience, he picked a woodland walk that was on level ground and didn't take 4 hours. It was pleasant, a woodland I'd not visited before, and cool under the shady trees. Huge dragonflies zoomed around a clearing we stopped in for lunch, and there were dozens of butterflies leading the way along the paths. We're undecided about this week - part of me has given a small sob at the thought of 35 degree heat - and may decide to be sensible and forgo it until the following week when it is a sensible 22 degrees and I can move without melting. 

A walk that didn't make me feel like my lungs were about to fall out. Still nice though. 

There's been a new addition to the family this week. Well, 3 new additions. Earlier in the year, I'd pointed at the shubunkin in the pond and said, "that one looks pregnant," which N had scoffed at until Monday when he spotted 3 very tiny shubunkins flitted between the reeds at the shallow end. Babies! This is very exciting and has resulted in much peering over the edge and trying to spot them again. The other fish are too taken up with clopping at unwary flies on the water's surface to bother them now. 

We've also had our first ever dahlia success. Having been handed a bag on anonymous tubers and the vague instruction to "plant them in the spring", we weren't really sure what we'd get. Was it even a dahlia? I'm pleased to say that it was and that they are beautiful. Tiny wee firecrackers of colour, just as the nemesia are giving up the ghost. I can't go out and photograph them for you right now as I'd burst into flames. 

The Kid started a new job this week. After 4 years working in care, looking after adults with physical and mental disabilities, before, during and after the pandemic, dealing with an increase in aggressive behaviours during the lockdowns, struggling on the minimum wage. Excuse me a small amount of anger, but all that clapping resulted in absolutely zero in terms of better wages or better working conditions (fancy a 12 hour awake-all-night shift followed by a 3 hour 'essential' team meeting anyone?). 

All the most intriguing paths were strictly non-humans only

Anyway, he now has a job at the lovely Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford, long one of our absolutely favourite places. When I asked him how it was going, he said, in a tone of great wonder, "I can walk into the research room any time I like". Which pretty much sounds like the dream to me. 

We have a trip to the sea coming up shortly. Not having seen our friends in the north for nearly a year, catch up is overdue. After my quick solo break in May, I made a resolution that we would get away more and remember to tell N about it as my finger pressed "BOOK" on the next break. We're going to see Lindisfarne, Bamborough and Alnwick, because he's seen none of them (he hasn't lived!) and then we're having a massive gathering of the clans, plus quiz, food and cake. I Can. Not. Wait. 

Today I did something I've never done before...I complained about a school. Bear with me. I'd been thinking about it for the past 2 weeks, but shied away as I'm not, by nature, a teller of tales or caster of stones. However, after the 4th incident of finding the grammar school were using a sprinkler on their goddamn CRICKET field, I properly lost my temper and did it before I could calm down again. I was, I think, calm and polite, yet unequivocal in how that's really Not On. So there. I am now one of Those People, who write do-gooding complaint letters and twitch their net curtains and write down reg numbers...actually, I draw the line at the last unless a Proper Crime has been committed, however badly the woman at No 1 chooses to park. 

The canal at 7am. Gorgeous and shady. 

So I am a snitch but we are hours away from an official drought announcement and subsequent hosepipe bans. Some places are without water already. The allotment ground has cracks in it wide enough for a finger to fit in. We slop grey water from the house to the garden. Everywhere is tinder-dry. Whole crops have been lost and farmers are caught between a drought and a Brexit. Now is not the time to be scattering water like so much privileged confetti. 

And if they can just wait till Monday, there shall be rain enough to green their pitch. 

This morning I harvested a lot of wildflower seed heads from the allotment, so I can spend this afternoon decanting the seeds into tiny envelopes for our wedding guests. Some people pick sugared almonds (although why? Those things are harder than the science questions on University Challenge with Jeremy Paxman yelling "Come ON!" after 2 seconds); at my cousin's we all got little Burts Bees lip salves and hand creams, which was sweet. I like the idea of wildflower seeds though, and even if all they do is throw them away (as happens so many wedding favours), the seeds will still find a way. So if you'll excuse me, I need to get my shaking hand on. 

Have a splendid weekend, everyone. Hold on in there, rain's a-comin'. 

PS, I'm trying not to bombard you all with too much wedding talk, but it has to be said, the damn things take up a lot of time and attention. Tell me if you're bored and would prefer my hot take on the Tory leadership race. Although no one really needs that. 

July at the Allotment

Gracious, it has been a week since those dog days of oppressive heat and unforgiving sun, where N and I took to hanging damp towels in front of open windows and, at the worst points, putting even damper towels over our heads. We may have looked all kinds of ridiculous but, as we never left the house past 10am, no one was any the wiser. 

