A Perfect Equinox

On this fine 1st of October morning, I am tucked up in the spare bed in the Retreat (aka my office), under the duvet with coffee fragrancing the room and a stomach that's gently rumbling in anticipation of brunch. This is where I go when I wake at 6am, my brain won't let me sleep any longer and I don't want to keep N awake with my own awakeness. I'm comfortable and warm. 

I am also 7 days married, the wedding ring light and glinting on my hand. 

Yes, 12 months of planning that included, roughly: 90 sunflower seedlings sown, 144 squares of bunting sewn, 120 invites, at least 3 lively debates about the benefits of eloping (me) versus staying here and catering for gannets (him), one dress meltdown and a tablecloth near-emergency. But the day was bright and clear and autumnal. Just as we'd wanted. 

The whole thing was just as we'd hoped and neither of us stopped smiling or laughing the Whole Day, which was perfect (although it's taken a week for the muscles in our faces to stop aching). Everyone we loved, liked or tolerated for the sake of each other were there. The ceremony was simple but perfect. I got a fit of the giggles at the sight of this man I've known for 20 years standing there being very solemn and serious. 

Friends currently on sticks (unrelated accidents) formed an arch that we charged through after the vows. The green shot silk of my dress and his tie shimmered in the sun. The bride and groom, bridesmaids and anyone else sensible enough to take our advice, wore trainers. 

The day before we'd spent hours decorating the venue with sunflowers, seed heads, berries, rosemary, ivy and grasses spilling out of the vintage vases. Around them I'd scattered dried lavender heads, gourds and pinecones. What I'd hoped for - a feeling of harvest, of abundance - translated nicely into reality without any need for fiddly bits of wire or complicated oasis bases. Just keep stuffing those jugs till they'll take no more. 

On the welcome table, mossy twigs, ivy, hawthorn, oak, rosehips, blackberries, conkers and thistles spread along the gauzy surface with its brown paper and string wrapped coleus. We invited people to leave a message and take a seed packed. Wildflower seeds we'd gathered from the allotment. 

We'd got bottles of bubbles, sketch books and pencils for the children who'd been dragged along. We were left some lovely, from the heart, drawings. And some more risque ones from the adults as we got further along into the night. I don't feel you need to see those. Let's just say, I'm glad we didn't put disposable cameras out. 

The food was, according to all who spoke of it, delicious. I managed a side plate, quickly grabbed under the insistent gaze of my Friend from the North. N was similarly frogmarched in the buffet table direction. Later we danced to Divine Comedy's Perfect Love Song, a stumbling shambling dance that we should probably have rehearsed more but we were too busy grinning to care what people thought of our moves. 

At 9pm, we had the additional treat of a firework display courtesy of the wedding taking place in the hall behind us. All the benefit, as it banged and zipped over the lake and trees, oohs and aahs coming naturally, none of the expense. 

When the last taxi door had slammed behind the last guest, we thanked the bar staff (who'd been kept busy ALL night) and headed across the fields for our bed in the hall. Obviously, we had no torch. Equally obviously, there was no light of the moon as it was a new moon. There may have been a detour through a field of nettles and an encounter with a gate that would not open no matter how much I pulled it. Luckily N pushed it just as I was about to hitch up skirts to climb over, and it opened just fine. 

I'm reading and rereading this, feeling that my retelling is perhaps a little sparse? In truth, it's because I'm still too full of it. Too full of the magnitude and the happiness of it. Neither of us stopped spinning that day and, although we've had to return to work pretty sharpish, that feeling of spinning hasn't gone away. When I look back, I remember nothing but laughter. Shapes being thrown on the dance floor by friends. A lot of beer. Joy. 

Leftovers Cake

I don’t often bake these days. Whilst being an enthusiastic supporter and consumer of baked goods, there just isn’t the call for it in our house. N will sometimes make sounds of appreciation over a sticky toffee pudding or a crumble, then put his portion in the fridge and forget about it for 2 months, which is no way to live quite frankly, and should, in all right-minded households, result in some sort of jail sentence. 

The Kid decided some time ago that he’s reached an age where my attempts at birthday cakes are superfluous to his enjoyment of the day. These days he likes his birthdays with a side of beer rather than a cake that resembles the leaning tower of Pisa, if the tower at Pisa had been constructed of sponge, cream and strawberries, or that has a strange blobby space monster blobbing it’s green tentacles all over a wonky moon. And the least said about the doughnut cake the better. 

My Nan used to make wedding cakes of 3, 4 tiers. Fruit cake heavy enough to knock out a burglar, stacked on silver paper covered stands, covered with thick marzipan and icing rigid enough to break a tooth. They would be decorated with flowers she had painstakingly made herself from the same icing, rolling it to a fragile thinness, cutting the circles and strips that would then be rolled, crimped, frilled and pressed into flower shapes to adorn the tops. Further icing swags, curls and dots would decorate the sides and the lack of a steady hand could be hidden with a quick design change or swipe of a damp sponge. 

I still have the blurred photographs she took to remember each creation; the flash is too harsh, the background too dark. I can recall the smell of the cake, the sweet grittiness of the icing. I was mmmph years old before I realised marzipan needn’t taste synthetic. 

She was a bakers daughter, my Nan, and I still have the recipe book she wrote when she joined the bakery at 13. I say “joined”. It was more in the way of the family National Service - the only person who escaped conscription was her brother, the great hope of the family, eventually brought down by gambling and ego.

In this hard backed, faded red exercise book, she wrote down the recipes for Eccles cakes, the coconut macaroons that would eventually become my dad’s favourite. Malt loaf made by painstakingly soaking the fruit in cold tea. Bread off every kind, cottage loaves a speciality. Her unsure, looping hand records how the ingredients are scaled up and up for batch baking, the demand in this Lancashire town never quite satiated. 

So when I bake, I’m small again. My own kitchen recedes and I’m stood on a stool to reach the counter, a riot of 70’s daisies spread over the apron that’s been tied around and around my waist. There is the smell of cold tea, coconut and sugar. I can feel the warmth of her oven and heat her telling me to “sift the flour, really lift it.” 

This recipe isn’t hers but it has her fingerprints all over it. 

Leftovers Cake: 

Ingredients - 1 pot of yogurt about to go off, 1 banana that’s too squishy for eating, zest of one lemon, 1 egg, self-raising flour, vanilla, any berries that need using up, caster sugar. 

