Mercy, it’s a while since I’ve been on here. So long that my rustic romance link has dropped right off of my ‘frequently visited sites’. It’s been replaced by pages from my other, less interesting life; HMRC, bank accounts and office supplies. How I love the end of the tax year.
I’m still a frequent visitor to Pinterestthough; this year (and next, and probably the one after that…) we’re converting a barn on the farm. My input so far has been looking at pretty pictures. I’m good at that. This is what our house-to-be looks like at the moment:
Oodles of rustic romance, the inside isn’t so pleasing to the eye – yet.
Ditch clearing on the farm this week, and stocking up the woodstore. I’m beyond happy that my new hip lets me walk far enough to check up on progress…
And still editing of course, lots of red pen marks on the final draft and I really need to get it finished before the sun comes out, those chairs on the decking are calling.
That takes some beating. Now the holidays are over and and I hope to channel that sparkle and fizz into the final edit of the new book. A busy January, and a second novel for 2016. I’m excited.
As for the rest of the year, well I’ve already started writing book three and my resolutions are sorted – go crutchless (that’s crutchless, not crotchless), publish book two and get myself back on a horse 🙂
A HAPPY, HEALTHY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL
Plain, simple and homely is what I hope for this year. Good food, good friends and an eggnog or two.
Here’s a picture of a pretty pony to lighten your day in the frantic countdown to Christmas. (Cute isn’t he!)
2015, the year I published my début novel, is rounding off nicely. A big thank you to all of you who have followed my efforts and stumbles on these pages. I’m super excited to be doing it all again with the sequel in 2016.
Now I’m off to supervise tree decoration. Ed has returned with a red velvet cake, Yd will be back from work any minute and Dil is currently winging her way from Durham. The gathering commences, bring it on! Time to whip up the snowballs and festive music.
My but the body is a resilient tool, and the mind’s capacity for adaptation is a wonder!
Three weeks on from my hip replacement and my skill on crutches has developed apace. I’ve almost got used to having no free hands, shuffling items from pillar to post until they reach their final destiny (I WILL position that cup of coffee next to my easy chair). I can use the crutches like chopsticks to move some things along, but the greatest amusement in my day is had with my long handled gripper. I’ve been honing my gripper skills with determined ambition; knickers from ankles to washing basket with one sweep of the arm. Target practice at the dustbin for extra sport. I can pet the dogs, or even prod them when they’re scratching at my carpet. What fun! A comedy of terrier confusion as they try to work out that one.
Life isn’t without frustrations. Tell me I can’t bend over and I instantly start dropping every thing I touch (not to mention a few that were sitting around minding their own business until that sweep of the gripper got them). I have been known to drop the gripper too, and my crutches. Proper stymied in those moments.
Support stockings have driven me close to madness. The surgeon chopped my leg in half, but it’s those bloody stockings that bug me. Erotic they aren’t. When I have taken the time to imagine a man kneeling at my feet freeing me of hoisery, this wasn’t the scenario I dreamt of. The only release I yearn is escape from their deadly boa constrictor grip.
I long for the loo to be a haven again, where I can sit in comfort. I learnt the hard way that slow progress to the dunny+lack of scissor leg action+more wasted minutes reversing onto the bog and dropping my troos (not too low!) is a receipe for disaster (especially if someone has put the lid down – thirty years of marriage when he didn’t drop the lid and suddenly he’s Mr Diligent.) Oh how we laughed.
Every cloud has a sliver lining. Housework has gone out the window, swiftly followed by the ironing. My mother filled the freezer with delicious home cooking. A joy for the first fortnight, but we’ve now fallen prey to a sordid ready-meal habit. The sister has been on dilligent standby duties, instinctively absorbing all the gritty jobs which I couldn’t ask anyone else to do (I won’t abuse you with detail). I baulked at calling even her when the terrier puked on the carpet. It was a weird sort of torture, observing the glorious mess from my seat, unable to clear it up. Now I never thought I’d miss the skills to do that job, but at least the farmer learnt something: don’t give old dogs eggs for breakfast without anticipating consequences. Even if we are out of Chappie.
As I type said farmer is washing the kitchen floor. Unasked and unprompted. And that my friends is an indication of just how low this house has fallen.
An out of the ordinary week for me, as I got a new hip last Friday. Now six weeks to while away sitting on my bum, which shouldn’t be a challenge for a writer.
