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…

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.

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.

It was my birthday on Friday. Mostly, the day consisted of gloating over the rather dandy selection of presents which, er, presented themselves, together with far more cake-eating than is generally advisable, and a spot of pottering around the shops in Exeter (something I do increasingly rarely, though I’m delighted to find that a small shop to which I’ve been going since I first came to Devon in 1998 remains a dead-cert for me; it probably says it all that its defining feature when you walk through the door is the colourful nature of its goodies) followed by a walk at the sea as it was getting dark. These days, the witchling is a sufficiently confident walker that this means a hand held by each parent, and plenty of swinging over puddles. I couldn’t say for sure, but I suspect our glee probably equals her own.

Yesterday we did my official birthday treat, which consisted of a trip to the Yarner Trust’s Christmas fair, up in North Devon. There was some lovelies on offer, including a felting kit which may have made its way into my sticky grasp (and with which I am hoping to create some felted dreadlocks to add to my collection; I never have taken the dreadlocked plunge, despite still lusting after my very own head of dreads, and given the witchling’s love of twiddling my hair, I don’t think the time is quite right at the moment, so I settle for felted dreads bound in amongst my hair in a – mostly futile – attempt to contain the follicular chaos), and we had a very nice lunch in Boscastle before walking the witchling down the harbour and back in the increasingly pouring rain.

The only slight downside to all this is that we’re all in varying stages of a rather unpleasant throat/cough/cold thing, for the second time in a month; the witchling felt more and more pathetic as bedtime drew near, and I felt rather shifty for having taken her out – I often find it hard to decide when to just think ‘to hell with it – out we go, and we’ll all be the better for it’, and when to just stay put and fester indoors. I tend to think fresh air and whatnot is no bad thing, and if I’m not well I do find it easiest to occupy ourselves by going out, rather than kicking about the house.

I’m really, really ready to get past this bit where we’re catching everything going, mind you – this autumn has been a bit of a joke, health-wise. We’ve gone from rarely being ill – I think the year before the witchling was born, we were completely cold-free, despite working in large open-plan offices with huge contingents of germs just waiting to pounce on one’s unsuspecting immune system – to barely recovering from one thing before the next one appears. I’ve just purchased a large and intimidating-looking bottle of Floradix, a vitamin-mineral-tonic-thingy which, if the taste is anything to go by, appears frighteningly good for one. I’ve also stocked up on extra fruit and veg – we normally manage veg with every meal, but other than apples, our fruit intake could be better, so it’s satsuma binge time. I suppose it’s the chronic tiredness that makes us easy targets for germs, but it really is getting tedious; I suspect my cough may indicate some sort of bronchial nonsense, which is just utterly loathsome. So, anyone out there got any suggestions for fighting this sort of thing off? My normal weapons – ginger, honey, lemon, garlic, fruit and veg and Eating Properly And None Of That Junk You Think Will Give You Energy – just don’t seem to be keeping things at bay…

Urgle. No idea where the last week went, apart from the bit that I spent in West Sussex, isolated from the pernicious influences of the internet and all that sparkles therein. This made me realise, once again, how much time I spend pratting about online when I should be getting on with the things I constantly moan about not having time for. Gods, what a sentence. I spent evenings reading (three entire books knocked off in the space of five days, which is pretty good going, even by my speed-reading standards) and knitting, with the result that I’ve finished the back and half of the front of a cardigan for the tiny daughter, and I’ve decided to keep up this rather lower-profile internet useage. For one thing, it makes me value the time I do spend online, rather than just obsessively hitting ‘refresh’ on my feed reader, and it also means that we’re back to spending evenings DOING THINGS together, rather than slumped in front of some film or other, courtesy of various websites. It’s funny – when we got rid of our telly, both Quercus and I felt good about it, not least as we’d hardly watched it for months. But then, when I’m tired and not getting much sleep, I seem to gravitate towards the internet in much the same way that I would have used television in days gone by – not activity, as such, but a sort of real-life-is-paused thing that lets you off the hook of living. Well, enough, says I. I reclaim the time I spend reading Go Fug Yourself (which is mostly about people I’ve never heard of, anyway), and I claw back the hours lost to Facebook and Twitter (which has never really caught me in the way it has others, but which is still handy for procrastination purposes), and I brandish knitting needles and crafty bits and bobs, and I depart the parish to prepare bits of card for the tiny daughter and I to attempt to transform into an advent calendar later on. (And no, I have not turned to the church for comfort in my hour of need, but I do like to celebrate seasonal whatsits, and the notion of advent calendars thus appeals to my generally-ridiculously-excited affection for midwinter.)