1. Blend 1 cup of yogurt with the banana, half a cup of the sugar and the vanilla. Chop and add the berries. 

2. Stir in enough flour (to sift or not to sift, you decide according to time) to make it look like a proper cake batter - I think it took about 2 cups but I was ad libbing, talking to the cats and listening to the radio at the same time, so I can’t quite remember. 

3. Remember the lemon zest, grate it over the bowl, Drop the lemon into the batter, curse, wipe it off, continue grating till done. Stir in. 

4. Line the cake tin of your choice - I used a flapjack tin, about 15 cms wide because I appear to have lost all my roundy tins - with baking paper and tip the mix in. Sprinkle with Demerara sugar. 

5. Bakes for 20 mins in a 180 heat oven that you’ve remembered to preheat. If you haven’t remembered to preheat, do it now and make a cup of tea while you wait. Possibly talk to your partner/child/handy pet at the same time. 

5. Test readiness of cake with a skewer or, in my case, a wooden chop stick. If it comes out clean, cake is done. Allow to cool a little before lifting it out of the tin. Allow to cool completely before removing the paper. 

6. Slice according to portion preference. Eat. 

A Returning

 Last Tuesday I declared to N that I was feeling restless, missing the big long walks I used to be able to do before the arrival of grinding arthritis in my feet. I felt that the steroid injection had done its job so well, that it was possible to tackle my first one in 4 years. And where I wanted to go was a bit of a trip down memory lane. 

You see, I used to live at the foot of this hill. In my dog days, I would walk with him to the very top on a regular basis. We saunter up past the standing stones, up along the crumply fields with their intriguing hummocks and folds, along through the copse full of twisted trees that soared over our heads, and out into the wide open space. 

This place. 

It has air. Big skies. A curiously shaped stone. A tiny whimsical tower. It has the curves and falls of its Iron Age fort. It has my heart. In a way I cannot define, I belong to this place and I’d dreamed these last 4 years of being back up there. 

The old dog is gone now but I still packed an extra sandwich, an extra bottle of water, like I used to do. And we walked and walked, slowly. Not saying much, focusing on each step. Drawing the thick summer air into our lungs. Feeling muscles sit up and say “I remember this”.  

At the top, we sat and drank it all in. Had the place entirely to ourselves - crowds get drawn to the Cotswolds, the Malverns. This is ours. I let myself feel the sheer joy of being back up here after so long, after thinking I’d never get to see it again. There were a few discreet tears of sheer bloody joy. Relief. Thankfulness. 

Buzzards wheel and scream freely up here. The wind tugs at your hair. Memories wave from the corner of my eye. Turn my head too quickly and they shyly hide again. The clouds tumble over themselves in the sky, chasing their own shadows on the ground. 

We walk the perimeter and I can feel the ghosts of the tribes that called this place home jostle beside me. They chatter and laugh, argue and fuss. They cook and craft, look after the beasts they’ve brought in with them for protection. Until one bloody day when their fortress falls. Skeletons have been found in the ditches. Broken weapons. This place holds them and me. 

And then we leave. I look back as much as I look forward. Tired and dusty back at the car. T shirts sticking to our backs, water bottles empty. Feet firmly back on the ground. 

All Aboard

I had to be in the lovely little town of Ledbury this morning for a work thing. As I'm trying to keep our car use minimal, I set out via train, which is no hardship. Sit back in the warm, no worrying about turns, road works or mad other drivers, just let someone else trundle you through the countryside. 

And what a countryside it is. That stretch along the rugged spine of the Malverns all the way to Ledbury never fails to please. It is a quietly dramatic journey, as the hills rise up beside the tracks, looking dark and inhospitable, with abandoned quarries, dark woods, hill forts and tree-less top. At the same time, you can see into the back gardens of houses nearby, catching the briefest glimpse of someone hanging washing out with more hope than expectation, or a person spooning breakfast into their mechanically working mouth, sleep still hanging over them like a fog. 

Is there anything more guaranteed to raise a smile and feeling of contentment than the side of a tree-lined stream, meandering through a meadow, completely undisturbed by housing or roads? No. And you can only see them from the train. It's like being let into a big lovely secret. 

There is also that exciting moment when the train whooshes under the hills and into a long tunnel. I never fail to be awed by the feat of engineering that this kind of endeavour is. It's not merely a case of blasting through the hill: the resulting space has to be chiselled smooth, propped up, tracks laid, the safety of the whole darned thing has to be guaranteed every single day. 

But I am going to stop there because I am not, and never will be, an engineering nerd. Nor do I collect train numbers. I am content to remain impressed as I whizz along. I do not need to know the minutiae of how it was achieved. 

Even on a dark gloomy day, like today, train journeys are incredibly soothing. I'd got coffee, crochet and a book to occupy me, but mostly I stared out of the window and let my thoughts drift by with the view. I should do this every week. 

Ledbury itself is as picturesque as it ever was. I used to come here a lot in a former life (and a former marriage) as we had friends living here. There are some cracking shops selling things that are placed Just So, where I walked carefully, holding my breath so I didn't know anything over, or pollute it with my me-ness. The restaurant where I first ate a crab linguine (unfortunately the same night I developed tonsillitis and was seriously ill the next day), is still there, as is the wonderful Maps and Books shop. Fewer maps than there used to be, but still a great book selection. That place has been there so long, it's practically an institution. 

There are some seriously quaint buildings too, all along the Homend (the main street) and into the winding, cobbled Church Street, including the place I was going to visit. Crooked frames, sloping roofs, big timbers and low wooden doorways you have to duck to get through. If someone was going to design a model village, this would be the kind of place they imagined. 

I absolutely and completely want to live in this house, behind the big trees. 

I shall creep out o' night my dearies, and scare pub stragglers by cackling 

from behind the wall. Hey, we all need a retirement plan. 

That said, it must be deathly dull here for teenagers. No amount of poetry festival (Elizabeth Barratt Browning lived nearby with her weird father) or fictional links (John Masefield likewise, although without the father issue) or tasteful deli is going to make up for the fact there is, as is often the problem with small towns, Nothing To Do. 

A fact borne in on me when I saw a pop up sign for an holistic spa where the picture of a smiling, relaxed, utterly middle-class person had had a speech bubble added by marker pen and the words "What A Dump" drawn on. 

Which made me laugh. I remember all too well that weighty, bone-deep boredom of being 15 in a place where there was nothing to do and you were welcome nowhere. I almost wanted to add "don't worry, you'll be out of here soon". 

