And you?

I’m still here, and have been meaning to write various things this week, but…

1. I spent Monday to Thursday feeling pretty dire with a sickness bug which meant that my sum total for four days in terms of dining experiences was half a sticky bun and a lot of water.

2. I have 10,000 words to copy-edit and proofread by, well, as soon as I can manage it.

3. We have Quercus’s mother with us so that we can juggle the small girl between us in order to lay a patio, finish various bits of landscaping in the garden, put drains in around the front of the house (there’s a saying about a good hat and decent boots being the best thing for cob houses, and it’s true; we have a good hat in that the roof is Norfolk reed and is in reasonably good nick, but the drainage around the base of the walls has always been utterly rubbish, frankly, so here’s hoping that this will improve things, courtesy of half a mile of flexible perforated pipe), and generally bugger about with the house, because, well, that’s what we do.

4. I spent last weekend on a dumper truck, meaning that this weekend finds me battling the Washing Mountain while realising that the entire house is coated in dust to rival Miss Haversham’s set-up. Hello, housework – long time, no see.

5. The small girl has a yen for a blue dress, so I have been cutting out pieces of fabric today. The material is left over from a tent thingy which Quercus and I knocked up when we were about twenty, so that we could go to various craft fairs and flog our wares (incense, glasses, oils and whatnot) looking suitably exotic; little did I think that I’d be turning it into a dress for my daughter ten years later.

6. I am trying to get my brain around rejigging various bits of my thesis in order to submit an abstract for an academic article to a journal that an old friend of mine set up a few years back. It’s right up my street in terms of its focus; now I just need something which doesn’t sound like the rabid ramblings of a half-cut fruitcake. I’ve also been talking to my examiner from my PhD viva about, well, things, and much to my… delight? disbelief? he thinks I should do something with the research I put together. The words ‘post’ and ‘doc’ may have come together in a sentence. They may have been accompanied by things like ‘inter-departmental’ and ‘supervisor’, and he may have said that he’d like to supervise any project I undertook. It was, er, illuminating, in that it was exciting. Exciting. That was not the reaction I’d thought I would have, but the idea of doing things which really stretch my brain to its (tiny) limits was thrilling, if I’m honest, after months of proofreading idiotic screeds of a dubious nature. I thought I definitely didn’t want to be an academic, and I think that’s probably still the up-shot, but I do like the idea of working my brain, and if I could do it while attached to a university, I suppose it wouldn’t do the freelance work I do any harm at allllll. It’ll probably come to nothing, as funding is scarce these days, and competition is ever-fierce, and the other chap I’d be looking at as a potential co-supervisor is a bit of a law unto himself (as well as being reasonably pompous, if we’re honest), but hey – it made me realise that my PhD is something about which I care sufficiently to make it worth actually pulling my finger out and sorting that abstract. On my examiner’s advice, I’m thinking that, given the other time hoovers currently sucking about the place, if I can get a draft to him (he’s volunteered to read and comment) by November, then that will be just dandy. (Gone are the days of Dire Academic Deadlines of a Brain-Defying Nature, thankfully.)

So. Those are my current preoccupations. And you?

Quercus here again.

Well, that was quite a week! Many things have been fixed, or prepared, or done in some way. I had forgotten how everything takes 3 times as long as one thinks it might. I won’t list the rather long and tedious list of things that have changed, but think it fair to say that it’s been a productive week.

I think I should thank the Earthenwitch for actually upping and offing with the Witchling for a week, as it’s given me the opportunity to spend far more time than I would have done otherwise working on the chateau. I know that they have both been enjoying their time at Gwandma’s house (she is so called by the Witchling) and that they have had a chance to a) rest and b) visit ducks. Always a bonus. I have had a chance to lie in undisturbed this morning, which has been absolutely blissful. The week has seen me up at 5.30 and working til 7 or 8 in the evening; this comes of naturally being an early riser, I think. I do like the feeling of being outside stripping a door or something in brilliant sunshine, while everyone else is asleep. But today it was me who was asleep!

In other news, we are almost ready for the Witchling’s second birthday. Bless her, how can she be two?! I am sure pictures will be posted in due course of both beaming child and of presents. We have a couple of things we have made for her, and I’m particularly pleased with one of them. The other, from me, involved spending some time with a chainsaw in order to make it.

Right. Now I’d better toddle off to make the house look presentable again. Piles of tools in the middle of the kitchen – far simpler than putting them back in the shed every day. Can’t wait – I get my girlies back this afternoon!

