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.

Brown Soup Days

We have reached the time of the year, I like to refer to as 'Brown Soup'. The weather has changed from deliciously, invigoratingly frosty to damp and sludgy with rain pouring down from skies that are hanging heavy and low over the landscape. A local saying around here suggests that when a particular hill is wearing its hat (i.e. cloud sitting on the top), the day will be wet. Well, dear reader, more than once recently, it hasn't been so much wearing a hat as burrowing itself under a cloud duvet. 

But these are the necessary rest days and the weather is doing nothing more than helping us slow down and take stock. They are the days where you can stay in the softest clothes you own, catching up on books, tv shows, music that you'd been meaning to all year, if only you had the time. Well, now you do. Say thank you to the weather. 

There are walks, but of the sort that make you scurry home faster than usual. There are gatherings but these have lost the frenetic energy that powers the pre-Christmas ones and we don't mind when someone inevitably dozes off in the corner. There is yoga of the sort that requires lying down rather than pushing through some kind of core workout. These are not the days to push through (unless you're in active labour), but to rest. 

These are also the days for clearing out. What no longer serves is being taken out of its habitual hiding place, shaken down and held up to the low winter light for inspection. We have donations for the charity shop, items listed on Freecycle and boxes of memories packed away for the attic: the postcards and birthday cards and ticket stubs and ephemera of life that will have no relevance to anyone but us, but still they remain and we can't quite bring ourselves to throw them out. 

Somehow, despite resolutely not buying anything of the kind, we find ourselves with boxes of mince pies, biscuits and chocolates. Not many, but more than we would normally buy in a year. Some have gone to the foodbank, but they appear to have reproduced in the way boxes of that sort do and are part and parcel of the feasting and gluttony we do to shore us up against the cold and bitter days to come. 

To counter all this sugar, I make brown soup from leftovers in the fridge. The rain is tapping gently at the window and I can see the thin branches of the acer whipping about in the wind. We haven't seen the fish since November as they've taken themselves down into the warmer depths of the pond. I have a large pan of stock coming to the boil on the stove top and Kirstie Young is talking about her desert island discs in the background. Above me, I can hear the bump-buzz-thunk of the hoover being pushed about the floor. 

On the chopping board, leftover roast potatoes, carrots, sprouts, swede and parsnips are neatly (ish - this is not a beauty competition, this is Brown Soup) cubed and waiting to be added to the stock. My phone pings with a message from an old, old friend saying they would be delighted to see us for japes and larks, or, more sensibly, scrabble. 

Cheered by the news, I reach back into the fridge for the leftover turkey, pigs in blankets and stuffing. Just a handful or 2, enough to add some protein and some of that gorgeous sagey flavour. The cat flap bangs and seconds later Mabel headbutts my leg vigorously, loudly demanding biscuits. Her fur is cold and damp, thick and fluffy in its winter condition. She's been patrolling her patch, defending the borders against the evil tabby, and her eyes are glowing green with triumph. I feed her. 

A quick step into the garden for some lemon thyme. Shake the rain from my hair and pull the leaves from the stems. 

Everything in the pot, I leave it all to simmer while I occupy myself watching the weather beat against the house. The black-eyed susans were finally forced into giving up flowering during the cold snap and now the stems that wound so vigorously around the jasmine during the autumn are hanging limply, like so many bored socialites, all limp and jaded greenness. Hanging from them are raindrops like glass beads and, in that delicious betwixt times kind of way, I let my thoughts drift while watching them drip. 

The smell of soup, and the silence of the hoover, brings me back to the now and I turn my attention to the tricky business of tipping the contents of the steaming pan into the blender: have I misjudged the amount of stock and it will all overflow? Have I misjudged the angle of the tilt-and-pour and am about to have a counter liberally covered? Luckily the answer is no. Blend, noisily, for 30 seconds. Tip the resulting liquid back into the saucepan and back onto the hob. 

