… there will be a brief interval, during which I shall finish copy-editing two theses, one on the history of art, the other on nineteenth-century poetry. We are also fortunate in that Quercus’s mother is with us for a few days – I cannot express sufficiently how nice it is to have someone else to bring you tea, provide a tissue for the small girl’s nose, do the washing-up and generally provide a much-needed third pair of hands, while Quercus works on the big cupboard which will, when complete, cover about half of the red wall in the kitchen.

Also, there will be chocolate malt cake. Oh so very yes.

Ack. Haloscan is stopping its current free incarnation. I thought I’d stop using it, and go back to WordPress comments. And then I broke my site, for the umpteenth time, and of course I’m buggered if I know how to sort it, so until I can summon up the energy to fix up the mutilated CSS and the strange-looking header, I’m going with this oddly Germanic number.

Ick.

And also, bums.

Update: yes, still most of the above; just a quick question, too – does anyone actually ever use the search bar? I ask because it’s just possibly going to drive me demented; finding the CSS which governs its appearance seems to demand a peculiar combination of dogged determination and a devil-may-care attitude to the passing of time – I can manage the former, but the latter is proving tricky…

This month, we have mostly been trotting about in rather large quantities of snow, at least for this corner of the world. (This has meant more than usually pictureque views, and disproportionate use of the camera, naturally. But have I sorted out my hard-drive space issue? Have I buggery.) The chickens have had vast pots of porridge carried down to them by the small girl, and we have trolled around in wellies and millions of layers of woollen things.

Outside, we have walked and talked our way round dark Devon lanes while hoping not to get clipped by a van, as happened on Boxing Day, and we have watched the various comings and goings of the sheep who live on the hill behind our house – one of my favourite sounds here in Earthenhouse is the noise of many, many sheepy feet approaching as they pass our house en route to (literally) pastures new, in the cider orchards up the lane. Speaking of the orchards, we have also been out to admire the landscape in the snow; I am always entranced by the symmetry of rows upon rows of apple trees, whether cloaked in blossom or snow crystals. We also managed to rescue a poor sheep who had fallen down an open land-drain; it looked as if the cover had simply cracked in the cold, and the sheep, not realising that the ground wasn’t as it is everywhere else, simply dropped down into a challengingly sheep-sized hole, getting him(her?)self firmly wedged.Quercus hauled him(her?) out, and (s)he legged it, bleeting resentfully, though hopefully not at our intervention. The sheep around here seem fortunate in the home they are offered in the orchard fields. (As an aside, I would love to have some sheep. My particular favourites are the dark ones, preferably with big horns and a tail. Also, goats. Oh yes.)

Inside the warmth of the house (thank god for the woodburner; every time I find myself feeling hacked off at the prospect of lighting it, or cleaning it out, I remember the time we spent here with no heating at all, and lo! once more it takes on a wholly reassuring aspect), we have sat ourselves on oak counters and marvelled at the grain and the smooth sheen of newly-waxed wood (let us not speak of the utter shiteness of hard-wax oil), all while eating sultanas. We have also watched as our kitchen began to take shape; after months of planning, Quercus has been hard at work on and off since November, time permitting, and the result is a custom-made oak kitchen, beautifully in tune with the house as a whole, and my utter delight at the moment.

The worktops have holes and rippley feathered sections, and are finished a few tones darker than the cupboards beneath.Working out how best to protect them from daily use has proved something of a challenge; we have ended up with spirit dye for the colour, followed by tung oil, largely because this combination appears to be the only one you can fix up later on without having to sand back whatever finish you’ve gone for so that you can start afresh. The joy of unloading boxes of stuff, stored for months if not years, is just around the corner; today Quercus has fitted two cupboard doors, and he has worked out a cut-list for starting on the large cupboard which will occupy over half of the red (cob) wall.

In a further move towards some degree of civilisation, we acquired a cunning laundry airer whatsit (and yes, that is exactly what they are called), and I am not ashamed to say that it has revolutionised my feelings about laundry. Not tripping over the sodding airer thingy in the sitting room is a huge improvement, as is not finding Wixon eating one’s socks at six forty-five in the morning. Whenever I walk under the airer and find it empty (which is rare at the moment), I feel almost jealous of the drying time that we are missing out on – I mean, things could be up there! Drying! But worry not – I am coping. Just. (We’ll just agree to draw a veil over the maniacal glint in my eye on beholding items needing washing, shall we?)

The images which will stay with me the most are probably those of the small girl taking her first bewellied steps while clutching Quercus’s hand; she has been walking confidently for some time, but there is still something about snow and wellies which gets me every time. I felt the excitement as if I had never before seen snow, simply because she hadn’t. It is a constant source of joy – and amazement – to me, this sense of the new in the familiar. Long may it last.

In amongst some stressful happenings, there are bright patches of warm, glorious sunshine. This afternoon, and indeed its counterpart yesterday, was spent curled up in the warmth of a large feather quilt on a large comfortable bed, watching as the small girl snoozed quietly beside me. There is nothing like sleeping together to smooth away the cares, to brush back the shadows, to bring back the radiance, to strengthen the connection. The small girl sleeps deeply, her breath a constant source of wonder to me as I think of the tiny lungs in her chest working away, almost by magic. She sighs as she sleeps, and I wonder what her dreams show her. Does she think of time spent in the velvet sling, carried on her parents’ willing backs? Does she think of the softness of luscious black fur, proffered on a friendly cat’s paw? Or does she dream of the night sky, the moon which fascinates her and the stars which make her smile? Perhaps one day she will tell me. For now, I am content to lie there beside her, moving in and out of my own dreams as I hold her against me.

