What now?

Old Year's Night

2011-12-31T15:09:00.004Z

I guess today is as good a time as any to formally bring this blog to a close.

The last day of the year is for taking stock of what has gone by and planning for the future.

This time last year I was still alone. Still trying to make sense of a world that had spun out of control. Still asking the question, “What now?”.

Now I find myself on the brink of a new life. One which will, I think, be very different to what has gone before. It is exciting, a little bit scary and very, very good.

Much has happened on the way from there to here. I don’t know why, but these pages didn’t seem to be the right place to talk about it – this is and always has been a space just for R.

And learning to love again perhaps should be a private thing. Whatever the reason, I seem to have dropped off the edge of the world for a time. I think I needed to do it, but thank you to those who have cared enough to try to get in touch over the past few months. I haven’t been a good correspondent, for which I apologise.

The closing of the year seems to have resurrected my desire to write, though. So it is time to create a new space, one where the emphasis is on life, not death. I still miss R. I still talk to his picture, visit his grave and shed tears over it. But I have at long last fully absorbed the fact that he has gone. A line seems to have been drawn. A sort of Year Zero.

Now it is time to live again.

In closing, I think I can do no better than quote the last few lines of Natalie Merchant’s beautiful and uplifting song and hope that all those who read them will eventually come to the same conclusion.

Oh, they told you that life is long
Be thankful when it's done
Don't ask for more
Be grateful

But, I'll tell you life is short
Be thankful
Because before you know
It will be over
'Cause life is sweet
Life is, oh, so very short
Life is sweet
And life is, oh, so very short
Life is sweet

Judith xx

Fighting talk

2011-04-22T00:17:00.009+01:00

For almost as long as I have been writing this blog, I have talked about the little village in the hills in which we made our home and how much it means to me.

This area is of negligible economic significance.
There is a small amount of light industry down in the Severn valley. Once you rise into the upland areas there are sheep and very little else.

Apart from wind.
There is certainly no shortage of that.
As a result, there have been wind farms springing up on the hills all around the area. There is one that I can see out of my office window, up on Mynydd Clogau, on land owned by my friend Angie and her husband. I remember the day that the turbine blades were fitted, seemingly all at once, and in that instant the view from my window changed forever.

That feeling of shock took me by surprise as I had always previously been in favour of wind power as a source of alternative energy. Over the years, I have grown accustomed to seeing them, and although a jarring sight, they are now familiar friends.

But the battle to have that wind farm erected nearly tore this village apart. When we moved here, it was a topic that was generally best avoided as there was still an undercurrent of bad feeling on both sides of the argument. And as the Welsh Assembly Government has earmarked this as a strategic area for alternative power generation, permission has been granted for several more wind farms, each bigger than the last.

Early in the New Year, we all received a large envelope through the post from the National Grid. The contents outlined in very vague terms their plans to build a substation for the wind farms to feed into, three incoming 132 kV power lines and a main 400 kV outgoing line to feed into the grid.

The two suggested locations for this 20-acre substation site and the 160 foot high pylons needed for the 400 kV line are either just outside my own little no-horse village or about a mile from the place that R is buried. The thought of either of these beautiful places being desecrated in this way just breaks my heart.

For the last few weeks there has been talk about little else around here, and the rounds of public meetings, collecting signatures, writing letters, etc. have started.
It is a long time since I have done any political agitating. We moved here for a quiet life and to leave the 'dirty' aspects of the world behind. But it appears that the world has followed me with its clumsy boots and greedy ways. There aren't really enough hours in the day already, but I think this is one fight worth making time for.

A year in the death: March

2011-03-31T20:09:00.006+01:00

It was R's birthday on Sunday. He would have been 49.
That's no age to be absent from the party, is it?

It is still difficult to fully take in the fact that he has gone. Even though to the outside world I think I appear pretty together these days, I still walk around with that massive R-shaped hole in my heart.

This year I turned down the couple of offers of company I received. It seemed like the right time to get through a birthday on my own.

In the event, though, I didn't have to go through the day alone. No, Bunny, WomanNShadow's travelling Ambassador of Grief and Whimsy arrived the day before. (And many, many thanks to Boo for making sure she arrived on time). I shall talk about Bunny's magical effect in another post, but suffice to say she was a gentle and calming influence on the way over there.

There were daffodils to take from the garden, of course. R's favourite flowers.

Bunny listened all the way as I told her about birthdays long past - both his and mine. We had to take the long way around as the bridge is out on my normal route, but it didn't seem to matter. We were not in a hurry.
We sat by his grave for a long time.

I talked. Bunny listened.
I cried. She understood.

Moose came and sat down and whispered in her ear too!

Then we went up the hill to look at the view.
It was a grey, cold day. The mist had descended and the lack of sun meant that it didn't clear at all. But somehow the dense mist in the valley bottom had an ethereal feel to it, cutting off the hillside from the rest of the world.
For one day at least.

Running to stand still

2011-03-14T14:17:00.003Z

It is a real struggle to keep up with everything at this time of year.

Clients have their end of year budget to use up, so are sending me work like there's no tomorrow. This is also a busy time for me family-wise, with a whole spate of birthdays coming in quick succession. The Facebook experiment has been declared an Official Failure, so has been shut down to the merest skeleton presence (although it did turn up one friend from university I lost touch with years ago, which was nice).

And the garden is waking up.
Every spare moment seems to be spent digging, and I have only just started to sow my seeds. Normally the windowsills are filling up by now. I feel as though I am pedalling at full tilt, but the chain has fallen off so I am getting nowhere.

So is it any wonder that I have to enlist a little help to get the job done?

Information overload

2011-03-04T21:23:00.003Z

So, after much prodding from various people, I set up a Facebook account.

Oh my. Now my head is about to explode. I'm not sure my poor widow brain can cope with exponential messages. Who are all these people, and why do they want to talk to me all at once?

Maybe I should crawl back into my cave and evolve for a little longer!

Cost-benefit analysis

2011-02-28T10:03:00.003Z

The streamlining continues.

Yesterday I parted with my stock trailer.
This wasn't as much of a wrench as I thought it would be. I decided to sell it because it is too heavy for me to manoeuvre alone and I just cannot hitch it up without assistance. It also needs a jolly good clean. My original plan was to buy another, smaller trailer that I can easily handle - I only ever need to carry two or three animals at a time - but I have had a couple of offers of loans, so I might not need to at all.

This feels like a positive step. The trailer was just sitting there, slowly deteriorating and turning green from algae, and it was another symbol of the things I could not do any more. Clearing it out felt like a breath of fresh air.

And the best part was that it sold for a tenner more than I paid for it!

I am finding that this acceptance and jettisoning of what I cannot cope with on my own brings a real sense of peace. Heaven knows I have fought against it for long enough.

I was talking to my sister-in-law the other evening. She has some significant health issues, including having had major back surgery. Although she is still working, she finds anything like gardening, which involves pulling and bending, to simply be too painful. Their garden is beautiful, and they put so much work into turning it into a little haven of loveliness. But over the past year they have gradually accepted that she can no longer do what is necessary to keep it looking that way, and have taken the decision to turn it into much more of a low-maintenance garden.

This was a heart-breaking decision for them and is the sort of little domestic loss that needs to be mourned. But she can also see the possibilities that the new garden will open up for them. More time to travel, for example, and certainly not being tied to the place during peak sowing and planting season. More cash to spend on other things, and no longer feeling a need to shoot rabbits from the upstairs windows to keep them off their newly-planted seedlings!

I started feeling the benefits of this simplification process myself this weekend. With just one henhouse to clean out, and no large smelly duck house, I had a lot more spare time. This meant I could make a start on clearing the decks for my new flower cutting garden, and just generally tidying that part of the garden which tends to be the dumping ground for all sorts of things I can't find a home for. The mess around there has been seeping into my consciousness for a long time now, despite my best efforts to ignore it.

The picture was taken last year, so I would like to clear it properly before the nettles and brambles spring back into growth with a vengeance. Then I can perhaps get a path laid and the flower bed edging in place. This will have the knock-on effect of not having to control the triffid-like weed growth in that area during the summer - which will hopefully save me more time.

It is all good.

This little fellow wasn't keen on being exposed though!

Thoughts on watching the cricket

2011-02-26T00:12:00.014Z

I have just been sitting here watching the highlights of the World Cup match between Australia and New Zealand. I guess the Kiwis can be forgiven for a lacklustre performance today.

It took me back to 2003.
We had tickets that year for the World Cup in South Africa. I had bought the tickets about 6 months ahead of time when they were still quite cheap. Then we started house-hunting, and decided to buy this place. Had all gone to plan we would have been settled in here by the November and could have travelled, but it all went haywire and turned into the move from hell.

As the whole sale process dragged on and on, we ended up having to cancel the trip, much to our huge disappointment. Ultimately we moved house right in the middle of the competition.

Although we cancelled because of the house move, it also proved to have been the right decision in another way - my Dad died right in the middle of the time we would have been in Cape Town. He had been living with leukaemia for many years, and his health was up and down all the time, but his death came right out of the blue. I can't imagine how I would have felt if I had been a 12-hour flight away. I think there was less than 2 weeks between his death and our move, with his funeral in the middle of it all.

It is funny how things like conveyancing and packing, which seemed incredibly stressful before, suddenly became of no importance whatsoever. We had brought Dad up to see the house the Christmas before he died, but only from the outside. He never got to see it inside, or the land that goes with it, which he would have loved. We never got to ride together on the steam train that sets off from my nearest town. So many things we were unable to do together.

After missing out on South Africa, R and I talked a lot about going to the West Indies for the 2007 event. But by that time he was contracting and was reluctant to commit to going, just in case it would have prevented him picking up work.
I wish we had gone. I know the whole event was rather chaotic and the cricket wasn't great that year, but he could have at least ticked off a few more 1st class grounds from his bucket list.

When you think you have a 'normal' lifespan stretching in front of you, it is so easy to let things slip or pass by because there will be plenty of time to do them later.

If only that were true for everyone.

In my new life I am much more inclined to seize the day. It is hard not to regret the missed moments. All I can do, though, is to ensure that there aren't so many in the future. I just wish R were here to share the unmissed ones.

A year in the death: February

2011-02-17T20:48:00.003Z

It has been a heck of a week, including two nights working way into the wee small hours. Moose was a little stir-crazy too as his dicky leg has been playing up and our walks have been necessarily foreshortened.

We therefore both needed a little fresh air this afternoon and, as I had to go to town to pick up a parcel, it was a good opportunity to visit R on the way back home.

Spring seems to be on its way. Snowdrops punctuate the periphery of the field, and there are catkins on the hazels already. The grass has that dead, brownish shaggy look that it takes on just before the new shoots start to appear.

Today I did something that I haven't done for a while, which is to walk up the hill from R's grave to admire the view from the top. I used to do it every time I visited, but seem to have got out of the habit lately.

From the top of the hill I can look out over the Severn valley and the flat flood plain that is regularly underwater. It is dotted with the small mounded hills known as "moel"s that are so prevalent in this area (moel means "bald" in English, and they are very reminiscent of round tonsured heads). There is nothing that makes me feel so close to R as being at the top of a hill.

And I wanted to 'talk' to him. To explain why I feel it is the right time to at least open myself up to the possibility of finding someone else. I am pretty sure he would be OK with the idea. Certainly there were no signs from beyond the grave that he didn't approve. There were no flashes of lightning. The clouds didn't form themselves into a giant NO! I didn't even step in a pile of fox poo on the way back down the hill.

R just didn't do standing still.
He fidgeted and paced and marched ahead.
Looking back I have lost count of the number of buses we missed over the years because he couldn't bear to wait at the bus stop for one to arrive, and so we had to walk to the next stop along. And then the next stop. And the one after that. Invariably the bus would arrive while we were between the two.

He would understand me not wanting my life to stagnate.
I have no idea if anything will come of this and, to be honest, it doesn't really matter if it doesn't. What is important is to feel as though I am taking my life back, being active rather than simply reactive. And I know he would approve of that.

Lonely hearts

2011-02-14T21:37:00.002Z

As seen from the top of the Berliner Dom last year.
Yet another set of steps that we never got to climb together.
I was a little bit mad that day, so I walked up all 270 steps twice - once for each of us.

I so miss being able to share views like that. Just to be able to get to the top of a hill with someone and talk about what I see. It is almost as though the experience never really happened if there isn't another person there to remember it as well.

So I did something this weekend that rather took me by surprise.
The fact that someone else was 'driving' the computer may have had something to do with it - or perhaps it had something to do with the large amount of red wine that was drunk that evening. But I signed up for an online dating agency. (And if you happen to read this, C - thank you!).

Am I ready for this?
I really don't know.
What does 'ready' mean in any case?
I am pretty sure that I don't want to spend the rest of my life on my own. I know that I like having someone to love and look after. I don't feel at all needy - just that it would be good to share with another person once more.

At some point I have to be ready. So why not now? Before the hard, hard shell I have been busily building around myself becomes too thick to chip open at all. Before I get too stuck in my ways and forget how to share.

I won't ever stop loving R, so there is no point in sitting here waiting for that to happen. I am comfortable in my own skin and know I won't settle for just anyone. I know how a good relationship feels and am not prepared to compromise on a bad one.

That all sounds terribly confident, doesn't it?
In reality I am trying not to freak out about the fact that several men have responded to my profile and am wondering whether to simply run away from the whole idea for another 6 months. The process makes me feel like a naive 15 year-old who has never been kissed.

Perhaps I am not ready after all.

A talking-to

2011-02-10T23:53:00.004Z

I came inside from feeding the sheep the other morning and caught sight of myself in the mirror.

What a state!
Hatty-hair, covered in bits of hay, wearing R's tatty old padded shirt that makes me look like a tartan Christmas pudding, grubby jeans and wellies.
Here I am in my winter plumage.

Practical, but good grief. Not day in, day out for three months or more. Time for a bit of a talking-to.

Time to get a grip, woman. Time, at least, to wear your own clothes - you know, the ones that actually fit you. You have been wearing R's waterproof in the rain since he died. That's two and a half years in a coat at least three sizes too big. Come on now, it really wouldn't hurt to go shopping - would it?

And about that hair.
Go on. Pick up the phone and make an appointment. Your hair looks quite nice when it's short and cut properly. Then you won't need to cover it up with a woolly hat that makes you look like a bag lady. And I hate to say it, but are you really mentally prepared to look quite that grey? Why not use that box of colour that has been sitting in the bathroom drawer for months? Just for a bit of a boost.

And while you're at it, how about a touch of lippy next time you venture into civilisation? Probably a good idea to check the use-by dates first if you want to avoid some noxious infection due to wearing out-of-date cosmetics.

Or a skirt, perhaps. You know, those things at the far recesses of the wardrobe that are a dim and distant memory. You do have legs, you know, and they aren't too dreadful. Although you might want to take a razor to them first. I'm sure you remember how to do that.

This is your Vanity talking to you. There was a time when you paid me a lot more attention and I like to think you scrubbed up reasonably well when you did. Go on. Pick up the phone. Oh, and make that dentist appointment while you're at it.

Just think of it as another decluttering project, if that makes you feel better.

(This picture just makes me laugh. J the sheep whisperer is humiliated by her ovine charges yet again!)

End of an era

2011-02-08T22:58:00.006Z

This afternoon I said goodbye to the last three Muscovy drakes.
It is the first time I have been without ducks for about 7 years and the place seems very odd without them. They weren't there waiting outside the back door when I went to feed the sheep this evening. Now Moose will have to find something else to pester at feeding times.

Muscovies are simply the most laid-back poultry I have ever kept. They don't seem to be bothered by anything much and are quite happy just to sit and chill or relax around the pool while all the other birds around them are busily looking for food or destroying a flowerbed or something similar.

But they had to go.
I sold quite a lot last year, and the fox took the two ducks I had planned to keep. That left me with the three layabout drakes that were serving no useful purpose whatsoever. They were too old for the freezer and just represented another responsibility that I don't have the headspace for right now. When I was offered a couple of bales of hay in return for them, it seemed like the sensible solution - and one fewer journey to pick up hay. But I am really going to miss them with their football hooligan greeting behaviour and incredible fecundity.

And it is one more admission of defeat.
One more spirit-sapping move away from the reason we came to live here.
I sometimes wonder whether it would have been better to sell up and move somewhere smaller right away than to witness this death of our dream by a thousand cuts.

Will this wind be so mighty...

2011-02-04T23:17:00.003Z

... as to lay low the mountains of the earth?

A bit of Pete and Dud always hits the spot!

It seems a little churlish to complain about the weather after all the people of Queensland have been through over the last couple of days but, by heck, it's a bit blowy out there today.

The wind has been gusting at about 75 mph, with a peak of 90 mph this afternoon. I can hear the roof slates rattle with every gust, and it sounds as though a whole host of banshees are circling the house. The power has been on and off all day, and the TV gave up the ghost this evening (something to do with the pressure, I think).

I tried walking the dog, and got about half a mile before I had to turn back because it was just too much like hard work. There are times when I wonder at our sanity when we moved to a house at the top of a hill. The wind whistles along the ridge at the best of times, but days like today are quite breathtaking - literally!

When I went out to feed the sheep this afternoon there were a dozen windbreak willows and one 25' conifer down, bringing up the fence with its roots. There was also another, larger conifer that was looking distinctly dubious. The duck house that normally takes 2 people to move it had been lifted up and thrown on its back.

Hopefully the worst is over now. If I get through this night with my barn roof intact and nothing worse than a few slipped slates on the house, I will be very happy. What I really don't want to be doing tomorrow is dealing with a whole load of storm damage, but I am going to have to do something about the fallen conifer before the sheep get out of the field and onto the road.

I guess I won't be able to keep that promise about not using the chainsaw after all.

So I found a few more things to unscrew....

2011-01-31T16:13:00.005Z

A strange little thing, isn't it? It is one of those objects that I have dotted around the house that bring R back to me more vividly than any photograph.

It is a billet of aluminium that he subjected to many psi of pressure to demonstrate diagonal shear as a result of compressive stress. He was very proud as it failed at an almost perfect 45° angle.

R did his degree in Aeronautical Engineering. It wasn't one of his better life choices, as he freely admitted that his decision was based on being quite good at physics and having made lots of Airfix models as a kid. After a few months he realised that the course was about 87.54% maths. Very hard maths. With huge long equations that extend over several pages.

As a result of all this maths, and possibly his discovery of beer in a big way, he ended up taking 5 years to complete a 3-year course. But he stuck at it and finished. Much to the pride (and not a little relief) of his parents.

What he should have done was to change to something like structural engineering or materials science. That was what interested him - the way materials behave when subjected to external forces. He could expound on this subject for hours if I let him. This explains how I know why the ancient Greeks removed their chariot wheels at night (to prevent them deforming due to extended loading - also known as 'creep'). Or why this arty-farty linguist could explain Hooke's Law to you if you really wanted her to.

It also explains why my thoughts this weekend were full of bending failure in copper piping.

After two weeks of tripping over the things I had moved out of the kitchen and into the corridor so that I could remove the boiler, I decided to have another go at shifting the wretched thing. It took a matter of moments to bend and break the copper pipes that I had so singularly failed to saw through. That gave me the leverage I needed to undo the last remaining nut on the pipe manifold thingummy, thus allowing a couple of gallons of the blackest water I have ever seen to pour out over the kitchen floor!

That made the whole structure light enough for me to wrestle onto the sack truck and out of the house forever. Hurrah!

See, R. I was listening.

Snacking

2011-01-26T22:32:00.002Z

My Dad had the dreadful habit of allowing our dogs to lick the plates and dishes after we had eaten. Looking back on it I find the thought quite revolting - I wonder sometimes how I made it to adulthood without succumbing to some noxious disease. It probably explains why I have the constitution of an ox now.

R, who came from a non-doggy family, once witnessed this mealtime ritual and it rather freaked him out. During the 'talks' that led up to us getting Moose, not allowing the dog to lick plates was one of his non-negotiables. As I secretly agreed with him, this was obviously an easy point to concede. (I find it is always good to have one or two principles that can be easily dropped in the course of important negotiations!)

We also agreed that dogs should not be fed scraps at the table.
I have a particular dislike for dogs that stand and drool on my knee while I am eating or, worse still, attempt to snatch food from the table. Moose knows that he has to lie on his bed while people are eating. Fortunately, being a mostly-Collie, rules aren't a problem to him. He likes to know how things should be done, and will make up his own rules if I don't do it first.

But he does have expectations.
After we had eaten, R would make up the dog's dinner, including any leftovers from the meal. It was one of those little things that made me smile - R went from being someone very nervous of dogs (something he learned from his Mum) to being totally besotted with our initially rather difficult and troubled Moose. The way they both grew together was lovely to watch.

The meals eaten in this house have changed somewhat over the last couple of years. There are very few roast dinners now, so much less watered down gravy to pour over his biscuits. But Moose does enjoy a bit of yoghurt once in a while. Every time I decant a little into a bowl for my lunch, there is an interested glance in my direction. He is just waiting for me to get to the end of the big pot so he can have his turn.

Yep, Moose does enjoy his yoghurt!

But first ...

2011-01-23T01:20:00.004Z

Two little words that seem to characterise my life at present.

Whenever I think of doing something, there is always something else that has to be done first before I can get started. Sometimes a whole series of things.

Take the old propane boiler, for example.

My house is L-shaped, and the two wings of the house had separate heating systems when we moved here - one oil and one gas. When the solar tubes and thermal store were installed, we had the two systems amalgamated and the large bomb-shaped gas tank removed. But for some reason we never got around to taking out the gas boiler.

So it sits there still, along with a couple of lengths of flue pipe, the new sink top and taps, and a large box of pipe lagging (to mention just a few items), in the little room that is - or one day will be - the back kitchen. The room is tiny - a little over seven and a half feet square - and has been waiting to be fitted out for more years than I care to remember.
It is funny how you can simply ignore or, more precisely, stop seeing things. I walk past this room several times a day to get out to the garden, but because it belongs to the granny flat and not the main house I am able to ignore the fact that it looks like a building site.

