It’s been a funny old month, thus far. The time I’ve not spent on this organisation/spring clean kick, I’ve mostly been trying to stop. To stop worrying; to stop cleaning; to stop moving, even. Having had persistent back-ache for about five weeks, I’ve accepted the fact that pregnancy for me is fine, provided I know my limits and I take serious, early, repetitive note. So, no long walks, no prolonged standing, minimal lifting and plenty of rest. Which sounds delightful if you can factor in the presence of full-time staff. In the real world, perhaps less-so, but still, I seem to be finding the happy medium, just about, and keeping things afloat.

I always used to think that the whole idea of pregnant people starting to nest and whatnot was probably a load of old horseshit, until I was pregnant with the small girl, when suddenly those cobwebs on the ceiling took on world-ending importance in the middle of the night and so on. This time around, it’s a little bit different in that much of the time I would otherwise have spent lamenting said cobwebs is now devoted to retrieving various garden implements from the hedge, or attempting to stop painty fingers from grabbing soft furnishings, but still, the instinct is there, nonetheless.

We now have a tidy airing cupboard for the first time in, oh, probably ever. All it took to achieve this was the realisation that space, in this case, is not the infinite place they make it out to be in Physics lectures. So, out go the old towels which can’t even remember what colour they used to be (they have now moved on in the karmic chain, to enjoy a new incarnation as wet wipes and dishcloths), out go the ancient pillow cases which were once white, out go the four zillion double quilt covers for which we have no earthly use, given that that still leaves us three doubles just in case, and hey presto! or something less trite: an airing cupboard which doesn’t bit when you open the door.

It’s also been a bit of a month for flux. The small girl has moved from her cot into a bed, in part because she said she wanted a bed of her own, and in part because encouraging that seemed like a good idea, given that the cot will hopefully see further use in the not-too-distant future courtesy of our impending arrival, and a nice gap between occupants seemed a good idea.

So, away went the cot, and in came the single bed, which is very lovely apart from the fact that its arrival caused us to realise that the small girl’s bedroom is only 6′ 5″ across, and most beds are just a couple of inches bigger than that… Which is tedious, in so many ways, not the least of which is that the only solution we could find was to jack the bed up past the skirting board to where the walls are a little wider, meaning the small girl needs a stool to get into bed. It doesn’t make for a very pleasant fall if you happen to tumble out in the night, either; so far, parental fail count: five. Five. Five times she has fallen out of bed in coming up to a fortnight. We can’t fit a straightforward rail, either, because Morpheus appears to have declared a bit of a fatwa about this whole bed situation, and this means that the fittings just don’t. Fit, that is. A trip to Ikea has helped in that we now have decent linen and a quilt the girl loves – feathers, properly snuggly, and a crocodile cycling amongst the stars were always going to be a good combination – but I am wishing that I had a spare £150 so that I could just buy an extendable bed, nice and low, which would fit the space without its tiny occupant needing an oxygen tent.

The small girl, whose name I am considering using these days if only because a nick-name seems a bit trite, really (anyone any thoughts on this? Do you blog and share? Or do you stick with no names?), has also had two days of going to bed without having a last-thing feed. She is two years and nearly ten months, and until the last few weeks has been feeding three times a day, or so: morning, naptime and then at bedtime too. As the naps have begun to taper off, the bedtimes seem to be following suit. The mornings are still going strong, for now at least. I have such mixed feelings about it, predictably. Part of me is ready for her to stop feeding – she is going to be three this summer, she seems so much more grown-up in the last few months, and I can see that she no longer needs it as she once did, although the need for the emotional connection is obviously still there – and I am twenty weeks into my second pregnancy, which has meant some discomfort from time to time… But at the same time, I still find myself saddened by the thought of this part of our relationship coming to an end. It’s been a joy, genuinely, and has given me such a powerful way to comfort, nourish and interact with her, for which I shall always be grateful.

And in amongst all this has been the usual roundelay of cooking, the odd bit of crafty whatsits (felted eggs, which were tremendous fun, and a couple of knitted cowls), the development of dreadlocks (yes, dreadlocks, again, despite my earlier attempt not going the way I’d hoped), and some fairly major landmarks for us in terms of our garden work. All of which, I find, might be fodder for another post, another day. (I want to get back to writing a bit more regularly, if only to get things down, rather than revolving them around in my head, or boring Quercus to tears with The Many Reasons Why I Need That Other Sling For This Baby). For now, curry is calling me, and it’s got a bloody loud voice.

There goes another fortnight or so where I really did mean to sit down and pour forth the usual torrent of venom, but somehow didn’t get round to it.

It is a rainy old day here in Devon, but it is made immeasurably more pleasant by two things:

Thing the First: we have a real, genuine garden path, made with real, genuine stepping stones which Quercus made. Pictures to follow when it is not pissing it down.

Thing the Second: I am working from home for three days a week as of today, because, predictably, I’m getting fairly serious SPD symptoms when sat in an office all morning and driving an hour’s round-trip to get there.

And you? Any Things of Moment on the boil?

• cough, cough, cough • sniff, sniff • grumbling small stomachs • back ache from too much standing and a lot of rocking of small persons who are not very well • cement mixing • homemade stepping stones x 40 • incredibly garlicky hummus • lentil, cheese and tomato loaf • a lot of salad • a small girl who loves her grandma (thank god!) • not enough sleep • not enough fun • knit, knit, knit • ‘MAMAAAAAAA!’ • ‘You mean and horrid, Daddy.’ • again? it’s 3 A.M… • Sherlock Holmes • Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (why has she not written more books yet?) • tea in the sunshine • a cleared-out greenhouse towards which I have not lifted a finger • a clay-covered garden path • fizzy water, only drunk when pregnant • the tired-and-broke desire to spend LOTS OF MONEY on treeeeeeats • silver earrings? • why can’t I find new slippers that aren’t hideous for less than £40? • muddy pawprints • cream throws dyed brown look a lot less disreputable • the workshop now full of our things, and the borrowed garage storage now empty •

And you?

Isn’t it always the way that the weekend sees rain non-stop, and then Monday morning dawns bright and sunny?

Ho hum.

This weekend, Quercus has been trying to get back into the swing of working on our house. The current project is to get the garden work finished (as much as is seasonally possible) by the end of February; we have a block of time set aside for just this very thing, beginning on Friday, and Quercus’s mother is coming to lend an extra pair of hands, which is probably just as well given that this weekend saw me with the first twinges of a back pain suggestive of SPD.* So, Saturday was spent with the small girl and I pottering about the house, sorting out laundry (thrills! deep joy!) and house stuff, and pootling on the patio for tea-breaks with Quercus, who was otherwise engaged in making shelving for the workshop so we can get our tools and general shed paraphernalia sorted out, prior to doing more intensive work as the year goes on.

We’ve had a few weeks of not doing very much around the house, somehow. There are lots of things to do, of course, but somehow, the slump around Christmas just took a while to wear off… so that despite his having worked really hard for a week in early January, we still find ourselves with a list which includes many tasks identified quite a while ago. I think the thing is that it’s difficult to sustain a really brisk pace over a long period of time, particularly when you’re also working, living in a house which requires a lot of just ordinary cleaning and maintenance even to tread water domestically, and bringing up small children on top of that. So, from time to time we just sort of collapse into a small heap of lethargy. Well, I do, at least, and I’m not even the one doing the majority of it. (I like to think of myself as er, ahem, a facilitator.)