But I didn't because I'd already graffitied a copy of the Metro on the train (see below). Instead, I broke my No-Shopping-January by venturing into a couple of charity shops and coming out again with 2 books and 3 tops. Charity shop shopping doesn't really count as shopping, does it? It's really more of a donation. My good deed for the day. 

Later today, I shall be going to look at ART at the evening preview of a new exhibition at the local art gallery. Yes, I am going to be that kind of fancy. I asked the friend I'm meeting how long we'd be there and was informed that it would be for "as long as you want to consume free wine for." As I'm in No-Booze-January, I fully expect to be back home after 5 minutes. 

Have a super weekend, whatever it finds you doing. I'm planning to write, visit friends for a scrabble night, allotment and eat delicious things what are good for me. With the occasional thing that is not because, you know, life. 

"Stay tuned for our article next week on how young mothers are 

irresponsible, morally suspect and only in it for a council house!"

I'm eye rolling so hard, I may have dislocated a retina. 

Seasons Eatings

Every family has them. Those odd side dishes or food rituals that only appear on 25th December and incomers (sons and daughters in law mainly), look on with undisguised horror and incomprehension. But to your family, they are non-negotiable. If these foods do not appear, it isn't Christmas and boy, will you make sure everyone knows about it. 

There are the things you buy in - Quality Street, Cadbury's selection boxes, Cadbury's chocolate fingers, Terry's chocolate orange (you see where I'm going here, right?) - and things you make, bringing them to the table with a sense of propriety and pride, smiling like a beneficent god as the rest of the family choke down something they don't really like but wouldn't dream of hurting your feelings by saying so. 

For years, until Mum mastered the art of pastry, it was mince pies. My sister and I aren't sure, all these years later, what happened as this usually exceptional cook took the raw ingredients of flour, fat and liquid and turned them into something you could build a house with. Her pastry throughout the rest of the year was spectacular: light, fluffy, crisp, flaky...whatever it needed to be, it was. There was just something about the time of year that changed the way the pastry fell together. Now, years after those days, I suspect an egg was missing from the mix. 

These days, her mince pies are delicious, but somehow, I still hanker occasionally after one from my childhood years. Whenever I’m short of a weapon. Or some grouting. 

Dad didn't cook, wouldn't have wanted to cook, but would earn unending brownie points with us kids simply by deigning to share a Smartie or two from his Christmas stash.  If we were very lucky and very good, maybe even a square or - heaven! - a line of 4 squares of Fruit and Nut chocolate. Despite this being the total sum of his culinary contribution, his tastes shaped our Christmas lunches. 

I remember describing it to a friend once and she looked at me with horror; "Mushy peas? Mushy peas have No Place on a Christmas table!" They did in our house. He was not a fan of most green veg, my Pa, but put a bowl of mushy peas in front of him and he was as happy as a pig in a pea field. 

Likewise, he was not a fan of the claggy fruit-laden Christmas pudding. Yes, he'd set it on fire for us to ooh and ahh at, but that was it. Once it was safely blown out, he'd help himself to a wodge of syrup sponge pudding, adding extra syrup from that green Tate and Lyle tin that brings back such a sugar-rush of memories now, and then complain if the custard wasn't thick enough to stand a spoon up in. 

If there was not enough left for a second helping the following day, he'd sulk and refuse to share any more Smarties. 

Pity my poor Mum, influenced by Delia and Keith, desperate to bring a bit of class to our table with spiced red cabbage, goose fat roasted potatoes, a delicate cream for the puddings, only to be thwarted by his distinctly down to earth tastes. "Fancy tack!" he'd say and carve himself another slice of custard. 

This year, I tentatively suggested that we opt for rib of beef or goose (I like both more than turkey) when Mum voiced concerns about a possible avian-flu-related turkey shortage, only to be shouted down with "we always have turkey!". Like I said, some things are non-negotiable.

There will still be mushy peas this year but there won’t be a syrup sponge pudding. I’m not sure any of us could eat it without crying, and god knows, this year has rendered us soggy enough as it is. 

Instead, I’ve offered to make a festive pavlova. 2 layers of chocolate meringue, sandwiched together with a chocolate liqueur spiked cream, some pomegranate seeds and more sugary stuff that I need to buy in as I’ve sworn off it till then so we’ve nothing sweet in the house. I WILL make us a pudding to ooh and ahh at and fight over the second helpings or, so help me, take us all down with diabetes in the attempt. 

Of course, it has to survive the 40 minute car journey from here to there, so we may well be eating an Eton Mess by the time it reaches table. 

***Image above from Food Stories - click on photo for link to recipe - rest easy, mine is NOT going to look like that***

Seasons Readings

 

Because there are certain books that can only be read at this time of year. I’ve tried to read The Box is Delights in summer, The Dark is Rising in spring. It doesn’t work, they don't fit and trying to read about snow so deep you could lose livestock in it, or dark forces abroad under a wintry moon, whilst it's 30 degrees out and your toes are sweating, just means you lose something of the magic of them. 

You need the cold nipping at your toes, frost etching the skeletal bones of trees and the promise of a hearty stew on the hob for them to work.

Delights and Rising are, obviously and very definitely, Christmas Books. Or rather, they are midwinter solstice books, conjuring pagan worlds beyond our reach but tantalisingly glimpsed. A world of fires and snow, old gods and wolves, and should only ever be read in the run up to the solstice. 

My favourite, and never bettered, author, Terry Pratchett wrote Hogfather and Wintersmith in his Discworld series that are very definitely Christmas and winter themed. The former is hilarious and yet serious in its exploration of why humans need myths, why humans persist in irrational thinking, why we just need some bloody...magic. 

" WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM?

'Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?' 

NO

'Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact.'

THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN...A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD. 

'All right,' said Susan. 'I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need...fantasies to make life bearable.' 

...NO. HUMAN NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE." 

There are some books that I save for winter reading, just because they have passages that capture it perfectly, I only ever reread Wind in the Willows during this season. It’s invocation of home and longing taking hold in snow blown trudges is so breathtakingly perfect, it’s forever a winter book for me. Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie, while it might linger over hay-strewn, cider-sparked Midsummer dalliances, contains some of the best winter passages you could hope for. The childhood joy of snow and how it transforms your familiar world is so beautifully realised, you’ll want to be 8 years old, stout in many scarves, setting off carolling with a tin can full of smouldering rags.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is a splendid read, but I tend to save for deep winter. January, when the cold has an iron grip on the ground outside, and the tree branches are stern lines in a glowering sky. That’s when I can hear the wolves* howling in the hills. 