Do you know what has been absolutely loving this heat? The sunflowers. Yes, they have finally taken off from the thin spindly, slug bitten things that they were and are shooting skywards (you can see a video of their progress on my Instagram feed (pretty much the only social media I engage with now. Does Blogging count as social media? It feels too measured for that. Anyway, back to the point...). All they needed, it seemed, was a solid dose of Mediterranean temperatures to set them on the right course. It's quite reassuring to see, although I have been researching emergency florists just in case. 

The courgettes have recovered from a similar case of slug attack too. They were nice and healthy when they went out; a day later they were stripped of all but one leaf. It's incredibly frustrating but other plot holders tell me I'm not alone - slug levels have been off the slimy record and we're all grasping at coffee grounds (the one I have had most success with), copper tape and wool pellets. There are slow worms on the site but it seems there aren't enough of them. I really must get my pond dug and frogspawn transplanted when the time is right. 

I'm reluctant to bring in hedgehogs as there are badgers here, and badgers eat hedgehogs (true and disgusting) and I don't think I could bear to be responsible for that kind of massacre. 

BUT, there are signs of balance. I've seen more ladybirds on the plot this year, keeping aphids under control with no intervention from me. Chives have seen off the white and black fly from the beans. I keep a shallow dish filled with water to encourage birds down. Crickets scatter as I walk, so I know they're around picking off pests. 

As usual, my low boredom threshold for weeding means that there are "wild flowers" galore, so the bees and butterflies are out in number, which is just fun to sit and watch. It also means that the ever present bindweed is really flourishing in parts, but I like to let that get to a decent length and then pull it out of the ground like spaghetti from a carbonara. 

The potatoes are nearly ready, I think. I'll be lifting a few at the weekend to check. The beetroot are slow but that's my fault for the late sowing which has meant the ground has been too dry to plant them out. The raspberries are mainly autumn fruiting but a few are already ripe, albeit small through lack of rain. These I pick as I go, handy snacks rather than a crop I make plans for. 

The Japanese wineberries are also looking ready to burst from their strange, sticky cases. They made a superb jam last year, but I'm not sure I'll have time to make jam again. Too much to do in the run up to September. Maybe a flavoured gin that can quietly steep while I'm busy and then be handed out to everyone who helped with the wedding? 

I like that idea. I also think gin will needed. 

In August, I'm going to order in a heck-tonne (an official measurement) of topsoil and compost so I can finish off the last 3 beds in the no-dig fashion. N has, reasonably, pointed out that digging through the accumulated nonsense - accumulated by previous plot tenant - absolutely breaks me, takes months and actually depletes the soil in the long term. He is not wrong, which is annoying. And I find that, in my 4th year of plot ownership, my enthusiasm for digging up that nonsense has decreased considerably. The arthritis makes progress slow and dispiriting, so better to try another method than involves no more than cardboard and a hefty topping of topsoil. Which I asked for for my birthday. 

Hey, some girls like diamonds, some like earth. 

The brassicas are HUGE now, having recovered from their dodgy start. N built me a new cage for them from bits of the fallen fruit cage, scaffolding netting and drainage tubing. They now have even more room to shoot up. Extra bonus: the netting is yellow and the pipes blue, so it’s a very colourful cage. 

I managed to put my back out slightly, lugging a half-full water butt into a new position. Annoying as it meant my planned 2 hours at the plot were curtailed by 40 mins so I could go home and lie down till the agony passed (it did) but also, hurrah for another water butt! 

This year is the driest I’ve seen the allotment. We haven’t had a decent rainfall for months. The canal level is low and a hosepipe ban is lurking just around the corner. Of lot of plants, under stress through lack of water, are throwing seed out early. The clay soil is crazed with deep cracks where it’s shrinking back on itself. 

There have been a few half-hearted attempts from the sky to throw some rain in our direction, but mostly it evaporates in the sky, or gets lost somewhere around Wales. Trying to weed or plant anything is like chipping away at plaster, so I have a number of plants in pots, waiting for the right time to go in. So we just have to hope August is a little kinder. 

At home, the garden is just about coping. We've lost more plants to the local fox family coming in and scent marking their way around (goodbye thyme, dwarf acer, ferns) than we have to weather conditions. Although the honeysuckle has never really enjoyed life here. The lettuces did lay down and die but the tomatoes are loving this, even though we are using grey water to keep them refreshed. 

Let's just hope they don't taste unusually fragrant when we come to harvest them. 

Bear or Gecko?

