This is the sight that greets me most mornings when I open up the cupboard which now hides the fridge away: we’re getting about two dozen eggs a week, lots of them blue, and Quercus, whose real life is interrupted daily by a large office, is doing a roaring trade in selling; so much so, in fact, that we sometimes find ourselves eggless, which is ironic, given that we’re the ones with the chooks. I’m particularly delighted with the blue eggs, I confess; the colour of them is simply gorgeous in person, and it’s particularly touching that one can tell which hen laid which egg by the colour. Cobweb, who came into lay before Nightshade, lays eggs which are on the yellower-end of blue (two of hers are at the back of this photo), while Nightshade delivers turquoise confections which you can see in the foreground. Then we have darker, speckled eggs courtesy of Liquorice, our Barnevelder, and the paler ones from the two Buff Sussex hens, who – and I swear they do this on purpose to increase the frustration of not being able to tell them apart because their markings are so similar – seem to produce identical eggs.  I’m starting to think that white eggs might be nice too… Or perhaps green ones. Anyone got any breed suggestions? (And yes, I’m playing with fire here – I remember a conversation with Quercus, oh, two years ago, where I said ‘it’ll only be two of them; no, really!’.)

In other news, I have acquired the most fantastic fabric. It has got wols on it. Wols, I tell you. Shortly, it will be transformed into a blind for the witchling’s window; not before time, I might add, as British summer time has only been prevented from fucking with our normal morning timings by the fact that the poor tiny daughter has been rather sick for the last day or so. I know I’m in a lucky percentage here, mind you, in that this is only the second time she has been ill, and she seems to be getting over it pretty rapidly, but I did feel for her yesterday when gravity appeared to be suffering a regrettable performance lapse in relation to her tum. I am glad that she is still breastfed; it seems to be the one substance which stays down.

In other, other news, the thing I wrote for Juno Magazine is going to be in the next issue. I am quite excited. Oh yes.

ARG. 

In fact, no, wait – ARRRRRG. 

That feels a bit better, but not much. 

So. Picture the scene: Quercus hasn’t had a car since he sold his beloved CX back in January, and he’s thus been using mine to go to and from work, which is fine, though as we live in the sticks, it’s rather circumscribed my activities (no bad thing – can’t get to shops, thus can’t spend money, or something, and no, now is not a good time to mention the positive plethora of delightful goodies available on the internet). All this time, he has been hunting down his particular vehicle of choice. Eventually, he found one, and managed to win the auction on eBay. So far, so good – good car, good price – but of course the car had to be in Manchester, didn’t it? For those not in the know, that’s about four hours from here by road, and more than that by train courtesy of the need to change in various places and of course the ineptitude of our train system here in the UK. But lo! my father was visiting! And lo! doth he not live within spitting distance – OK, within forty miles – of the car’s location? And lo! wast he not returning thither on Friday, i.e. today, the very day which Quercus had arranged to collect said vehicle? Verily – OK, let’s cut the crap, shall we? – he asked for a lift. And then there was a TREMENDOUS quantity of discussion. First, it was fine to give him a lift. To the door! Not a problem. Then, the car’s location appeared to move. Or something. Suddenly, it was a long way to go, and really not that close at all to where the parent needed to be, and perhaps he could take Quercus to a station en route? But not too en route – after all, he hadn’t planned to drive that way, and it would add ever such a long time to his already-long journey. And he and the new wife were planning on going out that night, so he’d need to be back in good time, and leaving at the very latest at about seven, and he couldn’t guarantee that they’d get to a particular station at a particular time, so it would be tricky for Quercus to book tickets, and didn’t Quercus understand that the M6 is not to be trifled with? At any cost? At any time? And Birmingham – who would drive to THE WEST of Birmingham? Who would do such a thing? 