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey will make you shiver, feel the cold deep in your bones as she perfectly captures what it just be like in the long hard winters of the deep north. The worry of ice creeping into the house with long scratchy fingers, of falling through frozen rivers, of just being damn cold All Day Long. Read with a hot chocolate, under a blanket. 

It goes without saying that now is the time to bring out the Gothic. Oh, not Dracula or Frankenstein (October and November only). No, I mean Bleak House, Wuthering Heights. Let long descriptions of fog, howling storms, snow deep enough to swallow roads, flow past you and make your duvet feel all the warmer for it. 

Of course, there is the greatest of them all, the Christmas Carol, but I actually prefer to watch that. Be it Patrick Stewart, Michael Caine or Bill Murray in the Scrooge role, I prefer those to the book. 

Writers of detective stories have always pulled out all the stops for Christmas. Agatha Christie, Nicholas Blake, Mary Kelly and more, bring out all the trimmings: evil domestic tyrants, dysfunctional families, chippy young gels who can be trusted to be ever so clever and neat at finding clues. There will be a feast, missing treasures, strange family traditions that no one understands, long held resentments, dastardly people getting their comeuppance. Snow will scatter, misunderstandings will occur, mild romance may even take place. If you are very lucky, your detective will be faintly comedic, entirely at sea in terms of manners and traditions. But good will always triumph and chippy young gels will go orff to do splendid things. 

Unless it's le Carre's Murder of Quality where there is not a jot of redemption for anyone, not even the heartbreakingly poignant George Smiley. Still, winter book.

I don’t really venture out of my comfort zone for Christmas reading. It’s a time for cracking open pages and welcoming old friends back in. For knowing what’s going to happen but still feeling gripped by it. This is nostalgia at its best - no false remembering of the past, but a revisiting. Turn the page and, oh hey, there you are! So good to see you again, come and tell me everything. 

Come and let me stay with you a while. Watch you eat the plum pudding, sing carols to the squire, defeat the villain and celebrate with a glass of something warming with your restored or newly created family. Let me feel the sneaking chill while safe under my own roof. Let me feel like a child for a moment before my own tumbles through the door, fresh from a long train journey back south. Let me remember what it was like to wake to a full stocking at the end of the bed and a tree that sent magic to every corner of the house. 

The best Christmas reading transports you to the before times. Before life admin, before work, before grief. It reminds you that danger lurks but comforts you with happy endings. 

" OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death, OTHERWISE WHAT IS 4:30 A.M. FOR?"

What are your season's readings?

*Disclaimer - I LOVE wolves and will continue to do so until I inexplicably become a 19th century homesteader with chickens and sheep to protect

Edit: I forgot the Moomins! How on earth could I forget the Moomins, the greatest wintery creations ever to venture forth with a sensible handbag?? I blame the fact that I currently don’t have any copies on my shelves. Mine are missing, I don’t know where, and have been for a while. I shall be buying myself some replacement copies. This absence will not do. 
 

Lightly living

Okay, so I have a confession to make. 

Brace yourselves. 

It is May and

Deep breath 

I have been putting the heating back on every now and then. 

Oh my parsimonious northern ancestors must be spinning in their coal dust filled graves, beating their spectral be-clogged feet against the boards but it had to be done. 

For, my dears, it is so cold and wet and recent news events so very saddening that a little joy must be got from somewhere. And for me, that somewhere is in having a warm living room. Just putting on another jumper wasn’t going to cut it. 

Heating scandals aside, the past 3 weeks have been mostly about work. One project has just kicked off with a flurry of activity and another, shorter-term one, has involved many tech frustrations, so my attentions have been focused on the laptop. 

That said, I managed a shop and a lunch with a friend the other day, during a short burst of sunshine. 

Today I discovered that the best music to knead gluten free pizza dough to is Fontaines DC. And then I realised that gluten free dough needs no kneading because there’s no gluten to make it lovely and stretchy. God only knows what sort of rock-like substance it will turn out to be, even with the addition of yeast and xanthan gum. I shall report back from the culinary front line. 

N and I have taken the leap and finally got round to booking: 

1. A man who can to build us a pergola. Which we’ve nicknamed the Degoba System

2. A new sofa to get rid of the second hand one i brought with me. It has held me comfortably but I’m tired of owning furniture that looks like it would be more suitable in a country house hotel in the 1980s. Instead of the sleek young hip thing that I actually am, obviously. 

Side note: do the young people still say “hip”?

3. A weekend away. The cats are booked into the cattery, we’ve gone all out and splurged on a Premier Inn (don’t even go there - I’m just grateful not to be self catering) and The Kid has been warned as we’ll be in his neck of the woods. 

The piano was sold. The Kid brought it with a small inheritance over 10 years ago and it’s sat, unplayed, in the last 4 houses we’ve lived in. There’s only so long you can hang onto something that big in the hope they’ll open the lid and start playing again. As Sunderland is a bit of a trek for a Sunday morning tinkle on the ivories, and neither N nor I took it up during lockdown, it was time to say goodbye. The room suddenly looks bigger, lighter somehow, so I’m refusing to be sentimental about it.

And in another dramatic act (remember I got rid of my to-be-read pile?), I threw out my diaries. This was the one change that made N hesitate and say "you sure?" And yes, I'm sure. My diaries were my regurgitation of a day's event's or life's happenings and it felt suddenly vastly unfair to leave them for the Kid to deal with when I'm gone. 

They were incomplete (only lasting a handful of years) and private. And, importantly, mine. I read through pages at random and confirmed that my decision to get rid was the right one. I am no David Sedaris. So into the recycling they went. No dramatic burning in the grate, a la Alec Guinness.

In case you're wondering if I'll regret it in a few years time, I can honestly say I won't. This is not the first time I've got rid of diaries and, should I take it up again, it probably won't be the last. Write it down, write it out, then get it right away. 

Live light, sez I. 

Besides the Kid will be happier with the collection of interesting stones and maybe-fossils he'll inherit. And in keeping with my philosophy, I use the term "happier" very lightly indeed.  