Taste, season, add a glug of Worcestershire sauce - the proper stuff. My, this is a brown soup indeed. Thick and rib-sticking, it promises to cure all ills, to coat your bones in a comforting umami hug. It will win no beauty prizes, but it will see you right, cutting through the gluttony, the sugar highs and lows, the hangovers and the hang-unders. 

It brings both my boys to the table where we break bread and nourish together, facing the oncoming change of the year. 

A note on the image above: I can't find the name or reference for this, although I am getting a hint of Vanessa Bell, maybe? If you know, can you let me know so I can credit properly? 

Winter Joy

Like absolutely everyone down here, south of Birmingham, we were hit last week by a cold snap, and I could not have been happier. As a person whose temperatures naturally run high (maybe because I was born in the summer of 76?), I am at my absolute best when the ground outside is frosted and the air chill nips my ears red. Far from condemning the Snow Queen in Narnia, I have sympathy for her endless winters and the build up to Christmas being more exciting than Christmas itself. 

I'm less with her on the turning people into statues issue, but hey, who doesn't have a character flaw or two?

So you can probably imagine my joy each morning as I would peer through the blinds to see a sparkling world, dressing hurriedly, so I could get a walk in before having to switch on the laptop for work. Pacing slowly along the canal in my boots and layers, more wool than woman, stopping to capture the light. 

It was simply a delight to walk every morning, timing it so the school rush was over - or not yet begun - and the canal path was pretty much just me and a couple of hardy dog walkers. Joggers and cyclists moved to the main roads and left the space clear for us to wander at will, filling our eyes with the sparkle and snap of the morning. 

The moon was bright and glorious each time while the sun cast benevolent halos that made me blink. The rushes and reeds glinted, bejewelled by the frozen droplets that turned them into living chandeliers. Leaves were etched, their veins picked out in silver, while mosses retreated into their own tiny frozen worlds. 

I don't think I walked a straight line once, so dazed was I by how beautiful it was, by the patterns in the frozen canal, by the cloud of my breath spiralling up into the clear sky. 

Tiny Wee Mabel enjoyed trying to catch the snow during one of the handful of flurries we had. Just 8 miles down the road, they were shovelling it off driveways. Friends in Wales and the Cotswolds made me green with envy as they showed off their magical, sparkling gardens, made mysterious and slightly eerie by the snow-quiet and pale light. 

We are bunkered in for Yule now. Presents brought, wrapping still to be wrestled with. Food to be prepped (I'm making a magnificent trifle this time, after last year's pavlova affair). The day itself will be full of family; the day after just him and me, recovering from the previous day and letting our blood sugars slowly return back to normal. There will be large sandwiches full of turkey and stuffing and redcurrant sauce and, oh, all the trimmings, always so much better between 2 slices of thick bread the next day. 

This isn't a good season for everyone, I know. If you are still deciding which charity to make a seasonal donation too, I heartily recommend this one, which I've supported for a number of years. Or, seek out one nearer to you. 

Wherever you find yourselves and whatever you find yourselves doing, I hope this is a good season for you. May your trees be bright, your puddings fulsome and your lie-ins lengthy. 

Of the Before and the After

The Potting Shed by Lore Pemberton. 

On my Christmas wish list, Click on the image to get to her website.

I had planned to pop on here and say something cheerful about winter being nearly here, but it feels like we have crossed that invisible marker here in the Midlands. Winter is already here. The past week has been full of huge downpours, torrents of raindrops that hurled themselves at the windows and roof, drumming percussive music through the week. Whole days have been blackened by rain clouds, battered by winds. Taking the train to Gloucester, I could see the silver glint of flooded fields by Bredon Hill, the hill itself looking dark and already folded into hibernation. Occasionally, a wild sunbeam would break through the cloud, sending down a fierce bright light that made me blink. 

On Monday, my friend came over with her little boy. 10 months old and already staggering around like a wee drunk man, bow legged and hands raised up for the sheer joy of motion and speed and independence. He is a joyful whirlwind, a tiny tyke, a terror of all cats and bearer of childhood nursery germs that I had long lost all immunity to. 24 hours later, whilst hoovering up what I hoped was the last of the rice particles he had liberally blessed the carpet with, I felt an ominous itch in the back of my throat. 

