Missing in Action

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

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

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

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

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

Wait. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, he suffered it down.  

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winter's Tail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

Reading Autumn

When October rolled around, I dug out my battered copy of Dracula for its annual reading and settled down for a few days of feeling slightly jumpy and the right side of being scared (you know that side: a rush of goosebumps when the cat knocks over a plant pot outside - even though the Count would never be that clumsy - or a mild jump when your partner leaves his dressing gown hanging somewhere different and you spot it in the half light of an early dusk). That feeling should only last the duration of the book and a couple of days after before vanishing, never to return...until you read it again the following year. 

This year, after putting it down, I gazed across the shelves to decide on my next book. This takes a while as I have about 1000 books, not including N's. He keeps suggesting a 1-in-1-out policy, I keep finding new ways of stacking them so I can pretend I haven't heard that. 

This Autumn, it seems I am in the mood for dense, chewy Victoriana, with a side helping of mild Gothic horror. I want a weighted tangled storyline with complex family feuds and backstories that take entire chapters to retell. I want to hear a metaphorical wind howling outside the window, trees thrashing in protest, as a backdrop to the dark matter in my hand. I want to feel the damp chill of a creeping winter dawn. 

After Dracula, I settled down to get myself lost in the moors and wilds of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Jane Eyre, settling myself into a warm reading nook while N watched foot-the-ball, and letting the descriptions of wide Yorkshire landscapes take me away from all that. The power balances shifted on the page to the backdrop of feet thunking against wet turf. 

Isn't it wonderful how they were able to make the landscape feel so expansive, whilst depicting lives in miniature? And I always find something new when I return to them. Wuthering Heights, for example (read in August). On that reread, I lingered over old Joseph's proselytising, pulpit-raising, style which made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion. 

Wildfell and Jane also both contain a supporting cast whose speeches and asides cut through the tension, providing a small moment of comic relief, the brief capering of a jester at times of high tension. I'm more appreciative of those nowadays, and it seems to be a skill we've lost. Now our epic tomes are relentlessly grim and Loaded With Meaning from start to end. You need that lightness to throw the rest of the plot into contrasting shadow. 

On honeymoon, I took Lady Audley's Secret, having spotted it on the bookshelves, unread for a few years, and remembering that it included Belgium, which it described as "flat, featureless", a statement I can reveal is partly true. It took up a large part of the suitcase but was forgiven as I, once more, found myself rooting for the Lady Audley as she pivoted and twisted against the confines Victorian society imposed on women, ceaselessly seeking a way out until all routes were closed off. 

Back at home, after a couple of misty morning starts, the kind where the air soaks your hair and distant hills appear to be wearing blankets, I reached for Bleak House. It's really the only Dickens I can stand to read without choking on his performative sentimentality and is absolutely perfect for this time of year with its depictions of fog and ceaseless rain, the blackened sooty streets of London. The extraordinary description of the foul Mr. Krook's spontaneous combustion. The icy chill of Lady Deadlock's disdain. Poor confused and persecuted Jo of Tom-all-alone's. 

The complete loss of internet at home was a blessing as it allowed me the rare treat of hours of evening time I could give over to reading. But now it's finished, and Esther is happily married, I find myself restlessly scouring the shelves again. It seems that any post-1900 fiction just isn't satisfying right now; thin, sterile things they seem as the weather hurls itself against the windows of the house. A candle is guttering in a draught that reaches me a few seconds later, causing me to wrap the blanket more tightly around my knees. A mug of tea is steaming next to me and there is hot buttered toast for breakfast. It's no good, I can't stop the hand reaching out, fingers extending, grasping until...there!

The Moonstone it is.