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

Of oak trees, violets, dormice and children

It’s a whole different dynamic when Adrian’s away. Some people hate being alone but I love it (maybe because it doesn’t happen that often). I can do what I like when I like, without having to consider anyone’s feelings but my own. So today I had ‘lunch’ at 11.20am and then found myself at ‘lunchtime’ with no hunger yet a vague feeling I should mark the hour somehow. Now, I’m a great one for telling people to slow down, live in the moment, wake up and smell the roses and so on. But do I follow my own advice? Do I heck. I am horribly driven (presumably it’s the Capricorn in me) with an over-developed puritan work ethic – I feel guilty as sin if I sit down and do nothing for more than ten seconds.

But today I made myself sit outside and drink my tea. No good – I could see weeds – a whole chorus-line of them throwing up their skirts on the ‘raised patio’ (OK, the bit where the greenhouse used to be that was supposed to be an ‘outdoor eating area’ but never really happened). So I weeded until my tea got cold.

Then I thought, this is ridiculous. It’s a gorgeous day and I’ll go for a wander to say hello to the oak trees. The year after we moved here, when James was a small baby, we rescued three young oak saplings (from someone who was thinning out their woodland). It felt symbolic somehow – a tree each. Of course, as luck would have it, that year was supremely dry and we wore ourselves out carting up water from the river to keep them alive. But there they stand, getting on in size now, protecting our hill. For a fair few years I felt we had the placing of them all wrong. Although they are within sight of each other, two are definitely closer with one slightly on the outside. For a long time it bothered me and I would reason that the two close were James and I (mother and baby) with father standing watch (the other tree is slightly higher). But as I looked at them today I thought otherwise. James is the tree outside – for while Adrian and I are (presumably) stuck together for life, James will inevitably break free at some point and go his own sweet way. It is right and proper that it should be like that. We borrow children – they are not ours. Our job as parents is – I believe – to nurture them, support them, be totally there for them but (and such an important but) also to know when to let them go. There is nothing worse than a child who feels he or she cannot leave its parents.

It was warm, sunny yet with a brisk breeze and Jack and I followed an old sheep track. We have been leaving the upper part of the large field unmowed for the last few years to see what happened, and what has happened is a ton of wild flowers. I don’t know the names of half of them and must look them up. But today I kept noticing violets above all. Violets are fascinating in folklore terms. It is considered perfectly fine to pick bunches of violets and have a posy in your home, but you should never pick just one single one. It’s even worse luck to pick a violet with dew on its petals – it was said to augur the death of a loved one. Pick violets when the weather is fine and intense rain is supposed to follow (now there’s an idea). Yet on the plus side violets are supposed to be an antidote to evil and dark witchcraft – they were grown in medieval monastery gardens as a protection against Satan. All violets were supposedly white until Mary turned from watching Christ on the Cross at which point they became violet to echo her mourning (hence purple as an original colour of mourning). This however may hark back to earlier times still – in mythology, Cupid was said to love white violets and Venus/Aphrodite changed them to purple in what amounts to sheer spite basically – jealous old bint.
Of more interest to a lot of Exmoor folk is the old belief that wearing violets while hunting was supposed to ensure that you didn’t fall off your horse.
Talking of horses, I also noticed a tiny horse chestnut sapling – only about six inches tall. It’s a long way from our other horse chestnuts and I had to wonder if it had come from a conker dropped from one of James’s pockets. I’m not sure if it will survive as it’s in a slightly exposed spot and liable to be tramped on or nibbled – but it must take its chances. Though as I reached in my pocket I found an old conker and tossed it into a small hole on the bank – it’s probably too old and dried but you never know.

Jack and I sat down on the bank that marked the old hedge-line, by a tangled stand of beech and silver birch. Thoughts were still whirring round my head so I shut my eyes and tried to focus on my breathing. It’s amazing how something so simple slows you right down. Immediately I could notice the cool air on my nostrils, redolent with the faintest tang of gorse’s coconut and the pure distilled scent of ‘green’. The birdsong became a concerto of woodpigeon, woodpecker, rook, thrush, blackbird and pheasant. Inevitably of course the JTR from my nearest neighbours decided it deserved a solo – but a hand on Jack’s shoulder stopped him from making it a duet (he is still being remarkably nice after yesterday’s shocks).

A quick tour down by the river and I picked up a few hazel-nuts. I expect you know that you can always tell if you have dormice by the way nuts are eaten. Whereas a squirrel will splice the nut in half, a dormouse will delicately nibble a little round hole. We seem to still have a healthy population of these teeny tiny mice. Often they nest right by the backdoor and drive Jack potty by flitting across the patio while he is stuck inside watching.
The house martens don’t seem fazed by the unseasonably warm weather and lack of mud: their nests are looking very ship-shape.
I came back from my wander refreshed and recharged – and ready to tackle my dreary feature on allergies again (if anyone has been cured of an allergy do let me know and you can feature as a case study!).

By the way, thank-you so much to everyone who has read and commented on the prologue of my novel Walker between Worlds (see link on left hand side). I’ve posted Chapter One now and will put up the other chapters as and when I can (I’m trying to do some editing before putting them up). I’d really love you to continue reading and giving me your (honest) impressions and suggestions. And yes, would really welcome feedback from any of the target audience (12+). I’m relying on Frances to correct any howlers I make about US vocabulary and syntax!

Reading this back it's a bit 'worthy'. So the picture is of the infamous Woods - James insists that, regardless of Adrian not being here, we must fulfil our Friday early evening ritual of a ginger beer (or spritzer) and bags of Burts crips. So this is where we'll be come 6.30pm.... anyone fancy joining us?