Or at least I used to be able to ignore it.
Last week I must have looked at it with all my New Year zeal, and suddenly realised that this can't go on. The mess just saps my energy and the inertia it creates spreads to all the other areas of my life too. If I don't get it sorted, it will keep on holding me down. Unfortunately my BIL won't be able to come back and do the work for months, if at all this year, so I am just going to have to bite the bullet and find someone else to fit the kitchen that has been sitting in the spare bedroom for at least 4 years now. Just get it done!

But first...
But first I need to have the room plastered so I can sit down with someone with the final measurements and decide what will go where - and in such a tiny room it will have to be done right. So that means I need to empty the room.
No problem, I'm on a roll with my major declutter. Just carry on in the same vein.

But first I have to get rid of that boiler.
Everything was disconnected, so it should have been plain sailing from there. Onto the sack truck, out to the car and a big heave to get it inside.

Nope.

Here we go again. Can't shift it. I don't know what they put inside gas boilers, but it weighs a ton. Why does it always boil down to me not being physically strong enough to move things? When R had heavy things to move, he could ask me to help him, and together we could usually manage. Where is he when I need someone to lend a hand? That's what I want to know.

So I find the toolbox, collect an assortment of screwdrivers, mole grips and adjustable spanners and start dismantling the boiler. At first it comes apart quite easily and I become quietly confident. But then I run out of things to unscrew, and am unable to undo the nuts holding on the long lengths of copper piping sticking out of the top.
So I try cutting them off with a hacksaw, but the blade is worn and very ineffective. Can't find a new blade.
Kicking it hard made me feel better, but the noise scared Moose and it didn't do much to help in any case.

By now it is getting dark, and there is no light in the room. Plenty of wires where the lights will one day be. But no actual lights.

Give the boiler one last kick and go and drink beer. Resolve to tackle it with renewed vigour in the morning.

I shall get that bloody thing out of here if I have to take an angle grinder to it!

To everything there is a season

2011-01-20T00:29:00.002Z

I guess I have answered one of my "Where do I go from here?" questions.

The box on the table is an old army surplus detonator box. R bought it from a strange little shop at the back of Euston Station many, many moons ago. So long ago that I can't even remember his justification for buying it - possibly just because he liked it, which I guess is as good a reason as any.

For a long time he used it to store part of his burgeoning coin collection, but at some point along the line the collection outgrew the box and I appear to have appropriated it.

For my seed collection.

As that is obviously something that needs to be stored in a detonator box!

Growing things is important to me.
The ground was rock hard this morning, with a delicate white dusting of hoarfrost, but I am already thinking about getting started again. It is time to sow chillis, aubergines and sweet peas, and it is always worthwhile setting off a couple of jars of seeds to eat as sprouts. It would also be good to get the greenhouse cleared so I can start sowing salad leaves soon. The speed with which they grow and are ready to pick is always gratifying, even when there isn't a chance of getting anything started outdoors.

Since R died, there hasn't been a lot of planning going on in the garden. I have just reacted to the changing of the seasons, and simply sown what I had when there was time in which to do it. This inevitably meant poor germination in a lot of cases due to sowing old seed that should have been culled. This is a double whammy of crapness as I never seem to catch up even when I do buy new seed - there simply isn't time to sow them again.

And the food I eat has changed dramatically. Much more than I ever imagined it would. These days I barely touch potatoes, the thought of Jerusalem artichokes turns my stomach, parsnips seem to be just for Christmas. Green beans now interest me mainly for the seed inside them. Fruit I enjoy when it is fresh, but R seems to have taken my sweet tooth (such that it was) away with him, so I no longer make pies - or jam or ice cream or even chutney. On the other hand I can't seem to keep up with my demand for green leafy vegetables, tomatoes and curcubits of all sorts.

Then there are the ones that I would love to grow, but that just can't handle the conditions up here, like the sweet potatoes and outdoor peppers. Carrots which do fine in pots in the greenhouse, but succumb to slugs or rootfly outdoors after mid-Summer. Time to either give them up or give serious thought to erecting a polytunnel over some of the raised beds to extend the growing season.

And the flowers.
Megan is right about those. They are not frivolous at all, they are balm for the soul. I think that more time spent growing flowers that do not need preserving or turning into something, and simply give pleasure will be time well-spent.

The seed catalogues have been plopping onto the doormat since New Year, so it is time to set aside an evening in front of the fire to look through the seed stocks and see what is too old, what I may as well pass on to someone else because I know I won't grow it and what, if anything, I need to buy new this year.

It is good to feel a sense of anticipation and growing enjoyment about something.

Yep, whatever the future holds, there will be room for seeds in it.

A year in the death: January

2011-01-16T01:12:00.006Z

The soup must have worked its magic as I survived the week relatively unscathed. A couple of days in bed sounds quite nice right now - I have a huge backlog of books to work my way through - what a shame it normally means having to be ill to do it.

On Friday, I felt I deserved a day off though.
When R was here, I was able to do this most of the time, and we were working towards me cutting back to three days a week, so I could spend more time on the smallholding. The place looked very tidy in those days. Ah well.

Friday's treat was a trip to the tip to get rid of all the junk in the Land Rover, with a view to filling it up again this weekend. Such is the glamorous life I live these days.
But it did give me a chance to call in to see R for a few minutes. Just to be there and feel close to him.

The contrast in temperature compared to this time last month is quite incredible; +12, rather than -12 C. But the warm front has brought with it high winds and lots of rain, which is the sort of weather that really sends my mood into a tailspin. It brings on inaction and passivity, which doesn't suit me at all, and makes me long for Spring.

But the field has changed very little since my last visit.
The grass appears flat and lifeless and there is not even a trace of the first bulbs. It is a frustrating time, as always. My hands are itching to start sowing and planting again. Even digging isn't possible because the ground is so wet. I know there is life starting again as the moles have started to excavate the paddock, and sparrows can be seen carrying feathers back to their nests. It seems to be light a little longer every evening, yet it still is not really time to start working outside.

I have decided that this will be a quiet year on the animal side of the holding. It would be nice to do more with the garden. There is a patch outside the back door that is a real mess, largely because it has been devastated by chickens - something that used to drive R mad, as they would constantly scrape soil from the flowerbeds onto his lawn! Well now the chickens are firmly under lock and key, and duck numbers will be reduced soon, so it would be good to have some frivolous, non-productive flowers this year - just because. I even have plans to plant a small patch of flowers behind the greenhouse just for cutting for the house. It would be nice to think that will happen this year too.

I may not be able to dig at home, but there was digging occurring at the burial field when I arrived. I had to take a deep breath before walking past the new grave being opened up. Life may be at a standstill for the time being, but it appears that death is still in business.

Preparing

2011-01-11T19:41:00.001Z

I was feeling quite smug because I thought I had got away with it.
Most of my family had come down with the lurgy either at or around Christmas, but I sailed through the festive season in rude good health.

But now, ten days after they all went home, taking their sniffles, portable drug cabinets and soggy hankies with them, I can feel the achiness starting.

I really don't have time to be ill this week. Or at least not until Thursday when I have to deliver quite a large job to a new client. One I would like to impress, so calling in sick just isn't an option. Working freelance mostly makes for a wonderful life, with the flexibility to control the content of the day. But having no one who can take over the reins occasionally means keeping going when you would rather be tucked up in bed.

So, attempting not to think resentful thoughts about my friend whose husband managed to wangle a week working at home to look after her when she had 'flu, I have been preparing for a possible visit from Mr H1N1:

Extra bag of chicken feed bought - check
Friend to walk Moose if I can't get up - check
Table tennis match cancelled - check
Paracetamol - check
Boxes of tissues - check
Fire made up and ready to go - check
Adequate stores of honey, whisky and lemon - check
Hot water bottle beside the kettle - check
Big pot of soup made - check

This latter is essential if I am not actually on my deathbed. Soup to nourish and comfort.
There was no chicken immediately to hand, and I wasn't about to start exploring the icy depths of the freezer, so lamb bones would have to do. They make a lovely rich soup, with lots of instantly health-giving veggies and barley. Barley is one of my favourite comfort foods; it is easy to eat and digest and soaks up all the flavour of the stock. While I would rather have a gentle nursemaid here to soothe my fevered brow, magic soup will have to do instead.

'Flu?
Bring it on!
Well actually I would much rather it passed me by altogether, but at least I am ready for it. But not until Thursday, please.

On a roll

2011-01-09T19:15:00.012Z

I knew I shouldn't have listened to it.

But The Archers, that everyday story of country folk, has been part of the soundtrack to my life for 15 minutes a day ever since I was born, so it was sort of predestined that I would have to listen to the 60th anniversary edition. (60 years! How can a radio programme keep going for so long?)
I held out until the omnibus catch-up this morning, then simply couldn't resist despite my better judgement.

And the clunky dialogue and even more obvious plot-signposting did nothing to lessen the impact of having one of my favourite characters killed off. The resulting shock, pain and disbelief was beautifully played by the cast. Which was how I found myself sitting at the kitchen table this morning, sobbing my heart out at the imagined grief of an imaginary wife in a pretend village on the radio!

Time to get a grip.
Time to shake off a mood that was rapidly spiralling downward.
Time to get mucky and start clearing out the barn.

It is revolting at present, with everything covered in a couple of generations of duck poo and polystyrene bobbles. I don't know why, but polystyrene has an irresistible fascination for chickens, and mine had spent many happy hours pecking to pieces the insulation sheets that R had put in there for safe-keeping.

Then there are the piles of wood, cardboard boxes, stacks of old feed sacks, solidified bags of old cement, soggy straw, old demijohns, many lengths of baler twine, tarpaulins and plastic sheeting - and that's even before I get back as far as the disintegrating shelving units left behind by a previous owner. Somewhere under all the mess are the boxes containing the parquet floor blocks that R bought about 2 months after we moved here and which I would like to have laid in my sitting room - when I finally get around to decorating it.

Outside there are a couple of old radiators, a stack of old windows that R was going to make into cold frames for me, the pile of quarry tiles that I hope one day will be sufficient to cover my kitchen floor.

It was like Steptoe's yard out there and getting worse by the day.

A couple of hours later I was totally filthy and the Land Rover was packed to the top with - let's not beat about the bush here - with crap.
Not potentially useful stuff that just needed to find another home, but pure, unadulterated crap that has been making me feel awful every time I went into the barn. Getting it out of there felt wonderful.

It would be nice to say that I had got most of it done this afternoon, but I am not even close. I had to stop due to lack of space in the car. There will be several more trips to the tip needed after this one. But it feels better already, and if I can keep up the momentum it might once again become a useful space rather than a dumping ground for general rubbish.

Resolving

2011-01-06T01:06:00.002Z

It is incredible what a few days with people around can do to lift my mood.
People who loved R nearly as much as I do. People who forgive me if I am a bit tetchy or weepy or just generally useless. People with welcoming arms and ready shoulders. People who make me laugh.

The only down side, if indeed that is what it is, is that it does not leave much time for reflection. There is no space in which to do the balance-sheet accounting that is usual at this time of year. No quiet hours to sit and think and plan for the future.

So I am a bit late with my New Year's resolutions!
Actually this is not something that I have done much of in the past, as it always seemed such a pointless exercise. But that was in that other, charmed life where things always appeared to work out for the best.

Now I feel that I am approaching some sort of crossroads.
I seem to have been simply marking time for so long. It is difficult to say exactly what I have been waiting for - probably for the deus ex machina to descend and explain that the last two and a half years were all a bad dream.

Nope! Much as I'd like that to be true, it just ain't going to happen, so I need to do something about the inertia that has been rooting me to the spot for so long.

I could write a long and very boring list of all the things that need to be done around here, but that would be missing the point. First of all I have to decide what I want from my life from now on, otherwise anything that I do achieve will be nothing more than rearranging the deckchairs.

I think it all came to a head when I was plucking the turkeys. It was about 10 below zero and my hands and feet were painful blocks of ice. At that moment it wasn't entirely clear to me why I was doing it - other than that was what we always did. But that was when there were two people to share the work, and it was the precursor to a hugely-satisfying home-produced Christmas dinner.
With one person it was just a miserable exercise.

It would also be nice to do a bit of travelling this year, and that is much easier to arrange if I keep the animal numbers to a minimum. But then it feels like holding up the white flag of surrender to say that. On the other hand it would allow me to concentrate on getting the house sorted, or at least half of it, which would be a very positive achievement and make me feel a lot better about myself.

Gah. I just don't know where to go from here. All I know is that I don't want another few months like the end of last year, when I found myself running - and failing - to keep up with everything. Something has to give. But what? And how to make that feel like a positive thing, rather than making me feel I have failed?

So, my resolution is to find out what I really want from the next phase of my life - whatever that may be. If it takes a year, then so be it. It has got to be better than watching myself becoming increasingly overwhelmed with everything.

Oh, and I want to run at least one 10 k race this year, plus a sub-28 minute 5 k.
And catch up with all those overdue letters that I owe people (you know who you are)!

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda o Gymru

2011-01-01T01:24:00.004Z

or
A Happy New Year from Wales.
May 2011 be everything you hope it will be.

A year in the death: December

2010-12-30T22:27:00.002Z

I was a little worried that I wouldn't manage to visit R in December due to a combination of weather, work and guests. Fortunately the thaw set in with a vengeance a couple of days ago, and the snow disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived.

Having sailed through my first two Christmases alone, I expected to do the same this year, but it proved to be a long hard slog. It was difficult to derive any pleasure from the preparations - almost everything I did emphasised his absence. Not having him there to discuss the menu, share in the gift wrapping or even rush around getting the rooms ready seemed to suck out every last vestige of enjoyment from the process. It is many months since I was last so consistently weepy and for such a sustained period.

The inevitable meltdown came on the morning of Christmas Eve when I came to dress the turkeys that had been hanging in the porch for a few days and were thus semi-frozen. Standing there with my hand up the rear end of a frigid turkey in a chaotic kitchen and totally unprepared house proved just too much. An hour or so of railing at the gods about the bloody unfairness of it all, and how this wasn't my job and I should be happily faffing around with my lavender beeswax polish at this point helped a bit. That and a stiff talking-to.
I am thinking of having one of those posters made up with "Have a Good Cry and Carry On", as it seems to be my motto these days.

Once people started arriving it got better, even though R's absence from the room is still huge for everyone. Talking to his family on the 'phone on Christmas Day was difficult; all of us putting on our best jolly voices as we always do and pretending that nothing is amiss. But we all got through it - as we always do.

My no. 1 niece stopped on for a couple of days after the others had left.
Up to a month ago she had been living in Finland with her partner, but the relationship had gone pear-shaped and she has returned to the UK - and is currently both homeless and jobless as well. So she deserved a little TLC, and it was good to think and talk about someone else's misery for a change!

So I didn't get to visit R until today.
When I arrived at the field I wasn't alone. Had I turned up an hour beforehand there would have been a funeral in progress. Fortunately I missed that, but Eira and Ifor (the owners of the field) were about to start filling in the grave. The wooden frame holding the mound of slatey soil excavated from the ground brought back bitter memories of an August afternoon two years ago.
We had a little chat - about mutual friends, about the weather and about their young Collie who had had to have a leg amputated, but was still charging about like a mad thing on three legs - then they tactfully withdrew to give me some time alone.

It was a dull, damp, grey morning as I stood and told R how much I missed him. R's normal view had almost entirely been swallowed up by the fog, and Cefn-Bryntalch - the big house that was once the home of composer Peter Warlock - was barely visible. This was where he composed his haunting song cycle, The Curlew, a piece that suits my current mood very well.

It will be a few months before the curlews return, however. This morning I would have been satisfied with an elusive glimpse of the sun, but it was not to be. The wind farm that is normally all too present through the gap in the trees was nowhere to be seen either. With the fog pressing in on all sides and filling up the valley, it was as though this hillside was the only place left on earth.

Care and maintenance

2010-12-21T23:11:00.002Z

My poor old walking boots have taken a bit of a hammering over the last few weeks. They are the only footwear that keep my feet warm enough in this weather, so they have been worn a lot. Salt, snow and grit aren't a great combination for the leather, however, so they were looking rather sad this evening.

R was very conscientious about looking after shoes and boots. Cleaning was usually a job for Sunday evening before he went off for the week. He had a vast array of cloths and brushes and pots of polish, and each had to be used in the correct order. I loved to see the shoes all neatly lined up on a sheet of newspaper, laces removed, waiting for their final buffing and shine.

On the morning of his funeral I totally fixated on the need to polish my boots. I spent about an hour sitting on the step with the little pot of parade ground gloss he always used to give shoes that extra-special shine. It was always the polish of choice for weddings, funerals and interviews, so how could I do anything else? People moved around me, chatting and getting ready, as I sat with my brush and duster. My SIL said a few months afterwards that she thought I was going to rub a hole in the leather. Mechanically brushing, buffing and polishing - over and over - proved to be an effective substitute for thinking that morning.

Walking boots required a different approach.
That was always done in front of the woodburner as the warmth from the fire helped the wax to sink in. As he rubbed the wax in with his fingers, he would explain why it was important, particularly in damp, muddy Wales. Wet boots would be brushed clean of mud, stuffed with newspaper and allowed to dry naturally. Then they received the Nikwax treatment.

R practically lived in his walking boots when he was at home, so they needed a lot of maintenance. After he died I couldn't bear to see his boots on the rack in the porch. Other shoes didn't bother me so much, but seeing his boots there was torture. So one morning, fairly early on, I took them to town with me and dropped them in the Salvation Army clothes collection bin as I couldn't stand to have them in the house any longer. None of his other clothes or shoes had that effect on me - just those boots.

So I know that he would be cross to know that I hadn't Nikwaxed my walking boots since he died. They have been neglected for nearly 2 and a half years. Definitely worthy of a disappointed look. When I got back from walking Moose this evening I finally noticed how sad they were looking. It was time.

I always feel very virtuous when carrying out this type of maintenance job. It is daft really. All it involves is rubbing in some wax, but it makes me feel like the latest in a long line of thrifty housewives, darning socks and applying their stitches in time. The scent of the wax is very strong and heady, and quickly fills the room. Not exactly pleasant, but again homely and upright. My fingers move in greasy circles, paying particular attention to the seams - just as it says on the tin. The parched leather drinks in the wax, deepening in colour as it does so.

It doesn't take long, certainly not long enough to justify avoiding the task for all this time. My comfy old boots now sit ready for use once more. Sure they are a little battered and worn - just like me - but they polish up OK and seem to still have a few miles left in them yet!

The view from my window

2010-12-21T11:08:00.003Z

Hmm.
I think I need to do something about those gutters!

Slowing down

2010-12-17T13:36:00.006Z

The last week has been quite a hectic one for this little homebody.

Last weekend I was in Liverpool visiting friends, then on Monday I finally forced myself to go to Shrewsbury to do my Christmas shopping. Wednesday saw me driving up to Manchester for a production of The Messiah at Bridgewater Hall. Unfortunately what was supposed to be a quick trip up there, followed by a leisurely supper and an evening of sublime music ended up being rather frantic. An accident on the M6 turned the normal hour and a half journey into one lasting four hours. When I finally arrived, Jane thrust an insulated coffee mug into one hand and a bowl of lasagna into the other and said I would have to eat them in the car on the way to the concert hall! We made it with literally two minutes to spare.
The music was worth it though, and the whole experience made me very grateful that we made it out of the city and away from the daily commute when we did.

Yesterday, however, everything came to a grinding halt.
I was supposed to be going down to Essex for Vera's funeral, to see R's family and to deliver Christmas presents, but the weather had different ideas. The snow forecast for Saturday arrived two days early and I found myself stuck on my hilltop again.

As a result I spent much of the day wandering around aimlessly, trying to focus on some housework - so that I could actually achieve something with the time. I have no idea why this always happens, but the sudden relaxation after frenetically running around trying to get things sorted always results in a more or less wasted day.
Possibly it is a small amount of guilt at not making the journey, even though I know it would have been rather foolish to go. R's Dad was relieved that I didn't as he would have worried about me the whole time, but it still felt wrong not to be there to say goodbye.

In the end I simply gave up and went out with Moose for a good long walk. The snow was fresh and still shallow enough to walk on comfortably. I love the leaden light created by weak winter sunshine fighting its way through snow-laden clouds. The complete lack of traffic allows the other sounds of the countryside to ring out clearly - hungry sheep in the fields waiting impatiently for the farmer to bring a new bale of haylage, startled black rooks rising as one from the white-shrouded depths of an oak tree, snow falling suddenly from an overhanging branch.

I am glad we went out yesterday as another foot of snow arrived overnight.
Feeding the animals was interesting as their bowls and waterers had completely disappeared. Everything - including me - was more than ready for their breakfast by the time I got round to them.

The snowplough has just been along the main road, so I now have the choice between digging out the Land Rover for a trip to the shops to pick up a few things, or staying inside in the warm and putting on the oven to do some baking.
At the moment the thought of the baking is winning!

The visit

2010-12-13T23:54:00.000Z

I have just returned from a trip to the Hall at Abbey-Cwm-Hir, a restored Victorian Gothic Revival house.

I'm not sure why I agreed to go as visiting country houses really isn't my thing at all, but I guess I couldn't come up with a reason why not quickly enough. And it was a trip out with friends, which is generally a Good Thing. At this time of year, the tour centres on the fact that the house has 52 rooms, and each one is decorated for Christmas.

Well, I had probably had my fill of tweely-bedecked Christmas trees by about the 11th room, and we hadn't even left the first floor. The place was on the unacceptable side of lukewarm in most of the rooms as we padded around in our stockinged feet (shoes had to be left at the door because of the carpets), and the lady of the house flitted around behind the scenes in her bright red dress, never introducing herself to us, but constantly "there", glimpsed briefly and elusively going into another room at the end of a corridor or the top of a staircase. All very Daphne Du Maurier.