I hasten to add that I don’t consider this blog, nor my reading of other people’s blogs and the commenting thereon, to be part of my problematic nonsense time online; genuine interaction I value very highly, but pratting about on sites in which I’m not even really interested, simply because I can’t be arsed to get off my backside and get on with things, despite feeling shitty about not doing so, is just not on. So there. Also, I am determined that the tiny daughter shan’t be exposed to the internet to the extent that it becomes part of the background noise that other people experience as the constantly-on television; the last thing I want is for her to feel that she’s not interesting enough to be put before the compulsive checking of email. So, it’s back to basics: no iBook if she’s awake, apart from the odd phone number-checking moment, or things of that ilk.

Right. As you were. And coming soon: oak kitchens, the building thereof; multicoloured tiles, the drooling over thereof; chocolate fudge, the vast consumption thereof; and many more such nonsensical things, as the fancy taketh me.

How are you all?

I’ve seen a new meme floating around the atmos in the last few days, one which focuses on what people are reading, and what their little ones are reading too. I’m not feeling collected enough to join in officially, but I did want to witter on about a couple of books, so this seems an apt time to do so.

The tiny daughter’s favourite thing is a book. She also likes her lighthouse (which, consisting of wooden rings of different colours, is one of my favourites too), and her wooden hedgehog (which is also wooden rings, one each of red, two shades of orange and yellow, but with the added bonus of varying numbers of holes drilled into them so that in order to fit on the hedgehog’s base, the alignment must also be sorted out the right way; this has kept her going back for more when I think other stacking toys might have become dull by now), but still, if she’s ever bored or fractious, a book is the first thing we go for. Recently, her ability to look you in the eye, attempting to keep the tell-tale grin off her face before she beetles off around the corner to run away and hide, has only added to the utter joy I feel when we sit down to read together.

Current favourites are Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper, No Matter What by Debi Gliori, and Keep Love in Your Heart, Little One by Giles Andreae and Clara Vulliamy. Of course, they’re partly my favourites, too – the illustrations for all three are just so scrumptious that I want to climb into the pages and set up house there. I mean, look at these, from Keep Love in Your Heart:*

Big is even wearing striped socks. What’s not to like?

As for reading material of a more adult nature, well, I’m struggling at the moment. I read Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves and really enjoyed it; in fact, I intended to do take part in A Clever and Intelligent Discussion of It in October, but somehow that fell by the wayside. Since then, I’ve read A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly, and enjoyed that too, but now I’m back to re-reading H. Potter (currently, The Deathly Hallows), and I could do with some recommendations. Recent enjoyments have included (and I feel I should feel shame at this, yet I don’t, somehow) the Twilight saga (saga – !), but I could do with something a little meatier to get my teeth into, I think. Suggestions, anyone?

* Yes, I am aware of the slightly cloying nature of this title, and yes, there was a time in my life when I probably would have vomited at the very mention of such a phrase, but hey, such is life – I’m a hypocrite.

1. I really, really like Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. To the extent that I’m not at all sure about a film version.

2. It’s been raining here. A lot. The windows we spent weeks stripping and repairing are getting covered in condensation pretty much all day, every day, and we’re wondering if the glass isn’t sealed well enough. We’re also wondering what the buggery to do about it if the quantity of water has nothing to do with sealing, and is instead caused by the fact that it’s single-glazing glass, and it’s really, really thin, because that’s what Listed Buildings insisted on, regardless of the fact that this may well lead to the destruction of the original frames.

3. Quercus is bashing on with the kitchen – the sink is in place, even if not finally, and we are getting the carcasses in place. Suddenly there is an impression of what the space will be, when it’s all done, and it’s a good feeling.