This has been a proper, old fashioned cold, the like of which I haven't experienced since the Kid left primary school. Stuffy of head and nose, full of catarrh, throat like sandpaper, eyes like heavy hot marbles and sleep punctuated by a cough that would scatter the crows. Bravely I have soldiered on through it, meeting grant application deadlines, project end deadlines and meetings that could not, would not be shifted. But now I'm ready to lean into it, give in to it. Lie on the sofa with a cool flannel on my forehead, a soothing drink to hand and someone else to cook. To give credit where due, N has been dying to do this for days, it's only now that I have the capacity to lay down tools and let him. 

Own. Worst. Enemy. 

But I am ready for winter now. For fresh air walks in the morning that leave your cheeks pink and tingling from the nip of a frost. For gentle yoga meditation in a candlelit evening, emerging blissed out into a house that smells of rich stews and baking bread. To take up a craft again, pick up the knitting needles or crochet hook and not care if the end result is any good. For the time to make bread and stews and soups. For woodsmoke, and citrus, and spices. 

Not that I can smell anything right now, and I was about to write "stupid cold".  Which is reflective of how I treat most of my conditions. They are stupid because they get in the way, they stop me from doing the job I loved, they cause me pain. 

But it occurs to me that this is the wrong approach to these things. It lacks grace and understanding. It tries to set the bar to how things used to be when, truth is, it can never be that again. As a friend said last week "it's okay to be angry about them but don't let that anger become all you feel". So, it is time to reach an accommodation, an acceptance of where I am now. To develop an intuitive understanding of what my body is trying to tell me, instead of rushing over it because there are things to be done. To consider a new approach to my body instead of feeling like a failure because it doesn't work like it used to. 

Chronic pain is the worst bedfellow, it sucks as a walking companion, and I've raged bitter war against it, but maybe, this Winter, I can take the time to recognise it for the signpost it is. The one that guides the way to a better, more sustainable life, overriding the itching temptation to eat all the chocolate oranges under the tree and carry on as before. 

'Before' is a closed box; 'After' is a wide, open landscape to explore. Let's see what I can find there. 

January at the Allotment

Mostly this morning, I am extremely tired thanks to the winds that blew a hoolie round the house all night and made me fret for the safety of our newly-constructed mini-greenhouse (fret not, it was still standing when I dared open the curtains this morning). So I've given myself permission to spend the morning messing about with seeds before I crack back onto work this afternoon.  

Yesterday, I grabbed a lovely couple of hours at the allotment. There was more digging of the long bed to be done but I'm pleased to report I'm now on the last third of it. The resident robin bobbed about nearby, on the look out for any worms, so when I sadly chopped one in half (and I was genuinely sad about it), I threw him the pieces and he darted off with his takeaway lunch. 

Which reminds me, my Mum recently told my niece about the legend that robins are the spirit of departed loved ones, come back to check on you. Pause. "I don't think Grandad is a robin," niece said thoughtfully. "I think he's a pigeon." 

Which has made us all laugh for weeks, every time we see a pigeon. 

It was good to be up there, with only a scattering of other people around, tending their own plots. The "You want a weed killer on that" man was there, hands in pockets, shuffling about his plot and stopping everyone who walked past to say "Werrrllll, I haven't seen so-and-so for aaaages. He's prah'bly quit." You may imagine that he is a bundle of joy wrapped in a holey jumper with a bad, slightly Hitler-ish moustache to bristle at things. 

Also up there were the Descriptive Couple. They like to allotment loudly, telling each other what they're doing. "So, I'm putting in the broad beans while you weed around the onions, right?" "Yes! And then I'll prune the raspberries while you turn the compost." "This is all great fun, look I've found a millipede!" When they got their plot, they smeared mud on their cheeks and danced around, hugging each other. They are adorable but not peaceful. 

And there was me, digging, sitting with a coffee, pruning, sitting with a coffee, picking up the blown over fruit cage, sitting with a coffee. I'm probably known as She Who Sits, but my brain is always busy. 