By the time we reached the frigid 'servants' quarters' at the top of the house, each room still decorated in its own Christmassy theme, it was all becoming very surreal.
I had hoped that the trip might help to bring on a little festive spirit, but it was rather counterproductive. When we left I swore that I didn't want to see another Christmas tree for as long as I lived!

This will be my third Christmas on my own.

The first one I planned simply to survive. In the end I found it very comforting to go through the ingrained rituals with my family around me. For R and I, it was never one of the 'big' things in our year. Mostly it involved frenetically driving all over the country visiting relatives, so we rarely spent it just the two of us. Of course his absence was huge that first Christmas, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and nowhere near as awful as most of the other 'firsts'.

Last year I actually enjoyed the holidays. The preparations were a great distraction. I had lists and timetables, and spent a week or so making beds, cleaning, baking and generally turning the house into a home for the season. My family were all on good form, and it was wonderful having us all together, eating, talking and playing silly games with the kids. The period afterwards was difficult for me when the snow came back and I was all alone for several days, but Christmas itself was an unexpected pleasure.

This year I seem to be struggling much more with it.
My family are coming here again, which is just how I want it, but I don't seem to be able to gear myself up to getting ready.
I can cope with the feasting part - I love that and always will. But thinking about and shopping for gifts feels like swimming through treacle. It doesn't help that I regard the whole gift-giving part of Christmas as a totally meaningless exercise for anyone over the age of about 18. Don't get me wrong - I love to give people gifts when I happen upon something that I know they will like, but desperately rushing around trying to find a present for someone who doesn't really want or need anything from me, and all for an artificial deadline, just sends my head into a spin.

It used to be so easy - I would hand the whole thing over to R, who loved shopping and could happily wander around for hours, if not days, looking for gifts. In contrast, I find it totally stressful, and really wish people would grow up and decide not to bother after all. Right now it is sucking out all the pleasure that I should be feeling at looking forward to the feasting and companionship which, for me as a non-religious person, are what Christmas is all about.
Oh well, it will all be over soon.

Hurrah!

2010-12-12T00:43:00.001Z

Success at last.

Several days of tapping, banging the jar on the worktop, levering and channelling of all my frustration came to naught, but then I remembered. Heat. That's what was needed. A little light expansion.

Half an hour seated on the radiator (the jar, that is, not me you understand) did the trick. And I am delighted to announce that ...
we now have pickles!

(The heater is also now in the house, although that did require some assistance).

Warming up

2010-12-07T00:43:00.002Z

It feels as though I have spent the last week or so doing nothing but feed things and deliver water to replace the last lot of water that froze.
And trying to keep warm, of course.

It takes a few days to get habituated to the snow and develop a new routine.
It is the same every year. I always forget just how cold this house can be with its rubble-filled stone walls and undersized boiler, or at least until the wood stove and central heating have been going full-blast for a few hours and the benefits of the large thermal mass eventually start to make themselves felt. R had some incredibly unfeasible ideas about how to insulate the house, most of which were vetoed by me on the grounds of a) cost, b) loss of internal floor space or c) general bizarreness. On the other hand, when I think back to our first couple of winters here and how uncomfortable they were, I am very grateful for most of the improvements he did organise, like the beautiful new windows or the rather more prosaic repointing of the stonework so the walls no longer run with condensation in the cold weather.

But despite the improvements, it is still a cold house and I forget how many clothes I need to wear when the temperature drops below zero; for the first few days I am constantly cold with even more frigid feet. Then more and more garments are gradually added until I reach a balance between staving off hypothermia and actually being able to move.

Having reached this balance, it was a small surprise when the temperature rose drastically on Saturday and a short thaw set in.
That gave me an opportunity to get over to see my Mum and take her to do a bit of shopping. The negotiations of the Summer sadly came to nothing, and she has decided that she doesn't want to move for the time being. Which is entirely her decision, of course, but does make life difficult for both her and the rest of the family as she is now dependent on infrequent public transport after giving up her car earlier this year. It also doesn't help when she tells me that she fell over in the road while going to visit a friend a few days ago. Fortunately she got away with a sore wrist and bruised hip, but it could have been so much worse.
At what point do we take over the baton from our parents and start worrying about them, rather than the other way around?

The slightly warmer weather also allowed me to get a few jobs done outside on Sunday, like cleaning out the henhouses and sorting out the woodpile. I also needed to ear tag the two ram lambs prior to taking them to the You Know Where today. The lambs are still quite small, having only been born in June, so I decided to keep the ewe lambs until next spring. The boys had to go, however, as they were still intact and I am unable to keep them separate from the ewes. I want to give the ewes a rest next year and not put them to the ram again as they were still lactating up to a couple of months ago, and it doesn't seem fair to get them in lamb again so soon afterwards.

This is an ongoing problem I have with the male lambs.

***Look away now if you are at all squeamish***

It is not the first issue that comes to mind when you start keeping sheep, but eventually if you are going to have lambs, then at some point you have to think about castrating the rams! There are essentially three choices. Do it within the first week using a delightfully-named Elastrator, which applies a rubber band to the scrotum so that the testicles eventually wither away and drop off - just like the tail does if you decide to dock (which I don't, as I don't seem to have a lot of problems with flystrike up here). I haven't yet managed to use this device successfully, and R was never any help as all he would do was to hold the lambs with his eyes shut, refusing to look until it was all over! This year, faced with a wiggly ram lamb and no one to help, I completely chickened out and decided to worry about the problem later.

Or you can do the deed just before puberty using the rather mediaeval-sounding "irons", as my neighbour calls them. Only he only offered to show R how to do this and, as is probably obvious from the Elastrator fiasco, his heart wasn't exactly in it, and he never took the neighbour up on the offer. To tell the truth, I was quite relieved as I didn't fancy the idea much myself.

The third alternative is separation. When the lambs come off their mothers, move the boys to a separate field. Which I do not have. And my third little ewe is the result of the unnatural son-and-mother action that was the inevitable outcome of my abject failure to complete any of the above steps successfully!

So this year's ram lambs had to go, and two fewer mouths to feed will make my hay supply last a bit longer.

***It is safe to look again***

After I had finished all my outside chores, it was time to take Moose for a walk. He was in need of a good stretch of the legs, so we went up the road towards the moors, passing the Widow's House on the way. The poor little cottage looks even more desolate and lonely in the snow. Nothing has been done to it for a couple of years now, and I suspect it will just be left to rot. Which is so very sad.

The weekend was a pleasant respite from the cold, but the temperature has dropped ten degrees once more.
Back to chipping out blocks of ice from the water bowls and nursing my chilblains!

Here we go again

2010-12-01T23:38:00.002Z

Well it looks as though the Grim Reaper is still dogging my tracks. R's brother rang me this evening to tell me that his Aunty Vera had died.

Now Vera wasn't a huggable sort of aunty at all. "Formidable" was probably the best word to describe her. A classic old-school army wife with a ramrod straight back and inability to suffer fools at all, let alone gladly. In the course of her life she moved house nearly 40 times and, even in her eighties she thought nothing of upping sticks and moving to new accommodation. At the age of 90, she had her driving license renewed.

I remember feeling rather daunted at the thought of meeting her for the first time. When the day finally came, I had a horrible bout of food poisoning after eating fried chicken at a party the night before. R had to stop the car a couple of times on our way to his parents' house so I could throw up, and I spent most of the afternoon with my head in a bucket! Strangely it proved to be an excellent ice-breaker and she never let me forget our first meeting.

As a woman who liked to be in control of her life, she seems to have been in charge at the leaving of it too. She had recently lost a lot of weight and was eventually taken into hospital because of stomach pains. The doctors suspected a hiatus hernia and wanted to do exploratory surgery. Vera told them in no uncertain terms that she had had enough and wasn't going to be "messed about with" by them! Within a few days she had said goodbye to all the people who were important to her and passed on in her own terms.
I cannot help but admire someone who is so uncompromising right to the last.

I was planning a trip down South to drop off Christmas presents, but it now looks as though I shall be combining it with a funeral. I'd better make sure I don't eat fried chicken the night before - just in case!

Logistics

2010-11-30T12:30:00.008Z

Some days you just want someone to open the pickle jar.

Try as I might to ignore it, Christmas is fast approaching.
For the time being at least, it is easiest for my family to come to me. I have plenty of space, the all-important turkey is here and it means I don't have to arrange for someone to feed the animals while I am away (which is both difficult and expensive during the festive season). But it does mean that I need to warm up the back part of the house that isn't currently in use.

Sadly there is no chimney out there, so it isn't feasible to fit a woodburner. I have been looking at electric versions of my cast iron stove for some time now, but most have been too noisy, too tinny or just too not quite right. Then I discovered Broseley stoves which pushed all the right buttons for me - locally-made, proper cast iron stoves, rather than flimsy sheet metal and even the pretend coals aren't too tacky. Altogether really rather nice.
Unfortunately they were also rather outside my budget!

But last week I spotted one on EBay, advertised for pick-up only less than 15 miles from home. Well, it was just meant to be, and I won it for about a third of the normal cost.

I went to collect it yesterday and am absolutely delighted with my bargain. What I didn't take into account, however, was the fact that it weighs almost exactly the same as me. It went into the Land Rover fine with two of us to lift it.
Now I can't get it out!
All will be well once it is on the ground as it will go on the sack truck, but I'm afraid that it will land too heavily and break one of the cast iron legs if I try to get it out by myself. So it is stuck in the back of the Landy until I can enlist the assistance of some kind passing gentleman.

One will doubtless be along sooner or later, but it is infuriating having to wait. Had R been here it would be in the house, fitted and warming up the back room now as I type. It frustrates me so much being reliant on other people for stupid little things like this.

And no, I haven't got the pickle jar open yet either. Not even with the aid of my trusty Baby Boa. Grrr.

Let it snow

2010-11-28T01:20:00.003Z

I have had many occasions to smile at R's bulk-buying habits over the past couple of years, and not a few moments spent shaking my head in exasperation. Every once in a while, though, I have good reason to be thankful and feel that he is still looking after me.

This early spell of snow took me quite by surprise.
The weather forecast seemed to suggest that we were only due a light sprinkling. Well that may have been true down in the valley, but up here on my hilltop we had a proper snowfall and I really wasn't prepared for it. So my first job this morning was to rediscover the path from the house.

Fortunately R had been prepared, and I was pleased to unearth a bag of salt that he had stashed away for a moment such as this. (Buying salt had been on my "must get round to it soon" list, but I didn't expect to need it quite yet). I also found a couple of cans of windscreen deicer on a shelf which I suspect will be very useful tomorrow.

The snowfall is beautiful, but this is always a difficult time for farmers.
When the fields are white, most of the traffic on the road seems to be related to ferrying food around for sheep and cattle in one form or another.
This year was a bad one for hay and silage. It was so dry in late Spring and early Summer that the grass seemed to stop growing in the peak haying period. As a result, many farmers were only able to take a single crop from their fields, or at best a fairly meagre second crop later in the season. The price of hay seems to be nearly a third higher than it was this time last year.

For me, with my micro-flock of just 7 sheep, this isn't the end of the world. I can take the financial hit. The lamb in my freezer probably won't be cost-effective this year but I can cope with that - and it will still taste wonderful. For my friends who farm for real, having to buy in hay or silage can mean the difference between making a profit and making a loss.

My little Hebridean sheep are hardy souls. When the weather is bad they aren't too fussy about what they eat, unlike some of their more highly-bred cousins. But they do appear to have an aversion to eating food that is damp, whether that be hay or the concentrates that they also need when there is no grass. This means that I find myself taking food out to them three or four times a day in bad weather as they will simply ignore their pellets once they get wet and go soggy - even though they were tucking into them happily a couple of hours previously. Damp food means both hungry sheep and a waste of money.

As I said, this early snowfall took me by surprise, and I was down to my last bale of hay this morning. No problem, I thought. I'll take the Land Rover down to the feed store and pack it with enough hay to see me through this cold snap.

It was a great plan.
Unfortunately the Landy wouldn't start. It was turning over, but there wasn't enough charge - or it was too cold - to start.
I can just picture R, standing there with an exasperated grin on his face, wondering why on earth I didn't make sure the battery was fully charged when I learned that snow was coming.

Well I just didn't.
OK.
So it messed up my entire morning waiting for the battery to charge. At least I got my ironing done while I was waiting.

Fears

2010-11-26T01:04:00.003Z

At this time of year it is difficult fitting everything in within the hours of daylight.
This isn't a new phenomenon; it has been the same ever since we moved here. If I don't feed the animals early enough before it gets dark, for example, the food lies around all night and encourages rats, which is never a good thing. This means that I really need to stop working at around 3.30 to do all my animal chores and give Moose his evening walk. It really messes up my working day, but even at his venerable age, the thought of having an underexercised collie in the house is still worse than actually wrapping up warm and going out!

That's the official timetable anyway.
Some days it doesn't quite work out like that, and the light is fading by the time Moose and I are ready. No matter. The roads are quiet here, so I don my reflective vest, put a torch in my pocket and set out regardless.

There are only a couple of street lights in the village, and none whatsoever after passing the village sign. There used to be more, but the Council switched two thirds of them off in a fit of money-saving zeal and it is so much more pleasant. I love walking in proper darkness without the sodium glow on the horizon.

This evening I was half-way around my usual circuit when I met an elderly gentleman I sometimes see, and stopped for a brief chat.
"Aren't you scared?" he asked, "Out here in the dark on your own."
I was puzzled.
It had never even occurred to me that I should be scared. I like the dark. I had a torch in my pocket and a rather protective medium-sized dog with me. There is very little traffic, and the thought of someone lying in wait behind a hedge in the frigid conditions on the off-chance that I might pass seems very unlikely.

I don't want to be scared about things like that.
There are plenty of things that I am nervous about now I am alone. I don't use the chainsaw when there is no one around after promising my family that I wouldn't. I'm not keen on heights, so ladders are best avoided where possible.
The thought of breaking an arm or leg is a constant worry as it would make my life well-nigh impossible.
I am totally paranoid about being tripped up by the dog on my way downstairs and breaking my neck.
And constantly at the back of my mind is the nagging fear that I will wake up dead one morning, just like R did, only there will be no one here to call for an ambulance.

But walking in the dark? No way.
I shall continue to enjoy that. Particularly on a cold, crisp, icy night like tonight when the starlight is almost dazzling and there is a nearly full moon to light my path.
That is a pleasure, not something to be feared.

&@£$%"+ foxes

2010-11-25T00:26:00.001Z

Oh well. That's one fewer turkey to put to bed every night.

Bah.

It's raining men

2010-11-23T10:57:00.006Z

From a few conversations I have had lately, the world seems to think it is time that I "move on".

At a meeting the other day, one elderly lady asked me if I had found myself a "little friend" yet. At first I thought she was asking if I had got another dog!
There was a time when I would have been shocked or upset or insulted by a question like that, but I am a lot more sanguine about it these days. People mean well.
I told her that I didn't think I was ready yet, and we talked a little about living alone. I explained that, although it had taken a long time to become comfortable with my own company, there are some benefits - the house is feeling a lot less cluttered, for example, and the kitchen table doesn't regularly disappear under a layer of detritus!

And I think that is where I am right now. Comfortable. In my life and in my own skin.

There are times when I would love to be sharing my life with someone again. Not because I need to - I am pretty self-sufficient these days - but the sharing part does appeal. Sharing meals, sharing moments, sharing a joke, sharing a bed, even sharing sadness. Living alone does tend to make one a little selfish, and that is not who I really am.

Every now and again I take the idea of looking for another partner out of its box, place it on the table and examine it well from all sides. So far the thought of dating again has appeared overwhelmingly awful, and the idea is carefully wrapped up again and returned to the box.

My friend Natasha decided the other day that she was going to act as my Official Matchmaker. Unfortunately (or should that be fortunately?) she was unable to come up with any eligible bachelors who weren't either under 25 or well past retirement age, which came as something of a relief!

And therein lies the rub.
For the past two and a bit years I have been surrounded by women.
Funny, smart, comforting, gentle, supportive and loving women. It was exactly what I needed - they have wrapped me in love and kindness, picked me up when I stumbled, handed me tissues on the bad days and laughed with me on the good ones. I wouldn't have got this far without them. But with very few exceptions, the only men I have spent any time with have been family members or the husbands of friends. The top of a hill in the back of beyond isn't the ideal place to start a new career as a single person.

So I had a bit of a shock yesterday evening.
I have mentioned before that I help to run a table tennis club. A couple of the older lads and our coach Brian have formed a team that plays in the local league. Last night Brian was unable to play so he asked me to stand in for him. I was a bit nervous, but that was at the thought of playing at a seriously competitive level, rather than in our little club. But when I walked through the door into the gym, it suddenly struck me that I was the only woman there - it was wall-to-wall men and really quite overwhelming! Had it not been for the fact that I had to drive the two teens home again afterwards, I would probably have turned tail and run.

Naturally once I had calmed down and started playing it was all fine, but it did bring home to me quite how out of practice I am at this being out in the world on my own business.
Oh, and I was roundly thrashed in every game I played. That is OK, though, as improving gives me a goal to work towards while the little box is still on the shelf. Displacement activity is the order of the day in this house.

A year in the death: November

2010-11-17T13:54:00.009Z

It has been an intense few days. For once not on my own account.

A good friend is possibly - probably (who knows?) - on the verge of leaving her husband. It isn't my story to tell, so I shall leave it at that, but she has been staying for a while in a little holiday cottage that just happens to be very near R's burial field. So I took the slight detour to go and say hello on my way home yesterday.

Talking to R at his grave still helps me to clear my head better than almost anything. The grass was too wet yesterday to sit down so I couldn't settle for a long chat, but a few minutes was long enough to off-load it all.

It was also an opportunity to look back at how far I have come.
A year ago I would have found this situation too difficult to cope with. There was a time when I simply couldn't bear to be in the same room as a bickering couple. Watching two people who are supposed to love one another causing pain instead was too unfair, too much to handle.

If I'm honest, it still hurts to see, but I can now look beyond the unpleasantness and be thankful to have had the life I did with R. We argued from time to time, of course we did, but rarely allowed the sun to go down on our anger. I cannot imagine how it feels to be trapped in a life with someone who makes me unhappy.

I guess even our relationships are subject to the entropy that rules the universe, and it takes both parties working hard to prevent them moving inexorably towards disorder.

This field where I come to think and talk also paints a picture of the changing seasons.

I can tell as I walk up the hill who has had a visitor recently. Some graves have a few flowers marking the spot, at others it is the beaten-down grass that reveals the footfall. It is also an automatic reaction to clear away any overgrown grass or fallen leaves from the stone marker, and it makes me a little sad to see that R's immediate neighbours have 'disappeared'.

The young trees that were little more than sticks in August 2008 are now healthy-looking saplings, and there are more chairs and benches around the periphery of the field, sponsored by families who want their loved one's name to be visible to the world as well as just a number.
It was a dull November afternoon yesterday, and I only had my phone with me so the pictures are not great.
I don't understand why, but I still feel a need to record the passage of time without R, and this place would appear to be the ideal place to do it.

November is perhaps an odd month to start, but I guess it is as good as any.

Remembering

2010-11-11T11:21:00.003Z

Aftermath

Have you forgotten yet?
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same - and War's a bloody game.
Have you forgotten yet?
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz -
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench -
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack?
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads - those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.

Siegfried Sassoon

Weirdness

2010-11-01T23:46:00.007Z

It is not for nothing that Wales is known as the Land of Song. I have probably done more singing in the past seven years than I did in the previous 40. It is just a part of life here, and there is none of the apologetic mumbling that you get at weddings and funerals dros y clawdd (across the dyke - my favourite way to say "in England" in Welsh). For a long time, I always carried a little piece of paper in my handbag with the words to the national anthem - to ensure that I never had a John Redwood moment!

I don't think it is just a rural thing either; certainly not if you have ever heard the rugby crowd singing at the Millennium Stadium. The eisteddfod tradition has a lot to do with it. Every school, even at the primary level competes in local and national eisteddfodau, so getting up on stage and singing, dancing or reciting is not a thing to be feared. Most people seem to be able to tell a few jokes, play an instrument, sing tidily or act on stage.

I love singing myself. I'll never make a soloist, but I can hold a tune and love being part of a bigger noise. And I quite enjoy being on stage and making a fool of myself, so I was rather pleased a few years back when I was asked to take part in our village's entry in a local "entertainment" competition. And rather more surprised when, a couple of years later, I found myself writing it as well.

For obvious reasons, I took some time out from this after R died. Then last year I had a small part which did me a lot of good at the time. This year, the writing baton somehow got handed back to me so, for the last couple of months, I have been totally absorbed with scripts, props, casting, rehearsals, finding suitable music and all the other minutiae of putting on a playlet. It is amazing how a 30-minute performance can totally take over your life - it is the ideal distraction for the widow with the slightly obsessive personality!

Well, we entered the competition. It wasn't a stellar performance, but we came joint second, which was probably a fair result. But as it always seems such a waste to put all that effort into just one night, we repeated the performance at our local village hall as a fundraiser for the church. And the winning team was asked to join us too.

"Where on earth is she going with all this?", I am sure you are thinking to yourself by now.

Well, all this goes some way to explaining how, yesterday evening, I found myself standing on stage introducing the Master of Ceremonies for the event - who was none other than the funeral director who buried R.
This situation was made all the more weird by the fact that he was wearing jeans and T-shirt, rather than his sombre funeral garb, sang in a rather excellent tenor voice and told a lot of slightly risqué jokes over the course of the evening. I am not sure what I expected a funeral director to do in his spare time, but it certainly wasn't this.

But it didn't end there. The other team performing this evening was led by the couple who own R's burial field. They are lovely people, and made sure I was OK, but it was all very peculiar, standing there having a post-performance glass of wine with them.

Oddly none of this was the least bit upsetting.

But it was very, very weird.

Negotiations

2010-11-01T00:46:00.007Z

On Saturday morning I was rushing around getting ready to go over to see my Mum. Late as usual. There was a knock on the door. I opened it to a little Welshman with a broad grin on his face. He is the archetypal retired Welsh farmer; about my height, round, cheerful face, late 70s, walking stick, clean 3rd best suit and a flat cap.