But as the weather improves – and we did get some sunshine on Saturday, albeit followed by gale-force winds and pissing rain – and the days lengthen, we remember that somehow, I am fifteen weeks into pregnancy, and before we know it, this whole managing-a-house-with-one-child-plus-jobs-and-renovation malarky will seem like child’s play as newborn chaos reigns and we find ourselves back on rations of sleep which are expressed in minutes with perfect validity. So, the things we’re going to do by the end of this month include:

•  laying the stepping-stone paths (we’re now thinking about using meaty cordwood rounds instead of paving slabs, simply because we can’t seem to find something we like and can afford, despite months and months of hunting) down to the bottom of the garden;

• finishing off the workshop and bringing the contents back from storage;

• rotovating what will be the lawn, which is the largest of our three terraces;

•  grass-seeding;

•  sticking in decent quantities of manure and topsoil where the new growing beds are going to be;

•  planting a few things!

•  clearing out the greenhouse;

•  sorting a waterbutt or two for the workshop;

• plugging gaps in the hedge where necessary.

This, of course, is only half the story – the other side of our garden, which is about the same size as this piece, is completely broken. It’s covered in a combination of a goodly-sized woodpile (which will one day be housed in the barn which Quercus will build for wood storage, but probably not until next year), building supplies and general crud, but we’re thinking sufficient unto the day and all that, so for this spring, it’s the kitchen garden, effectively, which we’re hoping to finish, so that we can then try to work out a way of sorting two of the four rooms in the original house. (For ‘sorting’, read ‘taking down the ceilings; stripping the walls of their crumbling plaster; working out minor details like woodwork, doorframes, cupboards, shelving; reinstating plaster, skirting boards, ceilings and so on’.)

It’s quite daunting, truth be told, and I’m struggling with the feeling of being unable to help beyond the facilitating bit. This is a bit of a recurring problem for me; I like to be in control (‘what? you!? Nooooooo.’) and not being able to be in control does not bring out the best in me. I like to make lists, and to tick things off, and to move swiftly on, and whatnot. And I just can’t, really, when it’s not me who’s doing the things on the list. And it’s not fair of me to want things to move more quickly, and I know that, and I know it’s not helping to chivvy, but oh. It is not easy to park a lifetime of twitchy must-try-harder mental habits.

So, I am hoping that Quercus and I can write a list together, so that I know what’s likely to happen when, and so that I don’t get unrealistic expectations of what might be possible. I can do things to help, of course, like making sure there is cake for a break with tea, and food for dinner which doesn’t take much thought, and enough to drink, and clean working clothes. I can ensure the small girl is happily occupied, and I can make sure that I’m eating well and taking care of myself so that I don’t enter that horribly emotional state which for me often goes with tiredness in pregnancy, meaning that Quercus can Just Get On With It without having to worry about how I’m doing, and whether I’m about to sprout snakes instead of hair. But I so so so wish that we just had pots of money, so that we could get someone to help us do this, so that we could wave a bit of a magic wand and just make some of the list go away, preferably with time enough to spare that the last months of this pregnancy might not be such a balancing act, such a divide-and-conquer approach to our time as the two adults in the house. When you’ve got limited funds, where is that point that decides you on prioritising just getting things done over keeping the small quantities of savings that you’ve accrued…? And did I mention that Quercus may be made redundant at some point in the coming months, as part of UK government cuts to the civil service? Let us not speak of that, actually – we knew that this was a possibility, and I’m hopeful that with careful management, we’ll do just fine. I prefer to be positive about these things, after all.

Friends have been talking to me since I said that I’m pregnant, telling me of the importance of networks, and of local friends upon whom one can rely for emergency childcare, cups of tea, bolt-holes. I do know this, of course, but it’s hard to cultivate these networks when you’re generally always occupied doing something, be it commuting from work or freelance editing or spending time with the small girl or debating paving slabs and heating solutions. I am trying, though, and I’m trying to find out about things like pre-school, and whether or not it is right for us, and other groups to occupy small people, and ways to manage my time which make household-running easier.

Sometimes I’d like to just be pregnant, you know? But then, does that ever happen, I wonder? Or is it just that most people seem to have children at a time in their lives when change is inevitable? Moving house, changing jobs, having other children to think about…?

So. There you go. And you? What are you up to on this (hopefully) sunny Monday morning?

* SPD – to those happy uninitiated readers, this is basically where the ol’ pregnancy hormones get a bit carried away, and your pelvis loosens, meaning that the joints aren’t terribly comfortable. Sometimes this means audible clicking, sometimes ‘just’ aches and pains. Sometimes it means hydrotherapy helps, and sometimes it means crutches. In my last pregnancy I had SPD from about 22 weeks, so it’s not particularly surprising that it may be thinking about starting a bit earlier this time. Tell you what, though: it can fuck right off.

Chrimbly was good – lots of snow and sitting about and then lots of slush and ice and wishing it would sod off while eating mince pies and eyeing up the ginger wine.

Post-Chrimbly – so far, still just cannot believe that I am back to getting up at 6.45 and sitting at a desk for five mornings a week, but other than that, life is good. I have News, but I’m not yet able to share it here because of the, er, width of my readership… But I don’t want to fall completely out of the habit of blogging, which I am in danger of doing if I don’t pull my proverbial out and get on with it.

Ugh.

Which isn’t very helpful, really, is it, but still, it will make sense in due course, I think.

Still to come: this year is going to be the year we destroy the inside of our house and rebuild it. Given that we live in our house rather efficiently, using ALL OF IT ALL THE TIME (well, nearly), it’s going to be quite challenging finding a way to take down ceilings and strip off old plaster while still, well, living here. Knackered it may be at present (and let us not speak of the gaffer tape and wallpaper paste required to preserve wall integrity lately), but it is sort of intact, if that makes sense, and the idea of hacking into that order, even if it is utterly duff in nature and deeply deserving of a refit, is slightly daunting in a way that the kitchen and bathroom just weren’t, given that they are tacked on in an extension. I think the thing is going to be to just move into those rooms (now finished, complete with tiles and grout! of an oatmeal sort of colour!) and try to ignore the chaos beyond the kitchen door.

So, intentions, in a slightly more verbose manner than is strictly decent:

1. Garden: we’re going to have a bit of a January push on sorting out some outstanding business – paths in the muddy hellhole which passes for a garden, some beds dug in for later in the year, some grass seed sown. I’d really like to be able to get back to growing some proper veggies this summer; with the extension self-build and the re-rendering taking over most of the summers since the small girl’s birth, we’ve done little more than tomatoes and the odd herb for three years, so it would be nice to get back to a level of produce which might actually have an impact on our sodding, sodding grocery bill. The intention, then, is that we get path sides in, and find some paving slabs for stepping stones. (My role in this is probably going to be chief bottle-washer and whatnot, as it tends to work out that Quercus does Heavy Muddy Things while I ponce around with the small girl, making something out of felt.)