Those of you using feed readers may have picked up a post I disappeared a while back, one in which I explained the oddities of the caravan which lives in our garden at the moment. Well, to those of you who didn’t, the brief overview goes thusly: Lovely David, fixer-up of Citroëns and general all-round good chap, helped enormously on our extension self-build, and in the process he found us a caravan to use as a temporary kitchen, bathroom and general living space while chaos enveloped our house. The caravan belonged to a friend of his, J(o?)ules; we did him a favour in giving it a temporary home while he moved house, and he did us a favour in providing us with something which we’d otherwise have had to buy and then resell when the building work was done.

Hmm.

So far, so good.

Fast-forward six months, and it was the summer of last year. David had some odds and ends to finish on the wiring he’d done in our extension, wiring for which he’d been paid (and which he’d been able to do because, during the build, he’d gone on a course to become a certified electrical installer-type person, able to do Part P certification, a necessary part of building regulations in the UK; we paid about a third of the fee for this, which was quite a considerable wodge for us), and we’d arranged a time for him to come and do it. He didn’t appear, and since that last normal conversation back in the summer, we’ve not heard from him at all. Despite calls and emails and texts and messages and forum posts.

I’d just like to say, at this point, how upset I’ve been about it; we both have. We thought this man was our friend, and, while we’re both open to an explanation which contradicts our eventual, reluctant conclusion that not only was he not really our friend, but that he was being a bit of a swine too, we’ve no idea why he’s disappeared off our particular universe. Being me, and naturally prone to a particularly unlovely combination of guilt and incessant curiosity, I feel quite sad about it still, if I’m honest; it’s so rare to meet people with whom you really get on almost from the word ‘go’ that I feel you have to hang on to them wherever possible. Of course, to do so requires, generally, a little reciprocation on their part. That is where this one falters a bit.

And, while Lovely David may have beaten a hasty retreat, sadly, the caravan has stubbornly refused to do likewise. It sits, festering, at the end of the garden. It is eight feet wide and twenty feet long. It occupies the space we have got in mind for a woodshed, and it’s a pain in the arse, not least as it means we’re constantly parking in eight inches of Devon mud. Also, of course, it’s one of those “but it’s not even ours!” things. J(o)ules hasn’t got in touch with us, as, to the best of our knowledge, he hasn’t got our number or address (although my real name and general location on Google brings me up as hits numbers one to ten), and we haven’t got anything beyond his first name, and David doesn’t seem to want to give it to us.

So, yesterday, I finally managed to speak to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, and they tell me that we must write to David, sending it by registered post so that he must sign to show he’s received it, and then wait two weeks. If he doesn’t reply, we’ll be selling the caravan, before hanging on to the proceeds for six years (!), in case J(o)ules should appear, wanting his wagon back. I don’t know if David will reply; to be honest, if you’d told me a year ago that we’d find ourselves in this situation, I simply wouldn’t have believed it, so little would this have fitted in with the image that we had of him at the time. But hey -here we are. I’m quietly depressed about the whole thing.

Two weeks and counting, eh?

I’ve been revisiting my tarot cards quite a bit in the last few weeks. It started when my eye fell upon them (I would say, mysteriously, ‘quite by chance’, but actually, there is very little chance you could miss them when they are poked at your nose by a small and very curious girl) the other week, and, after years of abandonment on the shelves downstairs, I felt a pull to have a potter through them once more. I’ve had these cards for about twelve years, I suppose, and while I was all enthusiasm, gypsy caravans and wafts of incense when I first bought them, somehow I sort of lost interest when I realised I’d have to actually read an entire book to get to grips with them. See? Fickle, I am. Anyway, perhaps it’s no longer having to read swathes of literature so dull that one questions the usefulness of literacy in its entirety, but somehow I managed to rip through the book in only a few days, and my interest has been on the up ever since.

When I was about fourteen, I came across a well-established witch who read tarot cards with astonishing accuracy. At the time, I felt pulled between the assumption that he must have been cheating in some way, surely, and the equally strong desire to believe that We Just Don’t Understand Everything There Is. Over the years, I think I’ve come down on the latter side, for the most part. Yes, there are some charlatans out there (and various aspects of this person’s conduct are, shall we say, questionable, perhaps), but that doesn’t seem to mean that everything they stand for is rubbish.

I’ve been picking the cards up on nights when Quercus sleeps downstairs, and having a quick look at whatever comes out first. It’s sort of meditative, and at the same time renews my sense of connection. ‘Connection to what?’ I hear you cry (along with ‘good grief, woman – what incredible old bollocks’), and well you might (to both!), because I’ve got no idea what I’m on about, frankly. I was trying to explain to Quercus yesterday what I feel when things seem… witchier, somehow, and of course I fell over my feet, verbally, and ended up sounding like Madame Arcarty, which was, shall we say, not quite the effect for which I was aiming.

I think it’s something which requires some serious thought, at some point. I mean, what do I actually think? I think there is More. I have an enduring interest in witchcraft, which, for me, means an awareness of one’s surroundings, including but not limited to the seasons, the weather, the herbs, flowers, oils, spices and so on that can be used culinarily but also for purposes less well-known. I also have a strong feeling that the universe sometimes sends you what you need, even if it’s not what you wish for. Fate, I suppose. I think I might just believe that sometimes you can effect what you wish for yourself, but only if it’s vaguely in line with What Will Be anyway. But beyond that, I’m not sure what I think. I have had a few examples of things I couldn’t explain, and I have reason to wish for More, for sure, after my mother’s death. I’d also like to know why I feel so preoccupied by these questions just now, when there is no obvious prompt for them.

The inherited lunacy, by the by, is a reference to my grandmother’s conversations with her own grandmother, who had been dead for thirty years at the time. Apparently, I have two generations of mediums in my family, and my father has often demonstrated worrying foresight, once or twice in most unusual circumstances. That, coupled with my mother’s strong interest in witchcraft, speaks clear and loud (and apparently alliteratively, as we shall see) of as barking a bunch of beggars as one could hope to meet, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s something in the DNA.

In other news:

Why is my radio constantly wandering off its station, sometimes after a few seconds, sometimes after an hour?