So long, old joanna, you were tuneful while it lasted

Getting Back To It

It was with some relief that I returned to work this week. As I'm working from home and it involves sitting at a laptop, this is something I can do without worrying about being asked to lift anything heavy. The heaviest thing I lift is the kettle (filled to the minimum required for a coffee boost). I may still be banned from doing any yoga, digging or anything interesting, but I can still use my brain. 

And my brain is glad that I can because it was getting impatient. I could almost feel it itching with ideas and plans, which is always a good sign I'm recovering. That said, one podcast recording, one meeting and an afternoon of emails completely wiped me out, leaving me yawning and barely able to hold a crochet hook by 7pm. 

I'm so much better that I was even allowed out for a walk all by myself last week. True, I did try leaving the house in my slippers (got 3 paces out of the door and realised what I'd done), the pace is slow and the distance not far, but the joy of being able to get out into the air is not to be underestimated. 

 

And then it snowed! And got very icy! A fear of slipping kept me from going outside again for 3 days - I really do not need to fall over right now. Although, I managed to almost take a tumble in my own home by getting my foot tangled with a phone charger cable, so maybe I just shouldn't be allowed to stand up on my own. Or at least move from my seat without supervision. Sadly N wasn't taken with the idea of being my personal watchdog - "mind out for the wool! There's a pile of books to your left!" - on the grounds that he has a proper job what pays the mortgage. 

He has promised that we'll take a trip up to the allotment at the weekend though, so I can't complain about him. 

So far in lockdown we've had surprisingly few rows. The most recent involved him playing The Idles very loudly while he hoovered and I dealt with laundry upstairs. I loathe that band. I mean, really hate them. They make me want to tear off my ears and beat the lead singer into silence with them. I don't know why, I just do. So I did the only reasonable thing and sat upstairs, seething, until the album ended and I could go back downstairs and tell him to put his damn earphones in.

 

It could be said that he was reasonable in asking why I hadn't mentioned it at the start, instead of waiting until the end, by which time I was in the right frame of mind to throw things (I didn't, credit me with some dignity, if not rationality). But I was not in a mood to be reasonable. At least, not until several hours and a bottle of wine later. 

This morning saw a lovely doorstep visit from my son and his boyfriend. They delivered and received belated Christmas presents, and he received a pile of post he hasn't thought to have redirected. That is something he's going to have to deal with soon as they are moving up to Sunderland at the end of Feb. I am trying to gather the tatters of my rationality around me about this - he's not moving to Australia, the house they're getting has a spare room for visits, he's healthy and happy - but it's a close thing. 

Not helped by my recent afternoon organising all my photos into neat digital files. I tumbled right down memory lane to the time when it was just him and me, and the places we visited, the hills we climbed and the books we shared. Lockdown or no, I will be giving him a hug goodbye before he goes. 

 

In other breaking lockdown news, I took a pair of scissors to my fringe in between meetings on Tuesday and instantly regretted it. Usually I trim mere millimeters off so it rests just below my eyebrows, hiding my massive forehead and enabling me to see, but I'd got fed up with seeing all that hair, so grabbed the blunt kitchen scissors and hacked off a centimetre, without factoring in the spring-back effect. 

Oh dear. Released from the weight of itself, the rest of the fringe has sprung up even further, leaving me looking perpetually surprised and slightly lopsided. I find myself tilting my head to one side in Zoom meetings, trying to disguise it. It'll settle down and grow back again, I know but my eyebrows are seriously traumatised by the sudden exposure and my neck is developing a crick in it. 

Really, it's just a symptom of wanting something to change and I'm craving a bigger chop to my hair all over. I'm thinking to the ears, nothing too drastic (I shaved my head once in the mistaken belief I would look like Winona Ryder with her pixie crop - I very much did not), but enough to rid me of all this hair. I keep picking up scissors and putting them down...N may have to hide them before the week is out. 

My attempts at sourdough have all failed miserably. The starters I started refused to develop, lying sulky under a sour brown liquid and giving off a smell that no mother could love. I do not have much luck with bread making under normal circumstances. My loaves always resemble dwarf bread (see Terry Pratchett for that running gag) and could potentially be classed as weapons if dropped from any height over 2 foot. So I called it a day on that Earth Mother dream and ordered some instead. I will feed back (pun fully intended) if it's any good. 

I did once think I'd be an Earth Mother sort of person: keeping chickens, baking bread, hoard of angelic children being homeschooled around me. Then I discovered that chickens smell (and are quite deranged), I can't bake a bread worth eating and children really get in the way of your reading time. And I don't think clogs are acceptable footwear. Besides, I'm not a one for labels - they always seem too much to live up to. 

All photos from a handful of the museums, galleries, hills and beaches I've visited with the Kid. Yes, I am milking this.

Betwixtmas

I’m sure I’m not the person who came up with this term but I can’t remember who did. Whoever they were, full genius marks to them as this is the perfect word to describe this period between the tired damp fag end of this year and the bright shiny start of next. 

Ordinarily, I’d be spending it clearing out cupboards, catching up with friends and family, taking long walks and generally filling my hours with activity. This year, recuperation means I can’t. I’m forbidden to lift anything heavier than a quarter full kettle, banned from all housework and under orders not to get cocky about the speed of recovery. 

Truth be told, this chafes a little bit, until I stretch too far and then the wound site chafes even more than my forced inactivity, and then I give in and have a doze on the sofa. 

Christmas dinner was a triumph, cooked by N - his first ever time of doing so. Yes, it was 2 hours late and we forgot the crackers, but there was no rush. These are the long slow days of not very much at all this year. I'm rarely properly up before 10 and he, with his infinite capacity for sleeping in, can get a good 12 hours before he wakes. 

It made me weep the morning after I'd come home when he appeared at the spare bedroom door (where I'm sleeping currently for maximum comfort) just as I was trying to struggle upright. He'd set his alarm so he could be ready with a cup of tea for me. That is consideration. 

Yesterday we had snow, as did many places. There is still something magical about this white stuff whirling down and covering everything, making it clean and bright. The cats were perplexed by their first encounter with it, although Mabel did decide to enjoy it after her initial jump back in surprise. Today, when more fell, she leapt into the air, batting it with her paws and generally acting like I wish I could have done. 

A friend of ours with a recent negative Covid test came over for a game of Trivial Pursuit, some damson gin and a lot of cheese. It brought a lovely dose of new energy and conversation to the house. Her present to me this year was a handmade apron with a fab print and a Granny Weatherwax hat on the pocket. It may have been the residual anaesthetic, but I was incredibly touched and a little weepy with it. GW is a heroine of mine and the most perfectly realised female character ever written by a man. That she'd remembered that and got it worked into a handmade gift was a truly generous thing. 