4. I have been meaning to take pictures of the house from various angles, to share the gorgeous all-singing-all-dancing lime rendering we’ve done over this summer, but see point 2 re rain, the persistent presence thereof.

5. Ginger cordial with hot water and honey is the world’s best sore throat treatment. I have now got a prescription of amoxycillin to go at, but am debating whether or not to take it; rampant sore throat and hacking cough aside, I think I’ll shake off the horribleness of not being well in the next day or two, and I do loathe antibiotics.

6. I’m really bored with being ill now. It doesn’t take long for the novelty of sitting in bed at odd times of day to wear off, does it? Not well enough to want to DO anything, but not ill enough to escape finger-gnawing cabin fever.

7. The tiny daughter and I did a pumpkin together on Saturday afternoon. It went pretty well – she only attempted to eat the flesh once, and we managed to roast the seeds to great effect. Less successful was the  cooking of the pumpkin itself – combined with ginger and cinnamon, the overall effect was still pretty grim. Hey ho – perhaps pumpkins and I are destined to enjoy a relationship based on two things: candles and compost heaps.

8. Is it too predictable to say that I’m quite enjoying Eastwick, a television series based on John Updike’s book The Witches of Eastwick, but that I find the casting of that chap who will always be Benton Fraser as Darryl van Horne a little distracting?

9. I think I’ve lost my knitting mojo, temporarily; I want – in theory – to start knitting the tiny daughter the cardigan I’ve probably mentioned here already, but I just can’t seem to pull my finger out. Instead, I cast on procrastinatory bits and bobs – another hat, for example – but none of these bits and bobs is actually on The List Of Things Which I Am Going To Knit, a list which exists purely to stop me starting things and then realising I’m wasting time, or that they mean the outlay of money, when other projects could be knitting for (what feels like) free (because it’s ages since I shelled out for the materials involved, and thus… yes, I’m revealing way too much about the inner nuttiness of my financial reasonings here, aren’t I? Let’s draw a veil over this bit, and move on…).

10. Do you ever just find that, despite a genuine preference for wholefoods and home-cooked food and general smug lentil-knitting-type living, you just wish you lived next door to a really good pizza takeaway?

I’ve tinkered with my CSS. Please tell me if things look odd, irritating, or ENORMOUS, as I’m using a giant monitor and it’s all gone to my head a bit.

Ta muchly.

You know, some day, at this rate, I may even get around to working out why the search bar’s larger than it should be. Steady, steady; I’ve only had this blog for, er, a year – don’t want to rush these things, do you?

I am such a bad friend. This weekend, I was supposed to go to Bath (about a two-hour drive from here) to meet up with two friends I met as an undergraduate. One of them has a baby a couple of months younger than my own tiny daughter, and the other, to whom I was always closer, is godmother to said infant; the idea was that they would come from London together, and I, armed with sling and baby, would meet them there for a bit of a catch-up, combined with tea-drinking and whatnot. 

I wimped out. 

The plan was suggested about two months ago, and when I agreed, to be honest, it was such a long way off that it didn’t really seem real. I could say that the witchling’s sleep patterns have changed and that made me hesitant. It would be true, but it’s not the reason I didn’t go. I could say that we’ve had ten days of visitors, hard physical work and general bedlam. Again, true, but not the reason I didn’t go. I could even say that, unwittingly, I exposed the witchling to chicken pox early last week, and it’s possible she’s picked it up (thank you, Steiner School, for not mentioning that when you confirmed by phone that the toddler group was running and had space for us to come along to try it out). Again, true, but still not the reason I didn’t go. 