2. Food: veg boxes. Anyone out there get them? And from whom? And do you like…? We are spending about £65 a week on groceries, and I am determined that January will be the month when we bring that down by a tenner a week. Part of the problem is that food just seems to cost more than it did a few years back, by a disproportionate sum – i.e. 7p for tinned tomatoes in 2005 now = 42p – but we also need to trim how much we cook (we often have leftover rice, for example, but now we’re henless, this ends up composted more than it should), and our tendency to stockpile, which is fine in theory but we never quite seem to get to the bit where we find ourselves shouting smugly ‘ooh – no need to shop this week!’. So, I’m hoping to get more organised, going back to menu plans but perhaps on a fortnightly footing, and maybe switching to veg boxes delivered, with just possibly meat boxes too. These scare me slightly, given my veggie tendencies and lack of familiarity with general Meat Cooking, but I want a change, and I want to get away from spending lots in evil supermarkets, and I’d also like to eat more organically. So, anyone with tuppence-worth to add, please be my guest.

3. TAX RETURN.

4. Organising: we need to start pruning our possessions where possible, after the chaos of building work and having things in storage; when we get to the rendering work later in the year, we’re going to need to pack up the main house and put things away for a while, so it would be useful to have somewhere to put them… This means… sorting out the attic. I’d like to Freecycle/sell/donate to charity half a dozen things this month, and I’d like to organise some of the utter bedlam up there into some semblance of order.

5. Start knitting something. I have shitloads of wool. Oh yes. Now to knit something and actually stick with it, after months of thinking ‘oooh yes, knitting – I remember that’. I’d quite like to do something like a cardigan for myself; I have eight very large balls of pure Cornish wool which I inherited from my mother, and it would be nice to do something with it, finally.

So, a short list, but a corker nonetheless.

Witter, witter.

How about you? Good break? Lovely food? Horrendous presents?

I had lots of good intentions about various posts, but somehow none of them got written, and ten days two weeks slipped by without my noticing it. I’m going to go with the zeitgeist for slowing down, and blame my lassitude on that. Ahem.

This evening finds Devon under a thick quilt of feather-like snow, downy and soft. Last night, six inches fell, and more is predicted tonight; this is so unusual in this area that most people have been quite caught out by it, I think, so often are the forecasters wrong when it comes to ‘wintry showers’. We ventured into Exeter, our nearest town, along roads thick with ice and slush, and the drive along our lane was easily as interesting as I would want it; no gritters get within two miles of us, which, given the tiny nature of our lane, is not surprising, and I was glad to get back safe and sound, with a bootful of food and a toddling person gleeful in the face of impending blueberry consumption. (The small girl has been out of sorts for a few days, with a temperature and a cough, hence tantalising morsels to eat.)

We have also acquired a wooden sledge, knocked together by Quercus the first morning of the snow, and perfected with plastic drainpipe runners; this means longer walks are good fun for all of us, rather than presenting boot-topping challenges to the smaller of our number…

These days, one of the best things about living in a house which needs, ahem, a bit of work is that we have so many things kicking about the place. Of course we had drainpipe and suitable wood, because, well, who doesn’t keep eight metres of plastic pipe kicking about? Er… It’s both delighting when we get to make something out of, well, not quite nothing, but certainly oddments and remnants, but at the same time maddening, as we have so much stuff which has yet to find a proper home, and even more stuff for which a suitable home is unlikely to appear unless we move to a much larger house… Oh, the irony – fix your house, in the process acquiring so many tools that you then need to, er, move…

And yes, that is the goblin hood I mentioned a while back, which I managed to put together quite quickly as the sewing machine has switched its allegiance back from the powers of darkness to me, largely, I think, due to blandishments involving fine-grade oil.

It took about three hours to get the sodding door shut, of course, after we were foolish enough to open it…

Predictably, while I have yet to finish some of the things I’d like to do before Christmas arrives in earnest, as it were, I’m happy to undertake side-tracks right left and centre. Note: felted winter fairy queen whatsit stage left. But the weather shift has changed the feel of the days already – we live at a slower pace, aware of impending darkness from mid-afternoon, and waking when the light bounces off the brilliant white of the fields and hedges which surround us. Somehow, the sense of busyness which I felt only a few days ago has receeded slightly, and I’m just letting myself go along with that. (See earlier jumping-on-bandwagon-excuse-making.)

Things have been crossed off lists not because I’ve done them, but simply because I’ve ended up questioning whether it was actually that worth getting worked up about. I have nearly finished grouting our tiles (for interested parties, we ended up with a sort of biscuity colour, which seems to set the bright colours off well), and I’ve managed to make some clothes for Bluebell, the small girl’s doll, and to attain a level of control over the craft cupboard not seen since shortly after its arrival, but for the most part, I am trying to feel OK about Just Being. Because it’s a bloody good thing, isn’t it? If you can get it to sit right?

Just Being is so important to one’s sanity, isn’t it? It’s something Quercus and I are both utterly rubbish at. We both struggle to sit, to contemplate, without constantly Doing, and Achieving. I only realise this, really, when we have nothing obvious on our lists (of which there are many, naturally, at levels ranging from ‘fix house’ to ‘sort escutcheon on front door’): these last few days of snow, neither of us has been out and about doing our normal things, and we’ve both been a bit on the antsy side, casting about for Tasks, for Purpose, for Things To Finish. Funny, really, for two people who often lament the lack of Time Off – when we are given it, we don’t seem quite sure what to do with it! It has meant, however, the completion and organisation of a few bits and bobs which were just sort of hanging; we’ve shoved (what felt like) hundreds of demijohns up on top of the oak cupboard, and we’ve put things in the newly-finished workshop, and we’ve hoovered the place and generally sorted a few things out. All of which is good. And makes me think, slightly, ‘this must be what sane people do at the weekends, rather than buggering about with knackered old houses which have a tendency to fall apart’. That said, of course, I know enough people who do what we do to realise that we’re not alone…

Anyway, with Quercus’s mother arriving tomorrow and a small girl who quite miserable (and has her first ear infection, we learned this morning), I’ll be back in this space in the new year, folks, so a medley Crumphole to all who read and visit and comment here, and bright starry wishes for 2011.

A gratuitous small girl photograph. Yesterday we went out to tea in Exeter. We looked at the lights; we walked; we talked; we pootled; we ate massive quantities of cake. Life is good.

The fleece stars which took approximately four lifetimes to sew; the new quilt project has finally come to fruition, and just in time for the cold weather. Because I already had the white fleece in my stash (let us not speak of those cloth napyp days), this feels almost like it was free. Almost. (Well, it was only about £12, I think, which isn’t bad, really. I’m going to draw a tactful veil over the years it has added to my Dorian Gray-style attic painting, of course.)

Quilts = hiding. Fact.

I think she likes it.

Damn grouting. Damn handmade tiles. So, brown? White? Grey? I am all agog for your grouting suggestions. (And there is a phrase which one does not find springing from one’s lips particularly often.)

Yes, they are random, and yes, we love them. Better pics to follow when I have finally pissed or got off the grouting pot.