It was certainly good to be up there and feeling more positive about the place than I had been back at the start of January. Then, it had all felt overwhelming and depressing. Now, I was reminded that I've done this before and I can do this again. That, although the squirrels have dug up my spring bulbs (*shakes fist in general direction of squirrels*), the rosemary is shyly flaunting it's perfect little blue flowers. 

The raspberry canes had buds on them and the rhubarb had new shoots and everything, despite the cold wind whipping at my ears, felt ready to get going again. 

Back at home, thawing out with a hot chocolate (a particularly nice one, worth breaking my no-sugar vow, from the Harth chocolate company), I watched with increasing amusement as N put up the greenhouse. I thought the moment where he appeared consumed by the plastic covering, flailing his arms from underneath, as though covered by fog, was funny enough, but he then manged to put it over the frame with himself inside and the door still zipped up. Nearly spat out my chocolate as he mimed being stuck and then picked up the whole thing, turning around in circles. 

Funny man. 

This year, I've made myself a planting calendar of all the (70+. Yikes. Now I know where my money went last year) seeds I have and when to plant them. Oh yes, shit just got real as I am determined - once more with italics, determined - to make more use of the plot this year. No longer will I wake in August and realise I am 4 months late getting pumpkin seeds started. No longer will our windowsills be crammed with leggy seedlings, desperate for repotting. No more will I glower resentfully at those plot holders who appear to have it all planted out and ready to go. 

Oh no, this is my real new years resolution. I shall be the allotment holder all others envy. My potatoes will be plentiful, my berries bountiful and my squash splendiferous. People will congratulate me on the progress and ask for advice. I shall smile quietly and gently steer their gaze from that giant yup of dead wood at the end of the plot. 

Fake it till you make it. 

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. 

January Blathering

 A truly wondrous thing happened yesterday…brace yourselves…we opened the attic hatch!

I know. Extremely brave of us. And I say ‘us’ loosely because it was just N up the ladder. I don’t do ladders. 

Anyway, when we brought the house back in 2019, we’d been completely stymied about how to open the hatch (don’t laugh). Then my neighbour had given dire warnings about the depth of the insulation and how he’d had to have it boarded over before he could use it. So we pretended it didn’t exist until this year when I had a small, totally reasonable, meltdown about how much I hated tripping over the boxes of Christmas decorations in July and other assorted detritus of life that were better placed in an attic out of sight and reach of toes. 

This then prompted an overdue January clear out of things upstairs. So many things that a black bin back was required for the first time in about a year (I really do try to keep our general rubbish levels down). Do you do a Big January Clearout? It's incredibly cathartic, almost a meditative act if you don't go at it like a bull in a china shop, which only results in more, broken, stuff being thrown away. 

Tiny Wee Mabel giving the world her best side-eye as she's

cross about the cold turn the weather has taken

I'm no Marie Kondo (gods forbid) but I do like the process of opening a corner/cupboard/drawer/box and working through the contents one by one. Looking at them and recognising that, if they've been in there 5 years and never looked at, it's time for them to go. In my case yesterday, that was scraps of fabric, a box of rusty pins, varying lengths and tangles of embroidery threads, remnants of wool not long enough to make anything with, wrapping paper that was too creased and crumped and sellotape-marked to reuse, broken buttons and knitting needles, and other random items that I'd once thought would have a purpose but turned out not to have. 

Where once there was an overspill of chaos and failed projects, there is now a contained order in labelled boxes on neat and clean shelves. It won't last but while it does, I go and stand in front of them every now and then just to appreciate the scene. 

It's representative of the more ordered me I like to tap into every now and then. She doesn't make an appearance very often. 

Just a happy Boo in his box. 

Also on the agenda at the weekend was a visit to the wedding venue. After a false start with a place that looked enchantingly like an Ewok village but had no wheelchair access or facilities beyond some basic toilets, we finally hit upon a place that has enough of a Wild Place look about it for us to be happy. 

As you can be sure there will be a lot more of that in the months to come, I'll leave it for the time being. Once we've got the Great Guest List Row out of the way. 