Why, on the first weekday after I start thinking seriously about what I’m eating, is my office strewn with cake and biscuits?

Starsky or Hutch? I think my money is on Hutch (if only for the quirky vegetarianness)*, but this is subject to change.

Homemade apple pancakes – do they count as junk food?

Why is it impossible to get in touch with the Citizens’ Advice Bureau if you’re not in a position to walk through the door?

* This definition of vegetarianism is also something of a post in itself; I’m still going about the place “looking like a vegetarian”, according to colleagues. More on that anon.

Gosh, that sounds a bit academic article titley, doesn’t it? What a worrying start.

Anyway, whatever the inauspicious title, I’ve been thinking a lot about self-image in the last few months. Well, probably the last two years, if we’re honest, since I was pregnant. The thing is, I really hate having my photograph taken, probably because most of the pictures I see of myself are utterly abysmal, and I see, rather than the person I hope I am, outwardly, a knackered-looking woman with dubious hair and a clear love of chocolate which manifests in the physical world as hips the size of Australia and a hint of second or third chins from certain angles, none of which is particularly flattering.

Of course, there are also photos which I consider acceptable (and rest assured that those are both firmly in the minority, and the only ones I post here!); yes, I still look knackered and my hair is obviously in need of urgent attention, but normally these photos don’t, at least to my mind, show the fat bird I am so worried to be the truthful representation. Now, I know, rationally, that the weight I am is not my ideal, in terms of longevity and whatnot. I also know, however, that I am not horribly unfit, and nor am I the size of a house, despite some photographic suggestions that such is the case (we’ll say it was a combination of an unfortunate angle and the deeply unflattering sweaters I used to think made me look slimmer, ironically. Oh, ignorance was bliss!).

But still, when I see myself in the mirror, I am not happy with what I see, mostly. I am happy to have what can only be described as a Junoesque figure – I have always had reasonably large breasts, and hips which look ideally suited to producing broods of small, dungaree-clad infants with blonde hair before carrying said infants about perched on one side or the other – but the stomach? The stomach I am less happy about. I am also less happy about the general… weightiness of myself. Mostly, I am unhappy about the fact that when I see myself in the mirror, I am reminded of the years I spent reassuring my mother that she wasn’t fat, and that she looked nice in such-and-such, and so on. My mother spent most of her adult life worrying that she was too heavy, and, indeed, being too heavy. I don’t know what the risk percentages are, but I do know that extra weight is no good thing when it comes to breast cancer; as fatty tissue may produce extra oestrogen, the less tissue you have which is fatty, the better, it seems. (I don’t know if the breast cancer which killed my mother at 53 is genetic, but I do know that her mother died at 39, and that the two breast cancer genes identified thus far [for which I have tested negative] are not necessarily the only ones, so in the meantime, I’m thinking bet-hedging is the way forward.) Anyway, yes – there she was, worrying that she was overweight, and yes, sometimes, and indeed prior to her initial diagnosis with breast cancer, she was too heavy. And there I was, at the time pretty slim, reassuring her.

(Aside: I look very like my mother. The small girl looks very like me. Genetically, it’s as if our genes didn’t even notice the paternal whatsits floating about, so weak and pathetic were they when compared with our own mighty, er, persistence.)

I suppose it’s at least partly from our parents that we learn our eating habits as adults. Yes, some of it is choice, but it seems reasonable to think that some of it is learned behaviour from our childhoods. I am fortunate in that I like pretty much all sorts of vegetables and fruit; I am less fortunate in that, like many, I seem to equate food with security and happiness. If I am tired, or sad, or depressed, or just a bit low, it is all too easy to reach out my increasingly porky trotter and waffle down some cake. Likewise, one of the best ways to improve my mood is to bake. Both traits inherited, if not learned, from my own mother, and not helpful, see, when combined with a ridiculously sweet tooth and the willpower of… a very unwilled thing indeed. (Although somewhere in there I must have some backbone – I quit smoking when I was nineteen and have never gone back to it, and I did, eventually, finish that sodding PhD.) (Aside: hmm. Maybe I used up all the willpower I had? Maybe that’s my quota gone…?)

And so I find myself, at the age of thirty-one, thinking that this time, I’ve got to stop pissing about and actually drop some weight. I think that a stone would make a big difference. I am a size fourteen, in English sizing (which I think works out at a ten in the US), and I think I weigh about twelve stone.

God.

When I write that, it does not feel good. But see again the point re stopping pissing about. I don’t think I eat terribly; rather, the problem is that I simply eat too much of everything, and I don’t get enough exercise to justify doing so. When I lived on my own as a bid to make myself get over my mother’s death and start actively living, rather than simply existing, again, I joined a gym, controlled what I ate, and lost over a stone relatively easily. I can’t really join a gym these days, partly because I think my arms would take on a life of their own and repeatedly punch me in the face until I realised the extent to which I had betrayed them, and partly because I am skint enough to consider buying coffee a lavish extravagance, and then again partly because I have the perfect accessory for doing bench-presses: a nineteen-month walking talking infant. So, I can’t be completely control-freak about this, in the way that I was when I had only myself to please, and only myself to consider when I went to bed hungry – but quite smug – each night. How, then, to proceed? Well, first up, I think I need to just cut down on everything, a little bit. I don’t drink, really, and I must stop baking, I fear, for the next month, just to see if that helps. (Of course it doesn’t help that Quercus, who isn’t overweight and can eat like a bull, gets very tired in the afternoons and often perks up when presented with cake; neglectful wife charges in the offing, courtesy of none other than my own brain, see?) And after managing a three-mile walk with the small girl in the sling yesterday, I think I must also manage this more than once in a blue moon, because It Is Important, and should not always be put to the bottom of the list.

Oh, if I could only just start with a clean slate, rather than having to slim down the sodding slate I’ve developed, as it were.