He has been calling upon me about once a month since early Summer.

He stands on the doorstep and we talk about ducks. Specifically my ducks. The ever-growing flock of juvenile muscovies that clutter up the place like so many indolent teenagers in a shopping mall on a wet weekend. Occasionally he throws a few Welsh words at me to test my knowledge, but so far I have passed the test.

Mostly we talk about ducks.
He may have introduced himself the first time he appeared, but I don't recall, and it is equally probable that he didn't. I do remember, though, standing in the doorway with a fixed grin on my face, wondering why this man was talking to me about ducks. And could he please get to the point as I had work to do.
Eventually it percolated through that he might be interested in buying some - not that he ever said it in so many words.

At the time the only ducklings I had weren't feathered up, so they weren't ready to leave their mother. But in a roundabout way, he wondered what price I would sell them for if I were interested in selling. I suggested a figure and there was a sharp intake of breath, at which I felt compelled to explain how much it had cost them to feed them so far and how I would simply put them in the freezer if I couldn't find a buyer. This exchange was followed by a couple more minutes of pleasantries and then he left.

It is the Welsh way of negotiating and it drives me mad.
Don't mention a price. In fact don't even say that you are interested in buying in so many words while, at the same time, making it perfectly obvious that you are. Assume a slightly quizzical and expectant look. Then when the other person suggests a price, appear puzzled at the beginner's obvious miscalculation and then change the subject. At which point the poor person who didn't realise that they wanted to sell their ducks in the first place finds that they are completely on the back foot and start chuntering on, trying to defend their entirely reasonable price proposal.

Repeat at monthly intervals until the poor benighted duck owner, who knows deep down inside that she has too many beaks to feed and is almost certainly not going to be putting the excess, layabout drakes in the freezer any time soon, suggests a price that is way under the market value, but appears to be acceptable.

Shake hands on the deal and arrange to pick the birds up in a few days time. Go on your merry way, leaving the duck owner feeling ever so slightly steamrollered!

Misery memoirs

2010-10-29T23:41:00.005+01:00

It's an odd thing.
The last couple of weeks have been great.
Buzzing.
I have been rushing around doing things that I love doing, with people whose company I enjoy. But I don't feel compelled to write about it.
Why is that?

I sometimes wonder how this blog makes me appear.
Yes, I have been through the trauma of R's death, and that was every bit as awful as you would imagine, and then some. But that has now been absorbed into me. It is as much a part of me as the fact that I have brown hair or love language or have to drink my morning coffee out of one particular cup.

But it is still so much easier to write about the bad times than the good.

The bad thoughts seem to tumble out of my head, through my fingers and onto the screen almost without thinking about them.
The good ones are much harder to write about without appearing smug or trite or irritatingly self-satisfied.

In my natural state I freely admit that I am one of life's Pollyannas. I like to see the best in people, and discover good things in bad situations. And it's true. Even in my darkest days it was still possible to smile at the absurdity of life or at little kindnesses shown to me. Or at the beauty of a sunset over the hills, or just the velvety ears of a dog who has stuck by my side through all of this crap.

I wish it was possible to simply will grief away.
Believe me, if it was, I would have done it. It is not for want of trying. Despite my monumental efforts to keep it in its box, it continues to seep into every corner of my life.

But that is not all that I am.
There are times that I feel there is a large "W" branded on my forehead, but deep down inside I know that it isn't really there. There is fun and laughter and song and dancing in my life too, along with all manner of other good things.

Perhaps it is time to start acknowledging those things and writing about them more, so I can start to believe they really exist, even without him.
There will still be bad days - I know and accept that - but maybe acknowledging the good things will allow me to truly absorb the fact that life can be good again. And indeed is.

Brrrrr

2010-10-25T23:44:00.005+01:00

We had the first hard frost of the Winter this morning. All the animals' water bowls were frozen, but not the outside tap fortunately. But it is still jolly cold on the hands - time to call back those gloves and scarves from their Summer hideaways.

The sun has been shining all day, though, as a consolation prize. Crisp and cold is good. Let's hope it stays that way long enough for me to get the leaves raked up from the lawn and cleared from the gutters.

I am feeling a little more positive about Winter today.

The wood store is full, I remembered to have the oil tank filled. The garden is half-way to being shut down for the Winter; perhaps another couple of weekends will get it sorted so I can get off to a flying start next Spring. The freezers are full of food, the lambs are booked to go off next month which will leave me with the bare minimum of animals to look after and feed.

Apart from the turkeys, that is.

Every year about this time I wonder whatever possessed me to buy in turkey poults. Well for a start they are probably the only animals around here that actually turn a profit. But that profit comes at a price. Turkeys are quite the most brainless critters I have ever encountered. Their worried curate expression and gentle peeping noises go some way to making up for their lack intelligence. But only some way.

Every evening - and I mean every evening - from the day they arrive in August to the day we say goodbye in mid-December I have to physically pick them up from the fence where they have decided to roost and carry them to their shed for the night. It isn't so bad for the first couple of months while they are still small, but those birds are starting to get heavy now. Nor do they cooperate. Not one little bit.
The novelty of chasing around the paddock after renegade turkeys in the dark and bitter cold quickly wears off. Particularly after the fifth night in a row.

That is one job I shall be very happy to see the back of.

Harvesting

2010-10-20T00:13:00.005+01:00

That's what they call it, isn't it?
It's a pretty euphemism for a not-so-pretty concept.

The subject has come up a few times lately, both online and in real life. It is another of those topics that I used to think was black and white, and now realise comes in a hundred shades of grey.

In one conversation I was on the receiving end of a little bit of stick (nothing too aggressive) for not letting the hospital take any of R's organs when he died. Back in my old life, I would probably have had the same attitude; he's dead, what does it matter? It was the living person who mattered, not the shell of his body.
R agreed. He carried a donor card (as do I) and indeed took it further to believe that organ donation should be a matter of routine, and each individual should have to opt out of it, rather than opting in.

But it really wasn't that simple.

When we had That Conversation with the doctors at the hospital, R's sister-in-law brought up the topic of organ donation. The doctor very gently explained to me what could be taken.
Corneas were mentioned, and the visceral nature of my response shocked me. They absolutely couldn't have his eyes. Not that. Anything but his eyes.
I don't know why. The words spilled out before I had thought about them.

Then the doctor explained that, to harvest the organs, he would have to be taken away before he had gone. And at that moment I knew I couldn't let it happen.

I could no more have let them take him away at that point than I could have sawn off my own foot. It wasn't so much the idea of taking parts of him away - that really wasn't important to me. I didn't see his body again after I left the hospital. Just didn't want to. But it was simply impossible to conceive of letting them take him away to die on his own on an operating table while the surgeon waited with knife poised. Had he gone as the result of an accident or after an operation, it would have been very different and I am pretty sure that I would have let them do it. If they could have let him go first and then taken his body it would have been alright too. But after two and a half days sitting beside him in Intensive Care, I had to see him through to the end of his journey.

The doctor was very good about it. In fact he looked quite relieved, and told me that he wouldn't have been able to agree to it either if he were in my position. It would be nice to think that R had helped someone else after he had gone, but it just wasn't possible for me.

Life (and death) really wasn't as simple as I had fondly imagined.

Tonight

2010-10-16T21:48:00.007+01:00

... supper consisted of coffee and chocolate.

This afternoon the pigs came back in boxes. My lovely friends Lynn and David picked them up from the butcher with their own pork, which saved me a trip and gave me the opportunity to sort out the freezer before it arrived.

The last time this happened was around three years ago.
The porkfest weekend was always one of the highlights of the year. The house would be buzzing with people. R would have a list of orders from colleagues at work. I would make up the brine for the bacon, we would chop and mince and season, and then make sausages. A lot of wine would be drunk, and lots of food eaten. It was a celebration of the end of a year of work, of the type that has been held at the end of the growing season all around the world since time immemorial.

This year is such a contrast.
The house was quiet as I weighed and labelled and rewrapped, although I did have a pleasant couple of hours as I drove around the area, delivering people's orders. The meat looks great - a lovely dark pink with just about the right amount of fat on it. After seven years of raising pigs, it looks as though I have finally got the feeding right. The recipients - particularly those who supplied me with buckets of apples - all appreciated their happy pork.

Then home to put the belly pork into the salt to turn it into streaky bacon and make a start on chopping and mincing the shoulder meat. Tomorrow I make chorizo. I also cheated this year and left the legs with the butcher to turn into gammon and ham - I just don't have the energy to do it myself, and he does a great job.

And at the end of all this, the last thing I want to eat is meat. I did buy some fish for supper, but I didn't really fancy that either - so chocolate and coffee it was. Tomorrow I can start eating properly again.

I still sometimes wonder what I am doing with all this. What is the point when it is just me here?
I have already decided not to get the ram in this year for my ewes. They were very late lambing and the lambs are not yet totally weaned, so it seems only fair to give them a rest. I shall no doubt regret this next year when there are no lambs bouncing around the field in the Spring. But perhaps there will be time and room for some more pigs.

I think, I hope this is just season-end melancholy. The greenhouse probably holds one last picking of tomatoes, and I have been digging over most of the vegetable beds before I cover them for the winter. There is the possibility of a frost tonight, so I shall probably have to bring in the shelling beans tomorrow as well.

As much as I kick against it, the year is closing itself down around me. Is there really any point in raging against the dying of the light?

Keep, throw, donate or recycle?

2010-10-12T21:05:00.000+01:00

I have been doing quite a lot of clearing lately.

It is a slow process. Much slower than I expected it to be.

Everything has to be examined and smiled at, or a few tears shed. Every book has to be checked for train tickets or bits of paper with scribbled notes on used as bookmarks. Every item of clothing has to be held close, the memories remembered and a decision taken as to whether I can let it go yet. Every notebook has to be checked just in case it contains some of his writings or perhaps some important detail about the house.

I thought I would be good at this. I can throw out or donate my own belongings without a second thought. Yet William Morris' exhortation to "have nothing in your house that you do not know to use, or believe to be beautiful" doesn't really help when faced with a drawerful of what a friend of mine calls "kibble". Those little things that obviously once had some purpose and were put away because they might be needed again, but it is not entirely apparent why. I wish I were brave enough to just take a binbag and empty all that sort of stuff into it, but I'm not.
So the process continues at its own snail-like pace.

I did have to laugh at this, though.

At the bottom of a drawer I found a box containing every single expired credit card, library card, AA card (the Automobile Association, not the other one!) and assorted other cards covering a roughly ten-year period.

Why?
Can someone explain to me why a grown man, apparently in his right mind, would keep all this?
If I check on e-Bay will I find that a ten year-old expired Labour Party membership card will fetch a small fortune in the right circles? Was he planning a new career as a house-breaker and collecting a toolkit for opening locks? Did he actually use them for scraping ice off car windows?

And when you have explained that, perhaps you can give me some idea why he might have kept these as well!

How I hate this part

2010-10-11T11:14:00.004+01:00

The pigs are loaded up in the trailer ready to go.
They followed the little trail of apples up the ramp with almost no fuss at all, which always makes me feel such a heel. Sometimes I wish deep down inside that they would do a Tamworth Two and make a bid for freedom.

My neighbour offered to take them to the abattoir for me with his pigs, but I always feel it is incumbent upon me to go with them on their last journey. I am sure it makes no difference to them whatsoever, but it feels like my last duty to these animals that have given me so much pleasure for the last few months.

All I have to do now is fill in the movement licence paperwork and write down my instructions about how I want them to come back.

I eat meat and have no guilt about that, and I know that my two porkers have had a good life - longer and much more natural than the vast percentage of the pigs raised in the UK and elsewhere. They have had the sun on their backs, a large patch of ground to excavate, a wide and varied diet and the ability to run up and down to their hearts' content. They had a good scratch behind the ears whenever I walked past.

They are also a pair of intact boars, and conditions here aren't suitable for overwintering pigs - I simply couldn't keep them even if I wanted to do so.

But I still feel like a total cad this morning.

No man is an Iland

2010-10-05T20:41:00.004+01:00

...intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

When I learned last week that my friend and colleague Heather had lost her beautiful partner Kate, I could feel a downward slide starting.

It is difficult to say whether this was a reopening of my own slowly-healing wounds or simply empathy. Perhaps the two are the same. Or perhaps it is a desire to take onto my own shoulders some of the shock and pain that I know she is feeling right now. Because I am stronger now and have a better idea of how to cope after travelling this path for a couple of years.

But that is not possible. This is a journey that we take on our own. People cheering from the sidelines help a lot. Of course they do. But the steps have to be walked nonetheless. Every one of them.

The funeral was this afternoon, and the morning got off to a very tearful start. I was very close to deciding not to go. The thought of travelling there and getting through the service on my own was almost too much.

Then the postman arrived, bringing with him a mysterious package from the other side of the world. Intrigued I opened it - and burst out laughing. A rather silly online conversation some weeks ago had resulted in delivery of a handmade felt squid! Don't ask - it doesn't make a lot more sense even if I explain it, but it couldn't have chosen a better day to arrive.

A stuffed cephalopod may not be everyone's idea of the perfect companion to a funeral, but come along he did - in my pocket - as a reminder that someone was looking out for me today. Thank you Sue from the bottom of my heart.

The service was short but poignant. K D Lang's version of Hallelujah was heartbreaking.
I couldn't face the crematorium, so went straight to the wake with a couple of translator friends. Despite the people around her, Heather looked so alone. I recognised that look on her face - jaw clenched with absolute determination not to cry. Because you know full well that if you start, the tears won't ever stop. But she made it, and she can take the first few steps into her new life knowing that she did Kate proud.

My journey home took me very close to R's burial field, so I popped in to say hello and show him my new red boots that I wore today as an antidote to all that grey and black.
I think he would have liked them.

Making lemonade

2010-09-15T13:15:00.006+01:00

It was still too revolting to do anything outside yesterday evening, so I took myself off to the gym after wetly walking Moose.

Pounding away on the treadmill is not everyone's idea of fun (possibly not even my own), but it was dry and warm and I find I can zone out after a few minutes and let my thoughts wander. As I plodded on and turned redder and sweatier, I drew up a satisfyingly long mental list of projects for the winter months.

Displacement activity it surely is, but it works for me. Empty hours drag me down so I shall continue manically filling them for as long as I can or need to do it.

And at the end of it all I found that I had run my 5k in under 30 minutes for the first time ever. 29 minutes, 18 seconds to be precise. It is amazing what you can do with a bit of pent-up craziness inside your head!

That small triumph followed by an earlyish night with the first hot-water bottle of the season has gone some way towards restoring my equilibrium for now.

I still wish it would stop raining though.

Duvet days

2010-09-14T11:13:00.002+01:00

Autumn has arrived.
It has been raining solidly for two days. 50 mm last night, apparently.
The rain hurls itself horizontally along the ridge from the West, battering the side of my house for days on end. The ground is already turning into quagmire and the pigs' run is starting to look like the Somme.

It is dark, cold and dank, and the thought of a whole Winter like this on my own is utterly depressing. I just want to go back to bed and sleep until Spring.

Anti-climax

2010-09-13T23:11:00.001+01:00

I had decided it was time.
Time to take my superhero knickers out of the underwear drawer and go battle some demons.

The local First Responders group held its AGM and social evening on Friday, and I resolved to go. In previous years there has been a bit of business, followed by some wine, nibbles and chatting and then a session introducing newbies to the CPR dummies.

I figured I could manage the first two and would simply go home when the last bit started.
The business part of the meeting was boring. But that is fine - boring is good.

Standing around chatting was fine too, apart from one conversation I had with a man who kept on going on and on about how he had read on the Internet that the use of a defibrillator can cause blood clots. I just wanted to slap him hard around the face and scream, "But at least you would be still ALIVE, you moron!" What I actually did was to excuse myself, run to the loo and do some deep breathing for a few minutes.

It was nowhere near as satisfying.

After a couple of glasses of wine I was starting to feel quite relaxed, and was wondering if I could handle the Little Annie showdown after all. At which point I saw the training coordinator taking the bags with the dummies back out to his car. Apparently there was no one new there to sign up so they weren't going to bother.

I wasn't sure whether to feel relieved that I didn't have to face up to it or annoyed that I would have to work myself up to this point again. So I am now trying to decide whether to ask to bring one of the dummies home with me or whether it would freak me out totally having one in the house.

Keeping on keeping on

2010-09-07T14:28:00.006+01:00

I had to smile when I read about all the salsa-making and pickling going on over at Cicero Sings.

Here the crop of the moment is not tomatoes, but apples - several bagsworth scrumped from R's uncle's orchard last weekend - but the principle is the same.

Peel, chop, winnow out the bad ones, render down for freezing. Nothing goes to waste. I have a willing home for all the peels, cores and less than perfect fruit!

Every night I stand there for an hour or so and peel apples. The kitchen smells of them which is, generally speaking, a Good Thing.

And when this batch of apples are finished, it will be time to start on the courgettes. And then the tomatoes. Perhaps pickle some cucumbers. Then there will be the last of the plums. And yet more apples. Finally it will be time to bring in the beans for drying

Just as I did last year.

And the year before. And all the years before that.

It is just what I do at this time of year. I quite like the repetitive nature of the tasks, and it pleases me to see the shelves and freezer filling up. It is also the reward for all that frantic sowing and planting a few months ago.

But this year I have also spent a lot of time wondering exactly why I am doing it. In my current state of aimless bobbing (thank you Boo!) it sometimes seems rather pointless just for me.
R and I spent so much of our lives working towards the day when we could have our own place and raise our own food like this. And it was so much fun doing it together.
This year, on my own, it feels like much more of a chore, even though I know I will enjoy the end result.

There is also a feeling of, if I stop, what then?
I would then have to make a decision about my future. If I let the garden go, it will be a sign that I am not going to stay here. I would have to decide to make a new life in a different place. And that thought is just too scary to contemplate.

So I keep on doing it, because that is what I do.

Aloneness

2010-09-07T00:04:00.004+01:00

Not so much loneliness.
That's not really what it is.

By most standards, I had a good weekend.
On Sunday morning I went to a local food fair, met some friends, had lunch and a lovely mooch around, bought some goodies and the sun shone.

But.
I miss having a hand to hold.
I miss going round the stalls tasting and comparing. Discussing which of half a dozen cheeses to buy. Arguing over the relative merits of the goodies on offer. Thinking about what would be nice to have for lunch the next day.
I am tired of having to carry all my own bags.
I hate feeling like the spectre at the feast when my friends are talking to each other.

And then I dashed home, wrote a card and went out again to a birthday party, complete with hog roast. I didn't know many people, but that's OK. It is a familiar feeling these days, and I am getting pretty good at making cheerful small talk with people. I didn't even burst into tears when someone said something nice about R. It was fun sitting around the fire chatting and eating, and I was surprised to find myself quite so reluctant to leave when I did.

But.
I miss having a hand to hold. A base to return to when the conversation runs out.
I miss physical contact full stop.
I hate that sore-jawed feeling that only comes from spending several hours nervously smiling.
I am so tired of being alone.

I am lucky. There are friends and family who love and care for me. I receive and accept invitations. I appear to be coping - I work, look after myself and pay bills. Most problems no longer seem insurmountable once I stop panicking about them. I am fit, healthy and solvent.

But.
I so miss having a hand to hold.

Flowers

2010-08-22T22:03:00.005+01:00

I have a confession to make.

I like flowers. And I like my house to be full of them.

It would be good to be able to say that, when I say flowers, I mean just locally-grown blooms. But although I am happy to fill the vases from what I can find in the garden or field, if I cannot forage enough for the house then I will buy them. And though it puts a huge dent in my environmental halo, I am not terribly fussy about discovering their origins. One year I shall finally get round to planting the cutting garden I have always wanted, but until then I shall have to live with the guilty conscience.

An old boss of mine who was very prone to temper tantrums would always buy me a bunch of flowers when he had been particularly obnoxious. These normally ended up in the bin on the way back from work or, if they did make it home, I never felt particularly well-disposed towards them as I felt I had 'earned' them

R never once bought me flowers as an apology. When he did bring them home - which he did often - it was just because. He had a favourite flower stall in St Ann's Square in Manchester where he would discuss the relative merits of the different blooms with the owner, and would come back with detailed instructions about how to prepare them for arranging.
I often received alstromerias simply because he was so proud he could remember the name! They make me smile now whenever I see them.

There have been a lot of flowers around the house since R's anniversary. They were looking distinctly shabby this morning, though, so it was time for a good sort and overhaul.
I once had a lesson in flower arranging for the craft section of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award thingy. It soon became evident that my talents lay elsewhere...

But with a bit of weeding out of the droopy blooms and judicious removal of crispy leaves, and by cutting the stems a little shorter and moving them to smaller containers with fresh water they can be eked out for a few more days. Which puts a smile on my face and goes some way towards rescuing my eco-credentials.

A surprise visit

2010-08-21T16:53:00.009+01:00

I, or rather R, had a lovely surprise visit yesterday. Martin, one of R's friends from university, said that he was coming up to put some flowers on his grave and would I like to meet up for lunch. We agreed to meet at the burial field, so I told him the number of R's grave in case he arrived there first.

As it happens, he got there about 10 minutes before I did, and I found him wandering around the field looking a little lost. He had been expecting a consecutively-organised grid system, which is a long way from being the case.

I have walked up that hill so many times now that I had forgotten quite how difficult it can be to track down R's grave. These days I can find the little 4-inch diameter stone marker in the middle of a 3-acre grassy field almost on auto-pilot. Head up the hill towards the telegraph pole, stop walking uphill when level with the corner marker then head towards the bench until the distant hills are visible through the gap in the trees. Turn ninety degrees, and if the telegraph pole at the bottom of the hill is straight ahead, X marks the spot. Or rather no. 63.

I guess it is just something that needs a little practice, and I have had plenty!