If I’m perfectly honest, I don’t really know why I didn’t go. I suppose, thinking about it, that I feel I have little left in common with these people. One of them, K, was a sort-of friend while we lived in the same halls, but I saw little of her after I met Quercus (and, to be honest, that’s probably true of most people I’ve met since I’ve known Quercus). The other, G, is one of the nicest people I’ve ever known; genuinely lovely, she has resolutely stayed in touch with me, despite my disinclination to leave Devon, while she’s been all over the place, training to be a lawyer and working overseas. She once told me that I am her touchstone for inspiration regarding the combination of career and relationship; as yet, she hasn’t had a serious relationship, but she thinks that the fact that I got a PhD and a man I love means that there must be hope for her. But, other than the loveliness of that comment, we have nothing in common. She is very career-driven, and works sixty-hour weeks regularly as a city lawyer, while I loaf home from work as soon as humanly possible, and do my best to avoid committing to anything even vaguely work-related whenever I can. She openly admits that the thing she wants most is LOTS of money. Well, our buggered house, ancient sweaters, and general discomfort at expenditure of nearly any sort probably speak volumes there; let’s say it’s pretty safe to assume that it’s not really money which motivates me. (I don’t mean to be wanky about that; money is, of course, a necessity for us, as for anyone, but I hope that we don’t put getting it, or conserving it, above everything else.)

I’ve never been very good at keeping in touch with people over long periods of time, and over distance too. I seem to manage one or the other, but both together present too hard a challenge. I feel bad, though, about this one; G is such a nice person, and now that the ship has sailed for this particular meet-up, I feel I should have made more effort, should have gone, should at least have called rather than emailing to say I wouldn’t be able to make it after all. I would hate her to think that I just don’t care; it’s not that, after all. I suppose, though, that the grim truth is that I just don’t care enough. I’d rather spend time with Quercus and the tiny daughter, which, after the adventures of the last ten days, is what we did; it’s been about two weeks since we had any time to ourselves, just to quietly do whatever, just to be, to live life as it happens. Part of me thinks I shouldn’t feel guilty about that, and part of me knows full well that G probably won’t get what that means, and that I am a Bad Friend (TM). Ho hum. When do you just declare, do you think, and accept that some friendships last, and some lapse, and that’s not a bad thing, necessarily?

(On which note, though it’s unlikely, if you are reading this, Mr. Rutherford, please get in touch; we’ve tried calling and emailing, and we do need to talk about the caravan, she said, in serious tones.)

So, cake:

Impromptu Ginger Cake

Ingredients
1 cup dark brown sugar

2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour

2 eggs

A good sprinkle of ginger; probably about a tablespoon 

About a mug of sultanas

A splosh of soya milk as needed

 
Then…
Entire lot in bowl; stir about with suitably nice-feeling wooden spoon, and whack it all in a loaf tin. Took about forty minutes on something like 200°c.

Still laying siege to house; render largely off the south wall now, but a bit of an evil job, all told, and we learn, not really to our surprise, that most of that wall has been reinforced (we assume) with bits and bobs of concrete blocks and old bricks, probably to effect a sort-of cob repair at some point. Of course, let us not speak of the fact that concrete eats away at the cob because it’s so bloody hard while cob is a soft material… We have decided that taking the render off is probably sufficient unto the day; it seems likely that replacing the bricks et al would necessitate major cob repairs (and probably exciting things like acro props, which, while fine in a let’s-be-really-paranoid-even-though-we-don’t-need-them way, are less fun when there’s a real chance that one’s house might collapse without their presence), and we’re not here forever… So, it’s lime rendering still, and patching-up of cob as necessary.

Quercus has a small scaffolding tower put up against one wall of the house, and armed with an intense frown and an SDS drill, he’s chiselling the render off, bit by bit. So far, we have most of the south wall clear, and some of the west, but we’ve also found that most of the west wall is covered with chicken wire underneath the render; not quite sure if that’s to give a key for the render on an otherwise very dusty surface, or because the cob was thought to be utterly buggered, but either way, preserving its presence seems a good idea. We’ll get more lime delivered next week, ironically just as our lane is closed for thirty-five days, which might make for some interesting manouevres on the part of the various drivers involved, and, possibly, on the part of any hedges foolish enough to put themselves in the way. (The lane closure is because the surface of the road has become, well, insubstantial, shall we say. There are potholes large enough to eat buses, and odd bumps which regularly cause cars to ground in the middle.)

Other than that, the Steiner School thing was thought-provoking, though I’m still not quite sure what I think (Steiner Schools: an interesting and informative alternative to mainstream education, or a bunch of smug lentil-eating tossers – discuss); the toddler group is over until next September, so we’ll figure out whether or not it’s something we want for the witchling over the summer, I suppose. In between trundling shitloads of rubble from one end of the garden to the other. Oh, and demolishing various sheds. And sorting the windows. And the buggered plasterwork. 