My first piece of flat felting.

And it is possible that I have something of a felted pumpkin addiction. I just can’t stop. And the more there are, the better they all look. It’s compulsive.

If only these leaves were likewise. I had in mind this fantastic autumnal banner with heaps of the blighters, only to find I’d used up a lifetime’s quota of blanket stitch tolerance in, well, about six leaves.

Though I did enjoy doing the oak leaf, in particular.

Not quite as abundant as I’d hoped, but hey, it’s a work in progress, right?

Monday morning:

- Bright sunshine and hard frost.

- Small girl’s starry quilt finished in time for the first proper cold weather (pics to follow when I finish changing cameras; have I ranted recently about how much technology has pissed me off lately? Broken or useless in the last few months: microwave, kettle, toothbrush, two digital cameras, external harddrive; it’s just not funny!).

- Several new recipes to add to the stash (sweet potato and lentil burritos, butternut squash and rainbow chard lasagne, stuffed pumpkin).

- House full of clothes needing either washing, drying or putting away (why oh why have we no decent line outside? Winter sun may not be either frequent or particularly warm but it beats the hell out of dank indoor set-ups, with the exception of the wonderful Victorian airer we have on a pulley system…).

- Hair cut on Saturday and now the mirror shows me someone else; can’t do the things I normally do with it very successfully, and yet don’t like it just down… Time, I guess, will solve that one!

- Small girl has been quite cross for about a month now, and Quercus and I are definitely noticing. Teeth? Virus? Chickenpox? All considered, but nothing conclusive.

- Gingerbread forest baked on Friday; eaten by Saturday evening.

- First pieces of flat felt made, one with stripes and one with spots. Again, pictures to follow once I sort the camera issue.

- For some reason, I appear to be savagely bad-tempered lately. Not sure why; maybe I’m catching it from the small girl (or maybe she’s catching it from me). The house is really getting me down, and I long to have the spare time together that ‘normal’ people seem to get at weekends, rather than the ships-that-pass-at-mealtimes experience that our weekends normally seem to be. I know that the things we each do are valuable, in some cases vital, but that doesn’t make it easier when you get to Monday and just feel flat because the weekend was… blah. Quercus is working to finish the workshop at the moment – the cladding is nearly done, and then he’s got a door and two windows to make before he can move our vast collection of tools in – and I’ve been tidying up things like gate-painting, crack-filling, kitchen tiling and whatnot. I can see progress, and yet the rest of the house is so dusty, so cobwebby, so mouldy (in places), so chaotically full of STUFF that just won’t fit anywhere else because our storage is virtually non-existent, and all I seem to do is half-finish a job while the small girl sleeps only to break off and do something else when she wakes, because otherwise we spend ALL DAY doing housework, which doesn’t seem particularly fair on her, despite her relative patience in such scenarios. (I find she tolerates me doing things like that for a long time, but we often end up with a period of relative meltdown later in the day; it makes more sense, thus, to go for a walk together at some point, even though the laundry mountain will only mock me for such weakness.) What I need is four hands, a forty-eight-hour day, and professional help. I just never seem to be able to keep up with all the things I’m supposed to be doing, and our house is the dustiest, mouldiest place I have ever lived, so here, more than anywhere, I really want to keep things clean. (Insert mild rant about possible reasons for developing asthma here.)

So where are you this Monday morning?

It’s Samhain, witches’ new year. The skies are dark once more, and it’s been wet and windy for most of the day. Despite that, though, a small girl managed to hollow out a large pumpkin this afternoon while sitting on the patio, aided and abetted by her grandma, and Quercus has put up much of the waney-edged boarding which forms the walls of the workshop. I have mostly been tiling – bright rainbow tiles now cover a large portion of one wall in our kitchen, leaving, sadly, the very cutting-intensive bit to do tomorrow, and of course the motherlode of grouting (though, as has been previously observed in the comments, grouting is a very satisfying job, really).

In the last few days there have been some extraordinary skies. We walked up Raddon Hill last weekend, and were rewarded with huge views over towards Dartmoor, and with mountainous clouds exploding on the horizon. Possibly my favourite, though, was the trees. I sometimes feel when I walk in woodland, or I sit under a large tangled beech or an expansive oak, that the otherworld is so close as to be almost visible, if you turn your head fast enough, out of the corner of an eye. That it is not really so much other as just over there – there! – behind that tree and around that corner, hidden by that shadow.

I feel similarly when I see the blanket of stars which the clouds so often magic away. Tonight, the skies are clear, and the wetness of the day is forgotten. I think of people I have known, and people I miss, and that otherworld seems once again tantalisingly near. Near enough, I hope, that those who are behind that tree, around that corner, hidden in that shadow can see that we still think of them, and wish them well, and hope beyond hope that they do likewise. Being a part of that other land does not preclude a continued existence in this one, you see. Far from it.

Isn’t it funny the days that turn out to be successes? Today, I have mostly been accustoming myself to a new (steroid) inhaler, courtesy of my doctor, who is now firmly persuaded that my recurring cough and general tight-chested shitery is caused by an asthmatic reaction to either a virus or an infection. So, I now find myself the proud owner of a grey-blue inhaler, a brown inhaler, and the excitingly-named Aero Dynamic Device, which, somewhat disappointingly, turns out to be a spacer designed to improve the inhalation part of the inhalers. Ho hum.

On top of this, it’s been wet and windy here today – proper persistent rain, too, not the sort of shall-I-shan’t-I misty business that you can largely ignore as you go about your daily. It’s going to stay like this until Monday, apparently, too. Getting colder, as well, and last night there were high winds; this morning showed lanes with a snow-like dusting of autumnal leaves, together with some small branches which were dislodged as we slept by the clever north wind.

Oh, and over last weekend the washing machine, not in its first flush of youth, decided that door-opening is really not included in its job description, clamping its poisonous self shut with a fervour normally associated with some sort of religious order. So, it’s now in the middle of the kitchen floor, still plumbed in but about four feet in front of its normal cupboard hidey-hole; Quercus cunningly hid our dishwasher, the microwave, the dustbin and the washer in the oak cabinets he built, because we both find kitchen Stuff irritating, visually, for the most part, and this is great, except for when you need to retrieve said item for some reason. In fact, in the case of the washer, it’s more than normally troublesome to retrieve the damn thing because the slate flooring doesn’t go right to the edge of the room, while the cupboards do, meaning that the sodding washer slips down a bit as it goes back, and is a complete bastard to get out, thus.

So, the house is chaotic and untidy – kitchen surfaces covered in quinces (still about a hundred to go, I should say; I am trying to put off making quince cheese until I am feeling resilient enough to cope with the sodding chopping of the blighters, and, worse, the passing through a sieve bit, which just makes me want to run for the hills when I think of it after my rosehip encounters earlier this year) and bread-making detritus, to say nothing of the kitchen table, which is currently home to my gargantuan sewing machine (which is a pig to move, as it’s cast iron and thus weighs something akin to a battleship, fully laden), a host of paperwork, the latest edition of Permaculture (which has a really good recipe for HOT SOUP in it), some random wax crayons, two large pieces of fleece acquired for a small girl’s winter quilt and at least half a ton of general crappery besides this shaming list.