All of which brings me to my second point: self-image. Essentially, in emotional terms, what’s made me really think about all this is that I don’t want the small girl to spend her life watching her mother feeling crap about the way she looks. Yes, I embrace the idea of people being different sizes, and different shapes, and just… different. I love having a feminine-shaped figure, and am not interested in losing lots of weight. But I’m not happy, and I don’t want to put that on her, if that makes sense. From a practical point of view, I find myself thinking with increasing frequency that if I really love my girl – and I do; oh, I do! – then I must do everything I can to ensure that she doesn’t become the third generation in my family to lose her mother at an unusually early age. My mother was 15 when it happened to her, and I was 22 when it happened to me. (In amongst all this thinking I’ve been doing, I note also that there are relatively few photographs of my mother; I think this is partly because she experienced the ol’ self-loathing I often feel when faced with photographic representations of ‘oh, one more slice won’t hurt’. I make myself appear in pictures, and in videos, with the small girl partly because I know that, while I may love the pictures of her as a small child, when she is older, she may want to see her parents too, and images of our lives together, rather than isolated snapshots of her sitting on worktops or something similar. Yack, it’s hard, though.)

So, here is to new beginnings. I shall try not to witter on about this to so long and so navel-gazing an extent again, but also, I would appreciate it if any regular readers – or those who lurk and would like an excuse to pick on me – could pop out of the woodwork with chirpy little ’so, lardarse, lost the excess yet?’-like comments from time to time, just to ensure I stay on the straight and, hopefully, increasingly narrow path to losing that stone, preferably in about twelve weeks.

Let’s see, shall we?

Ooooh, it’s been a long time since I did anything anyone could call actively witchcraft-like, but in the last few days, despite being crabby (yes, more-so than normal) and stupidly tired, I have been Thinking. Perhaps it’s the windy weather, blowing in hints of the year to come. Perhaps it’s the vivid dreams I’ve been having, showing the wheel turning. Perhaps it’s rediscovering pictures of the circle of toadstools which appeared at the end of the garden, suggesting secret midnight activities involving starlight and flames. Perhaps it’s the obscene quantities of chocolate I’ve been eating, turning my blood to cacao. Ahem. Anyway. Whatever it is, I have been remembering the time when I worked in a certain witchcraft-orientated shop, and thinking about all the things I learned while I was sitting behind the counter in a nearly-empty shop for hours at a time. And I have been thinking about all those candles burned, and all that incense wafted, and all those oils accrued (for lo! there are many, many oils in a small set of wooden drawers in the living room), and the general presence of low-level witchcraft that prevailed during that time. Perhaps it’s having a little bit more sleep (last night poor Quercus drew the short straw, and ended up sleeping in the lounge, on a massive pile of cushions, while I took the night-shift with the small girl; in a way, he got the upper hand, as he didn’t have to get up for Teething Duty at three a.m., but of course the whole sleeping-on-cushions bit isn’t ideal, and I think I ended up with more sleep than normal because I had the whole gargantuan bed to myself). Either way, this morning, it feels like things are afoot, and something has shifted, and shifted for the better.

Bell, book and candle, this-a-way.

And in the meantime, I have finished the watercolour pencils drawing I started for the small girl before she even born, and Chrimbly brought me a new set of double-pointed needles and some beautifully variagated Noro yarn to play with. It is time for a new list of projects, methinks; this witching feeling that has crept up on me appears to be taking a creative direction.

1. A cardigan for the small girl. (No. 1 was finished, but it’s on the small side due to my being rubbish at maths, and having to do sums which pushed my brain in ways it just doesn’t enjoy, all because I wanted to use some wool I happened to have in my stash, rather than going out and buying the stuff specified in the pattern.)

2. A Noro hat for me. Myself. All for my very ownses.

3. A sweater for Quercus. I would really love to knit something for him; so often, my creativity is focused on the small girl or the house, but Quercus is the axis on which my world turns, so it seems only fair to clothe said axis in something appropriately woolly. I’d like a jumper with a roll-over neck and no welt, which is relatively easy to do, and which uses double-knitting wool. Anyone come across such a thing? Comment, do.

4. I have it in mind to paint a small but significant set of stars on the small girl’s wall. If things go to plan, we will be re-rending the inside of Earthenhouse this summer, so now is the time to try out such things without having to commit to them forever; we have a very lovely book with illustrations which I could copy quite easily using the aforementioned watercolour pencils, and the small girl does love a star or two.

5. A spiral for the kitchen wall. Longer-term readers may recall the spiral which lived on our wall before we rebuilt the kitchen – hopefully this one will get to stay a little bit longer. When I was little I wanted a house full of music and laughter and bright colours; that spiral said all the right things to me, and it said them in three languages.

6. I must find me a chest of drawers, narrower than a metre, and tall enough to be useful. We have a short wall in the extension, and I would very much like to use it to get Quercus off the hook of making drawers by finding drawers which fit, and doing something to make them fit in. Drawers, though. They tend to be wider than this, damn them. So, the search continues. And then, oh then, if I find some, I’ll get to Put Things In Them. I love doing that. And organising cupboards. Oh, unpacking things. I’m really looking forward to rediscovering the contents of our sheds, most of which belong in a kitchen. (I know – I need to get out more.)

Right. On that note, off to do something productive. And you?

