The woods are lovely, dark and deep...

The woods are beautiful in the snow.  Well, woods are always beautiful but, in snow, they become primeval.  As you crunch the slim tracks through trees you could imagine the wolves were running.  Silent shadows, sliding past out of the corner of your eye.  Your head knows they don’t exist but your heart smiles at their subterfuge.

But really, here and now, there are deer, small herds of hinds. Startled, they stare, wide-eyed, then leap away.  A small dog in pursuit.  But no deerhound he. 

In the fields, by the river, the drifts are deep.  The water runs yet, too fast to freeze.  The gate has been snaggled with barbed wire. A pass-knot.  I unpick, fingers numbing. Patience, caution. Winter is a time of circumspection. No grand gestures now.  We do the small things we need to survive.  Remembering ancestors huddled round the fire.

And small things please.  Outside the kitchen door, a line of little icicles, a delicate fringing.  One pink flower remains. Embraced by ice. 

Back inside, I’ll build a fire.  A tent of twigs.  The ancient campfire.  Outside the snow falls still. Inside the fire keeps the bite of winter tamed. Just.

But before that, I pause. Type this with one dog perched on my lap.  His nose settled between my knees. His body warm. Both of us enjoying the comfort. Wolf turned tame.  The other?  Maybe not so much.  :)

The Last Weekend (and mad shoes)

It was our last weekend here and by heck it was a good one. James had his first ever sleepover (at school) on Friday night. So, while the child is away, the mice will play….. My dear friend Jane came down from London and met us at Woods (where else?). Gins were drunk. Wine followed. Food was fabulous. I was being careful though so what happened next was all Jane’s fault. She decided that she wanted an extra glass of wine for the road. Paddy, the owner of Woods, is a bit of a wine buff and prides himself on his cellar (the wonder of Woods is that you can pick any wine and just have a glass if you want)… So he bustled over to ascertain what kind of wine she fancied, vanished for a bit and then came back brandishing a bottle of Crozes Hermitage, insisting it was on the house. Jane had a glass. I said ‘No thank you’. Paddy poured Adrian one but he was drinking beer of course. Now, what do you do, faced with a full glass of something very nice. How rude would it have been to have ignored it? So I drank it and very lovely it was. At which point, someone (possibly me, I confess) asked what Paddy was drinking. ‘Champagne and pastis,’ he said with a bit of a wink. ‘Now that’s what you want if you’re having a party. Drink a few of those and you don’t know who you are.’ And off he went, chuckling, only to come back with three champagne flutes and a couple of bottles.
‘Nooooo,’ we said. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. Evil Paddy.

Jane drank hers. Adrian took a sip and put his down. I drank mine even though I don’t like aniseed-flavoured things one little bit. I think that was the point at which I brought up about the night when Jane, eighteen, got off with the chemistry master from the boys’ school (not sure why I said that, but Paddy thought it was funny and Jane didn’t – particularly because she was also having a hot flush at that precise moment).
Then our cab came. I got up and noticed Adrian’s untouched glass and said (why, oh why?) ‘Can’t waste it. I’ll take it with me.’
Paddy laughed merrily.

So there I was, in a mini-cab, thinking I was wildly sober, sipping something totally disgusting. It was only when I got into bed and tried to read my book (Glass Books of the Dream Eaters) with one eye shut and the other squinting, desperately trying to focus, that I realised that I had overdone it. By a long way.

The next day was hell. Truly madly deeply hungover and without the option of lying in bed groaning. Had to whiz around Devon and Somerset to pick up James, go to osteopath, go shopping, pick up cars etc etc etc. Jane and I kept trying the food cure: bacon sarnies didn’t do it so we tried toasted tea-cakes (Jane swore by them – wrong, so wrong) and when they didn’t work we went back to town and had mad Welsh rarebit (which as children we always called rabbit). Opposite the tea-rooms is a very upmarket shoe shop. When it opened last year there was much muttering about ‘London prices for Londoners’ and truly I don’t see how you could get around here wearing a pair of purple satin pointy-heeled knee-high boots, lovely though they were.
Jane and I were a little hysterical by this point though and so had fun trying on mad shoes. She decided to buy a pair of very tasty and tasteful black slingbacks. Then she decided that I ought to try on the maddest shoes in the entire shop.
‘Slapper shoes,’ said I, perching in them and howling with laughter.
The owner looked a little affronted. ‘They were in Vogue, you know.’
So? Anyhow, Jane decided that they were so outrageous (and half-price because no-one on Exmoor was mad enough to buy them) that she would get them for me as a housewarming present.
And she did.
I’m not sure I have the guts to wear them to Speech Day on Friday. I’m not really sure I will ever have the guts to wear them anywhere (unless I’m invited to any brothels in the near future). But I think I might just get me one of those Perspex boxes and put them on display as an ormanent.

Sunday we lazed around for the morning, reading papers and then had a pre-prandial drink at the usual place before coming back for a vast roast beef and Yorkshire (yes, I know in June – but hey, not exactly barbecue weather, is it?) The rain held off for a bit and we played (attempted) cricket and then cranked the music up waaay high (for the last time) and danced our little hearts out on our hill. Ah but it was fabulous.
Then, as we were sitting down polishing off a nice Gigondas, the deer came. Four stags, their heads magnificent, came virtually up to the house and stood watching us.
‘They’re saying goodbye,’ said Adrian. It felt just like that, like a benediction somehow. They stayed like that for ages, just watching. Then slowly, so slowly, bowed their heads and walked down the hill.