Yet, despite this, I feel happy. It seems that ‘happy mess is better than miserable tidiness’. This week has been quite a challenge; I have struggled to adjust to medications which make me a bit shaky* and a bit worried;** the small girl has been a bit under the weather and consequently rather inclined to a whinginess which is not her norm; I’ve been worried about taking more time off work after the disastrous winter of last year; as ever, we are not quite where I’d hoped in terms of finishing off things in the garden/on the house Before The Weather Closes In.

But set against this, I have made a gallon each of quince wine (and I used our German steamer to get the juice, letting it cook out all day long on top of the stove – thus, smug-makingly eco-friendly), pear, elderflower and lemon wine and grape, apple and sage win; I have sewn two pairs of toddler trousers without swearing once; I have made three loaves of bread; there are two sets of saltdough decorations drying by the stove (including some fantastic pigs, made using the spotty rolling pin I mentioned in my clay dough post – they look just like those Gloucester Old Spot chaps – because obviously, nothing says ‘festive’ like, er, saltdough pigs); there is a newly-finished autumn farrago (felt leaves, blanket-stitched, hanging on embroidery thread with wooden beads separating them; pics to follow at some point, as I quite like the overall effect while suspecting that I ought to do more than six or seven leaves; my enthusiasm waned after what felt like the five-zillionth blanket stitch) hanging up in the book room.***

Not a bad week, then, on balance. And balance is what’s needed, I think.

Oh, and a quick aside: if you’d like to take part in the postal parcel paraphernalia which came about in my post on doughs and whatnot, please drop me an email: earthenwitch [at] gmail [dot] com. I’m thinking of one or two bits, possibly crafty, possibly edible, possibly local to wherever you happen to be, but nothing valuable or seriously time-consuming.

*The Ventolin inhaler seems to cause slight trembling for me. I don’t think that I can just not use it, though, realistically, at the moment.

**The steroid inhaler has a list of side-effects which scares me, frankly, as it includes things about bone density and stunted adolescent growth; I have a longer-term plan to ditch this thing when I’m over the hump of this infection, and try improving my general health with more swimming, more garlic and much more chilli and ginger consumption, because anything involving ginger gets my vote, obviously. I have a friend who runs a healthfood shop who has suggested a variety of things including Holy Basil, salt pipes (?!) and elderberry syrup; she attributes my wheezy tendencies to our mould-ridden, dust-festering cob house, and thinks that when we’ve finished the internal plasterwork, thus stopping (hopefully) both dust and mould, things will improve. I really, really hope she’s right; her dire comments about the steroids and breastfeeding did not fill me with optimism.

***I know, I know – it sounds deeply pretentious, but I am trying to get away from calling it the dining room, given that we, er, don’t dine there anymore; I dislike ‘play room’, and there are more books in there than toys… so… Does that let me off? (No. I know. It doesn’t.) And if it doesn’t, then have you a suggestion which covers a room used for storage (understairs cupboard), piano, crafty things (knackered old chest of drawers), books, toys, and general walky-throughness?

It was Quercus’s birthday yesterday. I had smugly knitted him some wristwarmers, and I’d also managed to cajole the sewing machine into creating two pairs of pyjama bottoms for him. (Nice pyjamas for men seem to be a bit of a hen’s teeth thing, here at least, and after realising that anything approaching acceptable in fabric terms seemed to translate into sums of money which were anything but, I ordered some rather nice brushed cottons from the disturbingly cheap Croft Mill.) Much to my astonishment, the results are wearable, and quite appealing, and Quercus is either delighted with them, or a very good liar. (Let’s hope either state persists.) The complete works of the Mighty Boosh, a book about clouds, some Horace Silver and a ginger cake shaped like miniature gourds later, and I think it’s safe to say that this birthday was a good one. And that’s before I get started on the celebratory quince pie I made for afters, of which more anon. (I might also post the ginger cake recipe, as it was surprisingly successful given that I realised halfway through its concoction that I had run out of eggs, and Quercus was out, and the small girl was asleep upstairs, so my options were rather limited. Cue: the Inadvertantly Vegan Ginger Experience! Catchy name, no?)

We also managed a walk by the sea in the closing light of the afternoon; it was surprisingly calm, and the sun was just glorious, despite brief showers. It is extremely civilised living within a half-hour of lots of Jurassic coastline.

(Lengthy aside: the only slight fly in the ointment was that I appear to have picked up some evil chest infection thing. I didn’t really write much about this at the time, but last winter was officially not fun in terms of being ill. I think because we were getting so little consistent sleep (the small girl often waking several times a night, very rarely sleeping an entire night through and waking earlier than seemed strictly civilised), coupled with having rather a lot to do (work, house renovation, freelance stuff, childcare, the need to appear to be a functioning adult etc), my immune system just buggered off and left me to it, saying something along the lines of ‘well if you’re not going to have a holiday, I certainly am!’.

Result: 42 days of sick leave in one year.

Yes.

That’s FORTY-TWO DAYS. About a month of that was the point where my GP said ‘you need a break; here is a certificate for three weeks – kindly get some sleep and try to get yourself sorted as you have had TOO MANY ANTI-BIOTICS TO BE ENTIRELY SANE’. Obviously, it’s fair to say that the people I work with were not exactly delighted by this absence, and I felt utterly rubbish about it, not least because the whole time I was off, I felt terrible. Hacking cough, tentative adult-onset asthma diagnosis because of SO. MANY. INFECTIONS. The whole nine yards, and all that. Then, in the summer, the small girl seemed to hit her stride, and her sleep has been much, much more consistent since about May, overlooking teething and the odd glitch. As a result: one day off sick since then. Now, however, I’m worried that perhaps that diagnosis of asthma wasn’t as wide of the mark as I’d hoped; I thought that I just kept catching things, and they were ending up as chest infections because of those postcards from Rio that my immune system used to remind me of its existence. I picked up a cold last weekend, thought I’d cleared it, yet here I am, wheezy and tight-chested with a cough which sounds like that of a heavy smoker. I wish I could just crawl back into bed and stay there until Wednesday, but the thing is, I really, really don’t want to take more time off work. I’m into a new year now, as it were, and I don’t want to blot my copy-book so early in the winter. So, my plan is just to hope that it’ll bugger off shortly, leaving me fine and not wheezy and distinctly un-asthmatic. In the meantime, I’ve asked for an inhaler prescription. Woe. Woe is me. Anyone with tips for easing a wheezing chest (rhymes! see? recipes, pictures, AND RHYMES! Don’t say I never give you anything), please share.

Ahem.

Back to the birthday.

Quince pie. QUINCE PIE. In fact, QUINCE PIE!

Like this:

Runcible Pie

Take…

Filling:
3 large cooking apples;
2 quinces;
a very goodly sprinkling of sugar (for which read: half a truckload);

Pie itself:
about a pound of shortcrust pastry, i.e.
12 oz (in this case) self-raising flour (yes, I had run out of plain, and yes, I was determined anyway);
5 oz margarine/butter;
4 oz icing sugar;
enough cold water to form into a decent wodge of pastry.