Right. It’s official. I have decided that the best way to rediscover my mojo, currently missing in inaction, is to just pretend it’s here. It’s not quite the same, but levering oneself off the sofa isn’t pleasurable even when one has got more energy than the average sloth, so I figure I’ve got little or nothing to lose, except a few extra minutes of lounging, and that seems to be contributing to the problem rather than alleviating it. So, today, I have ordered an external hard-drive (yay!, largely because taking action in this, er, active manner means that I no longer have to think about such deeply boring things, and can now return to filling my head with more fascinating and useful information, such as, um, recipes for Swedish apple cakes, and, er, knitting patterns), bought a ridiculously reduced pair of shoes on t’inter (that’s reduced in price, I hasten to add; I have not suddenly developed a passion for foot bondage) to solve the stupid lack of shoeage that I have recently developed, sorted two lots of laundry (so much less horrid since we have done away with the laundry airer and replaced it with the cunning hangy-from-ceiling thing – I am almost enjoying laundry, which just might constitute the eighth wonder of the world), and made two batches of biscuits with the tiny daughter. That’s ‘with’ as in ’she helped’, rather than ‘now available in new daughter flavour!’. It seems that the small girl may well have inherited my love of all things kitchen witchery: she spent an hour stirring the mixture, putting in individual pieces of mixed peel, and shaking in what can only be described as a veritable spronkle of cinnamon. End result: one very sticky daughter, one VERY sticky counter, and something like a metric ton of biscuits. Not bad, eh?

Tomorrow I shall make a bid for freedom by sticking the small girl in the velvet sling and going for a walk with her. At the moment, most of our walks involve her doing the walking, and one or other of her parents sort of idling along, although when she’s on top form, I reckon she’s managing about two miles an hour, which, on legs approximately a quarter the length of ours, is not bad going, by my reckoning. But… it’s not exactly strenuous for adult companions, shall we say, and, as previously mentioned, at this rate, I shall be hiring myself out for use as a traffic island. Unfortunately, I need exercise. Don’t get me wrong: mostly, I loathe the very thought of such a thing. But… in the quiet of my secret mind, I confess (to the entire inter) that I do love that feeling when you’ve walked five miles, and have another two or so to go, and you’re into your stride, and your legs feel as if they’re walking for themselves and you’re not really putting in any effort and you could go on forever.* And perhaps it’s the Sagittarian in me, but I often feel better for getting out, getting fresh air, a change of scene. So, that’s the plan tomorrow – go somewhere, preferably by the sea, and walk for at least forty minutes, at a good quick pace, while carrying about twenty-four pounds of baby. Good for the soul, and not so bad for the ol’ cardiac whatsit either, I hope.

On which note, I shall retire to my chaise-longue. It’s not good to rush one’s recover.

*Or until someone offers you a nice bun and a cup of tea. I’m only human, you know.

Yes, well, it appears that I may have temporarily broken my website. Technically, I hasten to add, it wasn’t that I actively did anything, but rather that I ignored both an email from my host which told me that they were going to upgrade the version of something deeply important to a new and more exciting incarnation (now with added sparkles!), and the constant pleas from WordPress to update from their paleolithic platform to something more contemporary. Who’d've thunk it, eh? Anyhoo, if you’ve stopped by in the last few days and seen lots of rather unhappy-looking code, that’ll be why.

Anyway, in other news, well, nothing much, really. We’ve had lots of snow, which was very pretty and meant three days of working from home, and we’ve now had lots of rain, which means business as normal for Devon, really. I am struggling to work up enthusiasm for anything at the moment, somehow, partly because I’ve got lots of loose ends which I really ought to weave into some semblance of order, and partly because the witchling is teething and we’re up a fair bit in the night once more, after nearly three weeks of unprompted, spontaneous, out-of-nowhere sleeping-entire-nights bliss. I have got plans and whatnot (as ever, being the paranoid soul I am) but I’m just sort of ‘meh’ about putting them into action. Is this Januaryitis, I wonder?

Anyway, as a bid to ease myself back into the proverbial (saddle, that is), I thought I would share some of the questions currently tormenting my tiny mind. Here they be:

1. How on earth do we persuade the cats that the newly-fitted, polished, and worked-on-to-within-an-inch-of-our-lives oak worktops are not seating places, nor scratching posts, nor (God forbid) extended hunting grounds for playing with mousies? I don’t want to have to shut them out all night – the cats, that is, rather than the mousies; they I am quite happy to shut out – but our catflap is in the kitchen door, and Quercus is getting a rather mad glint in his eye whenever he sees the cats within, say, a four-mile radius of that woodwork…

2. Why does having been hit by a van means oodles of paperwork for us? OODLES OF IT, I tell you. All to be returned in seven days. Shite.

3. How does anyone find technology interesting? I have just spent about three months (well, in active terms, about half an hour) agonising over external hard-drives. Of course, because I’ve got a Mac, I’m looking at about half the storage for a wodge more cash. Arses.

4. How does one reset one’s mojo? Mine appears to be in a bit of a decline, in a sort of Victorian-lady-reclining-on-chaise-longue manner. I had all these good intentions about blogging more regularly, and maybe adding pictures more frequently, and getting more exercise (which is a whole nother post on its own, frankly, as I reach ever closer to Woman Mountain Status), and whatnot, and instead I am largely sitting here and thinking that ginger wine would seem to be in order.

Answers, anyone?

So, here we are in 2010 – how very nice it is to see you all, as it were. This evening, Quercus and I went out for a quick walk around the field behind the house – it has been very cold here in Devon, and the frost is thick enough on the ground that there are spikes of ice sticking out at outlandish angles from each blade of grass. We haven’t had snow, but the frost in the rising moonlight was crunchy underfoot, and the stars were bright overhead, and we are told that snow may even appear tomorrow or the day after.

Tomorrow is twelfth night, and this being one of the traditions that appears to have crept into our lives together, we will disband our Chrimbly tree, removing in the process the eighteen felted hearts and, er, one star that I managed to get stitched before giving up for this year; we went for the minimalist approach, using only the felty things, lights and some particularly attractive fircones as decorations. The good thing about losing the Christmas tree, which I am always sorry to see go, is that we will have serious floorspace available to us in the kitchen for the first time in aaaaages. Quercus has fitted oak worktops during the Christmas break, and we spent the days after New Year waxing them and polishing them with hard wax oil, a slightly confusing substance which behaves like neither wax nor oil, and which requires approximately half a decade to dry. Or go off. Or harden. Or whichever term implies best its ultimate, er, setting. Having worktops, together with cupboards underneath them, means the kitchen now resembles an Actual Proper Kitchen In Which Cooking Might Not Be Outlandish, particularly with a fitted oven! and a hob with wanky touch control thingies that neither of us really understands! to complement the cupboardage. Next up is a large oddly-spaced cupboard on the right-angled wall, but that’s sort of the next stage, so let us not get too ahead of ourselves, eh?