We sat there on the grass beside R's grave, in the sunshine, for a couple of hours. It seemed totally natural - two old friends getting together to catch up with all the news since they last met. We chatted, had lots of hugs and cried a little. We reminisced about the wild days of our youth, and laughed at some of his and R's misadventures. Moose wandered around the field sniffing at all the revolting things that dogs find interesting. We talked about R and even to him a bit. The swallows dived and weaved overhead. We placed the flowers on his grave, after divesting them of their plastic wrapper, elastic bands and sachet of plant food as everything has to be biodegradeable. We admired the view. Martin apologised for not having come back before now. But that was OK, he had rung and e-mailed and there were good reasons for not doing so. And I knew he had not forgotten.
That's what matters - not forgetting.

In the end we didn't get to have lunch. It didn't seem very important. A quick coffee and he had to be off again.

What was important is that he remembers.

On top of the world

2010-08-17T14:45:00.005+01:00

In a small village the social calendar is characterised by its predictability. We don't like radical changes, and want to know by looking at the date what is coming up in the next couple of weeks.
So August might be a bad month for me, but the wheel keeps spinning and the regular events come inexorably round in their turn.

This Sunday was the date of the Summer walk. Last year it helped me a lot in getting through some of the bad days, so I was very much looking forward to this year's walk. And I wasn't disappointed.
The group was smaller than in previous years, but there were still several people who had left their 'other halves' at home, so I didn't feel like the odd one out for once.

We walked up to the moors to the Llyn Mawr nature reserve above the Carno valley, and then followed the path back past our local wind turbines. I rather like being up above the huge blades - it puts them in their place somewhat. Although we climbed somewhere between 400 and 500 feet, it was a long, gentle and easily-manageable gradient. The sun shone benevolently and the slight breeze prevented overheating, and an elusive glimpse of a hen harrier made the climb worthwhile.

The only thing that marred the day was the fact that I couldn't take Moose with me. He has had arthritis in his shoulder for a while now, which we have been managing with a glucosamine/chondroitin supplement and regular doses of an NSAID. Sadly about a month ago the stiffness I had started noticing in his back legs suddenly worsened almost overnight. They are sometimes so wobbly that he falls over, and he is having difficulties walking much more than a mile or so - and then only at a very slow pace.

He seems happy enough in himself though, and still charges around my paddock like a mad thing when the mood takes him, so I am hanging fire on asking for steroids for now. But it has not stopped me embarking on another of my internal debates, this time about the moral implications of hip replacement surgery for dogs. I am sure I will be revisiting this one in the near future!

Spontaneity

2010-08-14T01:16:00.006+01:00

When the phone rang early this afternoon it was my friend Jane in Manchester. "Come for dinner," she said. "My French friend Myriam is over with her partner, and we are having a proper English roast beef dinner to celebrate!"

Immediately my response was to trot out the usual litany of excuses. It is a nearly two-hour drive each way - I will spend more time in the car than I would with them. I'm tired, I've been working hard all week, there is too much to do tomorrow, I have a deadline to meet and don't know when it will be finished. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Jane, who knows me far, far too well, simply replied that they would be eating at seven. I should think about it and give them a ring later to say what I had decided. At which I muttered something to the effect that I was unlikely to change my mind, and put the phone down. And grumpily went back to work.

As I finished up the job, proofread it and sent it off, one of those "Good J, Bad J" conversations played itself out in my head. What were the alternatives? A nice meal, a change of scenery and good company for the evening. Versus something to eat involving eggs and courgettes (again), an evening of CSI re-runs and my knitting. So what if you don't get back until one in the morning - you haven't got to bed before that for months now, you aren't suddenly going to change this evening. Stop thinking about this and JFDI.

It took a good couple of hours of batting this back and forth before I finally gave in and rang to ask them to set another place. The old J would have been in the car and off without a second thought. The new one, it seems, still needs a darned good talking-to before the message gets through, but at least she gets there in the end!

Progress

2010-08-11T17:59:00.004+01:00

Remember this?
This is how the granny flat at the back of the house looked on the day R left it.

With the exception of the plastering (which I bartered for my old, decrepit Land Rover) and the electrics, most of the work was done by my BIL, who spent short blocks of time here working on it over a period of months. This was good in a lot of ways as it meant that I had an occasional house guest during a very dark time, and also that I did not get too overwhelmed with decision-making. On the down side progress was very slow and patchy, and he has now 'disappeared' on another job in the way that builders are wont to do, which means that downstairs still looks like a building site and the kitchen is still located in boxes in my spare bedroom.
And he won't be able to come back for at least a couple more months as my sister is threatening to pack up herself and the kids and come and live with me if he doesn't do some outstanding work on their house!

But upstairs is entirely finished, and I can come and admire his handiwork and the peaceful, uncluttered space and ignore the chaos below.

What a transformation.

R and I both always loved this room. It is light and airy in a way that the old part of the house isn't, and it has one of the few windows that actually look out over the garden. So five and a half years after he started pulling it apart, it is nice to be able to use it again.

I still need to make the blinds and lampshades, otherwise it is finished. But what it did need was a couple of pictures for the walls, and there was nothing suitable in the collection we had built up over the years.

So I had a little splurge.
I have admired Ann Lewis's work for a couple of years now, particularly her North Wales landscapes, and finally had the cash to treat myself to two of her linocuts.

The first is for R.
Daffodils and narcissi were his flowers. When they are in season, the house and garden are full of them, and I have planted a lot on his grave. This simple study makes me smile and think of him.

The second one epitomises much of what I love about Wales - the dramatic, harsh landscape, the rugged colours, the seemingly ever-present threat of snow (or certainly rain), low skies and challenging climbs. R's Mum used to come to Snowdonia to climb in her younger days and, although R did not take up the sport to the same extent, he had exactly the same attitude towards anything with a bit of gradient. He would be up it like a mountain goat, leaving me to puff along in his wake. It did wonders for the thigh muscles.

I hope he would approve of all my choices.

Things I have learned

2010-08-09T14:36:00.007+01:00

That two years is no time at all. You don't forget, you don't stop loving, you don't stop wishing you could see him just once more to say goodbye properly.

That, despite the pain, sadness and the great gaping void his death created, it is still a billion times better to have had him in my life for all those years than to contemplate the thought of never having loved him.

That people really are important, and that I wouldn't have got through the last two years without the unwavering love and support I have received.

That I have some very good friends, and that these are not necessarily the people I would have listed before 5th August 2008. Some have dropped away, but others have stepped up to take their place. Some are here in my physical world and help with hugs, cake and practical work. Others are thousands of miles away and yet have been my unstinting cheerleaders on this journey, even though we have never met. I am grateful to every one.

That R really cannot be found in things. He is in my heart and always will be. Now I am starting to believe this it is becoming easier to divest myself of the 'stuff' that has been holding me down. It is a slow process, but it is ongoing and I feel much better for doing it.

That I will not explode in a puff of smoke if I ask for and receive help.

That I am probably a better and more humble person for having to do so.

That J, the person who disappeared almost without trace two years ago, has slowly been making her way back into my life. She is still rather battered and bruised, and has changed in many respects, but she has come back, and I do rather like her. It is good that she is home again.

And that, knowing all these things and with R in my heart, I am no longer afraid to move forward, to do things differently and to change my life radically if that is what I choose to do in the future. Life can be good if I allow it to be.

The last drop

2010-08-01T01:06:00.005+01:00

I may have mentioned R's bulk-buying habits once or twice.
There were few things he loved more than a bargain. Indeed I am still working my way through the pile of vacuum cleaner bags he bought over three years ago, and this is not by any means for want of vacuuming. By my reckoning it will probably be another year before I have to buy any more.

He took the same approach to his grooming products. He wasn't a man for aftershave or cologne, not even when he scrubbed up and put on a suit, but when he finally settled on a shower gel that suited him, he naturally ordered several bottles, rather than just one like a normal person!

For many, many months after he died, I mostly wore his jeans, T-shirts and sweaters. And used this shower gel daily. It gave me comfort to feel totally enveloped in things that felt, looked and smelled like him. The scent of the shower gel on my skin made him feel close by, perhaps just in the next room. Always out of sight, but within range of at least one of my senses.

I still do wear his Calvin Kleins, but now it is because I like them, rather than needing to do it. I carried on using the shower gel, but no longer every day - just when I felt a little down. But even R's stockpile had to run out eventually, and I think there is only enough left for one more use.

When it has gone, I don't think I shall buy any more.

Next week is the second anniversary of his death.
When I look back at the way I was this time last year, I can see how far I have come on this journey. I can still feel the madness building up in me as it always does at significant dates, but the intensity of feeling that so overwhelmed me last year is less ferocious this time around.

So it somehow seems right to let go of this crutch this week. It makes me feel like a small child preparing to ride her bicycle for the first time without stabilisers. I have come this far using it as an aid. Now it is time to let go and ride freely on my own. Even if I fall off a few times at first.

Resetting the clock

2010-07-12T16:42:00.004+01:00

I have written before about how my automatic response to stress or distress is to simply get busy. For me, mental and physical activity, and lots of it, is the only way to keep the bad thoughts at bay.

If there is one thing that will set me off on a downward spiral, it is a sleepless night. Lying in bed, fruitlessly trying to get to sleep with thoughts buzzing around my head takes me to a bad place very quickly. So I go to bed tired, read myself to a complete standstill and then sleep.

Mostly it works. And it means that stuff gets done, too, which always makes me feel better. The only problem is that bedtime has gradually got later and later. I will get to about 11 pm and find myself wide awake, and so start doing something like a bit of sewing, writing a letter or tidying a cupboard. Then, before I know it, the clock is reading stupid o'clock and I really ought to get to bed. Even then, I still have to go through all my winding-down rituals and by the time I finally get my head down it is half-past stupid and the birds are thinking about waking up.

All this was fine when I was still not working - I could just get up a little later. As I am now back in my office nearly full-time it is starting to be a problem as I am so tired during the day and my concentration is shot to pieces. My clients have been very understanding on the couple of occasions that I have played the Widow Card, but it is getting rather old as an excuse. It doesn't do a lot for my self-respect either.

I just don't seem to be able to break this cycle and get my sleep pattern back to something that resembles normality. I am never going to turn into a lark, but I really wish I could work out how to get back on track.

When will there be a harvest...

2010-07-09T13:35:00.010+01:00

It has been a strange year in the garden so far. There have been several disasters on the vegetable-growing front, but the fruit is just going mad. I feel a little like Marie-Antoinette; the peasants may be grumbling about losing half of their potato harvest, but never mind. Let them eat raspberries!

This is my Merton Glory cherry tree. It went into the ground five winters ago as a 1-year maiden - essentially a stick. This is the first harvest I have had from it. And what a harvest! It has the benefit over the other two cherry trees in our little orchard in that the cherries aren't bright red when ripe. Which means that by the time the birds notice them, I have eaten them.

There was a moment of sadness on tasting the first sweet, juicy fruits.
It was another of those Friday night rituals we had during the Summer months. All week I would check the veg garden and fruit bushes for whatever was nearly ready. When he arrived home and before the mowing started, we would have a stroll around, nibbling things here and there and deciding what to eat that weekend.

He wouldn't have been able to eat many of the cherries, though, as they made his mouth itch during hayfever season. So I don't feel too guilty in having these all to myself.

And this is Harry Baker, the crab apple tree we planted to ensure that all the other apples had a pollinator. It is a fabulous little tree with deep pink blossom in the Spring and good-sized, dark red fruits that look very handsome when Autumn comes around. I have absolutely no idea what I am going to do with them all - there is only so much jelly one person needs - so I suspect the pigs might do well from Mr Baker.

Last on this brief tour of the highlights of the orchard is Tydeman's Late Orange, a sweet, crisp Cox-type apple. I only had half a dozen or so apples from it last year. Now it is groaning with fruit. I hope it lives up to its billing as a reasonable storing apple.

R and I planted these trees along with several others on a cold January morning five years ago. Gardening wasn't his thing at all, but he could always be relied upon to dig a deep hole for me when I needed one, all the more so if it was for a tree. He was very fond of trees, particularly the native British species. Tree-planting is something you do as a commitment to a place. It is a sign that you intend to stay there for years to come, and an investment for your old age.

It breaks my heart that he isn't here to see a return on his investment and to taste the fruits of his labours. Their permanence seems to somehow emphasise his absence more than almost anything else.

Another phone call

2010-07-07T16:04:00.004+01:00

It seems to be the week for them.
But what a difference a couple of days make - this one had me giggling.

The call was from a sweet little lady in the village called Ivy, sister of Maldwyn the daffodil planter. She is getting on a bit, and a Welsh speaker, which very occasionally gives rise to communication problems.

Around here nobody, but nobody starts a telephone call with "Hello, this is XXXX speaking". Everyone just launches straight into the conversation. As it always seems a little rude to tell someone I have no idea who they are, I was racking my brains trying to place the slightly familiar voice. So I wasn't paying full attention to what she was talking about, which appeared to be something about the end of the month and someone called Richard. Which meant absolutely nothing to me whatsoever.

It eventually percolated through to my brain that it was Ivy speaking, and that she was talking about R's anniversary. Only his name isn't Richard, he was alive and well all through July, and Ivy didn't seem to be able to say the "D" word either!

Once those minor details had been cleared up, we had a very pleasant chat.

When do words lose their power?

2010-07-06T15:36:00.004+01:00

The phone just rang. When I picked it up, it was a cold caller who asked to speak to R.

I was expecting it to be my Mum, so I was completely wrong-footed by the question. After a big pause, I stammered out the reason why he couldn't come to the phone and, to her credit, she was very kind and said that she would make sure his name will be taken off the list. But my initial reaction was to say that he was at work or make up some other excuse, rather than tell her the truth.

After nearly two years, why is it still so difficult to say the 'D' word?

A difficult conversation

2010-07-04T20:22:00.009+01:00

I had a day out with my Mum on Friday.

She recently took the decision to give up her car after a long period of contemplation, so we went to a little town called Bridgnorth which she can easily reach by bus.

It was a hot, sticky day. After visiting every one of the charity shops in the town (and there are quite a lot!), we went for lunch in a little bistro on the High Street. I ordered a sandwich and salad, but I could see that she wasn't too happy with the available selection. She reluctantly opted for something on the menu, but then spotted the waitress delivering an enormous ice cream sundae to the gentleman on the next table. "I want one of those", she said with delight. And she had it too!
I guess when you are nearly 80 you are entitled to throw caution and sensible nutritional choices to the winds once in a while.

If you met my Mum, you would find a neatly turned-out lady who is happy to chatter to anyone about anything. She also appears quite self-sufficient and secure in herself.

But appearances can be deceptive. She has had a few health issues lately, and I think has been suffering from mild depression. These have combined to change the previously active, busy person to someone who has lost a lot of confidence in her own abilities and become reluctant to go out on her own. She lives in a village about 15 minutes' drive from my younger sister Liz, and her increasing isolation and on-off ill health has been a source of worry to me and both my sisters.

Liz and her husband are in the happy position of having a holiday cottage on their property which they have been letting out for the past two or three years. It is a lovely little bungalow, roughly the same size as Mum's home. We all felt it would be the perfect solution if Mum could sell her home and move into the cottage - she could then pay rent out of the proceeds of the sale (we all knew there was no way that she would accept not paying rent). Liz is a trained nurse, Mum would get to see her grandchildren every day and she would still have her own home and front door if she wanted her privacy.

On paper it is the perfect solution. But someone had to raise it with Mum - and I drew the short straw. There is no easy way to say to someone that you don't think they are coping very well and should consider giving up a degree of their independence. I wasn't looking forward to it.

In the event, it all went much better than I had dared hope. We were standing outside an estate agent's window (Mum has always enjoyed looking at properties for sale) and I casually asked her if she was considering moving. She admitted that she wasn't terribly happy where she was and would like to move closer to Liz, but found the thought of the entire process too complicated and overwhelming to contemplate - which was probably adding to her depression. I mentioned Liz's offer to her, fully expecting her to dismiss it out of hand, but to my surprise she didn't. We calmly discussed all the pros and cons as far as I could see them. There were a few tears; possibly of relief because she could now see a way out of her situation, possibly at having to admit that she wasn't coping very well. But we carried on talking and, when I finally left, she was quite accepting of the idea.

I can't imagine how it must feel to be taking decisions that will probably take you through to the end of your life. Mum's biggest fear of all is of "being put in a home", and I can fully understand that fear - the thought would fill me with horror as well. There are still a lot of steps involved to get from here to there, but I so hope this will all work out for everyone involved and that Mum will be able to enjoy the rest of her days in a home that she can call her own.

A post of two halves

2010-06-27T23:33:00.006+01:00

At this time of year it appears to be traditional for widows' blogs to have a post whining about mowing the lawn.

Consider this my entry in this vein.
I am now officially fed up of cutting grass. It feels like painting the Forth Road Bridge with a watercolour brush.

There seem to be two alternatives. One is to spend the whole day mowing grass, trimming edges and cutting the veg garden paths. This is visually satisfying as, once done, the place looks great for a few days at least. It is also very, very boring and I spend the entire time drawing up mental lists of all the things I would rather be doing instead.
The other is to do a portion each day over the course of three or four days. This is a lot less tedious, but it does make the job feel never-ending, and it doesn't give quite the same satisfaction of a job well done.

I suppose another alternative would be to let it all go. Indeed I have neglected one out-of-sight area that is in danger of reverting to jungle, but if the rest goes the same way, it will just be too depressing for words.
Or I could get off my behind and fix the tyre on the big mower. That would speed up proceedings no end, but I am having a big fit of the "don't wannas" right now - it's not my job, and I don't see why I should do it. Particularly on my own. Even though I am only spiting myself and I will have to do it in the end.
I know how childish and petulant this sounds, but I am having problems leaving this attitude behind at the moment. At least the current dry spell means that the grass isn't growing quite as fast.

Right.

So now I have that out of my system, let's have some piglet photos!

The two chaps have discovered the big outside world.
As they had previously spent all their short lives indoors, it isn't too surprising that it took them few days to get used to the idea.
They also discovered that they rather like sweet potato!

Moose is totally obsessed with them.
The sheep can pass by within a few feet of him, and he won't even take his eyes off the pigs. I think I could leave him here staring at them all day.

The porkers seem to enjoy the company though.

Introducing...

2010-06-22T22:36:00.005+01:00

... the latest additions to the madhouse!

They are 10-week old Large White x Oxford Sandy and Black crosses. This morning they were still a little shell-shocked and jumpy after their rather stressful day yesterday, and so weren't terribly cooperative with the camera.

The regulations in the UK require any journey that involves transporting animals for more than 65 km to be carried out by a registered 'haulier', i.e. someone who has been on a course and knows that you shouldn't pick up a pig by its tail or poke it with sharp sticks and has a 'Pigs in transit' sign on the back of their trailer. As I haven't been on the course and therefore do not know these things, I had to take my friend Natasha with me to collect them, as she has the necessary certificate.

We collected the weaners from a farm on the Llŷn Peninsula, which involved driving over the stunning Bwlch y Groes pass in Snowdonia. It was a bright, warm sunny day - absolutely perfect for a road trip. We weren't in a hurry, so we could take our time and drink in the incredible scenery. Even when the directions we were given proved to be missing a vital turning, and when we found that the road we were supposed to take had been closed for roadworks. Or when we realised that I had only brought the directions, and not the name of the farm or even the nearest village. Even when I got into a complete pickle trying to reverse with the trailer, and it eventually became easier simply to unhitch the whole thing, reverse the Land Rover and then reattach the trailer, we both remained blissfully unstressed. We knew we would get there in the end.

At the farm we had a very welcome cup of tea, looked around the other young stock and inspected the neatest vegetable garden I have seen in a long time, and then loaded 6 little porkers (two for me and four for some friends in the village).

This is not a quiet operation.
The noise that one small pig can make when it is picked up has to be heard to be believed. The weird thing about it is that it stops - instantly - as soon as it is put down again.

When we got back home, the whole squealing piglet process had to be repeated six times to deliver each one to its new accommodation.
Naturally one escaped.
He was finally cornered by the compost bins and hollered every inch of the way from there to the pig ark, where he promptly buried himself in the straw and went to sleep.

This morning they were still refusing to come out and eat. It wasn't until this afternoon when I went out there with my secret weapon - some chopped-up apple - that they would even contemplate stepping out of the safety of their new house.

I don't expect this reticence to last very long. I strongly suspect that they will start excavating the ground in their run within the next 24 hours!

The supervisor

2010-06-20T23:35:00.005+01:00

I am a very prosaic person. I don't do woo-woo stuff, and I firmly believe in what my younger sister calls the "compost theory of death".

And yet there are days in which I really feel R's presence. It is as though he is standing just behind me, watching everything I do. When I get stuck and don't know what to do next, if I ask him and listen hard enough for the answer, it will come.

Today was one of those days.

I needed to replace a section of the pig ark floor, as the previous occupants had gone right through it. I knew there was a sheet of OSB in the barn, and remembered that this is what he would have used.

I knew the best tool for the job was the jigsaw, and for once didn't have to turn the house upside down to find it. I have never used a jigsaw in my life before, but I could just picture R working with it, so it didn't seem at all daunting. I even managed not to remove any of my fingers as well!

Cutting the board was fine, then I needed to attach it to the base. Again, all the tools I needed were in the first place I looked. I'd like to think that he was proud of me doing this on my own, but if he was watching, then I suspect he was simply cringing at the sight of me breaking off two pilot drill bits and then thumping them into the wood with a large hammer. It wasn't an elegant solution, but at least it worked!

I'm hoping that one day I will be able to think about all the things I need to do this sort of job and get them together before starting, rather than running back and forth to the house every time to get the next tool. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Just getting it done was enough for me today!

And tomorrow I can collect the new additions. I am ridiculously excited. R adored having pigs too, to the extent that they were the wallpaper on his laptop. It would be nice to think that he wanted to look at a picture of yours truly while he was away on his travels, but no, he preferred a pair of Gloucester Old Spots! I guess I can live with that though - they were rather adorable.

I hope he is watching tomorrow and smiling too.