Last night I started crocheting myself a hat. I've been at a bit of a loose crafty end since finishing the last Attic 24 CAL in time for my Mum's birthday back in December. I've taken the time to do some repairs (pockets in jeans, buttons on shirts etc) but my next crochet project (which I can't mention here in case they read about it) won't start for another couple of weeks. I'm not doing the CAL this year as I feel I need to use up the wool I already have rather than buy another big bag of more. 

Glowering skies over the allotment

Plus my ears were really really cold when we were doing root cuttings at college last week. A fascinating process and I'm really hoping the phlox I used actually take. The soft-wood cuttings we did a few weeks back did very well until they did too well and I didn't pot them on in time, so they died. The leaf cuttings are just sitting there as if to say "What?", practically shrugging at me. I love the process of taking cuttings but I'm not convinced the plants are so keen. 

Anyway, my ears were cold and I don't have a hat, so I'm making myself one out of fetching dark red wool that's quite fluffy and has a wee bit of sparkle in it. I was given the wool years ago, so it's nice to finally have a purpose for it. 

In other news, I'm unofficially doing Dry January, alcohol being one of those inflammatory things that I'm trying to avoid, as well as Buy Nothing January, which is not something being marketed far and wide as A Thing, but the result of noticing that, really, I have everything I need, so why buy more? Honestly, I'm feeling very virtuous and smug about it all. Veering dangerously onto the path of Puritanism? Nah. Too many rules. Just an attempt to live more lightly on the planet. 

Took a walk in the park and successfully identified a 

Prunus serrula (Tibetan Cherry) by it's bark. 

I signed up for the George Saunders newsletter. Heard of him? He wrote one of my favourite books, Lincoln in the Bardo, a few years back and I've got his latest, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, on order at the library. He releases an e-newsletter every week or so (if you're on the free list, which I am) and he set an intriguing writing exercise yesterday, involving a word and time limit. I may try it later this week. 

On the subject of books, I read John le Carre's Call for the Dead yesterday, which was slim but excellent. It's interesting that as uninterested in the Cold War as I am, he can still draw me in and I'm a little in love with the shambling Smiley. And I'm also ploughing through Pandora's Jar, despite not being particularly interested in Greek mythology. But Natalie Haynes is a chatty writer and entertaining to boot, so it doesn't feel like a slog. 

And here I shall leave you to return to some proper work. As much as I enjoy letting free a long stream of blather, there are things to attend to. As we plunge into the dark and rainy second week of January, I wish you all a good one. Hope it's full of warming meals, warming fires and warm toes. I'm off to throw a jacket potato in the oven. 

Ditto this Cornus alba 'Sibirica'. 

The Muddy Truth of it All

Allotmenting in winter is the very epitome of playing the long game. The termperature and the short days have sent things underground. Plants that were vibrant during the rest of the year are now dormant, hibernating as solidly as any dormouse. Leaves that created patterns on the ground and provided much needed shade during the summer are now rotting in a leaf mould bin. The architecture of trees is revealed, the shades and shapes of the trunks. 

What was softened and hidden is now hard and revealed. Including your own failings. 

It takes bravery to garden a space at this time of year. A trusting that it will all come good and be green, life-filled and lively once more. Bravery in sowing precious seed, trust that the seed knows it's thing better than you do and will come up right on cue. 

Bravery in stepping back, leaving it to its own devices. Trust that it will all come good in the end. 

This week, my bravery and trust wavered. Perfection stalks social media, even in the allotment community. Close ups of adorable sheds, seed heads and perfectly raked raised beds. Rows of gleaming, newly-cleaned tools, all hanging in neat rows.  Bulbs have been planted and lovingly recorded. Some are even showing off their sweet pea seedlings. And I'm as guilty as the rest! Focus in tight, crop out those inconvenient bits. 

But still, I'm scrolling through, feeling the panic rise because Mine. Does Not. Look. Like. Theirs. 

So, let's have a little honesty about allotmenting at this time of year. When the mud clags your boots and sudden hail showers sends you into retreat. When the wind is so cold, even thick gardening gloves can't keep your fingers warm, and the sky looks malevolent. 

