Arboreally ironic

 No, I'm not sure if that is a word either. I'm running out of words, and we're not even into double digits of February. Today's word was 'arboreal' and I knew in my mind that I wanted it to be all about Psalm 1: planted by streams of water, bearing fruit wherever appropriate. But in the back of my mind was the growing panic that after tomorrow, there are only two words on the list (except for one that I'm saving for half-term). 

So, there I was earlier, doodling away about putting my roots down deep into words, knowing fine rightly that I haven't read a thing since January and you can't drink from an empty cup. Isn't that the expression? If somebody has a good word for that, do let me know tout de suite!

So, I am somewhat abashed as I trail upstairs to bed now. And I am taking my Bible and 'Leaving for America' with me. So far in 'Leaving for America' nobody actually goes to America. I'm also beginning to wonder if there really is anybody living next door to his big house, or if there is even a big house at all next door to his big house.

I'm teaching in school at the minute, instead of supporting teaching. Our fourth teacher out of a department of nine has tested positive. I'm a bit slaughtered. You can probably tell. So much for my glorious white space of January. Here's a tree, an aspirational tree, an arboreally ironic aspirational tree. Normal service may be resumed shortly.

A weekend

Prince Charming and I had breakfast together this morning (it was still Saturday when I started typing this!) to the sound of Radio 4 while our mostly adult children slept on. It was the start of a good day. When boys emerged, one studied and t'other helped me clear childhood clutter toys. In my head there will be one room completely cleared and completely cleaned each 2022 month. Forward, I suppose, but methinks this first room is going to be greedy for some February!

Not all 'in my head' things come to pass. In a new Meadowplace order, we are realising that these mostly adult children of ours have minds of their own which must be respected. So the blast to the coast after lunch was just the two of us. This is recently new, and we are adjusting! We did nonetheless love breathing in the last of the daylight all the way from Ballintoy to White Park Bay and back. It's not so far, but being in week 4 of a six week ankle recovery time, it's far enough! It transpired over Christmas that we have four front steps and not three. Who knew?

And here is some progress thus far. The sock was doing well until it became clear that I couldn't really go on knitting joyful rounds indefinitely. So now it's stalling. Fortitude needed for the next bit, or just some concentration. Both of which sound like a lot of effort! The second panel of Mum's tree blanket is nearly finished, though. Size 4 clogs for scale. The book is a proof copy of Francis Hagan's latest novel. FH is novelist and poet, psychotherapist and local English teacher... in the school where I work! Leaving for America is a poignant and increasingly teasing tale, written with Shakespearean scope and beauty. I have to read it very slowly. And this chromebook is my chromebook, to paraphrase the Bard himself.

 Can I tell you about the bags? The red one is A4 size which is perfect for the pattern for Trees. It was bought for its size at a craft fair that I must have gone to with my mother in 2002. I only know this because I got it to keep my first antenatal notes in. It hadn't been used since 2004 when it became redundant after the second now mostly adult boy was born.

The little white one, book-sized but also perfect for sock-things, was bought in July 2019 in a gorgeous bookshop in Germany, as you might have guessed. That was our last time out of a UK country (except for the quick drive across The Border that I had to do last Saturday - which was another quite nice day). We were on holiday with three friends and stayed in a centuries old watermill. One of the friends is a German teacher, and she did translate the Nietsche for me. I can't quite remember it now, but maybe you'll work it out!

I do hope that you might be having  a lovely forward-looking weekend, full of breath and joy in whatever makes you smile. I hope she won't mind me quoting it but the hardest working woman I know, who has an enormous heart full of big pain-won faith, said this, crowning my good day, forward...right out the door, to the barn with prayers God will overwhelm you with His blessings this year. This entire year. XO

Last and first

Yesterday I finished the first panel of a blanket that my mother requested. It was nice to finish something on the last day of the year. So I thought I'd start a new project today, and that maybe a new tradition could be here! The book is one of my Christmas presents, prayers written during Lockdown by the spiritual director of the Corrymeela Community. Beautiful, and challenging, just like Corrymeela!

So, because my great and greatly talented chum, Niqi, gave me socks for all the family, in four balls of sock yarn, I thought I'd better make a start! Glittery fairy lights sparkle wool from West Yorkshire Spinners - hopefully I'll have a pair of Christmas socks for this (hard to say?) 2022, even if my three wise men have a longer journey! And this is the only sock pattern I've ever been able, once and slowly, to complete!

Books-wise, here's the rest of the holiday reading, though the pile of new books is generously and deliciously high! I'm flicking through magical plans for a rabbit in a new school uniform. It's for a wee chum who will hopefully hear in the Spring that she has a place in the school of her heart's desire. And yesterday's finishing included this absolutely magical collection of tales from snowy forests. It came from our woodsman chum, and thank you very much indeed! If you are in need next year of new festive bookish joy, I could not recommend this little jewel more highly!

Wishing you great success in all your projects - and hoping that you'll finish them much more quickly than me...