This weekend's project

2010-06-18T20:11:00.001+01:00

I am still mulling over this self-sabotage business as I know I won't be able to stop picking away at it until it is straight in my head.

This morning was totally chaotic. I took the Land Rover in for its MOT test yesterday. It was late, of course, as I hadn't managed to get it to the garage before I went away. Then I had a call this morning - there was a crack in the windscreen and it wouldn't pass until it was fixed.

No problem, I rang the number on my insurance policy to get someone to come out to the garage and replace the windscreen. Which they were happy to do, only no one could come out until next Thursday at the earliest.

And I need the Land Rover to pick up the new pigs on Monday.

Cue a lot of frantic phone calls to the garage, insurance broker, insurance company and various windscreen repair companies. Eventually I found one that could replace it tomorrow morning if I get it there by 8.30. Phew!
And in between all this I had to proofread two jobs for delivery and take Moose to the vet for a check-up on his dicky shoulder and to pick up some meds. The morning was a little fraught to say the least!

Where does the self-sabotage come in to all this?

Well, I had known about the crack in the windscreen for a couple of months, and was fairly sure that it would be an issue in the MOT test. The car is fully insured, and it would only have taken a single phone call to sort the problem at any time. So why didn't I do it?

The only explanation I can find is that this used to be one of the things that R would do in our unspoken division of labour in the household. Despite knowing full well that I have to do these things now, I am still pretending to myself that they aren't my responsibility, that they will somehow mysteriously get done as they used to in the past. Even though I know that they won't.
Perhaps it really is a case of JFDI.

But in the meantime, I have something much more fun to busy myself with this weekend: I need to set up the run and repair the pig ark for the new weaners.

The ground has been standing unused for nearly two and a half years. I will need to set up the electric fence, and cut down the grass and weeds so that the wires don't short out. Some of those posts need straightening as well.

The pig ark needs a bit of fettling too. The first step will be to evict the sheep that have taken up residence! Then I need to give it a good scrub out and finally replace the section of floor that the last pair of pigs managed to wreck. The new chaps will also need some food and straw for bedding, so I will have to pick that up at some point in the weekend as well.

Now this sort of work I have no problem motivating myself to do as it always has fallen within my remit. It is also a lot more fun than sorting out paperwork or car repairs!

I wonder what this little chap will make of the new arrivals on Monday?

The cheque is in the post

2010-06-15T23:29:00.007+01:00

I had a cheque in the mail this morning.

That should be a cause for celebration, right?
Well normally it would, but this cheque was the first instalment of R's estate. Yes, 1 year, 10 months and 11 days after the day he died the loose ends are finally being tidied up.

So why has it taken so long?
Well, there were some complications due to the intestacy situation, and the solicitor I appointed does have a very underdeveloped sense of urgency, but the main stumbling block in the whole process has been me. Every time I was asked to provide information, sign a form or ring to arrange a meeting, it would take me weeks, if not months to do it. I have been subconsciously trying to sabotage or at least hold up the entire procedure at every stage.

It's not as though I am in a sufficiently healthy financial position to not need the money. Although I have been just about keeping my head above water lately, not working for the best part of 6 months pretty much cleaned out my savings. The money will certainly make my life a lot easier. It will probably allow me to go back to working 4 days a week, which was what I was doing before he died. That, in turn, will make it easier to keep up with things on the smallholding, which will result in a much less stressed J.

But right from the very first meeting with the solicitor I have just hated the whole business. It felt as though I was trying to turn him into cash - that this was blood money. My sensible side tried hard to persuade me that this was crazy woman thinking, and just to get on and sign the bloody form, but I seemed to have an infinite capacity to stick fingers in my ears and ignore the good sense I was talking.

And yet, despite my best efforts to scupper her, the good ship "Probate" - Gawd bless her and all who sail in her - has finally limped into port.
It is probably just as well that it has taken all this time. Had the process only lasted a few months, I would probably have torn up the cheque or given the money to the local dogs' home or something equally impetuous and stupid. Sensible J won the argument this time, though, and it has been safely deposited in my bank account while I worry and procrastinate further about what to do with it.

What I am not experiencing is any sense of closure about this. I should be writing a nice, cheery post about my holiday tonight, not fretting about this. But there is no nice warm feeling that he is looking after me even now, or relief that this part is nearly over. It still just feels like blood money.

Pooped!

2010-06-06T23:35:00.003+01:00

It has been a good weekend.

These days, being outside in the sunshine, working hard and tiring myself out, is probably my greatest source of pleasure. Digging over the veg beds, pulling weeds, sowing and planting. Heck, even mowing that darned grass. It is all good. Getting hot and sweaty, scratched by brambles, stung by nettles - none of that matters. I can lose myself in the sheer physicality of it all.

This weekend I had a lot to do.
On Tuesday I am flying to Berlin for a few days with R's Dad, brother and sister-in-law. I have been so looking forward to the trip. (There's that 'forward' word again!). I haven't seen R's Dad since before Christmas and he is not very good on the telephone, so it will be a real pleasure to spend some time with him. It will also give me a boost to set down my scruffy gardening gear and put on my respectable clothes for a few days, and get a quick city fix.

I love travelling, and always have. It has been a little strange planning this trip with R's family, though, as their idea of what constitutes holiday preparations is very different to my own. They normally go on package-type holidays, where they know exactly where they are going and where they will be staying, whereas R and I would simply buy a plane or ferry ticket and worry about accommodation when we arrived in the country. I think this makes a trip more interesting, but you do have to be prepared to spend the odd night sleeping in the car when things don't work out. Given that R's Dad is in his early 80s, I relented on this occasion and booked us a nice hotel!

Even though the trip is only for a few days, I still felt that I needed to get all the seedlings out of the greenhouse and into the ground before I went. And cut the grass, clean out the hen houses and generally tidy up. It did strike me as a little daft that the garden would be looking great while I wasn't there to see it, but I know that coming back home to a mess will be too depressing for words.

What I hadn't bargained for was just how much there was to do. So now I am totally pooped and haven't managed to do any ironing or packing. The spirit is willing, but these tired muscles just aren't cooperating. Doubtless I shall be running around at midnight tomorrow trying to pack and remember everything I want to take - but that is sort of traditional around here.

And at least the garden looks good!

Arrested development

2010-06-04T16:55:00.007+01:00

A recent post on TK's blog set me off on one of my thought adventures.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

It's a good question.

Had you asked me that when I was a kid, the answer was simple. I wanted to be Gerald Durrell! No, not like him. I wanted to be him. Not sure exactly how that was going to be arranged, but I was working on it. As evinced by the constant stream of sticklebacks, lizards, injured birds, mice, butterflies, caterpillars, both smooth and hairy, stick insects, frogspawn and hedgehogs that I brought home to the delight of my long-suffering mother.

Somewhere along the line, though, reality kicked in. I met Sartre, de Beauvoir, Brecht and Böll and discovered that I loved language as much as furry creatures. And then I found I could make a living out of it, and the animals were put on hold for a while.

I guess that is all part of the process of growing up.

A few months ago, I had a lovely email from someone who had read my blog. The words that really hit home in it were, "You were just kids when you met".
She was right; I was only 18 when R and I got together, although the first few years were somewhat tempestuous. I always say that we did the 7-year itch thing in reverse - it was touch and go for several years as to whether we would stick it out. But once we both admitted to ourselves - and each other - that we weren't going anywhere it was as though someone had thrown a switch and the rest, as they say, is history.

But when you become yoked to another at an early age, do you ever grow up fully as an individual? You certainly grow as part of a whole. But is the person you grow into as one of a couple, the person you could have become if you had remained single for longer? Did I miss out on my own development when I morphed into the R&J persona?

There are so many things that I used to rely on R to do. Not because I wasn't capable of doing them, but because it was easier to let him do them. I don't just mean getting things down from the top shelf or opening jam jars, but sorting out mortgages and insurance, inviting people to parties, keeping in touch with acquaintances. To a large extent I stopped doing painting and decorating, basic woodworking, looking after the cars - despite the fact that I probably had a better grounding in those jobs from my Dad than R did from his (who I suspect has never picked up a paintbrush in his life!).

Now he isn't here any more, it is almost as if I am having to grow up again. There are long-forgotten skills that have to be resurrected. I am forced, kicking and screaming, to do many of the things that I happily left to R. Necessity has made me look outwards again, rather than just concentrating on the little cocoon of our relationship.

I am becoming a whole person in my own right.
Even though I really don't want to be doing this, it is still happening.
Perhaps I am finally growing up.

Looking forward

2010-06-02T00:14:00.003+01:00

I am resisting the temptation to simply post pictures of lambs for the next few weeks!
The last one was born this morning - so that is two singles and my first ever set of twins. All are healthy and thriving, and the mothers seem to be fine too. I had a wonderful moment at the weekend when my 3 year-old no. 3 niece held the little ram twin in her arms. The look of joy on her face was worth every minute of worry and all the late nights and early mornings checking the sheep - and of course I didn't have my camera there to capture it.

These new lives seem to have triggered something in me.
The day that the twins were born, I was also offered the choice of a litter of piglets. I had almost got to the stage of deciding that I wasn't going to have any more pigs when these came along. The timing was just right, I was feeling optimistic and have booked a pair of weaners. If nothing else it will ensure that I have some visitors over the Summer - I swear people come just to feed and scratch the pigs, rather than for my scintillating conversation!
I am going away for a few days next week, but when I come back I shall go and collect them, and my little farmstead will be full to bursting once more.

What it triggered, though, was a realisation that I am really starting to look forward again. I have been at the very best doing nothing more than treading water since the day R died, desperately trying to keep my head above the waves. It feels very positive to be thinking several months into the future again. I'd like to say that I once again have goals for my life, but that would be a little optimistic. Nevertheless, I do seem to be sniffing the air of the future and sensing that there are good things there.

To make the most of this new positivity I have decided to organise some sort of memorial 'do' for the 2nd anniversary of R's death. Last year was just a date to get past without falling apart. This year I would like to have lots of people around me, to laugh and smile about him, to eat, drink, talk and walk - all the things he loved to do, with the people he loved most.

Now organising really isn't one of my strong points. It was generally R who issued invitations and brought in the crowds. But this year I feel I can do it myself. Perhaps the people will be different - just the ones with whom I feel safe - but the act of drawing up lists and starting to make phone calls feels good and right. One of the lessons that the past 21 months has taught me is that, while I do enjoy peace, quiet and my own company, I also love it when my home is buzzing with people.

So I have decided to have it the weekend after R's anniversary, and am hoping that anticipation of the event will make the weeks beforehand easier.
My notebook is open on the kitchen table, and I have started to write lists. Not just the "Buy loo paper. Pay water bill before I get cut off" sort of list, but lists of people, where I am going to put them and what to feed them.
Yes, looking forward again is a good feeling.

Worth the wait

2010-05-27T18:06:00.004+01:00

I have been on lambwatch for what has seemed like months now, although in reality it has only been since the start of May. But it has meant that I couldn't leave the place for more than a few hours at a time, just in case, combined with regular patrols at all hours of the day and night to check for movements.

My poor ewes have spent the recent mini-heatwave sitting under the conifer hedge looking like enormous woolly bowling balls. After several false alarms this week I was beginning to think that they had decided not to bother lambing after all. But then this afternoon I heard a loud sheepy racket coming from the field and got there just in time to see this little one come into the world.

It really upset me last year not having any lambs about the place. It felt as though - on top of losing R - everything we had worked for was falling apart as well. Moments like this help to show me that it is worth carrying on.

32:25

2010-05-16T19:51:00.003+01:00

Not too shabby for an old lady who hasn't run that far since she left school!

Na zdraví

2010-05-15T00:29:00.004+01:00

Why is it that everything, but everything is suffused with memories? It feels as though I will never be free from them. Never be able to look at something without a whole flood of remembering being released.
Or if I get to that point when objects are merely neutral, will I be happy?

I went to a meeting this evening in the village hall. A propos nothing at all, someone said that there was a bottle of wine there that belonged to one of us. As I had no recollection of ever leaving a bottle there, I didn't even bother to look up.
And then it was thrust into my hands. A dusty bottle of Soviet Russian champagne that I had given to someone to use as a prop in the village panto a couple of years back - and with it came a whole wagon train of memories.

R and I did a short Eastern European road trip in March 1990, just five months after the Berlin Wall fell. We drove to Berlin along the spooky link motorway, headed via Dresden and Leipzig down into Czechoslovakia, and then back up through Germany to stay with a friend in Essen for a few days. Just writing those words I can't believe it was 20 years ago; it remains as vivid in my head as though it had happened only last month. It was one of those trips that will stay with me forever, for a whole host of reasons.

After we left Prague and headed for the German border, we happened to stop at a layby where there was a man selling Czech beer from the back of his car. R, being R, had to buy a crate from him, plus a couple of beautiful lead crystal beer glasses - and this bottle of champagne. Since Russian fizz tends to be very much on the sweet side, it was almost certainly undrinkable then. I don't think we ever intended to open it.

Well the beer didn't last very long after we returned home, and I broke the second of the glasses a couple of months after R died. So I am left with the now almost certainly poisonous champagne. It is sitting on the kitchen counter looking at me.

So what on earth shall I do with it?
I have enjoyed in a bittersweet sort of way the little trip through the memory banks it triggered. It hasn't been missed for the last however long it was, and I really don't want it, yet it is sitting there still.

Bah! I thought I had moved on from keeping things just because, but it seems that I am still being held down by 'stuff'.

Losing my edge

2010-05-12T00:02:00.004+01:00

When R was working away, every Sunday evening before he packed for the next week, he would bring in enough firewood to last me the next few days and would sharpen all the kitchen knives. It was one of those little rituals that made me feel loved.

Well the firewood thing I can do myself. It might not be stacked as neatly as when he used to do it, but it still makes a fire.

But I just cannot get the hang of knife-sharpening. I don't know whether it is because I am a cack-handed leftie, or because my steel needs replacing, but I seem to spend as much time blunting the blade as sharpening it.

And I so hate using blunt knives. My older sister gave me a new filleting knife for my birthday (after a freak accident at Christmas involving my old filleting knife and a potful of frozen parsnips - it's a long story, don't ask!). It is so beautifully sharp that I only use it when absolutely necessary to ensure that it keeps its edge. Otherwise I have to wait until my brother-in-law is here and ask him to do it, and I hate asking people to do daft things like that for me.

Such a little thing, but a constant reminder that he has gone.

Perspective

2010-05-08T00:11:00.007+01:00

Well things look no more certain tonight than they did last night. But in some ways it feels better to know that it is out of our hands - it is now all down to the political horse-trading.

Unsurprisingly not a lot of work has been done today, and much of the time has been taken up with worrying, phone calls, e-mail and online conversations. With checking finances to find out how well I could weather a worsening financial crisis. With mentally running through lists of things that need to be done, paid or arranged in the near future.

One conversation made me feel better, though. It was with a friend who has good reasons to be concerned about the security of her own job if everything goes belly-up in the next few months. But her words made me smile, and helped to banish the feeling of foreboding that has been dogging my steps all day.

[It is a] total mess.
But the sun came out at about 5pm and I went for a wander around our paddock and looked at the veg starting to grow. It looks like we are going to have a cracking crop of soft fruit this year and the pigs are fattening up well. Made me think that whoever ends up in power, the sun's still going to come up, the fruit is still going to grow and the pigs are going to keep getting bigger. Helps get things in perspective for me.

And she's right.
I can't do anything to change things on a national scale, so all I can do is keep on keeping on.
At least I will eat well.

Uncertainty

2010-05-07T00:34:00.004+01:00

I am sitting here in front of the television, waiting for the election results to come in.

It is the first time I have ever done this without R by my side. His absence was huge as I walked into the polling station without him, and for the first time ever in my life I have voted without conviction that I was doing the right thing. There was no trawling through the election leaflets. No animated weekend discussions over the kitchen table, no arguing the merits of the parties. No enjoyment of the whole political process.

I have no sense of anticipation or enthusiasm. I can't even get excited about the fancy new swingometer graphics. There is just a sense of dread at the possibility of a hung parliament. I am old enough to remember the last one and the chaos it caused in the country. I cannot understand the delight with which people are greeting the idea. The days of haggling over every decision, of shipping in sick MPs in ambulances to vote, of strikes, uncertainty, economic gloom seem just around the corner. Why this should be a good thing I really don't understand.

So far only a handful of constituencies have returned their verdict. For the first time in my adult life I think I shall go to bed and simply wake up to hear the result, rather than staying up for the blow-by-blow accounts. I just hope it looks better in the morning.

Knitting with dog hair

2010-05-04T00:18:00.002+01:00

Moose is moulting.

The entire house, including me, appears to have acquired a gentle patina of grey collie underfur. I have reminded him that he shouldn't be casting his clouts as the May is definitely not yet out, but as ever he is dancing - or shedding - to his own doggy tune.

R held the post of Brusher-in-Chief in this household. He performed the task very assiduously, probably because more brushing meant less vacuuming. With both of us on the job, we could usually keep the furry tide to manageable proportions.

This year I was late in catching on that moulting season had arrived. It was when I realised that the dust bunnies had been driven out by hair devils that Something Had to be Done.

And so I brush.
And brush.
And watch the pile of soft grey fibre grow alarmingly.

Every year I think the same thing - it seems such a waste of a beautiful, albeit slightly doggy-smelling resource to simply put it on the fire (which is where it goes at present). But I am told by those who know about such things that the staple (length of the fibre) isn't long enough to spin up satisfactorily.

Such a shame. I can just picture a little dove-grey, boxy turtleneck sweater knitted from Moose fur. It would be cashmere-soft and so, so elegant.
But best not to wear it in the rain, perhaps...

Granny goes shopping

2010-05-02T22:50:00.000+01:00

After much deliberation and far too many hours spent on online shopping sites, I finally swallowed my pride and bowed to the inevitable.

Animal prints just weren't me though, and there is probably too much cloned Cath Kidston in the world already. Wicker felt ever-so-slightly old maidish. So in the end I opted for one of these.
It is not exactly stylish, but it is light and manoeuvrable and pressed all the right buttons for me.
And I rather liked the idea of doing my shopping with relative ease while simultaneously saving turtles!

Trolley and I went for a test drive in town on Saturday.
I probably could have done with 'L' plates, but we managed. Stability was an issue at first, but nothing that couldn't be remedied by packing more symmetrically. It was very nice to get back to the car without aching shoulders, and I didn't find myself having urges to get a blue rinse or buy a packet of mothballs, so it looks as though I haven't aged 30 years overnight!

I guess that means it can be regarded as a success.

Eating an elephant

2010-04-29T16:13:00.011+01:00

For the last few weekends, the pattern for Saturday morning has been the same. Get up, feed the animals, have breakfast, and then load another pile of the old porch roofing material into the car and take it to the tip. Or the Domestic Waste Collection and Recycling Centre, as it prefers to be known these days.

Yes, the knock-on effect of having a new roof was that I was left with the old one to dispose of as I saw fit. And no, I'm not exactly sure why this happened - I guess I simply forgot an important part of the conversation when I commissioned the work. The spec is just another of those things that I used to leave to R. When we had work done for us, I had to make the tea and look after the workers all day, so R could jolly well do the negotiating-a-price part (which has never been my forte in any case).

Initially I wasn't too worried when the roofer left me with the small mountain of old corrugated roofing panels. "Oh well, I'll just have to hire a skip," I innocently thought. The last time we had one, the cost hadn't been too unreasonable, and it would be a good opportunity to get rid of some other rubbish as well. But these days the basic hire cost is supplemented with landfill tax and THEN they weigh the bloody thing and add a price per tonne. It was going to cost me a couple of hundred quid or more to dispose of the sheets.

R would probably have suggested that we got one anyway and hang the expense. But that was back in the ancien régime - the one with two salaries coming in. In these more straitened times, another solution would have to be found.

The Land Rover was still out of action at the time, so I couldn't put it all in the stock trailer (not to mention the fact that it would have involved me reversing it back through the gate - a task that I will do almost anything to avoid). I guess I could have called in a favour from someone, but I like to ration those for when I really need them. The sheets were beyond reuse, which meant there was no point in offering them on Freecycle. Burning them would probably have resulted in a visit from Environmental Health.

So the pile sat there for a couple of weeks under its blue tarpaulin until the message finally sank in that it wasn't going to spontaneously combust or teleport out of there on its own. I would simply have to break up the sheets and take them to the tip one bite at a time. Fortunately the car was already in a disgraceful state as it was well overdue for a wash. I had also been using it all winter to carry hay, so the inside was as bad as the outside, and it couldn't really get a lot worse.

The first carload barely made a dent in the pile and I was very tempted to go straight back and get another instalment, but I am trying to keep my petrol miles to a minimum and that would have defeated the object of going only whenever I was going into town anyway.

Over the weeks I didn't quite make it to first-name terms with the gentlemen who run the centre, but I did become rather adept at reversing quickly into the right bay as soon as a gap appeared. And I found out how many other things are recycled or collected there. There is even a British Heart Foundation box for books, so I have been whittling down the excess book collection at the same time. Hurrah!

And this Saturday I am delighted to say that I finally saw the end of the pile as the last batch found itself a new home at the tip. It has been an object lesson in patience if nothing else.

And Moose is very happy to have his boot space back. He was most unimpressed by the whole business.

I am She-Ra

2010-04-25T10:03:00.001+01:00

Nope.
It's no good.
I've looked in the mirror from several angles and can safely say that you would struggle to find a less likely-looking superhero. Even before the telephone box transformation!
Just a sad combination of chronic overachiever and widow who desperately wants everything to be as close as possible to the way it was before. Even though it never will be.

But I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who took the time to reply to my last post and talk me down off the ceiling. I really do appreciate you sharing your own stories, which are every bit as painful as my own. Why this helps so much I don't know, but it does.

And thank you for giving me permission to let things go. Sometimes this idiot brain struggles to see the obvious. I just need to stop over-thinking things and simply do what is good for me. Why is that so difficult?