I am sitting here at my desk, in my apricot coloured office, with Radio 4 burbling gently behind me and the rain drumming its own beat outside. Oh rain, I'm so pleased to see you! For a spiritual bear like me (some people are spiritual geckos, some are spiritual bears), yesterdays 30+ degree heat was just...like some awful 3rd rate sci-fi hellscape. With chirpy neighbours who are more gecko than bear. 

"I just love this heat, don't you mate?"
"Oh yes mate. A real treat. I'm going to mow the lawn and chainsaw a tree. See ya mate."
"Good luck mate, I'll be here pointlessly hammering nails into bits of wood."
"Good on ya mate."*

There is a strict routine to days like that: in the morning, the blinds and windows at the back of the house are flown open to allow as much (relatively) fresh and cool air in as possible. By midday, those are resolutely closed and the ones at the front of the house have been opened instead. 

The cats find new hiding places to escape the heat. The Great Boo is under the trailing spider plant, enjoying the cool green shade of the beast. Tiny Wee Mabel seeks out shrubs to sleep away her day underneath, coming in at night to lie on the beds, shedding dried earth and dead insects from her fur. 

I look in the fridge like a helpless infant turning to its mother for food. Why have the contents not converted themselves into nutritious salads and refreshing iced teas while the door has been closed? Does this mean I have to do it? N is no help on these days as he will happily eat cereal twice a day when it's hot, like an overgrown student. Which I suppose he is now.

Any allotment visiting takes place strictly before 8am where a short burst of watering, fretting over mysterious holes in the sunflower leaves, weeding and harvesting of an onion or two, plus a quick pick of sweet peas may take place. I can hear the rattle of the heavy chain and lock that keeps the gates closed, repeatedly clanging as people race against the temperature clock. 

"Don't lock it!"
"Sorry! Think we're all up here, aren't we?"
"Can't stop, I've got 5 minutes to water everything while the kids eat breakfast!"
"Don't shut the gate!"

"Wait for me!"

The only other time it's this busy is on a Sunday morning where we can linger over Thermos's of coffee and commiserate over bindweed. There is not the time at 7.30 on a Friday: we rush in, sending dog walkers - on the same early morning mission - scattering in surprise. It's like the rush for an IKEA sale, without the tea lights and meatballs. 

At some point, I manage 10 minutes of yoga and realise that, along with all the usual places, my eyebrows are sweating. Eyebrows! I didn't even know they could do that! So I ditch out of the 4th downward dog in favour for practising shavasana - corpse pose. Apologies to the plucky tiny Texan teaching us all via YouTube but my inner bear wants shavasana, preferably on the cool tiles of the kitchen floor, a la the Great Boo. 

Another mournful gaze into the fridge fails to automatically muster up a peach, mint, bulgar wheat and feta salad with pomegranate molasses dressing, or even the ingredients for one, so I eat cheese on crackerbread and then retire for a nap on the sofa, the coolest spot in the house, waking an hour later with only the vaguest of notions where I am. 

Coolest apart from the hallway but I've not yet been forced to camp in there. Give me time. 

I've recklessly promised a friend I will go along to her preview show, so I pack sandwiches (the last time I went to any kind of exhibition preview, the promised 'dry snacks'** turned out to be packets of Walkers crisps. I am not falling for that trick again), bottles of water and wet flannels into a bag packed with ice blocks. I pack the friend foolish enough to say she'd come along. And we head out for a 50 minute journey down the M5 with broken air conditioning. 

***

As the mini Magnums are wilting on their slushy bed of ice, people are eschewing sticky backed hugs in favour of air kisses that land wide of their marks. Carefully designed 'Become a Patron' flyers are crumpled with use as fans and sticky from use as cocktail coasters. Faces are flushed and shirts are damp but the preview is a success, which is all that matters. 

I stay up talking with N, who'd been to the Gardeners World show for the day (the day! I'd have lasted an hour and probably tried to push Monty Don into a pond in my heat-induced fury), till 1am, neither of us able to sleep in heat that lies like a blanket. We drink cold white wine, eat Pringles, from our seats on the floor, the coolest part of the house. Tiny Wee Mabel comes in and announces, loudly, that she is going upstairs to sleep and scatter debris on a duvet after her long day of sleeping. Great Boo sits silently by his bowl, hoping that mute appeal will win him a second helping of supper biscuits. 

At last, although sleeping downstairs on the floor comes in for serious consideration, I remember that TWM brought a mouse in last week, and I don't much want to wake up next to a rodent corpse, I haul my heat-heavy carcass off to bed. One day, I promise myself, one day I will crack this heat thing and I will learn to love the weighty days of summer. One day I will have the right clothes, the right body, the right attitude, the right eyebrows that don't sweat. 