So Quercus gritted his teeth, said nothing, and quietly booked a ridiculously early train from Devon to Manchester. He got up at 5.15 this morning, drove to Exeter, and got on said train. At 11.00, he was in Manchester. At 11.30 he discovered that, far from meeting him at the station as arranged, the car’s seller had sent ‘a friend’. And that the car, far from being in perfect condition as stated in the auction blurb, needed a new clutch. And that, while there was a V5 document* with the car, it wasn’t in the seller’s name. And it wasn’t in the friend’s name. In fact, the friend claimed it belonged to his mother. Who wasn’t with him. Or contactable. Or receiving the money for the car, as the seller wanted it paid to him, in cash, on collection. At this point, Quercus walked away, much to the seller’s (phone-based) wrath. So now he is stuck in Manchester, looking at £126 of train fare, or a £50 bus ticket for tomorrow morning. And he is still carless, of course. And he’s used a day of leave to do this. 

Also, I have a stiff neck which is bordering on insanity-inducing, courtesy, I think, of strange sleeping postures when the witchling came and slept with us for the last couple of nights (teething woes).

It is safe to say that today has not been one of glorious sunshine.  

*The UK thing which says you own the car and haven’t, well, pinched it, or cut-and-shut it, or anything else nasty or unsavoury.

So here he is: I’m delighted with him, I confess, and not a little surprised. I had had it in mind to make the tiny daughter an owl (note to self: must stop calling a wol, or she’ll learn the mangled English that Quercus and I use every day as her only form of language…) for a little while, and then he sort of appeared over last weekend. It gives me hope for future projects – I love making things for the witchling and for Quercus, and I seem to be getting a bit better at it, which is nice. Recent months have seen Quercus getting a knitted scarf, the witchling two pairs of legwarmers, two hats (a vest is on my needles now, but, being me, I have first to get through the inevitable cast-on-realise-too-small/large-unpick-start-again-x-4 bit – if only there were a way to sidetrack whichever god it is that is so vindictive about my starting knitting things), various felted objects, a blanket and something else which escapes me for now. Oh yes – I knitted Quercus a hat with the most beautiful wool from Felt Studio UK, somehow managing to do so without a pattern and with only a modicum of swearing. Well, OK, maybe slightly more than a modicum, but still… Next up: more hats I think, including a very nice one which looks a bit like a beehive (and is much more attractive than that makes it sound), that knitted vest (once the necessary casting-on palaver has been overcome, of course), and the rest of the felted alphabet (and do look at the comments on the previous post for Blue Witch‘s thoughts on lower/upper-case letters; I’d never thought of it, so am now thinking about starting a new set of lower-case ones and keeping the upper- for later). I’d also really like to knit some wrist-warmer thingies; does anyone know of a good, fairly idiot-proof pattern? I love knitting on double-pointed needles, and would like to do something with a thumb-hole, but I’m too dense to work it out on my own without going very, very cross-eyed indeed.

- The aged parent arrived yesterday. Thanks for all your lovely comments, and I’m sorry I’m so rubbish at replying at the moment; I read every one avidly, but a combination of house-cleaning as if my life depended on it (come to think of it, with grime levels like that, life probably does depend on it!), going to work again, freelance work, website design and general parentingy bits and bats have meant I am spending a goodly portion of each day flapping about headless-chicken-style, and am thus not spending much time online because I know oh-so-well from my PhD days how much time can disappear when one thinks ‘I’ll just have quick look at so-and-so’.

- I have a new love: felted letters, the creation thereof. I am making the witchling a complete set; thus far, we have a heart (not strictly a letter, but, well, the spirit moved moved me, OK?), a capital ‘J’, a capital ‘N’, and a ‘U’.

- Second only to my love of felted letters is the strength of my affection for Ælfric, a corduroy owl I made over the weekend. He is a sprauncy flowery cord, for the most part, with a felted face and wings which crunkle courtesy of having the window from an envelope secreted about his person. He is, of course, destined for the witchling’s little paws, but I confess that handing him over will not be without a struggle, for he is a mighty owl indeed. I may post pictures, in fact, when I am sure that the lure exerted by Etsy, always strong, is not at siren strength, which, given the preponderance of felted goodness currently on display over there, always represents something of a challenge to my buy-nothing-unpaid-maternity-trimester resolution.