Hello. Quercus here.

Well, now that I am all alone, or rather just accompanied by paws and claws, I have taken the liberty of hijacking the tiny white box to ramble about what’s happening here. It’s been very hot here, and spending all day outside has had a curious effect on my skin – I sensibly slathered myself in sun cream, but was unable to reach a section in the middle of my back, and forgot my legs altogether. The resultant blotches may take some time to fade. I have never been a very shirt-off type of person, but in this heat doing hard work all day it seemed like a good idea. Plus I thought the only beings around to see were the cats; Pyewacket turned up her nose in disgust and retired to the pile of sawdust under the chainsaw trestle, and Wixon is too stupid to form an opinion.

So far I have worked for three rather long days, getting up at 5.30 one day and working through until the light started to go. For my own reference and to make me feel good, I have so far broken up the concrete paths all round the house and moved them to the now even more enormous rubble pile outside the back door, despite the temptation to put it all on the Witchling’s newly -laid lawn, which would have been a damn sight more convenient, sanded the render off the porch woodwork, scraped, sanded and cleaned every window in our tiny house (all nine of them; this was actually rather a big deal as they were covered in render and I had to take all the casements out as I went, then reinstall them), cleaned and sanded the fascia / soffit boards, then painted them, dug out a gatepost which was a devil of a job, and started putting guttering up.

Gosh, I’m boring, aren’t I?! Possibly the most irritating bit of it was this morning, when I painted the fascia / soffit boards. Usually the Earthenwitch does painting, particularly when it’s fiddly bits, as she is better at it than I, but I had to do it this time as it had to be finished before the guttering went up. I had primered it the day before, so this morning hoped to do the first of two top coats. We had coughed up our life savings and plumped for a Farrow & Ball number called Railings, in exterior eggshell (well actually the Earthenwitch had sat on me while reading my debit card number out to the nice man on the telephone, leaving me gasping for air and for reeling from the realisation that I had just spent £48.50 [that's a lot of dollars, for our American readers] on 2.5 litres of gunky dark paint; Messrs. Farrow & Ball must be laughing all the way to their extraordinarily large piggy bank), and I had just begun to apply it, up at the top of a very tall and wobbly stepladder, when a bloke appeared round the side of the house. I came down, and he explained that he was a tree chopping chap doing the rounds for the electricity company, and that one of the poles in our garden had about 6m more ivy on it than was allowed. I was delighted that he was prepared to hack it about instead of me, so after a pleasant conversation about wood which they might chop and I might collect, I went back to my painting. The Farrow and Ball had grown a skin. It was OK though, as I stirred it back in. I went back up the teetering ladder and continued. Almost immediately our neighbour appeared, along with two year-old boy and aged hound, who proceeded to make his way indoors to polish off Wixon’s breakfast (much to his horror). They chatted for a minute, then disappeared just as another neighbour, who is an electrician, dropped by to talk to me about some work we need doing. The skin was forming again. I continued, only to be halted five minutes later by a delivery van with bits of house for me, and then again two minutes later by the neighbour / boy / dog, passing the other way. The last straw was when a building supplies lorry turned up with more stuff for us, and I had to pause to direct the chap craning sand over the hedge. Mind you, he was my favourite driver – an animated Italian, who gesticulates wildly and talks almost incomprehensibly while beaming in glee at everything you say.

In the end the Farrow & Balls-up went alright, but took a lot longer than expected.

I have to say it’s very strange to be here on my own. I don’t really like it, although the heavenly bliss of uninterrupted nights (even if I do get up obscenely early) is enjoyable. But I miss my baby. Where is the little voice that demands “pruuuune” at the end of breakfast? Where are the tiny feet that run around upstairs? Where is the little bare naked baby who runs away at bath-time? And where is my garden helper? I miss her enormously. Oh, and I miss the Eathenwitch a bit too.

Right – I’m off for tea. Pizza again (gave up bacon sandwiches after eating nothing else for a day and a bit, and then being very sick; too much salt). Cheerio.