Apart from getting weepy over an infinite number of things (Mabel giving me a headbutt, Thor bringing me a gift of wool from my stash, N tweaking my toes as he walks past, the end of Ghosts, episodes of The Repair Shop), what have I been doing with myself?

Reading, making plans for next year, filling notebooks with these plans, making a sourdough starter, watching Christmas films. Chair yoga. Writing. Playing games. 

When I was little, this betwixtmas time would have been spent in much the same way (minus the yoga and sourdough, plus arguing with my sister), with the excitement of New Years Eve growing every day. For NYE was when we were sent off to stay with my maternal grandparents. We'd arrive in the afternoon so we had time for the usual rituals: visiting the tiny graveyard, playing Poohsticks from the bridge over the stream, exploring the small church that we never tired of, feeding the ducks in the farm pond across the road from their house. 

Dinner would be early and we'd be allowed to stay up, trying small nips of things from the leatherette-clad bar in the corner of their living room - advocaat is my Proustian madeleine - watching Clive James being incredibly erudite and witty as the clocks chimed 12 and we chomped a supper of biscuits and cheese. 

The next day would be our second Christmas as they were always elsewhere for the official one. Our parents would arrive, heroically hiding hangovers, a huge joint of beef would be roasted and there would be presents, crackers, squabbling and people trying to politely refuse the homemade wine my Grandad devoted hours to making but that always tasted like vinegar at best. 

I was lucky with my childhood Christmasses and the hardest lesson with growing up is that these can never come again. Both grandparents are dead, to begin with, second Christmas is a distant memory and besides, the wench is middle aged. This does not make me sad or melancholy though: this year, as I turn these memories over, I am just grateful for all the ones I've had and all the ones I hopefully have to come. 

All things considered, I'm having a pretty good end to a year that's been a test for all of us. There was no right or wrong way of passing this test - it is enough to have endured it. I'm impatient for recovery, for the new year, for change, as are so many, but I'll step carefully over 2020, rather than my usual full headlong pelt forwards. And I'll raise a glass to all of it. 

Invisible Sharks

The other day I lowered myself into the pool for one of my weekly swims, ready to enjoy the warm water, the solitude, the movement without pain from my feet etc etc, when I realised realised that most of the pool lights were switched off. No one else was around and it was quite dark in there. This was a little eerie, to say the least but it takes more than eerie to put me off, so undaunted (nothing gets between me and my swim...apart from my own laziness), I took another step down the ladder and...

froze. Literally. 

Something awful had happened. Something catastrophic. Something that caused me to inch my way into the water muttering out loud, "Holy Mary Mother of God, Jesus and all his blessed Saints" like Mrs. Doyle falling down the stairs (yep, I'm working that 2% Irish DNA in my system until I get a damn passport). A scene which, by the way, is completely overshadowed by the "So you're a racist now Father" spiel from the same episode* - also brilliant but not the comic masterpiece of a middle-aged Irish housekeeper falling down a flight of stairs while reciting the above. 

I digress. 

Anyway, what had brought this on, you ask? Well, the water was FREEZING. Like a good 10 degrees colder than it had been yesterday and there'd been no warning from the girl on reception, no cheery "brace yourself!" as I walked past her. It was like stepping down into the North Sea in February.

So what to do? Get out or stay in? Get out, get warm, get to work early? Stay in, stay with the schedule, stay active?

Reader, chump that I am, I stayed in. 

I stayed and I swam the hell out of that pool. Desperate not to turn blue, catch pneumonia or go to work early, I stayed in that water and I swam. Cut my usual 14 strokes per length (it's a small pool okay?) down to 10 and swam like it was the only way to ever be warm again. I swam that mother-fucking pool and felt like a champ. 

Until I paused (for breath) and looked back. 

The only person in there was me. The lack of light made the water looked a darker blue than usual. It also looked a bit choppy because of aforementioned activity. It was still cold and far over I could see a weird shape in the water.** It looked like it might be moving, but of course, that was just the movement of the water.

Before I really had time to get my rationality back on track, they were back and populating the pool. The Invisible Sharks. These had been my secret phobia when I was a kid: scared of sharks and convinced that no matter how inland the pool, how chlorinated the water, or how populated with people, there were Invisible Sharks in there and they were looking for small scared kids who splashed too much and didn't swim so good. 

Suddenly I am 6 years old again. 6 years old in a rainbow striped swimsuit. Not a strong swimmer and not confident enough to stand up against the swimming instructor who can't understand why I'm having trouble. At the far end, the bigger kids are diving for black bricks thrown into the water for them to retrieve and I cannot for the life of me imagine why they would willingly do that, what if there are sharks in there? Obviously there aren't because I can't see any but What If They Are Invisible? 

God only knows what I'd been reading to invent invisible, chlorine-loving sharks. I hadn't watched Jaws (and no, I still haven't). I hadn't been taken on holiday anywhere sharks lived. I hadn't got a relative with a nasty shark-related injury. But there they were, all of a sudden, and you could only see them if you stared hard enough at the way the water moved in the pool. 

It took years to forget them.

I became an adult, I swam in shallow waters, sometimes in the sea but mostly in pools. I insisted on being able to see the bottom of whatever it was I was swimming in. I forgot the sharks but they hadn't forgotten me. 

Of course, now I am an adult and Above Such Childish Things so I gave myself, and the sharks, a stern talking to, took a breath and started swimming again. Carefully, so I didn't disturb the water too much. God only knows what I must have looked like, a middle aged woman staring down in the water while head is held resolutely above, fists clenched, making my front crawl very unwieldy as well as incredibly slow. 

5 more lengths and it was time for me to get out and head to work***. The sharks stayed away and I emerged intact and triumphant. Stuck my tongue out at them as I left. The hot water in the shower afterwards has never felt so good. 

 

*Wikipedia link to the episode if your fancy is to have all the humour sucked out of it

**turned out to be a differently coloured tile I'd never noticed before, but still

***I've since swum 4 more times, so I'm completely over this phobia and not at all crazy.  

Slowing it Down

 Today is the start of my very favourite month and with it, I can feel the very bones of me start to relax and my brain take a sigh of relief. October brings cooler nights, my cloud-like duvet, the click and whir of the heating in the mornings, stews and soups, nesting and resettling. I find summer quite unsettling with its exposed flesh, eyes squinting against the sun, chafing and sweating. Hurrah for October where the sun still shines but the temperature is cool. I adore it. 