- I am weighing up whether or not to pay for a listing on a website which is supposedly the best place for freelancers to advertise; it’s £70 a year, which, while it may not sound substantial, is a lot of money to us at the moment, bearing in mind our financial context – very little income presently, and some big bills going out (water connection, various car things [Quercus has finally bought a replacement for the CX - still-much-missed-but-was-the-right-decision-did-I-mention-the-welding-it-needed; he collects it on Friday, all being well, from the frozen North], and now our arseing fridge, always something of a beast, has decided that coolness is overrated, and, actually, it would quite like a new thermostat, thank you very much), and I’m not going to get paid again until nearly May. That said, Dr. Anna, a very lovely friend from my MA and PhD days, has a listing with said chaps, and frequently bumps work my way as she is snowed under with Proper Academic Work, and thus has little time to, you know, draw breath, let alone take on freelance stuff. So… worth it? Not worth it? Tricky one.

I leave you with news that I recently succeeded in making chocolate cookies so pleasant that I almost wish I hadn’t worked them out; naturally, I shall condemning you all to being as fat as I shall surely be, should I ever make more be sharing the recipe with the world as soon as time permits.

Hmm. It transpires that the aged parent, which is to say my father, is coming to visit on Monday. Unlike Quercus and myself, he is not sufficiently pikey as to make the caravan, a lumbering beast of unknown antiquity which arrived in our garden at the beginning of the building work and has yet to realise it is now little more than a garden ornament of dubious style and taste, an attractive prospect, so he is going to stay in a small hotel thing up the road.

It’s strange. I haven’t seen him since October, when he arrived with virtually no warning, stayed less than twenty-four hours, told Quercus’s mother how ‘cross’ the tiny daughter seemed, and departed the parish. He came largely because he was bored, I felt; mid-house-move, he brought some boxes of things from what was once my family home, largely things which I’d already told him I didn’t want and hadn’t got room for. It was strange, awkward. He dropped hints about how we should go and visit them in their new home at Christmas; this being our first Christmas with the tiny daughter, and it having been A Bit Of A Year, what with the tiny daughter’s arrival, the ending of the PhD, and the building of the extension (complete with my seven-week absence due to the lack of running water and whatnot), we just wanted some time off, quietly, sitting and staring at a Chrimbly tree without the harassing tones of relatives to whom one isn’t really related, if you know what I mean. And that was it – I haven’t seen him since. We speak on the phone from time to time – he tells me how fantastic Wife II is, and how she does this/that/t’other which is extraordinary/talented/creative/hard-working, and I sort of verbally nod and smile. Sometimes this pattern varies, and he asks how the tiny daughter is before moving swiftly on to more pressing matters such as, for example, the latest orchestra he has started, or the programme on a forthcoming concert.

It’s hard, really hard, not to feel very saddened by this, particularly in relation to the tiny daughter. I don’t want to have to beg him to feel interested in her, jumping up and down, trying to reach the bottom of his jacket so I can tug on it and get him to look our way. I know I shouldn’t have to ask him to take an interest, and if I do have to, then it’s not worth it. But having spent a lifetime feeling that he wasn’t really interested unless I did exactly what he wanted me to do, it’s hard to shake the habit, I suppose. So I view this forthcoming visit with a curious mixture of nervousness and disbelief – I can’t believe he’s actually coming for starters – and I worry about his reactions to the witchling. I just want him to see for himself how lovely she is, how exciting, how interesting. And I fear that all he sees is Generic Baby, regardless of her being my daughter, his granddaughter, a visual reminder of my dead mother (though perhaps that says it all). He used to tell me almost proudly that he loved me because I am me, and not because I was his daughter; he pointed out his relationship with my brother, which, always pretty piss-poor, he used to illustrate his idea that water is thicker than blood, as it were. Ironic, then, that I expect, or wish, that he love her because of what she is, rather than who she is. He’ll think what he thinks no matter what I do, so why do I worry, and why do I think I can change this?