When you arrive one morning and find that the weather has whipped the weed suppressing material off the beds, the brassica nets are flapping and the damned slugs have eaten eveything in there anyway.

When the pile of manure seems bigger than your house and the fruit cage has fallen apart overnight. When even the perpetual spinach has wilted under a sudden frost and your good secateurs break. When the bamboo canes spill out and poke you in the eye and the only green is the grass and the onion sets. 

When the pile of deadwood at the bottom of the plot no longer looks like an enchanting wildlife haven, but a soggy, dank mess of a yup of stuff. 

When you are digging out bindweed roots longer than your arms and you slip over, dropping your flask of coffee and it is the last straw and you sit on the wet ground and consider crying at the sheer volume of stuff there is to do.

That is allotmenting in winter. This is, sigh, my allotment in winter.

Ye gods, it's a slippery, muddy, disheartening mess. I'm trying not to be embarrassed by it and my untidy ways.

But. Take heart! Yes, the membrane is ugly but there are insects and slow worms hibernating underneath it. Birds are hopping amongst the dead wood yup and picking out insects, berries and grubs for their dinners. Bamboo canes can be retamed, fruit cages rebuilt and secateurs replaced. The decimated brassicas will make excellent compost. 

Now is the time to make plans. To be up there with pencil and paper, measuring tape and ideas. 

There will be a cut flower bed, the bulbs will shock with a sudden appearance and the wildflowers make a reappearance. I plan on mixing up the planting this year, so there are no more regimented  rows of onions/peas/courgettes/etc, but a smorgasboard of edible things, intersperced with ornamentals. The deadwood yup will be transformed into a deadwood "hedge" that provides some privacy from the towpath. An additional bed will be dug in and the first of the fruit trees planted. 

I will even make a start on conquering the next quarter of the plot. Digging out the grass that's currently wilting under cardboard and membrane. Then I'll mark out the asparagus bed (the one thing that can't be mixed-planted) and set about making that productive. 

Plans plans. This is the waiting time. The being brave and keeping trust time. 

Rounding off the Edges

 I joked earlier this year that insomnia, of which I have suffered with regularly, was the gift of time. Except for this week as it appears to have morphed into the gift of "eating toast at 5am, then falling asleep again at 7, only to wake at 8.30 feeling like you've been hit with a sledgehammer, one that leaves toast crumbs in the bed". 

Part of this recent bout I can lay at the door of my foolish decision to watch the Mark Gatiss adaptation of MR James' The Mezzotint. It was early evening, I was surrounded by people I love, I thought it would be fine. Except that, 4 nights later, I'm still campaigning for the light to be left on overnight and hiding my head under the duvet so I can't see the fingers lifting the window. 

None of our windows lift up, but there we have the rationale of my brain. 

Part of the insomnia is, no doubt, also due to the lack of Fresh Air and Exercise. Not necessarily my fault - every time I've set foot outside the skies have darkened and the rain has hurled itself at me like an overexcited puppy. "Oh aces, you're here! Let's play! Look, look, I did a massive wee on you!" Splendid.  

This also means I haven't set foot in a shop beyond our corner shop for weeks. Not a disaster, you might think, but I am out of nail varnish remover and about to enter 2022 with chipped navy blue nails. This is probably a metaphor for the year or something. 

Speaking of foot, I have just brought myself a pair of orthopaedic trainers, for I am having the foot bones of a 70 year old and up with stylish trainers they will not put. I need supported arches, comfortable soles and flexible uppers, not jazzy laces, flat uncushioned soles and a natty little logo. Do the young people say "jazzy" these days? See? I even have the language of a 70 year old.

I may make "supportive, comfortable and flexible" our new family motto. 

I have vowed (but not made a resolution because, ugh) to get out more from henceforth, but it was felt by both N and me, that a period of quiet reflection and retreat and (in my case) work, was needed after this year. It has been a lot, this 2021. But I'm not subscribing to this general mood of "2022 WILL be better!"