Then…
First, bugger about assembling pastry while remembering fondly the days when your mother had A Mixer Which Did All This For You. Congratulate self on green nature of doing it by hand, and swig more sloe to ease cramp in hand. (That’s my excuse, anyway, and I am sticking to it.) Pastry sorted, stick in fridge to cool. Retrieve it after about twenty minutes (or, er, rather longer, if you completely forget about it while gorging yourself on quince pulp), and line an eight-inch greased pie dish with it, leaving about a third aside for the pie lid. I then blind-baked the case, as we had the oven on for dinner anyway, for about twenty minutes at 180°c.

Then peel, core and chop the apples and quinces, and pop them in a pan with about an inch of boiling water. I was amazed at the speed with which quinces discolour; two minutes after peeling, they were already very brown, so putting them in water as you go is probably the way forward. Cook them gently, lid on, for about twenty minutes, until the apple is completely pulpified and even the quince is looking a little mollified. Poke suspiciously at the quince, removing a small section with an inappropriately cumbersome utensil. Ingest said morsel, and come to terms with the need for SUGAR! yes, SUGAR! immediately. Turn head right way round and drink gallon of sloe wine to recover from after-effects of sourness. Bung in about eight tablespoons of sugar, stir until dissolved, and test, gingerly, sourness levels. Decide acceptable, and have at the lot with a masher, as the quinces don’t break down as much as the apple.

Pour the resulting gloop into the pie case, and whack on your rolled-out lid. Whole lot then goes in the oven for about another twenty-five minutes at 180°c.

THE QUINCES. I cannot stress the loveliness of the quinces.

Slaver, slaver.

Still to come: that vegan gingeriness, apple, grape and sage jelly, quince cheese and apple butter recipes, together with elderberry delight and quince cordials. Recipes, that is. (I will get those sodding 52 Recipes in 2010 done, dagnammit.)

And you? What has the weekend held for you?

Last week the small girl and I started experimenting with what I am ambitiously terming biodegradable Chrimbly decorations. For ‘biodegradable’, read ‘they will probably disintegrate long before they get within spitting distance of midwinter’. This, dear reader, is because they are made of dough. Squidgy, squashy dough. The first batch we made from cornflour clay, which goes like this:

1 c bicarbonate of soda;
2 c cornflour;
1c water;
essential oils to scent if you fancy it.

It has a pleasantly porcelain-like effect, courtesy of the cornflour; the ‘clay’ is very white, and slightly sparkly because of the bicarb, and it’s very smooth to roll out. Somehow that pristine whiteness is rather appealing, and it’s tough enough to withstand toddler poking without just falling apart.

We used cedarwood atlas oil to make it smell nice, and we had a good old bash at it with the rolling pins that La Que Sabe bought for the small girl, together with some Ikea cookie cutters.

After baking them (using up the heat after cooking dinner; took a couple of goes this way, but I didn’t fancy turning on the oven specifically to cook these little blighters, and hey, patience is a virtue [which I do not possess], OK?), we then had at them with some watercolour paints. You can see the basic white colour in the picture there, on the right; I almost wish now that I’d kept some of them white, because they do look rather pretty in a sort of pared-down way. Of course, pared-down is not, perhaps the most obvious watch-word for my, er, style, if you can call it that. Ahem. (That probably explains the explosion-in-firework-factory end result.)

Turns out that the little blocks of watercolour work very well for this sort of thing, though I’d thought they wouldn’t give a dense enough colour. Certainly, some of the ones that the small girl did on her own were quite wash-like, colour-wise, but variety is the spice of life, right? Plus, I have been genuinely alarmed previously by sessions involving tubes of paint – the paint! it goes so fast! you can virtually hear the coins chinking! This is how they turned out:

As they’re still only flour, really, and water, I think we’ll probably dip them in some sort of varnish or hard oil soon, to try to keep them for as long as possible, though I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how hardy they are, at least for now – we dropped several during the painting session, on to our slate kitchen floor, and not a one broke, despite being (I would have thought) a reasonably fragile shape.

We’ve made up some saltdough since then; the resulting stars are drying out as I speak. The dough is a creamy colour with small flecks in (courtesy of having used up part of a rather damp bag of wholewheat flour), and I’ve added lemon juice and sunflower oil to make it (apparently) more malleable when being worked and harder when dry. The basic recipe I used was this:

2 c plain flour;
1 c salt;
1 c water;
1 tbsp oil;
a good squeeze of lemon juice.

Again, the stars are getting a quick cooking here and there after dinner, and other than that, I’m leaving them to dry out by the woodburner. (Talking of which, we had our second frost of the year last night – everything was glittering with a dusting of powdery ice this morning, and very pretty it was too.) I think we’ll probably try the watercolours again afterwards, though I have also got some acrylic gold paint, which I wondered about just rubbing on by hand around the edges or somesuch arty-farty nonsense.

In other news, it’s Quercus’s birthday on Saturday. (‘Daddy’s burfday! Candles! Cake! Sing ‘happy buuuuuuurfday!’) Predictably, I have left sorting out his presents until the eleventh-and-a-halfth hour, partly because I am horribly disorganised of late, and partly because he hasn’t been going to his sodding rehearsals (he plays in two local orchestras, which should – note should – mean he’s out for two evenings a week, leaving me free reign of craftiness galore, but they’ve had a lot of sectional sessions, and as he plays a stupid instrument brass instrument which isn’t always needed, that’s meant a lot of missed crafty time, dagnammit).  This means that the last week or so has found me beggaring about in a feverish frenzy of I-can’t-say-because-he-reads-this-blog, and tonight, when he departs – finally! – for a rehearsal, will be no exception. Let us just say that there may be baking involved. Recipes and whatnot to follow shortly.

And in still other news, I am rather excited to be doing a parcel swap of goodies with the lovely Nadine, who lives in Prague and thus, it seems, has access to all sorts of striped delights of a tightly-sock nature. I really love finding out about people who come here and read the blathering idiocy that I inflict on the webly waves; it tickles me all sorts of puce to learn that someone reads this blog while eating breakfast as I am going to bed at night (hello, Nettles!), or that they too are interested in a cob hot tub run off wood (hello Canadian person whose name escapes me but which may have been – nope – sorry – it’s gone; please remind me if you’re still out there).

So. In the manner of the Spanish inquisition, who are you, where are you reading from, and what pearls of wisdom, crafty* or otherwise, have you to share on this bright frosty morning (here)? And would anyone else fancy doing a small parcel swap, goodies from deepest darkest Devon to… well, anywhere, really? I do love sending and receiving things in the post. There is something about unwrapping actual, physical parcels which makes me think of The Box of Delights and steam trains. Scrum-diddly-umptious. (Sorry. I don’t know what came over me there. Blame it on the brown wrapping paper.)

*After the stars fest, we are now looking for something else to do, craft-wise, which suits small fingers but gives big fingers something to do too. Recent hits have included wax rubbings of leaves and various baking bits. Any suggestions welcome.