1. Each night, after the family bath, the tiny daughter is carried upstairs by one of us, and I sit down with her, in the ridiculously comfortable Poang chair (is it wrong that I found myself thinking that the purchase of said chair represented An Act of Overt Adultness?) for her bedtime feed. It takes about a quarter of an hour, normally, unless she is particularly hungry or half-asleep, and when we’re approaching the last furlong, I bash the footstool on the floor three times using my feet, which is Quercus’s signal to get out of the bath and leg it up the stairs. When he arrives, I wind the tiny daughter, and he lifts her from my arms into his own, snuggling her close into his neck for a last cuddle before he wraps her up in her favourite blanket and settles her into her nest. This is both one of my favourite sights, and a favourite moment – the bit when, sitting in the gentle darkness, I watch her little rump, legs sticking out because of the slightly bulky nighttime nappy, floating up into Quercus’s warm embrace.

2. The hens as they wait by the chicken gate, which separates their run from the rest of the garden (the only way to minimise hen devastation, though, frankly, at present, their attentions could do little to worsen the state of our garden – it’s complete chaos thanks to a combination of utter neglect, building work, and natural bedlam caused by a near-stream which comes right through the sheds when it rains, which, this being Devon, is quite frequently); they gather there any time they see – or indeed hear – one of us near the back door.

3. The lights of the dashboard of my car; I think it’s supposed to be a sort of grown-up grey, but to me it looks like very pale violet.

4. Pyewacket peering over the top of the driftwood larder, an occurrence which always prompts speculation as to quite how she manages to get up there (it’s seven feet tall, and there are no obvious paw-holds).

5. Dark clouds blowing in, a little like this:

6. The stark outline of dead trees.

7. Wixon’s fly-killer face. This involves Wix spotting a fly – or indeed a beetle of virtually any sort, for he is not a fussy cat, in this respect at least – and beginning to chase it. The beginning always goes the same way: mouth half-open, constantly chattering his teeth as if snatching miniature flies from the air in anticipation of his nearing slaughter. The noise which accompanies it is even better – a sort of snap, snap, snapping, complete with little grunts of satisfaction (or frustration, depending on his progress).

8. Spotting Quercus in the back of the orchestra as the tuning begins, and then seeing him flash his eyebrows in appropriate moments during the concert itself, often while playing.

9. Cobwebs decked out in dew.

10. Beech woods, at pretty much any time of year. Preferably those ancient ones, with the odd-shaped hedgey-mounds overlaid with moss to the extent that you can’t really see what’s stone, what root, and what tree

And you?

(Absence due to nothing more exciting than freelance editing work, going into (not freelance) work once a week, invading relatives, and shedloads of DIY. Oh, and yesterday, a day to ourselves – the tiny daughter, Quercus and I went to Tarr Steps on Exmoor, and wandered about in the glorious sunshine, stopping to eat a picnic in indecently warm weather.)

It’s a funny thing, money, isn’t it? This month is the start of the unpaid maternity leave that I’m taking. My income has been gradually reducing since I stopped work last April, from full to half my normal salary, and then to statutory maternity pay, and now, for last three months of the year, nowt. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t begrudge this; indeed, a portion of me still wonders how on earth employers are obliged to pay people who disappear off to do something so completely unrelated to their jobs.

I think, though, that having been working full-time for a reasonably short time, only about eighteen months when I went on leave, means that I haven’t really had chance to get used to actually having money, regular money, and quite a bit of it (for me, at least), coming in. I don’t earn shedloads, but I do get well-paid for the job that I do, and the atmosphere, if not as lovely as it once was (the office has recently become open-plan, and a new style of management has come into fashion, not to mention deeply-inflexible-flexi-time), is not terrible. It could be much worse. And  having had a year and a half or so with only the mortgage and household bills and whatnot to consider meant that I was able to save quite a bit each month, meaning I repaid myself the savings I’d decimated when we bought Earthenhouse, paid off my overdraft (the stuff of life while I was PhDing), and managed to do stuff like, you know, amassing a vast quantity of wool before I could really knit. It helps that my magpie-like tendencies seem to find Things which cost less than £10 ridiculously rewarding, and that, having existed on about £400 a month for a bloody long time, my mind still recoils in horror at the purchasing of things which are expressed in three figures, shrieking ‘come now! Is that really, er, strictly, er, necessary?’ while backpedaling furiously.