This week has been a week off for me and N, although he did have to work on Tuesday morning (endless Zoom!), so I grabbed the chance to catch up with a friend I haven't seen for over a year. We headed to this arboretum, which has the national collection of acers and Japanese maples, both trees I love, and we caught up on all the changes.

The last time we had seen each other, N & I were separated (long story), I still rented in the House of Inconvenience and the Kid lived with me. On her side, her daughter was about to get married and her long-term partner was seriously ill. Laurie was a wonderful, gentle, charming man, full of old-school manners, a passion for theatre and horse racing, and I adored him.

 He was full of stories of a life lived to its very corners. Always open to new experiences and ways of thinking. You could sit down and have a long chat about the new Hockney works of art and end up discussing who would win in the 3.15 at Cheltenham, via diversions into who played the best Hamlet (David Tennant - which we'd actually all seen together - and Andrew Scott, in case you're wondering), the best type of soil to plant brassicas in and his experience as an evacuee. 

He was the least judgemental person I have ever met. 

So we walked and talked about everything under the sun, but especially about Laurie and how the lockdown has given my friend a chance to mourn him fully, without distractions and with a tenderness I hope I evoke when I die. We parted with full hearts, bellies (thank you marmalade and poppy seed cake) and, in my case, a Japanese hornbeam for the garden. Purchased at the garden centre, not just dug up and lifted off site. I haven't yet reached my Nan's level of pinching off cuttings in gardens and carrying them home in a box of wet kitchen paper, but I fear it won't be long. And even she drew the line at digging entire plants up. 

That one expedition aside, we've done very little this week and gratefully so. N cleared out the horror-show that was the shed and rearranged it so I can now get to my bike without having to step over 5 bags of different compost, shift rakes and spades to one side and then disentangle it from the hose. Pots are neatly stacked in size order and the tools form an orderly row at the end. I went in and spun round for the sheer novelty of being able to do that without being impaled on a garden cane. 

Today we were supposed to be heading to Ikea but have made the decision not to. Crowds still make me panic at the moment, add into that masks and the standard Ikea-chaos, and it was just asking for trouble. So we're going to order what we want instead and spend the rest of the day pottering around the house. 

Pottering is very much the word of the week: I've painted a wall in my retreat room a dark blue which I shall sprinkle with hand-painted constellations; my sister, her daughter and my mum all came over for coffee and cake one afternoon, we took in an exhibition of drawings and etchings at the local gallery, we've visited the allotment, I made apple muffins which are absolutely perfect for this time of year and had my first CBT therapy session, which interesting. 

We're watching Us, the Simpsons, Bake Off, Ghosts and football (well, N is, I'm reading on the sofa and making the right noises). I'm reading again and sink into a book every morning with a sigh of pleasure. We're eating foods that bring pleasure and drinking a red wine that demands respect. We're shifting furniture around and making cosy for the coming months. 

The kitten, Mabel, is now nearly 4 months old and a long, lean kitten she is now. My morning ritual goes something like this: get up, make tea, feed her, feed Big-Cat-Thor and let him out just before she pounces him, trying to get him to play, take her back upstairs with me, into the retreat. There, once she's settled down after checking my toes are still not something she can eat, gnawing on my book/phone to see if they are edible, sniffing the plants to check they haven't become tasty overnight and knocking any pens or hairclips off the dressing table onto the floor, she settles around my neck, purring like a tiny earthquake, for a snooze while I read. As she's still housebound for another 6 weeks at least, her fur is incredibly soft: it's like wearing a silken thermal scarf. 

The only dark spot on her otherwise light and playful presence, is her behaviour with B-C-T. To be fair, he is a grumpy old so and so: although he's only 5, he seems to have embraced a middle-age more suited to a Dad in a 1950s sitcom. If he could smoke a pipe, wear slippers and read the Telegraph, I'm pretty sure he would. However, Mabel is more of a freewheeling, playful, hippy spirit, what's yours is mine, hooray for today, kind of personality, coupled with a wilfulness that all toddlers exhibit. Her favourite thing is to sit on the arm of a chair until he passes underneath, whereupon she leaps, all 4 legs spreadeagled, onto his back, causing him to race around, growling and spitting, with her clinging on like a rodeo girl. Once he manages to shake her, there are a few minutes of feverish fighting before he manages to break free and make an escape. 

We're hoping time and neutering will calm her down with him, but if you have any tips, let me know. Heaven knows, I can't be supervising their behaviours all the time. 

This evening, I'm off to a friend's house for dinner. We scored a perfect Bunty hit in a charity shop a few weeks ago, spotting 10, original, 1960-70s Bunty's in damn good condition for £3, so tonight we'll sort through them, eat roast chicken, drink some wine and indulge in a good old gossip. We are both full of plans for things we'd like to start up, including a local group for peri, full and post menopausal women in the area. She is just post and I, with my hysterectomy planned for next year, will be thrown full on into it before too long. Until the question of the hysterectomy came up, I hadn't given my fertility another thought: I'd had the Kid and was happy at that. Once it did though, I found myself questioning absolutely everything about myself, the very fundamental core of myself and feeling almost bereaved. It was very odd. 

Anyway, a leaflet entitled "So, You're Past It" or "What is the Point of You Now?" handed out by doctors doesn't really cut it in the information/support stakes, so we're thinking of setting up our own. And a podcast where she demonstrates her considerable knowledge of history and I play the one who says "ooooh, really?" a lot. And and and. 

So many plans, so little time. Or rather, given that a growing time obsession was one of my "I think I'm going mad" triggers, enough time. If you really want to do something and its the right fit for you, it'll happen. Breathe, look at the trees, take it slow. 

My Week In...Smells

You see? I didn’t find a better word than smell after my first My Week In post, so I’ve decided to embrace it. Smells are marvellous after all: our smell memory is so much stronger than anything else, and the merest whiff of something can send us spinning down through the years to our grandmother’s house or back to last year and that holiday beach or even just to the beginning of this year. I love smells, so the word stays. 