Largely, the festive whatsit was quiet and delightful this year. Notable exceptions to this rule went as follows:

- Quercus’s mother told him he needed a haircut as her opening greeting, literally as she walked through the back door (to which she goes automatically, and which she opens without knocking unless we, Lucia-like, thwart her Mapp-inspired progress by locking the door, something we delight in managing), which was particularly irritating as we had actually had a cut booked for him but the hairdresser had cancelled because she wasn’t very well. Also irritatingly, she told him his glasses need changing because they’re scratched; he’d been to the opticians the weekend previously and is awaiting new lenses as we speak.

- One of the presents she very kindly gave us was funds for a wooden hanging airer affair, the sort you suspend with cunning ropes and pulleys, shimmying it up somewhere nice and warm and OUT OF THE WAY whenever clothes have the temerity to need washing. We bought the blighter, and blow me if we didn’t fit it the very same day it arrived, largely in a bid to avoid our usual ‘oh yes – must do that sometime’ procedure, a well-rehearsed number which usually includes a six-month lead-time. So, there we were, congratulating ourselves on a job disgustingly well-done and with more promptness than is perhaps decent, when up pipes Quercus’s dear mother with ‘but of course the washing won’t actually DRY there, will it?’. No, because clearly the effect we were hoping for was not one of drying, but of an INDOOR WATERFALL, carefully crafted with prayers to the gods of wet laundry.

- Eclipsing any irritations offered by my delightful mother-in-law, however, was my experience of van versus elbow, which took place on Boxing Day. We (we being me, Quercus, his mum and the tiny daughter) went for a walk in glorious December sunshine. We followed the Highway Code, walking on the right side for the conditions and taking general note of any traffic around (which was not considerable, it being Boxing Day, and the lanes being tiny and icy) and wearing suitably bright clothing (in my case, because I am naturally colourful; in Quercus’s mother’s case, because other people’s retinas are there to be attacked). Unfortunately, this did not prevent a van driver hitting not one, not two, but three of us, though astonishingly, and hugely thankfully, the tiny daughter was completely unharmed. Quercus had a big bruise and two large grazes to show for it, and I had a partially dislocated elbow and a bruise the size of Calcutta which has yet to disappear. Stiffness, general aches and pains and the continued purpleitude are the ongoing whatsits at this point; for the other party, apparently either a mandatory driving improvement course and accompanying fine or prosecution is likely. We have litigiously engaged a personal injury lawyer.

The delightfulness still outstripped the moments of homicidal mania, however, particularly where the tiny daughter’s recent acquisition (a red rocking moose) was concerned. Other splendid moments were created by the rapid consumption of far too many mince pies (though I still find that the mince pie drawer remains reasonably empty,* in my case, begging the question as to whether or not one might find any more about the place…) and two entire trays of homemade Rocky Road (for which I blame Nigella Lawson, of whose work I had remained blissfully unaware prior to a moment of weakness in the few days before Christmas, and an unfortunate availability of her back catalogue on the Beeb’s iPlayer dooberry).

Also, and I feel this warrants an entry of its own, really, I found myself the recipient of the very best present I could have wished for, but wouldn’t have, not wanting to tempt fate: the witchling’s sleep has improved. We haven’t done anything horrid, and we didn’t end up night-weaning, but for the last couple of weeks, things have been much better. Of course, now that I’ve written that down and made whichever part of the universe which had until now been looking the other way, busily destroying nations and whatnot, I expect the attention will snap back this way and sleep will once more become but a distant memory, but I just wanted to record for posterity that things have been particularly lovely for a little while. Long may it last.

And you?

* I tend to think my stomach has various drawers, departments and other organisational sectors; sometimes, for example, the savoury drawer can be stuffed to capacity, while the sweet drawer is happy to accept four servings of pudding, a bar of chocolate, and the promise of a ruptured something-or-other still to come. Is this just me? I think not.

Cue loud exhalation, and a look of drunken stupor brought about by AN ENTIRE NIGHT’S SLEEP. Yes, you read that correctly: AN ENTIRE NIGHT’S SLEEP. WITHOUT ONE INTERRUPTION. For some reason, the tiny daughter slept from seven until six-forty without a peep. We, the parental we, were most grateful. And today we’re almost punch-drunk with the sleepiness of it all. In my case, in a nice way; in Quercus’s case, well, let us just say he is busily caffeinating himself as we speak. I’m still hoping, as my sort of first-response thing, that the sleep thing will just resolve naturally rather than requiring the sort of interventionary changes I mentioned in my last post; I don’t want to night-wean and I don’t really want to do anything which involves lots of crying. I’m not going to think that this might be the start of that change, because the tiny daughter has slept through the night many times previously without it heralding a general regime change, but hey, at the same time, I’m still going to be bloody grateful for any extra sleep I get, and for anything which delays the onset of the batshit state which appears when we’re all a bit tired and emotional (without even a hint of alcohol).

So, thank you all for the lovely words and entertaining tales of woe. The moment of utter, crapulous woe of shitery-nasty has passed on this end, and we are feeling a bit better, collectively. For one thing, the lime, while interesting, is not completely buggered; our friend Chris, who is a lime specialist, reckons it’s completely salvageable, though not until any chance of frost has passed. This is good in two ways: way the first – IT’S NOT COMPLETELY BUGGERED!, and way the second – WE CAN’T DO ANYTHING ON IT NOW, which means no firking about in freezing conditions with fingers blistered from both cold and lime burns. Yay! for no burns.