But right now, there's an ice block chilling my bed and calling my name. 

*neither of these people are Australian, they just feel the need to express themselves like they are. Ah yeah no, mate.
**seriously. The preview invite said "one drink and dry snacks will be available". I have never felt more invited

*** the allotment (the nice bits) at 7.30 yesterday morning. I will allow that hot summer mornings are something special

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. 

Hither and Thither

I have been caught up in a maelstrom of hither and thither recently. So much so that a day out to Nottingham had to be cancelled. "Sincerest regrets, deadlines, busyness etc, enjoy without me!", virtually waving off the friends I had been planning to spend the day with. Instead I took myself off to the library and worked in the little cafe there (lattes £1, if you please), letting the change of scene work wonders on my bid writing skills. 

Which it did. This recent commission has a tight deadline so gallivanting was out of the question really, and I'd already lost a day in Brum the previous week. 

A friend most generously donated her time so we could spend the traipsing the Rag Market and assorted nearby fabric shops to find THE right fabric for the wedding dress. Which is not a wedding dress in the traditional sense of the word. Having been on this particular merry-go-round before, I have no interest in wearing white (or cream or champagne or ecru or whatever fancy name the designers give it). I wanted something vibrant and dramatic, and found it in a beautiful Dupion silk in emerald green. Of course, the making may be trickier now Mum has had a meltdown and refused to do it ("Silk? I thought you were getting jersey! I can't work with silk!") but someone with the requisite sewing skills will turn up. 

After, we hauled our aching feet to a greasy spoon to refresh ourselves with chips and builders tea before making our way to the Library where we combined work (we're evaluating a project there together) and pleasure (there was another exhibition which was splendid), and then rounded off the whole successful day with wine and, in my case, a bag of Percy Pigs. 

The plot moves on as slowly as I do, and that's okay. At the weekend, with the Kid over for a couple of days, I put him in charge of the incinerator to burn away all the non-compostable woody bits while I strimmed the grass and weeded some more of the wineberry bed. He had fun, I got jobs done, we both got back smelling of bonfires and spent the evening watching Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with N (who was in mourning over an Arsenal loss) as we continue his education in films from the 80s. 

We've been busy socially than I've been used to in recent years: tapas in the Cotswolds (get us being all fancy although tapas is not food, in my opinion - £9 for 5 pieces of calamari!! - it is naught but shenanigans. Expensive shenanigans.), birthday night out for a friend, another's 50th celebrations of a kind that was exactly right for her, and a gallery opening show of Japanese prints (so beautiful) that touted the worst red wine I have ever heard talked about in glowing terms ("we were so excited about having wine, we brought loads of a really nice one!" Did you? Did you really?). 

I have been reading Thin Places which was breath taking. If you know nothing - or only a little - of what it was like to live as a child in Derry during the 80s, this is the book you need to pick up. The collective trauma of that generation is so easily dismissed and yet it damaged them all. It is horrendous and yet she writes with a lightness, an uplift, as she tries to work that damage out of her system.

I also read a book about Edward I's daughters - as you do - which was fascinating, Clive James's Unreliable Memoir, Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries and I've just started Winifred Holtby's South Riding which I'd tried to read 10 years or more ago but couldn't get on with it. This time, I'm enjoying the characterisations more, so I'll carry on despite it's considerable heft means I'm risking a broken nose if I fall asleep whilst reading and it donks me. 

I've been listening to: Jill Scott, Laura Marling, Nina Simone. An antidote to the Beatles' White Album that N would have on repeat if I let him. While My Guitar Gently Weeps is making my ears gently bleed after the 100th listening. 

This weekend, I'm planning to work a little every day (that deadline loomeths) but mostly potter on the plot, read, cook and relax before the whirlwind of next week hits as I juggle dog-sitting for my Mum, a trip to London for a meeting but also fitting in the British Museum Stonehenge exhibition (London at Easter! What was I thinking?) and a trip to Gloucester to meet up with a client. I may try to fit in a visit to the Cathedral afterwards because it's a beautiful building. 

By the way, whilst I write, I'm listening to The Reunion on BBC Radio 4 - always a treat of a programme. Did you know a young Keir Starmer, at the very start of his career, gave the McLibel 2 free legal advice a number of times when they were preparing to fight McD's? That man is thoroughly decent. Where are the barricades we need to man to get him into the prime minister role?

And that's as far into politics as I'll go here because... Well. We have a criminal as a prime minister, who is paying the Rwandan government millions to take refugees. Good grief. Send help. 

Happy Easter/Ostara/Spring bank holiday!

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!