The beginning of the end

 Is there that feeling where you are? That we are still living the effects of the Pandemic, but change is coming quickly now? At the start of last week I was really quite sad. It marked one month until the boys and I will go back to school, and I imagine that this really will be the last school closure. Mattman will have left school by the autumn anyway, and I do hope that the vaccine* will preclude the awful pressures we've seen on hospitals even if there are more waves to come.

I can't pretend that we have had a difficult time with restrictions. We are all here together*, all well*, all with everything we need and more*. Caring responsibilities have kept PC and me in our respective parents' houses*, and the privilege of strong broadband* and many devices* has kept us in touch with work* and school* and friends *and church*. In fact we have been more in touch with some friends*, and able to make many new friends*.

So at the start of this week, one of only three Mondays left until we go back into the big, bad world, I am deliberately making myself savour the moments left to These Strange Times, and giving great thanks for the year that we have had here in a Meadowplace. And I suppose with the year's anniversary coming up for us around St Patrick's Day, I want to spend the remaining time reflecting on the value we found in our particular locked down lives.

While I'm here, there was no review of February books because I did not finish one single thing. That's appalling! But it was somehow like those first weeks of the first Lockdown where I couldn't settle my mind enough to concentrate on either reading or crochet, when it was so hard to sleep at night. Without being aware of anxiety during the day, there was a feeling of fragility to the days. That was before we settled into glorious days of unprecedented good weather,* with all the baking of sourdough* and the interesting dinners*, and the Lockdown birthdays that needed creative celebration*!

But over the last week I have been dipping in and out of this poetry collection. Longley is a contemporary of Heaney, and I was taught Eliot's Wasteland by his wife in my first year as an undergraduate. It's interesting to read his poetic descriptions of her when I remember a stately, bohemian, aristocratic English woman bemoaning the fact that we were studying Wasteland at the start of our literary studies (when by implication we knew nothing!) instead of as an accumulation of references at the end. She always seemed harrassed and nervous, and I think I blamed Longley when in fact she must just have been distressed at yet another lecture theatre of students who thought they already knew everything when in fact they knew naught!

Anyway, here's my current favourite Longley excerpt, from "Leaving Inishmore". It says something about what this year has been for me! (And MK, I'm claiming this as my poetry anthology!)

Summer and solstice as the seasons turn/Anchor our boat in a perfect standstill

Happy Monday, world. Happy last few weeks of Lockdown x

*Ages ago I thought I'd count Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gratitudes and two years ago I got to 860. I really thought I'd got closer to the 1000 mark, but I can't find any more recent posts than this, so that's another example of my utter and characteristic lack of consistency! But with so much to be thankful for surely I can finally put this to bed?!! (878)

First weekend in February

This week not only could we not really remember a pre-Pandemic world but we also started to struggle with memories of antediluvian life! We are obviously more than used to rain here in the Frozen North, but five solid, torrential, stormy days? That's rough even by our standards! But today, today the clouds scattered and we had a reprieve full of big blue sky. Just what we needed, now that January seems finally to have left us for another circuit of the year. 

The hurricane tree is still very bare, and I can't even see buds, but I did find snowdrops looking very confident in their overgrown corner of the drive. The maple tree too is leafless and budless, as far as I can tell. But the air whispers portents of longer days and fuller branches. I'm happy to be here, even in this chapter of our histories, as the air also whispers portents of a slow but steady end to These Strange Times, I hope. And isn't faith being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see?

So, this month I am doing this: 

Reading - absolutely nothing at the minute. I've hit a concentration hiatus. All recommendations welcome! I did read some Michael Longley poetry last night. His wife taught me The Waste Land at Queen's. She was wonderful!

Making - Cushla's Comfort is finished, bar a great big blocking manoeuvre tomorrow followed by some pompom attachment! Then I will have to work out how to get it to Downpatrick under the current restrictions. Maybe February will be the month I finish the skirt I started making LAST February... And then I'll discover that it doesn't fit my Lockdown body any more!

Doing - Trying to keep swimming, but my goodness, it was painful this morning. I only swam twice in January what with all sorts of body things, and I am now woefully de-acclimatised! Trying too to keep the boys working well through their home-schooling. Trying to keep God somewhere in the middle of it all. Trying to remember that I am a daughter as well as a mother, and a sister as well. 

Belfast 4 Corners Festival has been on this week - digitally, like so many other resourceful events. So something I have been doing is going to 10pm Night Prayers with Jim Deeds. a wonderfully reflective character on the creative spiritual scene in and around Belfast. The Festival's theme this year has been "Breathe", and for fifteen minutes every night we have been doing just that. Breathing in and breathing out. Breathing in God, and breathing out hope. It's been lovely. Try it x 

 

January Reading

 Happy St Brigid's Day! I wrote about St Brigid last year, just after I had made my first ever St Brigid's cross. Here it is a year on, the green of its sap all dried up, but still a promise of Spring! February has come round again, arriving in winter, and February will roll away again, but by then we'll have our lungs full of much less wintry air. Hopefully, at least, so let's not get our lungs filled up with anything else.