In the meantime, work on the kitchen toddles along. Quercus now has wood for the worktops, and we have wax for finishing them and hard wax oil (!) on order. We’re sort of aiming to have the worktops in position for Christmas, though I’m not sure if we’re going to manage that; at least the oven is now hooked up, and working, and most exciting in that it heats up in about five minutes, which, compared with the Baby Belling of Doom, is nothing short of a minor miracle.

So, here are some jolly pictures, so lighten the doom and kid you all into thinking that I am completely on top of things, with creativity oozing from every pore. (Let us not speak of the reality: it is not creativity but stupidity and, for variety, idiocy which oozeth in this house.)

I am still marveling at the hat that I knitted. I can’t believe I actually managed to follow a pattern, for one.

We’ve been making lanterns from watercolour paper soaked in oil; horribly incendiary in nature, but rather dinky, nonetheless.

Reading continues to be the witchling’s favourite passtime (and, just to ensure that universal balance is maintained, that choas on the right is the ever-present washing stand, which probably represents my least favourite passtime).

Once upon a time, I thought that Chrimbly decorations such as these would be such fun to make; blanket-stitching the hearts together and stuffing them for a padded look is indeed quite fun, but the stars! Oh, the stars! What was I thinking? So. Many. Stitches. So. Little room. For stuffing.

So, moving on from the doom and gloom, we’re slowly remembering that generally, we can handle the shitty bits and bats because life still has some delightful moments despite the flaking limewash. It’s on to Crumphole pudding-making and general mince pie-gorging now. So what have you got left that you’d like to do before the cessation of hostilities?

The shit:

- The fucking lime render is not taking the recent frosts well. For some unholy reason, the fucking fucking fucking limewash is flaking off, and the north wall of the house is encased in hard frost that looks as if the wall has had buckets of water thrown at it. Most of the limewash on this wall is going to come off, from the looks of it, and patches of it are in trouble across various other walls. I don’t know why. We have worked as hard on this project as we are capable of working, and it’s dominated most of this summer and autumn. I am beyond sick of it. We thought this bit was fixed; there are so many things to fix on this house, and we thought this was one of the things we had  - finally – managed to sort. Not so, it seems. Fuck knows what we’ll have to do. I think at least some of the render beneath the limewash will be compromised, to what extent I am not sure, but I fear we’ll end up having to redo some of it. I can’t even speak about it – I am just so fed up with this fucking house, and the number of fucking things which continue to need work. One thing gets fixed; four things break.

- The car is in for yet another bout of work. We had it back for one day after the fucking ignition switch told us it needed replacing by stopping the lights and wipers working from time to time, and the lever which allows the tilt and rake of the steering wheel to be adjusted snapped off, leaving the steering wheel unlocked and wandering, Wacky Racers-style. This, after suspension work, new tyres, a cambelt, more suspension work, a drive shaft and various other bits and bobs, takes the piss – we’ve only had this fucker for six months, and, bearing in mind we bought it to replace Quercus’s CX, which he loved but which he felt wasn’t reliable enough or affordable enough to maintain, it’s been nothing but trouble since it arrived. Fucker.

- Dad has sold his house, and continues to talk about how hard-up he and his wife are, in sort of ‘we’re all in the same boat’ terms. To clarify, we’re skint. We have a mortgage, and we have a broken house which we are trying to fix ourselves, to save money, and because we want to do things properly. He gets more than my monthly salary in a pension, ignoring the money he has until now received from his tenants. His wife gets well over my salary in maintenance from her ex-husband.

- My stepsister has attempted to kill herself and is now in a psychiatric hospital being evaluated. It looks like she’ll be there for some months. We’re not really sure why, or what’s going on with her, and it seems like she feels the same.

- I’m knackered. The witchling is teething, apparently two nasty teeth at the same time, and has been waking up quite a lot. We’re contemplating night-weaning, when these teeth are through, because, at eighteen months, we’re starting to think that unless we get some sleep pretty soon, we’re going to continue catching all the bastard illnesses that come our way, and the witchling will remain an only child, neither of which is what we’d like, ideally. I feel like a shitty parent for contemplating the weaning (even if it’s only at night), and it doesn’t sit right with me, really, despite the tiredness. But then I also feel like a shitty parent for being knackered, constantly ill (and of course missing lots of time from work, which then in turn makes me feel like a shitty worky-person), and reasonably un-self-starterish and uninspired in terms of doing things other than those things which absolutely must be done to keep us going, i.e. grocery-shopping, housework, and other such fancies. To be the parent I want to be, I need more sleep, I think. I want to be that oasis of zen-like calm who whacks out creativity at the merest whim while dandling a baby on one arm and mowing the lawn with a handknitted yoghurt pot. Instead of this, I’m more like a walking zombie on damage limitation (though not all the time, I should add – we do manage creative things, even though I feel crap about this at the moment).

- I have got to go to a supermarket tomorrow due to a spectacular lack of planning.

- We went for tea and mincepies with some lovely people down the road today. They have been in their house for six months. It only needs a coat of paint. I think I hate them. Predictably, they had bought a Christmas tree, a very pretty Christmas tree, from the farm up the road. We can’t afford said Christmas tree. The tiny daughter loves Christmas lights, but I don’t know if we will manage it this year – £30 upwards is a shitload of money. The aged parent said some time ago that he was sending us a cheque for £100; it has yet to materialise, and experience has taught me not to rely on this sort of thing.

- December 14 marked nine years since my mother died. This time of year always calls on me to walk a very careful path between ‘ooh isn’t it lovely to have winter and cooking and presents and solstices and whatnot’ and ‘I want my mum – I know I’m an adult, but I just want my mum; things would all be better if only I could have my mum back. Now would work’. I’m feeling the latter quite acutely at the moment.

The not-shit:

- We got the new oven and hob wired in. It’s a different world. The oven: it heats up in less than ten minutes.

- I have only got to work three days this week.

- We have the wood for the worktops in the kitchen, and the wax to protect them.