(I spent yesterday afternoon scrubbing the windows in the old part of the house – they are bouncy. Bouncy. This does not bode well for our window rehabilitation programme, due to take place this summer. They, I fear, may turn out to be a project which is expressed in three figures.  If we were to get someone else to do it, I think they might be a project which is expressed in four figures. FOUR FIGURES.  Let us move on; I find myself unable to deal with this concept at present.)

So, the long and short of it is that I am setting myself a task. You know that Buy Nothing Day (November 29)? Well, I am having a Buy Nothing Trimester. Obviously, that excludes stuff like groceries, and clothes for the witchling, who has the nerve to be outgrowing lots of her things when it’s still over a month until the next NCT sale, but other than that, the lid is closed, the coffers are empty, and the hand is firmly clamped shut. As someone who spends indecent periods of time drooling over Etsy shops, this is a rather depressing thought in some ways. But as someone who grew up with regular visits from the bailiffs, I think it’s time I got my priorities straight. I don’t want the witchling to have that sort of experience here, and while it’s not bloody likely as we’re nowhere near that, I do want to get through the next period without having to raid my savings and whatnot. I’ve got all this stuff that I’ve gathered up over the years, for a start – wool, fabric, paint, pencils, books – and if now is not the time to take advantage of such a stash, when the hell is? So, coming soon: a blind for the witchling’s window, a knitted vest for her, some other knitting bits and bats, a mended patchwork quilt (my mother made it; it has large holes; anyone point me in the direction of a good tutorial for this sort of thing, as I am a complete numpty, please?), and, hopefully, a patchwork strip quilt for the witchling’s bed made out of cream fabric we bought to cover up the horrendous tables provided in the hall we chose for our wedding bash. I feel that it’s time to translate a lot of intentions into actual, tangible life.

I’m wittering now. I still haven’t really said what I want to say. I’m sort of going through some things in my head at the moment, and I think this is in part a product of that. I feel side-tracked even as I try to express what I’m thinking, as if looking too directly at the subject I’m trying to write about means it simply slides slightly to the left, so that I can’t quite focus properly. I’m still re-examining things with my father, and I haven’t come up with any better answers yet; I don’t think that’s helping. What I wanted to say here had lots to do with priorities, and the need to put the witchling first, and with realising that the important thing is to be here, with her, helping her, looking after her, enjoying the time we have together. In part, having one car between us rather than the two that we’ve always run is changing the way that I think, I find – yesterday, the witchling and I walked up the rather large hill behind our house so that we could see the snow lying on the hills for miles around; it was a beautifully clear, sunny day, and you could probably see fifteen miles, right out to Dartmoor, which, given that we live considerably to the east of Exeter, is no mean feat. And I found myself thinking that this is what life is about. What it should be about.

Oh. I give up. I’m still wittering.

1. The witchling’s hair. It’s a mixture of calendula (from the shampoo we use), various herbs and oils (from the blend I made up for her before she was born), and, well, witchling (though it’s not the same as that newborn smell, which I thought was to be attributed to far too many maternal hormones or something, before I encountered it myself).

2. The smell of the cats’ fur when they’ve been out in the cold nighttime air. I like to snuffle my face into their fur as they warm up and start purring (well, Wixon virtually never stops purring, but still, you get the idea); Pyewacket smells like old powderpuffs, and Wixon smells like dark naughtiness (which is about right).

3. The puff of woodsmoke that comes out of the stove when I open it to throw in a log; this only really happens when the wind is in the right direction, as normally our chimney vents like nobody’s business; you need strong wind from the south for anything to make it out into the room.