I pre-organised my marketing activites with a book promotion scheduled for the day of the operation. It was satisfying, in a weirdly macabre way, to know that while my physical self was under the knife virtual me was out there flogging books. Over 400 novels downloaded while I languished in groggy discomfort, and tracking the promo gave me amusment in my (few) wakeful moments.
The next challenge (aside from learning how to use crutches) is to get through the edits and re-writes on A Bed of Brambles. Frustratingly I can’t sit at my computer in it’s present set up, so I’ve set the Engineer and the Farmer to the task of resolving that. It’s a job that suits them better than nursing. My creativity still seems to be anaesthatised but I’m not going to panic – yet.
Any new experience, including surgery, delivers grist for the imagination. Hospitals host a world of stories. From the lives of the staff and the patients to the tragedies and miracles which play out inside their walls. Precious glimpses of other lives.
Even the frustration of awkward mobility is a useful insight. Thought provoking, empathy enducing. It reminds me how lucky I am that my troubles are temporary.
Our supermarket has had a makeover. The car park is fantastic. An entire level for blue badge holders (which, given the battle anyone has to park within a mile of our market must be a godsend for those less sprightly on their pins) AND there are always spaces!
Incredible, remarkable. But it may have something to do with the fact that you can’t find a bloody thing in the shop any more. If you can find the shop at all. The lifts have been reversed and you’ll see many a confused shopper (yes all right, me) stuck in the lift staring hopefully at closed doors while a trick-or-treat set opens and closes behind them. When you park the signage tells you that you are on level G+1. There’s a level G+2 and a level G-1 as well, but the buttons in the lift do not correspond with any of that (the stickers which the staff helpfully sellotaped up failed to stick). So your hallelujah joy at escaping the lift is short lived when you discover you have arrived at a floor which doesn’t exist, and you can’t even remember which town you are in any more.
Now I could be accused of being change averse, but don’t get me started on the shop’s new lay-out. In our uber-quaint market town, cafes and tea rooms are three a penny. There isn’t a combination of hot drink plus calories which you can’t locate within seconds of arrival. So why oh why did our town centre supermarket think it was necessary to add not one, not two, but three areas inside their shop where you can now get a coffee?
You fall over the queue for the first one as soon as you walk in. A coffee machine wedged conveniently (not) between Customer Service and Quick-Check hand-set collection. Slow quick-check hand-set collection (sounds like a line from Strictly Come Dancing.) Very slow shop, because nothing is where it used to be. Trip over second cafe in the bakery section, notice the seated diners judging as you try to buy cake covertly.
I fear there is a clash of customer versus marketing going on here. Me, I just want to do a grocery hit and run. Marketing wants me to be distracted by all the fripperies they have on offer. They succeeded in distracting me (before I got out of the lift) and they have well and truly slowed me down. Too many special offers for a befuddled brain to cope with…six for five, three for two…or a baker’s dozen and a cappuccino? Four backtracks to hunt out items I’ve missed and I still turf up at the ‘quick-check’ (note ironic inverted commas) with less than half of my shopping.
Cafe three, I see what they’re doing. You do actually need pit-stops to break up this ordeal. And…a security check. The final insult to prove it would have been quicker to grow the groceries myself. I remind myself to be polite. It isn’t the shop assistant’s fault, and given my now total confusion there is actually a very good chance that I’ve stolen something…three for two, seven for six, one for nothing? I smile at her sweetly, I may need her in a forgiving mood before this shopping trip gets a whole lot worse.
As it is, I’m out! Now I just need to find the bloody car. And breathe.
I’m so blessed to live in the country-side, with a 360 degree view of the sky. A blessing which it’s easy to be thankful for because nature reminds you so often. I confess I’m not always grateful when the wind is hurling rain horizontally across the farm, or snow drifts cover the drive. It’s a rare winter when we don’t lose electricity, telephone, internet, and satellite (occasionally all at once). But I figure that’s a small price to pay for the everyday glories we get to enjoy (she says valiantly, while the October sun is shining).
Today the terriers got me up early (they’re playing innocent in this shot but don’t be fooled. And yes she is sitting on him).
Terriers can be the cruellest of alarm clocks. A bark sharp enough to rouse you from sleep with instant palpitations. A sense of smell so keen it can sniff out varmint from three fields away, and a dogged (sic) determination to tell you all about it. I say varmint, but often I haven’t got a clue what has set them off. A fox, pheasant, or deer? More likely devilish spirits which drive them to wake me at an hour when all of God’s creatures should be tucked up in bed (apart from the nocturnal ones of course). Credit where credit is due though, this morning the moon was worthy of howling at.