And buying another set of little lighties.

Because every house needs at least twelve sets of little lighties. 

Right?

… Right?

- The visit from the paternal relative (+ wife) went well; they both loved the witchling, and this resulted in lots of laughter, tickling, and general adoration, which the witchling lapped up. She was incredibly good-natured with her visitors, even managing a forty-minute car-drive home when she was really ready to sleep (she finds cars a bit too stimulating to sleep, generally, although she did nod off about five minutes from home, of course…) without a hint of displeasure, despite yawning her head off and clearly wanting some peace and quiet. We had a very nice time out in Totnes on Saturday; new dungarees were purchased for her from one of my very favourite clothes shops courtesy of the aged parent, and we had a gorgeous lunch in my favourite Totnesian eatery, Willow.  I am, however, cursing myself for not having bought a chest of drawers I saw at the market there – it was really quite good, and would have done for the space we have earmarked for drawers in the kitchen, but I sort of havered until we had to leave, and now I kick myself. However, a rootle in the shed later that day produced a forgotten demijohn of sloe wine; silver linings and all that. 

- An impromptu ginger cake I baked on Friday turned out particularly well; recipe to follow shortly.

- Quercus’s mother is here (the witchling is in danger of over-excitement at this rate, but we are off out together tomorrow on our own, just to give her some [I think much-needed] mama+babe time) and will stay until Thursday; on the plans – render preparation, garden organisation, door-finishing.

- Tomorrow the witchling and I are going to a Steiner School toddler group; I think it’s fairly safe to say that I am a thousand times more excited about it than she is!

You know how some days, the sun is shining, and the sky is blue, and a breeze blows in from the west, and things just feel right? Despite having woken up at five-something yesterday? And despite having spent quite a long time up to the elbows in semi-fermenting honeysuckle? Well, today is one of those days. Something has shifted for me in the last few days. I don’t quite know why, but it’s as if the energy around me has just altered for the better.

That’s really wanky, isn’t it? Sorry about that, but I can’t think of a better way to put it. I’ve been feeling stymied and tired and a little disgruntled for quite a while, in one way or another, for no reason other than just… because.

I think, for one thing, that having children of one’s own digs up, for me, a load of shite that would frankly be best left under the stone it previously relied on for cover; I’ve been introspecting to within an inch of my life, going over and over ground (my mother’s death, her illness, my father’s new relationship, my childhood, my father’s departure when I was a teenager and my mother was first ill) which is boring even to me. And now I think perhaps I am done with it. I think perhaps I am finally getting to the point where I can accept my father, and his involvement in my life (or lack thereof), for what he – and it – is: what he is, and what he can be at this moment. I am not his top priority, and I haven’t been for a long time. And that’s OK – I have priorities of my own these days, and Doc Witch’s post has just reminded me that actually, I chose this life, and I chose the things I do with it, and that any feelings of failure are created by measuring myself by other people’s standards or expectations, rather than because I’m actually fucking things up. So, yes: earwigs on the bathroom floor, grout which isn’t quite high enough, dead shrews littered artistically across the sitting room carpet, and a Baby Belling oven which is clearly sent from hell (along with a variety of mechanical and/or electrical fiends) – they are all part of this life that I have chosen. A life which includes a marriage I grew up thinking probably didn’t exist except in fairy stories (not that it’s fairy-tale, but, seriously, I do consider myself disgustingly fortunate in Quercus – I mean, as I write this, the man is going round the supermarket with the witchlet, picking up detergent, sugar for wine-making and whatnot, all having hung out the washing earlier this morning: what is not to like, I ask?), a child who makes me smile to myself in the middle of the night, a pair of cats who I adore (though don’t tell Wixon I said that; it’ll only encourage his twisted firestarter tendencies), a house which outwardly reflects so strongly who I feel myself to be (down-at-heel, but hopefully interesting nonetheless), and which Quercus loves as I do, and a life which, while there are still areas to work on, is, broadly-speaking, pretty damn good.