- I have finished Christmas shopping.

- The tiny daughter remains adorable, despite the nightly wakings.

- The cats are actually using the two-tier basket, bought in a bid to regain control of the sofas, which now lives near the stove.

I’m not really writing because of most of the ‘the shit’ list, but I’m still here, and when this lot of shit has passed, I’ll probably get back to writing more regularly. That’s my intention. For now, I think all I’m going to do is whinge, so I’m going to try not to do that, because, while wallowing can help in the short-term, as a naturally optimistic person, I think I need to a) find a practical solution to at least some of these things, and b) concentrate on the positives. So, in the meantime, how about you all distract me with entertaining tales of festive jollity? Or, possibly better still, amusing anecdotes featuring recoverable disasters?

I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this previously, but it occurred to me yet again today how very much I appreciate one aspect – at least! – of being an adult: the ability to create one’s own traditions, and to develop one’s own routines and rhythms to support both those traditions and one’s ordinary, everyday life.  When I was little, my parents were not big on routine, nor on tradition, I realise. We had very few things that happened routinely, and fewer things to which we returned each year, say, or each season; this, perhaps, explains why I find such things so comforting. We never went grocery-shopping routinely (and indeed both parents seemed slightly scornful of such a concept), meaning we often had last-minute dashes out for dinner ingredients;* more routine, if one can call them that, were the spontaneous day-trips of three-hundred-mile roundtrips, which normally started at ten in the morning, meaning late arrivals and even later returns home. My parents spent a lot of my childhood playing for folk dances, which meant I spent many evenings half-asleep behind stage curtains, or curled up in the back of the car, quilt spread between amplifier kit and a stray violin case; Morris men late on summer evenings, chucking those mysterious sticky-things about the place in a vaguely sinister manner, ploughmen’s dinners, drafty tents and midges circling half-empty pints of cider – all things I associate with life before the age of, say, ten. My father enjoyed being centre-stage – he still does, though he does less playing of this variety now, preferring orchestral stuff – and being out preceding one’s reputation doesn’t really sit well with a shopping list and a meal rota. My mother’s part in this chaotic existence was largely determined by the fact that I just don’t think she was very interested in having established patterns of existence. She longed for them, in some ways, I think – the security of knowing what will happen and when – but just couldn’t quite summon up the enthusiasm needed to turn ideas into reality. When she and I lived on our own after the aged parent moved to London to live with his then-girlfriend, my mother was a different woman – much tidier, much more organised. I wonder now who was the chaos-perpetrator, and I think it was probably my father, though to my knowledge she never made a conscious decision to step away from that.

Aaaaanyway, the point is that I think the reason I love order, and rhythm, so much, is that I experienced very little of it as a child. Now, I ground myself through the patterns which shape our lives. Quercus, the witchling and I start each morning curled up in our big bed in a largely dark room, hiding, feeding (in the witchling’s case), and generally waking up as slowly as possible. We finish each day with stories, the quiet dark of lamplight, and a bevy of kisses, as this is the witchling’s current fascination. Our days follow the same pattern, awash with constantly evolving patterns reassuring at once in their adaptability and their reliability. In the ten years we have been together, Quercus and I have evolved seasonal patterns too – Christmas, for example, now includes a cake made with dark chocolate, fruit and spices, a tree which arrives on the solstice, and Pfeffernüsse. We have non-chocolate-related calendars, homemade stockings, and far too many satsumas. Homemade puddings and mincemeat biscuits, this year mashed into submission by the witchling’s tiny fists. A real tree, and fircones, biscuits and felted hearts and stars to go on it.

It’s so, so, so nice to be the person who decides when and how we do these things. Not to have to wait and hope and wonder if things will work out the way you’d like, but to take charge and make it so. (I can never say that without thinking of that chap in Star Trek.) Part of me appreciates the notion that the witchling, as a very small person, seems to thrive on the gentle repetition of our daily lives, but part of me is aware that she is not the only one. At the moment, it seems that the spontaneity I experienced as a child was enough to be going on with; the routines we have evolved seem to support me every bit as much as they do my child. Does this mean she’ll be a thrill-seeking travel addict, I wonder? Is it as simple as a step away from what one experiences in one’s own childhood? Probably not, given that Quercus’s early childhood was pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum – he can’t remember a week where no shopping was planned, nor a journey made without preparation – yet he too thrives on the existence of certain rhythms.

And you? Do you do things differently each day, each week, each year? Do the traditions of your childhood reassure or restrict you? Do tell. I am all agog. (Can one be partially agog, I wonder?)

*Ironically, this lack of routine is now such a well-established thing in relation to the aged parent that one can almost call it a tradition.

The aged parent has just departed after a very pleasant visit which would have been improved only by the absence of my wretched cough, now in its third week and countering attack from a second course of antibiotics and steroids. We are busy on the kitchen – Quercus is machining lengths of oak as I type, and we have the carcasses of the base units in place, together with the floors for them and the side panels which divide them in two and whatnot – and I’m not in a very writerly space as a result; mostly the witchling and I have been going out for lots of little walks (she walked about a mile the other day, and was still faintly protesty when I suggested that she might need carrying for a bit towards the end), doing ridiculously sticky activities involving glue and coloured paper and – in my less sane moments – glitter, and generally enjoying the best bits of winter together. I am also delighted to have found a picture I drew for her when I was pregnant – there was a gap on the page left for the baby’s name, as we didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl when I drew it – and have started to finish it off, using some v. gorgeous watercolour pencils I self-indulgently bought some time ago.

Other than that, it’s knitting (on the second sleeve of her cardigan now, and have done the fronts and the back), blanket-stitching felt hearts and stars to go on the Chrimbly tree (which is assuming we either rob a bank or steal one, frankly, given the prices they’re going for this year – they mostly seem to start at about £30 for six foot, which seems a tad scary…), and the continual dusting involved in woodworky things.

Egad.