So, I think I’ve finally decided the ol’ hair question, and I think (subject to change, of course, because I am hopelessly indecisive at the best of times, and this is, of course, no different) that I’m going to get my hair dreadlocked. I’m not certain, partly because the person I’d like to do it lives about ninety miles from here, and is currently limited in her transport options, having been let down a few times by public transport. I have decided pretty much for sure that I don’t want to risk having a go at it myself, courtesy of a few YouTube videos; after all, if I wanted to make a complete mess of my hair, I could just ignore it for a few months, et voila! So, I think getting someone else to do it is probably the answer, and you’d be surprised (or perhaps you wouldn’t) how few people there are around who do this sort of thing, particularly if you’re familiar with Devon and the south-west’s tendency to attract velvet-shirt-wearing types and the like. Sadly, Quercus doesn’t think he’s up to it in hairdressing terms, and the only other candidate has the nerve to live in Ireland… so that probably rules her out too, at least for the length of time my patience will hold out.

It’s funny, though – thinking, finally, that I actually am going to do this, after years of hankering after other people’s dreads and thinking I’d love to try it some time, has made me all the more interested in reading about other people’s experience, some good, and some bad. Some people have talked about the attitude of other people if you’ve got dreads (assumptions being that you’re into drugs, or a pikey [because having a static caravan, in a right state, in your totally destroyed garden doesn't give that impression at all], or that you never wash, or that you’re morally degenerate), and some have mentioned the practical irritations of finding the right shampoo or abandoning shampoo in favour of apple cider vinegar-based concoctions.

Mentally, I’ve been trying to think how I would feel about people judging me based on my hairstyle. Some of you might remember that the last time I mentioned this, opinions were divided, comments-wise, between ‘yay! for dreads!’ and ‘er – why would you want to do that?’, particularly in relation to the judgement people might form about me and the small girl. I’m not such a hopeless idealist as to pretend that these judgments won’t happen, but I do think that probably, if you’re going to judge me on my hair, it’s unlikely we’d get along particularly well anyway. I know it’s probably not always that simple, but seriously: we are talking about a hairstyle here, not a form of social terrorism, and I imagine that anyone talking to me for more than a second will form judgments about who I am, and what I do, whether I like it or not, and in ways that I may or may not agree with. For example, a colleague recently assumed that I was vegetarian (again). Yes, this is something which happens often, and no, I have no idea why: I think I’ve written before about how it’s possible to look like a vegetarian, and I’m still no closer to answering that, other than the fact that, for most of the people I’ve asked about it,what prompted their assumption was normally either to do with my perceived eco-consciousness, or with the way I dress. Of course, the assumption that I don’t eat meat isn’t a remotely offensive one, and, indeed, it’s not far from the truth in that I don’t eat very much meat, and I try to buy free-range organic meat when I do eat it, and I love love love vegetarian cooking (as most of the recipes here will testify). But it’s still one based on appearances, and I suppose that means it probably goes deeper than just thinking about what someone does or doesn’t eat; my colleague also assumed that I had been to Glastonbury at least once, and that I’d be the person to ask about how to make your own wine. So, no matter what I do with my hair, my appearance seems to give off a dreadlocked vibe, as it were, and surprisingly conservative friends have been all for the idea of a dreadlocked me. (Either that, or I have some very polite friends!)

Practically, I’ve been experimenting with the latter having realised some time ago that shampoo was what made Quercus’s hair more than normally crazy (he’s fine with the sort of eco alternatives, but ‘standard’ shampoo – just no, in so many ways); so far, I’ve tried bicarbonate of soda and a rinse of apple cider vinegar and essential oils, and the results were pretty good in that my hair didn’t need washing half so often, and smelled really delicious in the meantime. I still need to fiddle with quantities, mind you, as a couple of times I’ve ended up with a rather clogged feeling to the ol’ barnet – too much bicarb? Hard water? Soft water? Should I be trying baking powder instead? – but the overall effect is rather good, I think, and my hair behaves much better between washes than it does when I use shampoo (which makes it static, oily-looking far more quickly and prone to that fly-away rubbish); the shift from washing hair every day to washing it once or twice a week has not proved the challenge I’d assumed, in that I haven’t wandered about looking as if I’ve dipped my head in a chip-shop, and this bodes well, methinks, for the once-a-week washing epic which dreadlocks – and their attendant drying – might entail.

Gosh.

And there was me thinking this would be a quick post.

So, anyone out there with any advice on the alternatives to shampoo? Any experiences of dreads? And any thoughts on the whole appearance/reality dynamic?

Right. Back to the ginger wine, now, then, as we all have stinking colds, and GW is my drug of choice in this situation – bugger the paracetamol: pass the alcohol!

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?