4. Washing drying over the stove.

5. Lemon zest.

6. Ground coffee (which I love, though I still wish that it tasted as good as it smells).

7. Valerian.*

8. Leather.

9. That Chrimbly smell you get when you come downstairs to a room with a real Christmas tree in situ.

10. The smell of damp cob – earthy, musty and a little like an old church.

And you?

* This is an all-time favourite, though I’ve tried to avoid getting into oils and scents for this post – there are just too many!

Today the witchling went from being two-thirds to being three-quarters. Well, strictly, she’s been doing that for the last month, but, you know, play along. Nine months she is today, and we celebrated with pancakes, delayed from last (Shrove) Tuesday. Because I am crap with dairy products, we are waiting to give her milk and so forth until she is one, but I have discovered that oat milk, revolting though it may sound, is actually roughly akin to soya milk (apart from the hideous, hideous price tag – £1.60 or so). Oh. Hang on. I always forget – I am in a minority of, er, one in thinking that soya is an acceptable beverage, aren’t I? I’ve tried and tried to persuade Quercus that Earl Grey with soya is the drink of the gods, but thus far, I have failed. Anyhoo. I digress. So, oat milk in one hand, and newly-allowed-egg in t’other, we scoffed down rather more pancakes than one can shake a frying pan at, and the witchling evinced her delight at the proceedings by allowing me to feed her little morsels of pancake from my thumb, an activity reserved for those rare occasions when the food is sufficiently tempting as to overcome her desire to feed herself, by herself, without help from her bloody mama, and preferably without any sort of interaction with facecloths afterwards, thank you very much.

(As an aside, I can’t express my delight in life with the witchling. I really should post about it, come to think of it; I would hate her to think, should she read any of this wittering in the future, that I didn’t post because she wasn’t interesting or enjoyable or what-have-you: it’s largely that I’m busy enjoying myself with her, and thus don’t post! I also don’t want this to be one of those blogs where What Once Was becomes nappies, nappies, nappies – oh, and a few more nappies, if that makes sense.)

One of the things I really, really relish about being an adult with a household of my own is the ability to pick and choose traditions, no matter how bizarre, and to adapt the same for our own twisted purposes. Neither of us is remotely Christian – in fact, quite the opposite, if there is such a thing as the opposite of Christianity – but we do like a pancake, oh yes indeedy, just as we do like a Chrimbly tree. We’ve sort of evolved our own approach to these things.* We have Chrimbly puddings, for example, and the excellent dark solstice cake which graced our table for the first time this year will definitely be making a repeat appearance in future – I’ve been looking for Our Chrimbly Cake Recipe for yonks, but hadn’t found it until that baby came out of the oven. We also have a real Chrimbly tree, and we decorate it with things made anew each year (normally fircones, twig stars and orange slices; the jewel biscuits to which Turquoise Lisa introduced us will also be part of the repertoire from now on too!) Since having the witchling, I’ve been thinking a bit about which things we do, and why, and what we’ll tell her about them when she’s a bit older. I mentioned the concept of season tables and whatnot in my previous post – while I can’t ever see us having something that formal, I do like the idea of having a sort of pattern to the year, and punctuating that pattern with some sort of recognition of the time passing. Preferably an edible punctuation, naturally. Mostly, we do things like Samhain/Hallowe’en, shortest day/winter equinox/Candlemass/St. Lucy’s day, Yule/Chrimbly, Beltain/Midsummer etc. But now I realise we also do things like bonfire night, and the pancake thing. For me, most of it I just enjoy as a passing of the year, as a seasonal change, as a shift in the pattern we follow, though I am aware of the spiritual sides, particularly with the witchcraft/earth-religion-related things. What sort of calendar do most people follow? Do you do what we do? Do you have this and that, from this religion and that? Do you take note of any religious symbolism, or do you just eat the damn pancake, as it were?

*Not the least of which, of course, is the fact that Christmas = Chrimbly here. Or sometimes Crumphole. I don’t know why; blame it on my mother, whose love of buggering about with language is clearly indelibly present in the ol’ DNA.