That slump I mentioned has hit me again. I feel a bit pissed off, truth be told. Last night, I even ranted about a situation at work, when I was at home – that may not sound particularly unusual, but it’s a near-golden rule for me that work stays at work, and when I close that door as I leave the office, everything to do with it gets locked in, in a sort of academicky Pandora’s box manner. Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that I have just realised yet again the importance of encouraging one’s life in the directions which matter to one, rather than spending time worrying about why other people’s directions don’t seem to matter to one, and whether or not they ought to, and whether, in fact, one’s own direction is actually a lack of direction and so on. In short, I had a moment of wondering if I’m not a bit sort of lacklustre because I don’t seem to be splendidly career-motivated; my conclusion was that for some reason, I don’t and never have judged success by income, and that I think I’d rather I stayed that way.

I sometimes feel that I’m not really pushing myself. That I ought to try harder at work, and make myself a likely candidate for promotion, or for another job, or for leading a project of some sort. I look around at the people I work with, most of whom are very lovely, and I see a new generation of colleagues now in their mid-twenties who are super-keen to use that language, to ‘move things forward’, even, gods forbid, to ‘blue-sky’ something. I just can’t do this. I couldn’t, even when I too was a twenty-something just-started-and-look-at-my-shiny-suit-type person, insofar as I ever was. For me, the compromises feel too great. You can think your own thoughts, but don’t share them. You can see things are ridiculous, but don’t admit it. You can all know the open secret – that the system sucks in lots of ways, and creates extra work in others – but don’t mention it. It’s maddening, and so is the expectation that you’ll want to do this forever, that when people answer ‘I am a so-and-so’ when asked what they do, that answer really does explain what they are, that their job is who and what they are, and hope to be, and have become. My job is none of those things. It is a thing I do to earn the money which pays our bills, for now. Surely it’s better to be happy and hard-up than it is to be rolling in money and miserable; I look at people I know who work sixty-hour weeks and never see their children and just wonder why they do it, given that it appears (at least to me) to do little more than funding a new car and lots of trips overseas.

Is it something missing in me? Did I just not make the queue when it came to the doling out of ambition? I don’t know. I do have ambitions, but mine just don’t seem to be particularly in line with what you might expect of a university graduate who went to private school and has mysteriously managed to accrue three degrees in the decade since leaving. When I was a teenager, I sort of thought I might try working in London, living somewhere predictable like Turnham Green while commuting into the city and reading the Guardian. I do read the Guardian sometimes, but that’s where the similarities end. I think I always knew, really, that I’d be happier living in the middle of nowhere, with a large and chaotic number of pumpkins growing in a small and ridiculously over-planted garden. But sometimes I see myself through my father’s eyes, and it seems to me that the path I’ve chosen is perhaps not what he’d expected or wanted for me; married to a man he thinks only serves to exaggerate my tendency to vegetarian* shoes and mad hair and strange houses in insane locations, my job is a very small part of my life, really, where his was, for some three decades, a defining part of Who He Was, and I think that puzzles him. He thinks I should try for a proper academic career; publish some articles, if possible, and try to write the book which might follow on from my PhD thesis, while I, I struggle to motivate myself to do things other than making bread and ogling quinces while working out what knitting abbreviations mean and wondering whether that circle that the small girl has drawn might constitute her first drawn thing. And because, while I am aware that it is perfectly acceptable to do these things and to feel this way, I cannot utterly divorce myself from the expectations I have experienced first- and second-hand since it became clear that I wasn’t actually as daft as I look, I sometimes find myself measuring my progress thus far, and thinking that there ought to be more. More purpose, more reason, more progress.

It spirals around, it does, this cycle of slightly beligerant – defiant – assertion of Self as Mother, Creatrix, and, er, general cook-and-bottle-washer, and Happy That Way, thankyouverymuch, versus the rather shame-faced version of Self which admits to not having pursued its career as zealously as it might have done, and which perhaps ought to feel more motivation when offered encouragement for academic writing, and which ought to have plans which include pensions and all those other things which, well, aren’t bright, colourful bags of stardust which possibly involve bells, and which I thus can’t actually identify. The latter is not Who I Am. The former is much closer, I think, embodying as it does the things which I genuinely believe to be important. Yet I continue to judge myself by the standards to which – I think – others feel I ought to aspire. It’s madness, really, because I don’t even know that people think these things which I am so sure they must; well, apart from the bit about the mad hair, because my dad did recently spend an entire day with me having double-pointed wooden knitting needles poking out of my hair without passing comment because, he later confessed, he thought it was some sort of statement.

Perhaps the time has come to paint a spiral on the wall in the kitchen. The last time I felt a bit at sea, painting a spiral was just the ticket.  It reminded me of what’s important, every time I looked at it; those things are still important – our house, our babe, our shared life of colour, of tinkling bells, of valerian in the oil-burner and bread rising all over the sheets in the airing cupboard. In short: bugger the rest of it – inner whatsit is the way forward. ‘Only connect’, said E. M. Forster, and I think he was on to something.

Ahem.

In other news, I’ve been back on the bread-baking bandwagon. This time, tomato and herb spirals, which went like this:

Tomato and Herb Spirals
Get…
2 mugs of strong flour
About ¾mug of warm water
1 tbsp runny honey
1 tsp Marmite
1 tsp yeast
Large fistful of herbs
About 3 tbsp tomato purée
More flour as needed to stop oneself sticking to the wall courtesy of the resulting dough

Then…
Whack the lot in a large bowl, and knead it all together until it forms a nice elasticky sort of glob. At this point, sling in more flour until you can actually manage to remove your hands from said dough without needing either the assistance of a passer-by or surgical tools, and continue kneading until the extra flour is worked in. You’ll notice the dough is a rather pleasant shade of sunrise – pinks and yellows – but don’t get distracted by this for too long, or you’ll find that stickiness returns. When you’ve managed to get a nice workable dough, pop the bowl in a warm place to rise for about forty minutes.

Retire, armed with a cup of Lapsang Souchong.

Some time later, retrieve dough from its resting place (the airing cupboard, in my case). Rootle it out of the bowl, and give it another good knead before dividing it into small lumps the size of half a fist, roughly. Technical, non? I like using scissors to divide it, because, well, they are so very snippy.

Take each little fisty whatsit and roll it into a sausage, then curl it around to form a spiral, and pop it on an oiled tray. When you’ve got a smug-making tray of these little delights, it’s back to the airing cupboard. This time, I left them to rise for about an hour and a half, after which into the oven, at about 180°c, for about twenty minutes, or until they’re getting to sunset shades rather than sunrise. Whip ‘em out, and eat them warm with a spot of butter and a handy ‘here’s one I prepared earlier’ bowl of soup.

Bits:
Knitting my first pair of socks, veeerrryyy slowwwwwlyyyyy. Realising now that I really shouldn’t have just ignored the ribbing at the top, as they are clearly going to fall down ALL THE TIME, and also, the difference between 3.25mm and 2.5mm needles is far more substantial than those measurements might lead one to suppose is possible.

I have fallen off the wagon, cooking-wise – attempting to eat supper earlier has meant cooking things which are quicker to prepare, and thus inventiveness has been overturned by ease. I have plans, though – next week will see at least two new things being tried, methinks, as otherwise, boredom will set in.