Two weeks - and counting

Two weeks to go. As James and I drove to the bus this morning he said, ‘In two weeks time I’ll be saying goodbye to the farm forever. I’ll be thinking that I’ll never come here again. I think I’ll probably be crying a bit.’
I think I will too. It’s been the best of times, the worst of times, these nine years here. I moved in when I was heavily pregnant (in retrospect quite the most stupid thing to do, given I had absolutely no support system out here, didn’t know a soul.) I had the pregnancy from hell followed by the birth from hell followed by infection and post-natal depression. I wasn’t ever a natural mother. Babies terrified me (and still do). Add in the persistent insomnia and I was a wreck. I used to drive, half-dizzy with tiredness, sobbing my heart out. I realised, very early on, that we had made a mistake; that, beautiful though this valley was, we had come at the wrong time. Adrian, however, was in love – in love with the land, with walking, with chain-sawing, with tramping.

I have had happy times here, but I have never really felt settled. I have felt as if we’ve been camping out, borrowing the house. I have never had the urge (which I had in previous houses) to claim it, to cajole it, to work with it to make a wondrous magical home. So, now we are on the verge of leaving, it is with very mixed feelings.

I will miss so much:

· The early morning sun flooding in through the bedroom window.
· The house martens roosting under my office window and giving me an air show throughout the summer.
· Watching the weather sweep across the valley – lazy drifting snow, columns of rain, the odd rainbow, a one-off whirlwind.
· The avenue of maples, with candy bright rhododendrons – the tawny owl greeting us as we come home in the evening.
· The stream – with James’ island and Jack’s deep plunge pool. Beloved of herons. We never did see an otter.
· The fire in my office…
· The space – huge kitchen, huge living room, huge bedroom.
- Being snowed in from time to time – and tobogganing down the hill.
· The red deer.
· Having no immediate neighbours.
· Watching the sheep and cattle on the hillside opposite.
· Watching the hunt – the hounds working the gorse.
· Our spring water – tastes like heaven.
· Closing the gate on Christmas Eve and shutting out the world.

I suppose, when it comes down to it, I will miss being surrounded by pure raw nature. When I think of my ‘won’t miss’ list, it all seems a bit pathetic. Maybe, to coin a phrase used elsewhere, I’m selling my soul for ‘country convenient’. I don’t know.

I won’t miss:

· Driving absolutely everywhere.
· The endless clearing of docks/bracken/thistles/
· The steepness of the hill – worse than a Stairmaster.
· Not being able to get a takeaway.
· The weird electrics – if you have more than two appliances on, the lights flicker.
· Losing the light early in winter.
· The pot-holes on the drive.
· The bridge that seems ready to collapse at any moment.
· The bats – in the bedroom.
· The need for endless forward planning – the lack of spontaneity (oh, I fancy baking a cake – ah, but we haven’t got this or that).

See what I mean?

It’s a hard time to leave. Summer here is exquisite. When I think back over the last two years of trying to sell, I still can’t believe it took so long. How could anyone NOT fall in love with this perfect little patch of Exmoor? How could I think of leaving it?

Wu wei (living with change)

I can’t blog. Just can’t seem to. I keep starting and then deleting it all. Nothing seems worth saying. Words seem empty. I’m all indecisive and mixed up and all over the place. We were supposed to exchange on Wednesday, then Thursday, now today. Will we ever move? What ill spirit is putting the dampers on everything? Because while, a week back, everything seemed to be going great guns (not just on the house but everything) now we’re stuck in the doldrums again. Calls not returned. Messages vanishing into the ether.

I can’t write, can’t draw, can’t clean, can’t do anything. Just sit and gaze out of the window (but not in a productive way). Letting the house martens hypnotise me as they sling themselves at the window, cutting it so fine, then an uptilt and into their nests. I wish I could be so flexible.
Last night we watched the deer, slanting down the hill at dusk. Then a fox sloping inbetween them. Half my heart winces at the idea of leaving all this. Half couldn’t bear to stay. Therein lies the problem I think – caught in the mid-place, stuck in the middle. It was funny that you were talking about that poster on CL – Janus. It’s a good image for how I feel at the moment, facing two ways at once – to the future and the past; to our old house and our new; life as it was and life as it will be. I know from bitter experience that the grass is rarely greener. I have made mistakes with houses before and dread making them again.

Sorry, this is just a splurge really. Words frustrate me so much at the moment. I want to paint, but can’t. I want to shake myself out of this inertia, but can’t. I should be drumming up more work but simply can’t be bothered. I let things drift.

Wu wei – standing out of the way to let things do themselves. Moving with, rather than against the nature of things.

So easy to write, so hard to do.

“Life lasts only a moment. Then another moment arrives and dissolves into the flow. We live our life from instant to instant. We realise that every experience of our lifetime has been impermanent except one. That there is an unchanging spaciousness in which all our changes float.”
Steven Levine, A Year to Live

Well, well. Look at that. I blogged. Can't load images though - ah well, never mind.....one thing at a time. jx