A crescent so perfect it’s a cliché. I was out there, in my nightshirt, with the dogs, taking pictures which would never do the view justice. Nature does beauty on an epic scale which scoffs at my camera and photography skills. All the same, pretty eh?
An over-blanket of mist rolling across the fields…
There were seven of us on that first beach hut adventure. Six adults and one tiny-eight-week old baby. My nephew. We lounged in deck-chairs as we read our books, and brewed cups of tea. Strolled along the coast and swam in the sea. Twelve arms to share one precious bundle.
Within ten years, the adults were outnumbered. Rumbustious kids, adventurous toddlers and sandy-bottomed babies. Buggys, pottys and sun-cream. We hauled a hand cart up and down the steep and winding path, heavy with picnics, towelling jackets, swimming suits. Buckets and spades. Saucepans, nappies and home-made cakes. Lounging became a dream of the past, forsaken to the glorious chaos of toddler pursuit, life-guard duties and feeding a hungry swarm. We cooked up fish fingers and baked beans on the gas stove in the hut, strung a mosquito net to fend off angry wasps. Embraced the weariness as we settled our gaggle of salty-haired offspring onto child-sized plastic chairs. As the beach cleared and the sun dropped, we sipped mugs of tea and smiled as they ate with an appetite born of a well lived day. Babies slept on impromptu beds spread on the beach hut floor. A weary-legged tramp took us back up to the top of the cliff. The sleep of the rosy-cheeked, sated child. Heads lolling in car seats, drunk on fresh air.
Tots grew into children. Bikinis and body boards, chips and arcades. Windy days brought waves to ride and kites to fly. Even when it rained the beach never failed to work its magic. Sandcastles became more adventurous. Shells gathered for bracelets, plaits beaded in hair. Granddad’s faithful frisbee, beach-boules and cricket. Suntan lotion glistened on youthful bodies which had evolved between our visits.
The whistle on the kettle changed its tune and more mugs were needed. We spread, our chairs spilling across the promenade. We took more than our share. Behind dark glasses teenage eyes watched passing talent. Youth swooped from angsty adolescent to playful child and back again with dizzying speed. Fireworks, air shows and smart phones. They might not want to come next year. Can they bring their girlfriend/boyfriend? But go without them, and oh they are pissed off.
We must buy our fish and chips from the very same place. Park at the cliff-top to take in the view of our beach. Ice cream cones, mugs of tea and rock cakes are compulsory. Change is good, but who can argue with those traditions. We number sixteen now, there is a new tot on the beach. My great nephew – sandy-bottomed, salty-haired and very precious.
Swallows circling the tractor and plough – dozens of them. We wonder, are they playing, or harvesting the flying insects which are put up from the stubble.
There’s a lot more like that, but my editing skills are worse than my filming skills and I had my finger over much of it.
It looks like a game, they swoop dangerously close to the tractor, as if surfing the thermals rising off of the engine, and dive across the plough to come around again. Maybe this is fitness training for the arduous journey ahead of them. Migrating birds, with hundreds of dangerous miles to cover. Topical at the moment. I wish all who embark on such fearful travels could be offered Godspeed and safe arrivals.
By early September, most swallows are preparing to migrate. They flutter about restlessly, and often gather on telegraph wires. Most leave the UK during September, with early broods of youngsters being the first to go. But a few stragglers may hang around into October.
The return journey to Africa takes about six weeks. Swallows from different parts of Europe fly to different destinations. Ours end up in the very south. They travel down through western France and eastern Spain into Morocco, before crossing the Sahara Desert and the Congo rainforest – finally reaching South Africa and Namibia.
Swallows migrate during daylight, flying quite low and covering about 320 km (200 miles) each day. At night they roost in huge flocks in reed-beds at traditional stopover spots. Since swallows feed entirely on flying insects, they don’t need to fatten up before leaving, but can snap up their food along the way. Nonetheless, many die of starvation. If they survive, they can live for up to sixteen years.
Hard to believe that a small bird can conquer such an endeavour.
We unearthed a horseshoe too.
Every year the plough turns up interesting treasures, but this one intrigued us because it is round. Remedial shoeing for a horse which once pulled a plough? Or possibly more recent, it looks small for a heavy horse (5 1/4 inches across). Like many of our finds, it throws up more questions than answers.
Sam Russell 