That's too much pressure to put on an innocent new year. It will be different, that's all. 

Still haven't chosen my word of the year. The workbooks and exercises I usually go through to find it have remained dusty and unused. I'll come to it eventually, or maybe not at all. I am trying to find my ease in the world, after a long time of trying to force myself into situations that made me feel like the proverbial square peg. 

This world needs more rounded edges. 

Something brave that I did do was sign up for a writers course. I am scared just putting that much information in the world, so I'll end here. Thank you all for stopping by here as often as you do. I shouldn't measure my life in Google Analytics, but when you put stuff out there, you really want to know someone is reading. Vanity, vanity, all is Google Analytics. 

Wishing you all a different, healthy, rounded 2022. Make space for yourself and repeat after me: "supportive, comfortable and flexible"

Seasons Pleasings

It’s okay, I’ll stop after this one, I promise. But I wanted to mark this Solstice with a little glimpse at things that have provoked sighs of deep contentment and let me think that, for just that moment, all is right in the world. 

Misty days where the cloud hung low, clinging to the tree tops, blurring the city lines and lending an air of mystery to my trip to the allotment, where I dug in some well rotted manure (courtesy of my friend's Shetland pony), admired cobwebs bejewelled by the damp air, and watched millipedes weave, like bright copper threads through the earth. 

It was an early start to the Sunday but my feet were toasty in thick socks and wellies. No one else was at the plots, just me with what sounded like hundreds of birds shouting their territorial rights, the chime of distant bells and the satisfying thunk of the shovel in the damp earth. 

I love misty days. They make me happy all the way to my toes and I can't wait to get out and walk in them. 

Last Friday, I took a trip to see colleagues, one that involved 2 trains there and 3 back, a cancelled train, a detour and a shouty woman on the final leg. As I reached my front door, I could see the lights on the wreath and the tree glowing through the window. Once inside it was warm, full of cats and N pleased to see me back, smelling nicely of pine, cloves and home. Settling into the sofa with a glass of wine as deep as a plunge pool and an M&S prawn sandwich, blanket over my chilled feet, fending off messages from Mum, N asked why I was sighing. 

I hadn’t realised I was, but they were the sighs of deep and blissful contentment. It was good to be home. 

Making jumbleberry jam to give to people I love over Christmas. A mix of raspberry, Japanese wineberry and blackberry, jam sugar and lemon juice. The longest part about making jam? Gathering the fruit. But that’s also the best part. 

The house smelt of sugar, fruit and that indescribable whiff of summer. 

Although the skies have been too shrouded to see the full moon, a week or so ago, I'd managed to capture it completely by accident as I stopped to take a photo of the lights at the local church. When I got home and looked back at the photos, I could see it, photobombing over the church's shoulder and looking might splendid. 

See? Splendid. It reminded me of that Jaffa Cake advert from looooong ago. Repeat after me: Full Moon, Half Moon, Total Eclipse!

A friend and I took a bimble around Malvern at the weekend, something we haven't done for a while. I dropped an astonishing amount on books (both new and second hand), and then we happened upon what is the winner of my own personal Christmas window contest...

Inside the shop was warm and bustling with the ever-cheerful owners and staff taking time to chat to everyone through the muffling of our masks. Later, we ate rum and walnut chocolate cake, exchanged presents and parted, determined to do more bimbling next year. 

Today I finish work, not back to my desk until the Thursday after Christmas*. The Kid comes home on the 23rd and I will attempt the Meringue of Folly on Christmas Eve. It's not really a peaceful time of year, but I am still going to make the most of not having to switch the computer on at 8 in the morning, of being legitimately allowed to eat After Eight mints for breakfast, to make turkey stuffing sandwiches, to watch old films. To hunker down. To take the Kid on long hill walks with flask and aforementioned sandwiches. 

To make plans and daydream.  

However you spend this time of year, and whoever you spend it with, I wish you all a very Good One indeed. Thanks for keeping stopping by here over this strange, untidy year. 

(*although I may possibly pop back here during the festive break because I don't seem to be able to keep away - even when I have Proper Work to do)