So here’s to taking ownership of one’s life, and of saying that the good stuff is all good, and the crap? Well, it’s transitory. (And sometimes, quite useful for comedy value.)

You know, it’s not often that I get the chance to sit down and write two blog posts in one day these days. Gone are the heady (for which read ‘crappy’) days of full-time PhD study, when blog posts felt almost like work because they included the writing of words, albeit words which were completely unrelated to anything I should have been writing about, and in their place are days of almost frenetic activity, of organised chaos, of places and times and movement and change and learning and teaching and… so on. The coin has two sides: one side is that Quercus and I manage not to use a nursery for the witchling, and can look after her ourselves, which is what we always wanted to do if we had children, but the other side of that is that we seem always to be en route. En route to work, en route home, en route to pick up groceries, en route to do, do, do. We have three-quarters of an hour between my leaving work and Quercus arriving at his desk, and a twenty-five mile commute split between the two of us; it’s tight, to say the least. BUT – and this is a big but – it’s working, I think, and we are settling into a new pattern, and I’m so very glad that when I leave in the morning, it’s Quercus who is holding the witchling as she looks a little uncertain about my departure, and Quercus who jollies her along with a wooden spoon and a quick waltz around the kitchen, and Quercus who gives her expressed breast-milk mid-morning before her snooze, which she takes in her own cot, surrounded by her own things, in her own house.

Anyhoo.

For some reason, I’m feeling introspective. Perhaps it’s an impending paternal visit. Or perhaps it’s the making of wine, which always reminds me of my mother and of my father, who first taught me such delights. And with introspection comes memory, and, often, thoughts of my mother. What would she make of my life now? Of our life here, all three of us, together in our tiny and slightly chaotic house? Of the new extension? Of the red paint? Of the fact that the house speaks of her in the things it houses, of her influence on my life, of my love for her, of the life I lived, the person I was, when she was last on this earth? I hope – I think – she would be happy. She would be pleased. She would be proud.

And that makes me think of the time when she was last on this earth. My twenty-second birthday preceded her death by a matter of days; I remember knowing that she was going to die long before the doctors confirmed it to us. I could see it in her; one simply couldn’t look like that, and be going to make old bones. I tried to hide my knowledge, and I hope I did; I know that we didn’t speak of what was coming, only of what was, though we did take, simultaneously and spontaneously, to saying we loved each other every time I left the hospice for any length of time.

And after she died, just before Christmas, I muddled my way through the assessments I had to complete in order to stay at university and maintain my grade average. It sounds uncaring, I always think, but I felt that to drop out would be upsetting to her – she had to leave university after she fractured her skull in a road accident at nineteen, and she never made it back, a fact which always pissed her off. She would have felt responsible for my failure. So I stayed, just barely, and a few weeks later, I went back for the start of term. Back to normality, in some ways, though in a world so altered that even the colour of the sky seemed wrong to me. And one night, long after Quercus and I had gone to bed, I woke suddenly, certain that someone was standing by the bed. I had an attic room in a Victorian terrace that year; my mother had liked the look of it from the photos I’d shown her, because it had reminded her of the room she herself had lived in during her brief university stint. The room was cave-like, with a dormer window at one end and the bed far back in the darker end of the room; I awoke to find just enough light to make out quite clearly a figure by the bed, one with light hair. That is all I can say with any certainty. I was so shocked that I did the cartoon thing of rubbing at my eyes and blinking to make it go away, to no effect. I reached behind me to wake Quercus, and as I turned back, it was gone. I didn’t see it again, whatever it was, but I never lost a feeling of being watched whenever I was in the house alone.

It’s that old cliché, really, isn’t it? There are more things in heaven and earth, and all that. How I have wished it would happen again, but it never has. I once smelt a scent she used to wear while I was in the car with my father, so strongly that we both got out and tried to find the source of it (to no avail), but I’ve never seen anything which could be connected to her since. It’s left me with a certainty that this isn’t it, though; I’ve always had leanings towards ‘alternative’ thinking on the religious/spirituality front, and I feel very strongly that there is something beyond the normal sphere of human existence, and sometimes one gets a glimpse of that.

So, that’s my moment of introspection for today, folks. See what too much Joni Mitchell will do to you?