I appear to have started me a set of dreadlocks. It’s astonishing what not washing your hair with commercial shampoo for about, er, two months will do for you. That, and the twist-and-rip method I came across online a few days ago. It’s not a complete birds’ nest, but it’s close. Ahem. There will be more order when I finish this twisting malarky, but my poor little arms get tired quite easily so I am taking it at a Methuselah pace. The big plus, though, is that I found a bead with a spiral on it and I now have it in my hair. Spirals. Beads. Hair. A combination that makes me squeak.

I have lots of projects in mind for the next few weeks: felted dress for the small girl courtesy of another old wool jumper discovered abandoned at the back of the wardrobe; fleece dress from sweater which had received similar treatment; trousers, with cord on one side and brushed cotton on t’other; autumn leaves made of felt for hanging-about-the-place-dustilyartistically purposes; pear wine, courtesy of two enormous bags donated by a friend.

In amongst this, the house is coming along – we now have a patio, paths around the house, drains, drainpipes, a water butt and a retaining wall, and this weekend we’re hoping to fill in the French drains with pea shingle while merrily stacking the woodstore (only a month later than planned, which is nearly a victory).

Bats:
The small girl appears to be losing the need to sleep in the day. Part of me thinks yay! about this, as it increases flexibility for what we can do when, but the other part of me is horrified – I had decided not to take on any more freelance copy-editing until the spring so that I could help Quercus by finishing off small jobs on the house (skirting boards, why must you torment me?) while the girl slept; sadly, that appears to be unlikely now. I think I’m just going to have find a new groove, frankly, so that I can manage to do things with her, but also to get some things finished in order to maintain our collective sanity. Yesterday she occupied herself quite happily for an hour on the patio, pouring water from a washing-up bowl into various pots and pans; I cleaned up and cooked dinner, talking to her through the open back door, and thought that actually, perhaps tiling with her around isn’t quite as crazy as I’d thought.

I’m also feeling more positive about the idea of having another baby, probably because my current baby is so clearly not a baby any more. She has a leanness to her, physically, which speaks of action, of activity, of movement, and of development; these are not the soft rolls of baby fat I see as I undress her for our bath each day, but the muscles of a small child whose constant zing and enthusiasm keep her moving nearly all the time these days. Also, of course, EVERYONE I KNOW IS PREGNANT, or so it seems, which does quite a bit to make me nostalgic. Not enough of a reason to have another baby, of course, but certainly I’m feeling more that adding to our numbers would be a Good Thing for lots of reasons, whereas before I couldn’t help adding ‘in theory’ in there somewhere.

I’ve been meaning to write here more frequently, but the stupidest thing has been stopping me – my camera, replaced about a month ago, is still stupid. It turns out that Kodak cameras have a problem with the operating system I use, and that there is no easy fix. Thus, getting pictures off the damn thing is a bit of an uphill struggle, and to be honest, the quality of the camera seems to be a bit of a bore too – where my old one was genuinely point-and-shoot, this one has focusing requirements bordering on the insane, and its most frequently displayed icon when on ‘auto focus’ is the one which means GET THE SODDING TRIPOD OUT – YOU HAVE AN ADVANCED CASE OF THE DTs. Not being a photographery person, of course, I have no tripod, and even if I had, using one would sort of miss the point of that sodding point-and-shoot approach I mentioned earlier. So, thinking of returning it. Anyone got any suggestions for a reasonably cheap alternative?

Right. I go, to ponder five pages of legal editing while thinking about what to have for dinner. And you? What are you up to this week?

So, there you are, full of good intentions and just about to write something constructive and informative and jolly and otherwise uplifiting and whatnot, when a bout of the east wind strikes, and you feel hacked off, and you retreat into your cave, where you stay, hacked-offedly, for a few weeks.

And then, the wind starts to shift. You can smell new things on the breeze, and you can hear new tales in the whispering of the leaves. The sky is changing with each passing day, and the nights are drawing in; already, twilight appears not long after supper, and a cobweb of stars which covers the sky is plain for all to see not long thereafter. All around, you see the fields, the hedges, the trees overburdened with fruits and fecundity (and what a delish word that is), and you immerse yourself in transforming the hedges which surround you into small crystaline pots of goodness, which you then eat, smugly, as the year progresses, and as those lazy sunshine afternoons become brisk with the quickening east wind.

There are vests to be knitted, and shoes to be made, of nut-brown leather and sunflower flashes of bright yellow. There are slabs to be laid, and pumpkins to be felted; nappies to hang in the late summer sun; hats to be discovered, and chairs to be waxed; first pairs of socks to be undertaken, with much trepidation, and peacock brilliance to be found in woollen form. Dragons take form on leftover wood, and rainbows appear next to them. There is action, movement, progress. And more jam than you can shake a big, gnarled stick at.

I’ve been struggling this summer with feelings that I ought to be doing more, being more, making more, creating more. Always the pressure to somehow exceed expectations, to juggle efficiently, to find time where none makes itself known. This pressure comes from me, from inside myself, and it’s something I think I’ve always known. Indeed, I think it’s the thing which has got me, in many ways, to where I find myself now. And the thing about that pressure is that it’s very hard to turn off. Near-impossible, for me.

Sometimes this is useful – finishing a PhD while pregnant and renovating a house? No problem – I’ll knock that off by next Sunday, and still have time to make cheese scones… – but at other times, it’s exhausting, and self-defeating, and just a downright pain in the arse. This summer, it’s mostly the latter, though I think I haven’t really noticed it until the last, say, two months.

So, I’ve been struggling to find the right words for this space, to explain myself without sounding either hideously repetitive or boringly downbeat. And I’ve failed at that, too, really, in that I’ve just taken the alternative option: don’t say anything at all, and just hope it’ll all go away. It’s coming to something when your own blog becomes a bit of a whatsit around the neck – a duty overlooked, a task ignored.

I think back to when we decided to stop having a television in the house, and the sudden ingress of time with which I found myself flooded.

What has helped me to dig my way out of this lovely little hole I’ve been burrowing away at for the summer months of this year has been cutting back on the time I spend online. It’s very easy for me to simply procrastinate away an entire hour or two online, without achieving anything beyond looking at some lovely things which other – less procrastinatey – peope have created, and thinking to myself a repeated loop of ‘that’s very cool – I must make one of them’, or ‘shite – I really should have done something other than this in the time I’ve spent online’, or ‘arses – I am utterly crap at management of time, and thus have nothing to show for today.’

So, cutting right back, spending a week with no time online at all, has really helped. It’s reminded me of all the things I can do, and do do, when I’m not time-hogging on blogs, or Facebook, or email, or somesuch nonsense. It’s also left me with a feeling of wanting only to dip a toe in, of avoiding previous bad habits, which seems to be helping longer-term.

Whinge, whinge, whinge. No more. (At least for now.) (Ahem.) Let us think only happy thoughts, with cheerful productivity thrown in, while I try to work out what it is that drives me like this, and why I feel that there are ‘right’ words, and ‘right’ things to spend time on, and, oh, so many other ways in which I drive myself (and others) insane.