Anyway. Enough of this introspection. There are things to be done, runaway trains to stop, people to be rescued...

Cowardice

2010-04-22T23:33:00.000+01:00

I had a phone call today that I knew was going to come eventually, but had been trying to put out of my mind.

One of the down sides of living out in the country is that the nearest hospital with an Accident and Emergency department is a 45-minute drive away. Because of this, a First Responders group was set up in the village a few years ago. R and I signed up along with many others. We did the necessary first aid courses, got our certificates and our names were duly added to the list of Responders.

Although I took the training and the exercises seriously, I never really expected to have to use it, beyond the odd cut finger or sprained ankle.

I certainly didn't expect to find myself using it on my own for nearly 40 minutes in the early hours of one August morning.
But that is what happened and, in all my naïveté, I thought that once the paramedics had arrived and restored his pulse, it would all be plain sailing from there. The fact that, when I arrived at the hospital, the A&E nurses were full of praise for the way I had kept him going, made me even more certain that everything was going to be alright.

Pride certainly does go before a fall.

But back to the First Responders group.
Once a year we had to attend a training course to revalidate our certification. Naturally last year, it was politely glossed over and nothing more was said.
But the year has come full circle and Neil, the training coordinator, rang me this evening to ask - very gently - if I wanted to do the CPR course this time around.

I know that I ought to go and do it, if only to exorcise the demons in my head.

But I can't. I just can't.

The thought of touching that truncated plastic dummy is making me feel physically sick. The flashbacks that have been under control for months now started up again almost the minute I put the phone down.
All I can think is that that stupid dummy feels nothing like a lifeless body that is depending on me to keep it going. It isn't gasping as though it is still desperately trying to stay alive. Its skin is a healthy flesh colour - not blue. It doesn't have the dead-weight of what had been a healthy vigorous man just a few minutes before.

And nothing - absolutely nothing - prepares you for the possibility that you will do all the drill, perform CPR for as long as it takes, and the person will still go and die on you. The childlike belief remains that following all the steps on the DR ABC list will miraculously restore them to life, while in reality the truth is that all you are doing is merely improving the odds a little in their favour.

I know I should do this, and will probably feel better afterwards if I do.

But I just can't.

Not yet.

Compostville

2010-04-18T01:47:00.003+01:00

In our little village we have a table tennis club that I help to run with two friends at the Community Centre. This started up a couple of years before R died and, as he was away during the week for much of the year, he very much encouraged me to get involved.

We run the club from September through to Easter. It all started as something for the village kids to do on a Wednesday evening. Then a few adults turned up for a bit of a knockabout after the children went home, and it has gone from strength to strength to the extent that we started playing in the local league this season.

It was probably the first social thing I did after R died - the club started up again no more than about 5 weeks after his death. I don't know why I felt I could do it. Possibly because I realised that I was now on my own, and needed to get back out into the world, even though I really didn't feel like it. Or possibly because the kids didn't ask any difficult questions, so it was a non-threatening way to ease myself back into the world of people. It certainly wasn't for the table tennis at first as I had all the concentration of a demented butterfly at that time; my game was shot to pieces and remained that way for months.

But whatever the reason, it quickly became the bright spot in my otherwise grey week. It got me out of the house and forced me to think of something other than my grief. I think that that the kids taught me to laugh again.
And the adults who came along to play have formed the core of my unofficial, but unswervingly loyal support group within the village.

Take Brian, our coach, for example. He and his wife Janet are blow-ins to the village like R and I. He is now in his early 70s, while his wife is a few years younger. For some reason, they 'adopted' R and I as surrogate children (despite already having four of their own). Janet, in particular, was devastated to learn about R's death, and they have been so sweet in the way they have unobtrusively looked after me ever since, both emotionally and with practical support.

The latest example of this came this weekend.
When we moved to this house, I built myself a set of compost bays behind the barn. This was a rather Heath Robinson affair, created out of old fence posts and pallets. It didn't look too good, but nevertheless served its purpose well for 6 years. This year, however, it had started to rot and totally fall apart, and some serious repairs were needed.

Sad, isn't it?

I can't remember exactly why I came to show Brian the parlous state of my composting facilities, but when I did, he said that he had exactly the solution to my problem.

And so this morning we built this:

Amazing what you can do with a couple of pieces of rebar and some old corrugated sheet!

Magnificent obsession

2010-04-12T22:57:00.008+01:00

A couple of days ago one of my neighbours said that the Daffodil Lane should be at its best this week. Poor Moose has had to put up with runs lately because I am still training for the Race for Life. He doesn't complain, but it doesn't give him a lot of time for mooching and sniffing while we are out. So I decided he deserved a good, long, slow walk today, and we set off down the hill to the start of the lane.

It looks promising, even if the sheep don't appear very interested.

Round the corner. Yep, the daffodils are definitely out.

Up the hill a bit, and they are starting to come thick and fast.

We had to stop here for a little while as Moose found something very interesting to sniff...

... then it was off down the hill, past the entrance to my friend Pip's farm. No let-up on the daffodil front though.

The daffodils were planted - every single bulb - by an old boy by the name of Maldwyn. A life-long bachelor, he lives with his brother and sister just off this lane where they have a small farm. The daffodil planting started some time after he retired from the Council's Parks and Gardens department - I think he must be in his early 80s now. When I asked him about it, he said he started at the end of their track and got a bit carried away - and just forgot to stop!

A few years ago, the village built this seat for him at the prettiest spot on the lane.
It looks over the weir.

R used to love this spot too. We often brought friends down here to stop a while by the river and give any dogs with us a chance to splash in the water on a hot day.

Moose was a little disappointed that I wasn't going to stop and throw sticks in the water, but it was soon forgotten as we started going up again.

There is a whole army of daffodils along this stretch. A positive host, if ever I saw one.
"I'd better check the other side of the road," says Moose.

And if you look very carefully, there are a few other little goodies that Maldwyn tucked in here and there when he had a few leftover plants.
Here is a little patch of pulmonaria peeping out from between the daffs.

Oh look! Some more daffodils.
You can spot his progress along the lane as one variety takes over from another. I cannot imagine how long it took him to do this.
The Autumn after R died, I planted a whole sack of bulbs in his memory. It took ages, even while I was at my most manic. But this stretch of road must hold a truckload of the things. It is unimaginable to me how anyone could keep going at the task.

There isn't a lot of space available for planting beneath the hedges here, but even so he has managed to tuck some into the poor soil.

Looks as though we are coming to the end...

... then a final flourish as we reach the village sign.

Maldwyn is a kind, gentle and modest man. But he has certainly made his mark on this little patch of Wales. I hope he will be with us for many years to come, but when he does go on to his reward, what a legacy he will leave behind him.

Good days

2010-04-11T21:40:00.004+01:00

Despite my recent period of introspection, the good days come along much more regularly now.
I won't say perfect days, because those don't happen any more, but cheerful, bustling, busy days when I get so absorbed in what I am doing that there is no time to be sad, and my end-of-day body is virtuously tired. When I can look back over a day in which things have been achieved, progress made and a little more chaos turned into order.

As I sat eating my breakfast this morning, the early Spring sunshine was pouring in through the kitchen window.
Or it would have poured in if it wasn't for the parlous state of the glass.
Window-cleaning was one of R's jobs. Not because it had been officially allocated to him, but because his love of light meant that he always cracked first when it became too dingy in the house for his liking. Another reason is that I really don't like heights and climbing ladders very much - the last time I did the job, the upstairs windows were left uncleaned and things were getting pretty dark up there.

So it was the perfect opportunity to deploy what was possibly my favourite Christmas present last year and the perfect tool for the widow with no head for heights. A 3 metre extensible pole! All the window-cleaning attachments fit it and I can now reach the upstairs windows without having to leave terra firma. (It will also allow me to paint ceilings without too much of a struggle).

With the house windows all clean and sparkling, I moved on to R's chilli house.
This was the little greenhouse he bought himself when we got my big one. Quite extraordinarily we managed to erect it without a single argument!
I'm not sure how it acquired the title of his greenhouse seeing as how all the plants were sown, potted on, planted out, harvested and cooked with by me. He may have watered them once or twice but - whatever - it was his chilli house!

And it is now clean and ready for the next crop.

After lunch the sun was amazingly still shining, so it was time for some sowing.
There are few things that make me happier than sowing seeds. I love the regular lines drawn in the freshly-raked earth with the sprinkling of potting compost on top to show where the seeds are. I love the lack of weeds in the recently-sown area. I love the promise of good things to come.
This cold frame is full of my second sowing of heirloom lettuce varieties - mostly the cut-and-come-again types. From May until practically the end of the year there will be salad on the table at least once a day. The least I can do is to grow pretty varieties.

The other cold frame is now full of brassicas - cima di rapa, cavolo nero, quick-heading broccoli and mustard greens. There is nothing fresh in the garden right now apart from a few parsnips, leeks and artichokes - the wait is driving me mad, and it will be at least another month before the first salads are ready. But in the meantime the constant round of sowing, potting on and planting out will take my mind off things.

Sadly it wasn't such a good day for this little fellow though. He must have flown headlong into the greenhouse and broken his neck.

He is now residing (very well wrapped, I hasten to add) in my freezer!
I mentioned it to a friend whose brother is a wildlife artist, and she told me that he could use it as a reference subject for his work. As most wild birds in the UK are protected by law, apparently painters and taxidermists are desperate to get hold of suitable subjects by legal means.
Being turned into art seems a fitting end for such a beautiful creature.

Control-freakery

2010-04-10T00:06:00.001+01:00

I worry about myself sometimes, really I do.

I have written before about how it has become very important to me to have calm and order in my life. Much more so than it ever was in the past.

Now this doesn't mean that I am a neat freak or that my home is spotless. With a dog that is constantly running in and out of the house and mud season still upon us, you should see the state of my kitchen floor! But I do need to know where to find things and I get far more pleasure from freshly-dusted, uncluttered surfaces than my former self would have thought healthy. And I have become ever so picky about how things should be done.

I also seem to have developed little rituals somewhere along the line. I have the same breakfast day in, day out without ever getting bored of it. My going-to-bed routine has ossified as well: make cup of Earl Grey tea, fill hot water bottle and put it into bed (I like a warm bed, but cold room), go out and lock the chickens up and send the dog out, fetch a glass of water, clean teeth, get into bed, read until I can't keep my eyes open any longer, drink my tea and fall into a deep, deep sleep until morning.

Even if I have people to stay, I still have to do all the steps or it doesn't feel right.

Sometimes you need to see yourself through another person's eyes. Then you realise that it probably isn't the end of the world if someone commits the heinous crime of making coffee in your favourite tea cup. It is quite scary just how easily these things can assume an exaggerated importance.

Surely I'm not ready to be a mad old widow just yet, but the list goes on and on. When someone sows a bunch of seeds for me to not quite the right depth, it really would be a bad thing to dig them all up and sow them again 'properly', wouldn't it? And it probably isn't the done thing to suggest that another person's washing-up technique is sub-optimal, particularly when they have been slaving away at the sink for ten minutes or more.

Then again, does it matter? I don't know.
Probably not in the great scheme of things, but it does seem a bit scarily controlled and not entirely normal.
Perhaps I need to practise simply letting things go for a while.

I get by with a little help from my friends

2010-04-04T22:20:00.007+01:00

It was R's birthday last weekend.

Just like last year I had decided not to make a big thing about it, but some weeks ago his brother and sister-in-law arranged to come over. And asked if they could bring some friends. Trina is a garden designer and Simon can turn his hand to pretty much anything. They said they were coming here to work!

I have already moaned about how with all the snow and work and everything I have been unable to get the homestead knocked into shape this year. This time last year I was totally manic and full of adrenaline, which enabled me to get most things done. The fact that I haven't been able or haven't had the energy to do it this year has been getting me down so much.

So the bargain was that I would keep them stoked with food and ply them with beer in the evening. When they arrived on the Friday it was too late and too dark to do any work, so we had a leisurely meal and caught up with all the gossip from the last few months.

Saturday morning though, Simon was itching to get started.

The thing I really wanted to achieve from the weekend was to set up some chicken pens to stop my birds marauding all over the garden and digging up my seedlings. So while he was measuring up and seeing what materials I already had in the barn, the ladies got to work on the vegetable garden.

Driving down to the timber merchant with R's brother gave us a good opportunity to talk on our own. Jon has had a rough year for various reasons - he has lost a lot of weight and seems to have aged a lot. We talked about R, of course. I think we are both in a similar place - we are getting on with our lives, can cope with the day-to-day of his loss, but still feel it to be such an outrage that he is gone. After all the anguish and raw emotion of the previous months, what it all boils down to is that It. Is. Wrong.

He should be here pounding in fence posts with us, chatting about work and family, setting the table, opening a bottle of beer. He should just be here. That's all.
And he isn't.

But while we were away buying chicken wire and nails, Simon the Human Dynamo wasn't resting. No. He managed to get my Landrover working again. And performed the same miracle on the bench saw that wouldn't start for me. Relaid some wonky flagstones. Mended a couple of the chicken coops. When we returned with the pen-building supplies, he was off again.

As long as I kept him and the others fed with tea and cake, they kept working!

After two days of this, I had a pair of orderly chicken pens.

They will need some netting over the top to stop the hens flapping out, but otherwise the two pens will allow me to rotate the birds between the two and keep the ground sweet.

And I have an empty, washed and dug over greenhouse.

And a totally cleared vegetable garden, with hedge cut, beds dug over, cold frames washed, broad beans, onions and 1st early potatoes planted all ready for the spring frenzy.

I also seem to have acquired a new sawhorse and all the odd pieces of seasoned tree trunk lying in the barn are now neatly chainsawed to size (I was made to promise not to use the chainsaw on my own!).

On Saturday evening we all raised our glasses and wished R a happy birthday. Not too many tears, but a missed presence in the room.
He would have so loved the weekend.

Back on my head

2010-03-24T16:40:00.012Z

My head may currently be full of philosophical thoughts about life, the universe and everything, but the reality of my existence, it would appear, insists on being much more prosaic.
Very down-to-earth, in fact.

There has been an odd smell in my house for a couple of weeks now. Not bad enough to worry about, but definitely there, and quite obviously getting worse. Then yesterday I noticed that the drain outside the back door was filling with water and overflowing whenever I used the sink.

I have been here before. When this happens, there are a couple of things to try before really panicking.
The first is, well, to don the industrial-strength rubber gloves and have a grope to see if there is an immediate blockage. I can tell you, there is nothing like being up to the elbow in it to reconnect oneself with reality. I will gloss over some of the language that escaped my lips as I was doing this, but suffice to say, it did not do the trick.

The second step is to get out the drain rods.
And no, I had never heard of drain rods either until I moved to a house with a septic tank, at which point they became an irregularly-used, but nonetheless essential part of life.
Then I had to locate the rodding eye - the manhole cover that gives access to a section of drain - and lever up the heavy metal cover with a crowbar. Down in the drain, one way heads towards the septic tank, the other towards the house. If there is nothing in the rodding eye, then you have to work back towards the house, as that is where the blockage is. If the eye is full of, ahem, stuff, you must head towards the tank as the drain may be blocked on that side.
To do this you select your attachment - one has a sort of double-helix affair, another a big sink plunger type of thing, and the last a hinged semi-circle that I don't quite understand. My choice of weapon was the double-helix. If it's good enough for Watson and Crick, it's good enough for me.

Into the hole it goes, then screw on the next rod and give it a good shove. When it has gone as far as possible, screw on the next one. Repeat until there are no rods left. Then give them a good to and fro, just in case there is a blockage.
If the content of the eye stubbornly refuses to go down, then this can only mean one thing. The septic tank is full, the contents are rapidly backing up and are about to invade the house. Now I have never had this pleasure, but it happened to a friend of mine not too long ago and she assures me that it is every bit as awful as it sounds.

Having by now exhausted my knowledge of drains and how to care for them, I started to pull out the rods, unscrewing each one as it came up. Until I got to the one with the double-helix ..... which was not there. Somehow, amid all the pushing and shoving and turning, I had managed to unintentionally unscrew the last rod, leaving it languishing somewhere in the bowels (sorry!) of the earth.

Well I wasn't going back in there for it.

By now it was too late to call out the tank-emptying company. So I tidied up outside, removed 95% of my clothing by the back door, contemplated whether to put it into the washing machine or simply burn it straightaway, and headed for the bathroom. Where, of course, I was unable to have the shower I wanted because of the risk of imminent invasion by the Thing That Lurked Beneath.
Washing in half a teacup of water was not satisfactory at all.

Fortunately the company was able to come out and empty the tank late this morning and all is fragrant around here once more. I was, however, too embarrassed to say anything about the lost drain rod and the nice man didn't mention finding it, so doubtless it is just biding its time down-under, waiting to bring another wave of chaos into my life.

Blindsided

2010-03-22T22:17:00.002Z

After 19 months and 17 days, I thought I was an old hand at this being a widow business.

By this, I don't mean that I have all my feelings under control. I certainly haven't managed that trick yet. But the benefit of time means that the waves of emotion have become familiar. A flashback is very different from a flicker of sadness triggered by a piece of music. A lonely evening full of tears requires a different coping mechanism to the stabbing pain of a briefly-remembered moment.

What they have in common, though, is that I have experienced them all - many times - over the months, and now know what to expect and how to respond. "Know thy enemy" truly is a large part of the battle.

But a recent 'conversation' on an online forum that I visit regularly really knocked me for six. It is a place I go mainly to talk about growing vegetables and raising animals, not to discuss the big issues of life. But someone raised a question about childlessness and how it affected people, and I was astonished at the strength of emotion it raised in me.

As will be evident from reading this blog, R and I had no children.
When we were young, we were firmly in the militantly child-free camp, but even as we mellowed and our lives and work changed, the subject never reached the top of the agenda. I don't know why - timing, perhaps, or circumstances or just that we felt we had each other and didn't need anyone else to make our lives complete.

As I entered my 40s it became a mild source of regret in a ticking clock sort of way. This feeling has become stronger since R died as I would love to have a part of him still with me. And if I'm honest, it also raises worries about what will happen when I am much older - I always expected R to outlive me by a long time, so old age was never a concern.

The question created such a feeling of aloneness in me; probably more than I have felt at any time on this journey. I try very hard not to live in the past, but it is difficult not to wonder whether, if we had known what was going to happen, would we have followed the path we did? Would a child in my life make it harder or easier to cope with life now and think of the future with optimism?

Of course, these are all impossible questions to answer, but it doesn't stop them constantly running round and round my head. I hate it when thoughts like these penetrate the chinks in the armour I have dressed myself in to cope with the world. The best I can hope for from my life at present is calm, and this thought is like a piercing siren in the early hours of the morning, shattering my peaceful life.

I guess it is still technically possible as it is all still in working order(!), but it would be with the wrong person and an incredibly selfish act to have a child - alone - at an age when most women are looking forward to being grandmothers. And there is no shortage of children and young people in my life. Between us we had 7 nephews and nieces, I am godmother to one and surrogate auntie to many more.

No, that definitely wouldn't be the answer. I just need to stomp up yet more hills until I have worked out where to take this feeling. At least Moose will be happy.

Seeing things in a new light

2010-03-10T12:03:00.007Z

Sometimes I feel a bit of a fraud moaning about some of the minor issues that trip me up every now and again. After all, single and divorced people have to face them every day too. Nothing is insurmountable given a bit of time and thought, although they always seem to surface when I have work piling up on my desk or am trying to get something else done. But what the heck, it's my blog. If I can't have a bit of a whine here, where on earth can I do it?

This week it is lightbulbs.

R had a thing about lighting. He liked a room to be bright. Inappropriately bright in my opinion. Arc lamp or crude interrogation technique sort of bright. Particularly while eating. He once put on a head torch in a restaurant in a silent protest against its use of subdued, "romantic" lighting - or at least until I had a hissy fit and made him take it off.

He was forever on the search for the perfect lightbulb. Every time a new one came out - whatever the size, shape or wattage - he would buy a couple and try them out in various sockets around the house. And would carefully put the old, part-used-but-still-working bulb back into the first box he could find that would fit it and return it to the lightbulb shelf.

Light fittings were another obsession.
If he saw one he liked he would bring it home and put it up in a room to 'audition' it. Normally only one, regardless of whether one was needed or four. And no matter whether it took G10, Edison screw or bayonet fittings, and may therefore require a whole new selection of lightbulbs. Alternatively he would fit one of his many ugly, plastic bulkhead lights as a 'temporary' measure. There are still a few of those around the house; I am gradually having them replaced and shall enjoy a quiet celebration when the last one has gone.

When a lamp no longer works, I go to the mismatched assortment of compact fluorescent, low-wattage halogen and LED bulbs. New, nearly new or possibly even blown - R could never quite bring himself to throw away lightbulbs as he felt they ought to be recyclable. He was presumably saving them all up until the local authorities came over to his point of view on this issue!

I then have to find something that both fits and offers the same light level as the other light fittings in the room. Invariably I will only be able to find a spiral type when all the others are straight. Or the bulb I choose won't fit into the fancy-schmancy light fitting that was only put up on a trial basis. Or it is actually a dud and should have been thrown away...

By this time I am grinding my teeth with frustration and about to give up and light a candle instead. At least I know where those are and that they work.

Today another lightbulb blew. That is the third in a fortnight.
In the great scheme of things it is nothing, but I am starting to feel just a little persecuted!

For WitM

2010-03-08T10:46:00.004Z

Some flowers for you.
Just to tide you over until yours appear.

I love snowdrops.
They are so delicate and yet incredibly tough. They appear to withstand almost anything nature can throw at them, and seed themselves with total abandon. The ground is rock solid at the moment, yet here they are.

This variety with its pretty green frilly edging is my favourite. I can never have too many.

They last and last until the daffodils appear.

But judging from this little lot, they are going to be late this year. I hope there will be at least a few in bloom by R's birthday later this month.

Have a nice day!