Anyway, this was my week in 7 smells: 

Strawberries from the farm shop, so ripe that I could smell them from the boot of the car as I drove home  

The acidic tang of pickling vegetables: courgettes, cucumber, beetroot, runner beans. We have been pickling everything the allotment has to offer and it was this smell that sent me cascading down through the years to my Nan’s house. 

Clean bedding, fresh from the washing line in the brief gap between rain storms. 

Rain! That beautiful, earthy, fresh smell of petrichor that the ground releases when rain hits heat-burden grass, bricks and stones. 

The oat, honey and lavender bath milk I’ve created for myself in an effort to create a sustainable bathing product that doesn’t aggravate my eczema prone skin.

Fresh bread, toasted and topped with a very nice sheep’s cheese. 

That curve between my boyfriend’s shoulder and neck.  

All the Small Things #2

Today, walking past a conifer hedge, I deliberately brush against it, pinch off a piece so I can smell its deep green herbal aroma, I am 7 again, my 5 year old sister behind me as I push through the conifers at the bottom of our grandparent's garden. I am convinced we will find Narnia, or its summer equivalent. 

Back in reality, our Grandad is in the plastic greenhouse, tending his tomatoes, our Gran in the kitchen making spaghetti bolognese with peas, to serve with ready-grated parmesan from a plastic shaker. 

We don't find Narnia but we do find the next garden, full of big leafy trees and a winding path up to the house.A dog barks as we make a few tentative steps along it and we push back to safety.

 

When this is all over

I'm finding that life at the moment is made immeasurably better by thinking about what I'll do when things get back to normal.  Nothing too big, nothing silly, just something positive to look forward to. What are you planning to do when life returns to normal? Or our own personal versions of normal!

I'm planning...

A big long walk in the countryside

A trip to Ikea to buy lampshades. We've owned this house for nearly a year, we need some damn lampshades. No, I don't want to order online, I want to browse and eat meatballs.

Painting "my" room. I need paint. Paint is not being delivered. This will have to wait till we're all out and about again

A visit to a garden centre AND a farm shop. Truly, these are wild and crazy plans

Planning our holiday next year: Paris to Bordeaux where a friend of ours lives. Can.Not.Wait

Those are my feet, as I contemplated possible wall colours. 

Tray of seedlings on top of the wardrobe... 

Good things this week? Both Ed O'Brien and Laura Marling have released albums of thoughtfulness and grace. The Hive online bookshop has both supplied me with books I'd like to read and donated a percentage to the local(ish) independent bookshop of my choice. I managed to score some rhubarb for a crumble and some asparagus for a pasta with goats cheese. The boyfriend had a fit of unaccustomed energy and defrosted the freezer. I now have a hose long enough to water the entire allotment without the need for trudging to the tap and back with a medium sized watering can. There are seedlings everywhere. 

Highgating it outta there

For some reason, it was decided that the hottest day of August would be a perfect day to spend wandering around Highgate.

Actually, I know the reason why: we'd arrived in London the day before for a 40th birthday party and, as we were in the North London area, the Boyfriend was extremely thoughtful (despite the kind of hangover that makes you want to pull your own brains out and replace them with a cold cloth) and tagged on to the Sunday a trip to Highgate so I could fulfill a dream of many years standing.

The weather was not so thoughtful. There were no cool breezes, there was no smidgeon of rain to alleviate the suffocating heat. There was a veritable rush for the crypt in the cemetary just because it was several degrees cooler in the dark than it was outside. Frankly, I think we'd have rushed in if there had been zombie hordes awaiting us inside: fine, eat my brains, just let me lie down in the cool while you do it.

Actually I would not as zombies are my one irrational phobia. Although, having read Zora Neale Hurston's account of meeting an actual real zombie in Haiti (Tell My Horse), I'm not sure it is an irrational phobia.

But I can feel the question hovering behind the eyes of anyone reading this...why spend a gorgeous summer day in a cemetary?

I wish I knew the answer to that.

I suppose it's the mix of architecture, peace, surprising flashes of nature and social commentary that I love and that make graveyards, especially the big old Victorian ones, so appealing to me. Or it could be that, from a small age, a regular occupation when staying with my Nan was to go visit the small village cemetary where she would lay flowers for her father in law and own mother, reserving a little bit of spite for Doris, her unforgiving (her son married beneath himself when he took up with the baker's daughter) mother in law. Truly all life is contained in these places.

My sister and I "adopted" a small and neglected grave of a young girl, Rebecca, almost hidden in the corner by hedges. We pulled out the weeds, begged flowers from my Nan for the rusty pot and generally chattered about childish things to the tiny headstone. You could say that we were always morbid wee things, although my sister seems to have grown out of it these days.  

Anyway, enough memory lane. To the present day and Highgate. Gosh that place is beautiful. We paid our respects to Douglas Adams (it would have been rude not to leave a pen) and Karl Marx before heading to the west side and the guided tour. 

A confession: I am not much of a fan of the guided tour. There, I've said it out loud. That's despite having worked for a museum where the only way you could access the building was by guided tour (it was the exception to my own rule). I find that you have to stand for too long in one spot, that you don't get to see the bits that are most fascinating, that the chance to just sit, soak up the atmosphere and stare around you is missing.  

However, wandering on your own is distinctly not allowed in Highgate. According to a friend of mine who's PHD means she spends a lot of time wandering around cemeteries, and who has been allowed unescorted access to Highgate, there are quite a few holes in the ground, falling tree branches and other dangers which mean 1000s of people doing it is a health and safety red tape nightmare to be avoided. Much like the holes in the ground. So I can understand it, but knowing there are vast spaces I didn't see fires my curiosity. And I wish I'd been able to pay my respects to Lizzie Siddal.

And now, nearly a month on (another confession: I started this post a week after coming back but life has a way of getting in the way of my plans just recently), I imagine that the heat has dissipated and those huge trees, creators of so much of the H&S nightmare, will be starting to change colour. I'm trying to come up with a plausible reason for visiting North London again... I'd like to go back, do another tour, see more of the east side, not be viewing it all from the wrong side of a night out.

But is is my favourite cemetery? No, that space is reserved for Key Hill in Birmingham, an oddly isolated place where it suddenly grew silent around me (and a former colleague found evidence of a voodoo ceremony), and Haworth, not isolated at all, thanks to it's central location and the hordes of Bronte worshippers. But there is something quite special about Highgate nonetheless. I can understand why so many people have written about the place. Next on the bucket list of graveyards - the Pere Lachaise and Arnos Vale. Just not at the same time.