Cityscape

2010-03-07T20:11:00.014Z

It's funny.
Most people take a trip to the country to recharge their batteries and relax.
For me it is just the opposite. I go to the city to reconnect with the mass of people and lose myself among them. For a few hours or a couple of days, the colour, bustle and purposeful busyness of the city is so invigorating.

My hilltop is beautiful, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, but at times I itch to be an anonymous member of a crowd. This feeling has been particularly strong lately given the last couple of months of snow-related semi-isolation.

So I have been looking forward to this weekend for a long time.
I went to Liverpool to visit my friends Tony and Delia and to see their new house. Tony worked with R several years ago and the friendship continued after we left the north-west - to the extent that I asked him to give one of the eulogies at R's funeral.

They are both great talkers and listeners.
After the usual catch-up conversations and sharing of plans for the future, we got to talking about R. With them it was so easy and natural. There was none of the formal "And now shall we talk about the dead person?" business - R was woven in and out of the conversation as though he were still with us. It was relaxing and normal, and for once it didn't make me cry.

Going out for a beer and a curry on Saturday evening was another welcome treat for me. At home, the round-trip involved in buying a takeaway means that it is not something I ever do. It all felt very decadent!

Sunday morning saw us taking a pre-brunch walk along Otterspool promenade in the crisp morning air. Despite the sunshine, we had to keep moving to keep warm, but the bright light glinting off the Mersey and the massed daffodils on the verge of flowering made it very worth the brisk walking pace required.

Moose and his friend Leo enjoyed the park as well!

In the afternoon, we took a trip up the Radio City Tower. This was something Tony and R had intended to do on the visit that should have taken place a few weeks after he died. It seemed appropriate to do it today.

Over 450 feet high, the Beacon as it is also known gave us a fantastic view over a city that I don't know very well. From the Liver Building to the two cathedrals and back over to Everton Heights, taking in the wealth of fine Georgian buildings in the city centre, it appeared much more grandiose from our vantage point than it ever does at ground level.

Tony joked that we could see my house from up there. Who knows? Had the Snowdonia mountain range not been in the way, he may have been right!

I have two more trips away planned this month.

From the viewpoint of getting things done around the homestead, this is a very bad idea; it would be far more sensible to stay at home and do some much-needed work. I am hoping though that, after a month of decadence I will come back and get going again with renewed vigour. The garden can wait that long, and nothing else seems to be doing the trick as far as generating enthusiasm is concerned.

I really hope this works.

Where does the time go?

2010-03-05T12:11:00.008Z

In a couple of days I shall have been living in this house for 7 years.

I have written before about the state it was in when we moved here. Filthy, full of rubbish, damp, cold and very sad.
We shouldn't have bought the place. The house was too big. It needed too much work and we weren't great at DIY. We had wanted a bit more land, and the village was a lot further from the train station and R's work than was ideal, which would mean that he would have to commute on a weekly basis rather than every day. We had intended to get somewhere a lot closer to my family, and this was an hour away.
So we agreed that it was all wrong and we would carry on looking for somewhere else.

But over the course of the weekend we kept on talking about the ramshackle house we had visited in the little village in the middle of nowhere. A week later we went back for another look - and made an offer that was less than the asking price, but still more than it was probably worth.
The offer was accepted and the rest is history!

And for all the expense, cold nights, hassle and work that it has caused, it was the perfect place for us. R loved it here; when he came back on Friday evening, he would take off the professional suit and change into his tatty checked shirt and ancient combat trousers, drink a beer, relax, talk and plan, eat hearty home-produced food and decide on the next project.

For me, it was absolutely the right place. I loved it the moment I first saw the house and the village, but didn't want to persuade R because he would be the one who had to work away.
The benign nosiness of village life has been just what I needed. People aren't intrusive, but they care and they do check up to make sure I'm alright. Even now. I have not once felt afraid to be living alone because I know the neighbours are there and they will look after me. I don't often ask for help, but when I do, it is freely given. I don't think that I could find a better place in which to be widowed!

And today it is 19 months exactly since R died.
I don't quite understand how that can be possible, but the calendar tells me it is true.

The tears, the stomach lurches when something reminds me of him, the longing to feel his touch again are all still there, and I don't think will ever leave me entirely, but I feel I can do grief now in the way that people must learn to manage their lives if they lose a limb or their sight.

It also occurred to me today that I have been writing this blog for over a year. I cannot for the life of me remember exactly what it was that prompted me to start and it amazes me that I have carried on for so long, albeit with a couple of gaps. In the past, diary-writing has always gone the same way as New Year's Resolutions!

Before I started, I was always slightly suspicious of people who cast their thoughts and feelings out to the world in this way - it never seemed quite The Thing to do. Yet the writing allows me to express what I would never say out loud. Focussing on the words has helped me to get through some of the hardest periods of pain and clarify exactly what I am feeling. It also helps with remembering what has happened over these past months, as I certainly don't remember if I don't actively put it into words.

And I gain so much strength from our little community brought together by sadness. Knowing that there are people out there who understand, who know what I am feeling - even if they don't actively speak to me - is such a source of strength.
Thank you to you for being there.

Mid-life crisis?

2010-03-04T18:27:00.002Z

I try not to do New Year's resolutions. They never last and I always end up feeling guilty.

Since I suddenly found myself alone, however, I have been very conscious of the need to stay healthy. This was emphasised rather dramatically by a bout of stomach 'flu last Autumn; the initial crisis was over quickly, but dragging myself out of my sick bed twice a day to feed the animals and give Moose enough exercise to stop him going stir crazy was no fun at all.

I have also developed a rather unreasonable paranoia about falling downstairs and breaking a major limb as this would mean a) I couldn't do all the animal stuff and b) I wouldn't be able to drive, which would be a disaster and make me almost totally reliant on other people.

There's not a lot I can do to prevent the freak accidents, but it is within my gift to try to eat more healthily and up the exercise.

So when a friend challenged me to run the Race for Life with her in Aberystwyth, I rather rashly agreed, working on the basis that we would shame one another into training for it.

"It's only 5k," I thought. "I walk at least that distance every day with Moose".

It is a long time since these old legs have run anywhere on a regular basis, though, and I had forgotten how much harder running is than walking! Moose isn't too keen on the idea either as the faster I go, the less time he has to sniff all his favourite smells.

And I know it would amuse R a lot. He was the athlete in our house. With his wiry build he was a natural distance runner, and did several half-marathons over the years with very respectable times. It was something I happily left him to do on his own, so I can only imagine what he would say if he knew what I was attempting to do!

Bright red and sweaty isn't my favourite look, but I shall persevere, even if it means doing tomorrow's run under cover of darkness to minimise embarrassment.

Running shoes are ugly things though, aren't they?

Pedicures

2010-03-03T23:28:00.007Z

In the past I have always enjoyed Winter.

I like cold, crisp days and have never really been affected by the lack of sunlight.

But this winter has been different.

On my Welsh hilltop, Winter normally means rain. And lots of it. It always comes from the West and lashes horizontally against the side of my house.

For weeks on end sometimes.

This year it was replaced by snow.

Snow which has done its best to wreck what remains of my social life. It has sometimes felt that every time I have invited someone over, the snow has fallen. The latest was last week when my friend Rosie spun her car on her way over to supper. Fortunately she was OK and is made of sterner stuff than many other people, so she made it all the way here, we had a lovely evening and she stayed overnight until the snowplough went through in the morning.

I can live with the quiet evenings, but the ground was frozen solid which has meant that I haven't been able to get outside to do all the tidying that I would have normally done by now. Not to mention all the Winter chores that R used to do like cleaning out the gutters.

So I guess the snow did me a favour when it brought the guttering off the wall and sent it crashing through the porch roof. Having that repaired is a bill I could do without, but the lovely man who is doing the work is also doing a number of other little jobs that needed doing and I was unlikely to get to any time soon, like painting a couple of windows. And as the exterior is going to look so much smarter, it has inspired me to start cleaning up the inside of the porch as well - another job that is long overdue. I have been a regular visitor to the tip this week, and it has been good for the soul!

But it still bothers me that I haven't been able to dig over the vegetable garden or sort out the greenhouse. The garden has been so far from my thoughts that I haven't even ordered any vegetable seeds yet. Normally by early March I have already sown the first peas, sweet peas, broad beans, cabbages and leeks. The salad crops and oriental greens are starting to come up in the greenhouse. I might not have managed to dig over all the raised beds, but at least some should be ready by now to plant onion sets, garlic and shallots. I should be itching to get the heated propagator running with the next batch of seeds, and the annual clearance of space on the windowsills should have begun.

And on the animal side too, I have only been doing the bare minimum - cleaning out the henhouses, feeding everyone, going out several times a day with warm water to replenish the frozen waterers.
I haven't yet built the chicken pens that will keep the birds from marauding round the garden and digging up what I have just sown. There are still several Muscovy drakes and a couple of cockerels that really should be in the freezer. I haven't sorted out the floor of the pig ark, so I won't be ready to go if a couple of suitable weaners become available at short notice.

And most depressing of all is that my sheep have been surviving on a régime of benign neglect.
I have two wonderful neighbours who have been towers of strength since R died. They have made sure that the sheep are up-to-date with their vaccinations, brought their ram round to visit my ladies and best of all have helped me with the foot trimming.

But I can't keep relying on them to essentially do what is my work. If I am going to do that, I should be entirely honest about it, get rid of my own sheep and simply allow them to graze theirs on my land.

And while I'm being honest, if I don't keep the garden going, what is the point of having this land? I can barely justify having a house that is more than twice as large as I need as it is (we had plans to turn part of it into a holiday cottage or possibly a bed and breakfast), so the sight of the garden getting away from me and starting to look so messy was really getting me down. To the extent of wondering whether I should simply give up, sell the house and buy somewhere more sensible.

Fortunately the sun came out this weekend and I was able to get outside and do some proper tidying in the garden.

Most importantly of all, I had enough get-up-and-go to take a good look at the sheep. A couple had been limping slightly, which is a sure sign that their feet need trimming. If you are a strapping chap like my neighbour Dave, foot-trimming means grabbing a sheep, turning it onto its bum and holding there while you wield the clippers.

If you are considerably smaller than that, female and your sheep aren't known for sitting meekly while you trim their feet, then you need a cradle. This is essentially a sloping metal box that you up-end the sheep into and it is unable to get up until you let it. This is a job that R and I used to do together, and one which I had been putting off trying because I knew that, if I couldn't do it, then I would have to stop keeping sheep.

So this weekend it was make-or-break time.
For once, the sheep went easily into the corral and I decided to give it a go.
I managed to get the little one into the cradle without any problems and gave her a much-needed pedicure. She has a hint of scald - an infection that will clear up quickly after an antibiotic injection - but otherwise it went fine. The next one was a bit heavier, but she is my best behaved girl and it all went OK.

Then came grandmother. She is the biggest of the three and had absolutely no intention of lying on her back in a metal crate! When I finally got her pinned in a corner and up onto her back legs, we then danced a bizarre tango while I backed her into position. A final burst of effort got the stubborn little madam on her back. Even then, she struggled and wriggled throughout the entire procedure to the extent that my back was screaming with pain by the time it was all over.

But I did it.
On my own!
I can't put into words how triumphant I feel about it.
It means that I can do it on my own. I can stay here without everything falling apart. The place may not be as tidy as it was, or at least not yet. But if I put my mind to it, I can do it.

It somehow seems disloyal to say that I can do it without him, and maybe that thought has been holding me back all these months. Perhaps I just need to change my emphasis and convince myself that I can do it for him and keep our dream alive.

A belated Valentine

2010-02-15T21:43:00.002Z

I have had a lovely day today.
My Mum, my big sister and myself all have birthdays within a couple of weeks of one another, and it has become a tradition for little sis to take us all out for lunch. Which she duly did today, bringing along my nearly 3 year-old no. 3 niece, who is such a natural comedienne that there was never a dull moment!

We met in Ironbridge, a sweet little town with many interesting shops and good places to eat. It's also a place with happy memories for me. R and I held a big family meal there for our 20th anniversary, and we also celebrated no. 1 niece's 18th birthday in the same restaurant.

Sitting in the restaurant over lunch, I was watching my Mum and looking at the story of her life etched on her face.
She turned 78 this year, and has coped with so much pain throughout her life, starting with when she was 5 and her mother died from TB. She and her brother were sent to live with her grandmother and aunts as their father was unable to cope. They both stayed there throughout the war and, when her dad came back from the Navy and married again, he took her brother to live with him, but she had to stay with her grandmother. Whose decision this was is unclear, but the feeling of rejection that must have created in a young teenager must have been enormous.

But she got on with her life, trained as a nurse, married my father and went on to have 4 children and a happy home.
Then it happened - the thing that every parent fears most; my brother, David, was killed while riding his bike home from school. He was just 13 years old, kind, intelligent, fun to be with and a fantastic musician. A life full of love and promise ended in a moment.

How my parents survived that I have no idea. But they did, helped partly by moving to the other end of the country to Somerset, where I roamed the countryside in semi-feral fashion for several years until I discovered boys!

Sadly two years later our family suffered another terrible tragedy when my two cousins were hit by a truck as they were crossing the road with their mother. Their father - Mum's brother - was unable to handle his sadness and literally disappeared from view for about 20 years.

Finally my Dad passed away on 18 February 2003 after a long battle with leukaemia.
It is a horrible disease, the effects of which ebb and flow with the passage of time. It goes into remission for periods and the drugs and blood transfusions help, but it always returns, visiting its damage on a different part of the body. During the last few years of Dad's illness, Mum nearly faded away with worry, and I never cease to wonder how she managed to keep on going.

Yet through all those years of sadness and pain, she has always been there for me and my sisters. Always supporting us in what we do. Always there with a shoulder to cry on, words of kindness or encouragement or a home-cooked meal.
She still keeps a beautiful home, looks after herself and dresses well, although her memory is starting to fail her a little, and confusion is a regular visitor. But she bears it stoically, and enjoys watching the birds that flock to the food tables in her garden, particularly in this bad weather.

If I have been able to be strong in my own journey of grief, I know full well where I derive much of that strength.

Love you, Mum. xxx

(Pictures taken from Wikimedia Commons, as they are so much better than the ones I took today!)

Would it be admitting defeat...

2010-02-11T23:18:00.010Z

... to buy one of these?

The case for the defence:

I really loathe supermarkets.
Even now I find them scary places - they are just too big, designed for people shopping for a crowd, full of couples and families and their trolleys piled high with food.

And they still make me cry.
R loved them. He adored bargain-hunting, 2-for-1 offers and general excess. They were a Friday night thing for us. If he was travelling by train, I would pick him up at Shrewsbury Station and we would head straight for Sainsbury's, buy some beer and pizza and get home to start the weekend.

Now the sight of crowds of happy, cross, frustrated, arguing, busy, impatient humanity, all sharing their lives with someone else just turns the knife another time. They seem to emphasise how alone I am.
I go to a supermarket if it cannot be avoided, and for the most part it can.

So I shop in my nearest town.
It has proper shops - a good butcher, fishmonger, reasonable baker and greengrocer, a lovely market, ironmonger, newsagent, deli and much more. Or I visit my local farm shop. There the shop assistants are always ready for a chat. I see people I know, and feel closer to the world.

But I don't go shopping very often. If I lived closer to town I could pop in every couple of days on my bike, fill my rucksack and nip home again. As it is, though, I tend to go once a fortnight or even less, which means lots of bags of shopping when I do get there. And without my sherpa to carry it all for me, this means several trips back and forth to the car or aching shoulders.

So the obvious answer is to get one of those. Or these. But definitely not one of these.
But I'm not sure I'm ready to feel like Miss Marple quite yet.
What do you think?

What if?

2010-02-09T11:15:00.002Z

R's uncle Les was a troubled man.

He had signed up for the army right at the start of the 2nd World War. He was injured at Dunkirk and captured a little later, and then spent the rest of the War in a PoW camp. After his camp was liberated, he spent months and followed a very circuitous route trying to get back to Britain.

As a result, he didn't make it back home until 1946, by which time the son he had left behind was a young teenager who had essentially grown up without a father. The family never really gelled, and Les's relationship with his son was a difficult one throughout his life.

In my memories, Les was a friendly, yet slightly reserved man, who was always kind and courteous to me. We got along fine, but it was easy to see that his relationship with his adult son was very strained, and they saw very little of one another in the later years beyond a short 'duty' visit every six months or so.

I have no idea what their family situation had been like before the War, but the 6-year separation combined with the very different courses their lives had run made it impossible to simply resume where they had left off and they were unable to ever make up the lost ground. To such an extent that, when he died, it was R's Dad who arranged Les's funeral - not his son.
It was so sad to see.

Lately I have been musing about how it would be if the thing I have hoped and prayed and begged and yearned for were to actually occur and R were to come back. If he were to just walk in the front door one Friday evening as he always did.

After the initial joy and euphoria had worn off, would we be able to take up our life together again where we had left off, as though he had simply been away on business for a while? Or would the forced separation have taken its toll on our relationship?

I have changed. I know I have, even though it has only been 18 months.
I am smaller, fitter and tougher for a start. Although I wasn't exactly fat before, I was on the verge of contentedly tipping into middle-aged spread. The food I now put on the table has changed a lot from the hearty meals we used to eat and I am very conscious of the need to stay healthy.

Naturally the intensity of emotion I have experienced has changed me. Tears come so easily now, and I have more empathy for other people who are feeling pain. Clawing my way up from the pit of despair has made me stronger. I have a different understanding of what is and what isn't important.

Of necessity I have become more independent and am learning to make my own decisions. I feel I am slowly becoming more confident in dealing with people and in social situations. I have burned most of his useful wood!

And R? How would he be? Where would his journey have taken him? Would he be the same carefree soul he was when he left? Surely he could not be unmarked by what happened to him.

How would we knit these two lives together again. Could we do it? Or would the divergent paths our lives had taken be too far apart to join once more?

A simple equation

2010-02-08T10:49:00.002Z

X
(R's Useful Wood collection, of which this is but a small selection.)

+ Y

(And I know it isn't in the ideal place, but I can't get to the work bench until I have dealt with the wood problem).

Aaaah. That's better.

Spring cleaning

2010-02-07T22:17:00.000Z

It is a little early, I know, but there is something about the low late-Winter sun shining through the windows that triggers a cleaning frenzy in me.

I have always been very conscious of not wanting to turn the house into a shrine to R. There is a lady in our village who hasn't changed a thing in her husband's office since he died 20 years ago. While I acknowledge that she may gain comfort from this, I think it would ultimately have the opposite effect on me - keeping me stuck at an early stage of my grief and not allowing me to move forward. I want my house to be a home, not a museum.

In some respects I was 'lucky' in that I spent 3 nights at the hospital with R, while his family stayed at our house. This meant that they had to change the sheets on our bed while I wasn't there. At the time this didn't matter as we were all expecting him to come home again, so when I spent my first night at home alone, it was in a bed with freshly-laundered sheets. Would it have been a comfort to have had the scent of him there with me as I slept? Possibly. I don't know, but I survived without it. And at least I didn't have the dilemma of when to wash them!

As I was cleaning the bedroom yesterday morning, I suddenly had the urge to move the furniture around.

The room had essentially frozen in the configuration it was in on the day R died: the furniture was in exactly the same position, the same pictures on the walls, ornaments on the dressing table, ...

So I changed it.

Different duvet cover, swapped the pictures for some others that hadn't yet found a home, removed a chair, moved some other bits and pieces and bought myself some flowers.

It was nothing dramatic - it's a bit girlier than before, that's all - but there was something very symbolic about changing the way the room looked.

And the last thing I did before leaving the room was to take a deep breath and remove R's dressing gown from the hook where it has remained for the last 18 months.

Wallowing

2010-02-06T00:54:00.004Z

I'm not sure if wallowing is exactly the right word for it. But certainly feeling uncharacteristically sorry for myself.

I went into the Christmas period in a very positive frame of mind.
My family were coming to me for the festivities, I had managed to buy gifts for everyone, had organised everything like a military campaign and was very much looking forward to it. And it was a happy time. Even without R, there were fun, games and laughter, and it was a joy to have everyone - particularly the children - around me for a couple of days.

Then they went home. And the snow came back with a vengeance.
The rest of the holidays were mostly spent confined to barracks. Friends who were planning to visit couldn't make it because of the weather, and a trip I had planned also had to be cancelled. Had R been here, it would have been wonderful to have been snowed in together with no work to do, and no means of getting to it in any case – there is always a freezer full of food, a stacked woodpile and a full wine rack - we could have lasted for weeks!
Instead it was a frustrating and not a little lonely time.

I once read on another widow's blog that the 2nd and 3rd years were the hardest. At the time I was still bound up in all my raw-edged pain and shock, and couldn't believe how that could be possible. There was no way it could get any harder.
But I am now starting to understand what she meant.

The only way I can find to explain it is that I have spent the last 18 months grieving entirely for R.

Now it's my turn.

I can finally allow myself to really mourn my lost future.
I can let my guard down long enough to admit how bloody difficult this all is. Not just the fact that I have lost the person I loved most in the world, but also that the day-to-day reality is hard. That shovelling snow on my own makes quite a good workout for a couple of days, but the novelty has very much worn off after a couple of weeks. That it really is sodding unfair when the melting snow brings down all the guttering from the back of the house, sending it crashing through the porch roof. That I’m allowed to cry with frustration when I can’t get the 4x4 started – and the only reason I had kept it was to see me through the snow season. That the day-to-day reality of keeping animals is so relentless when there is only one person to do it – and that person has to work full-time to keep the whole house of cards upright. That there is little joy in planning the next phase of the house renovations on my own. That the apparently cheerful, outwardly-coping person is so tired of feeling sad and lonely on the inside.

That was my mood through most of January.

It didn't help that I had a long and difficult assignment to do for most of the month that prevented me getting outside to do the chores that needed doing out there.

Self-pity isn't pretty, so I kept that to myself.

Happily I seem to have found a path out of the Slough of Despond for now. I have made some decisions, started planning things again, and once more appear to have the energy to deal with problems as they arise.

February would appear to be my month for resolutions.

All that is for another post, though.