I noticed in last year's post that I had reread La Peste last January. I remember pulling Camus of the shelves and his feeling interesting and topical, but still a year ago there was no real sense of what was to come to all of us. At that stage we were watching the news from China and even Italy, but pandemic implications still seemed a distant thing.

MK has an interesting reading project this year. I'm always following everyone else's reading recommendations, so I thought this might help me think of what to read next. Having said that only two out of the three books I managed to read in January can be made to fit a category. I was a bit disappointed that I only read three books in the month, which did feel like a very long month! But I notice from last year's post that I only finished three in January 2020 as well, though maybe we shouldn't ever after use 2020 as much of a yardstick...

I reread Ali Smith's Winter in the New Year. She has been publishing a book a year for four years now, following the seasons, and using one of David Hockney's Yorkshire paintings for each cover. I saw this exhibition of his ages ago at the Guggenheim Bilbao, would you believe. All the way to Spain for a day to see an English's painter's Yorkshire series! Hockney looks at exactly the same scene at different times of the year, reflecting on the influence of the seasons on our daily lives. What a wonderful metaphor for the year we've been in.

Smith is doing much the same thing, ambitiously. Assessing Britain after Brexit in four seasons, in four sets of stories, all of which intertwine with other stories, worded in layers of scintillating, metaphysical word-play that Smith conjures with such a light touch for such erudition. I love her work. I definitely don't understand it all, but she must be the only author I can read and savour without even worrying about what the tranche of landscape hovering over Art's head at the Christmas dinner table means.

And trees. She writes a lot about trees, and I do love her trees. Hockney's too.

Mattman and I both got Richard Osman's new book for Christmas. He had mentioned it shortly before online Christmas shopping crossed its threshold and I silently wrote it on the list in my head. But Prince Charming apparently overheard our conversation and silently wrote it on the list in his head! I've passed my copy on to a maternity leave colleague who had twins last August. She's now at home with three boys under the age of three. It's the perfect book for her - clever and funny, but not at all hard to read. Much less concentration, and time, needed for this one than with Ali Smith!

Osman does something very brilliant with the detective genre, I think. I hardly ever read detective books, though I do fall into glorious binges of Dorothy L. Sayers every now and then. So I'm claiming this for "A book in a genre you don't normally read", even though Osman's intrigue feels very fresh and new. It reads like comedy most of the time, maybe because it's narrated partly by one of the characters through her diary. And you are piecing together the characters as you go, then, working out who you trust or suspect or like or don't. And what a cast of characters! Mostly residents in the most atypical pensioners' community you could imagine. I'm quite sure we have nothing like it here in Northern Ireland! It's a brilliant book really. I think it would satisfy the most meticulous detective reader, while still being very engaging indeed just on a human level for someone like me. There's a wonderful wonderful wonderful relationship between the main retired characters and the two police folk. That's all I'm saying. Read it!

And then because it is quoted in Smith's Winter and because of "A Shakespeare play" I ordered Cymbeline. I'm used to watching or rereading Shakespearean plays with which I am very familiar indeed. This is the first time in more than decades that I've come completely fresh to a new story. And what an amazing story to read! I think this may be my new all time favourite Shakespeare. I couldn't actually work out if it was tragedy or comedy. It has the heroes with the tragic flaws, and is absolutely dark enough to be tragedy. It has the separated children and the disguised noblefolk and the forests of the comedies. And, one of my favourite parts, it has a literal deus ex machina. I'm not going to tell you the end so I can't say more on category, but this was a genuinely edge of my seat, well edge of my bed, experience. I loved it. 

(And on an edge of your seat note - we are currently watching the utterly gripping Designated Survivor on Netflix. Kiefer Sutherland looking the same age as us. We're about to finish series 1 - no spoilers, please!)

So, fine far friends, here we all still are. We've survived January and nearly a year of These Strange Times. I send you much love and many prayers from the frozen north! And here are some more of Hockney's glorious trees: The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire, in 2011 x

Well done, world

Not that I have any right in the wide wonderful world to congratulate it, but I do think we should at least pat ourselves on the back. We're still here, still surviving physically, emotionally, spiritually. That may be by the skin of our teeth, like here, but thus far, fine blogging friends, thus far.

I'm spending a day of self-isolation in my bedroom so I am going to spend the afternoon reading all your Christmas adventures and perspectives. Perspective is the first casuality in many of my crises. It's a good thing to have such a range of life lenses here in Blogland. 

My view on 2020 is that we did our best, we did what we were told, and we helped where we could. The difficulties that we encountered were not directly covid-related, but the circumstances did perhaps exacerbate the situation.  I found it even harder than usual to say truthfully that the joy of the Lord was my strength, but I did try to hold on. I love it when friends remind me that none of this is news to God and that He is still on the throne. Maybe my holding on isn't the important thing in this.

I do have two "resolutions" for 2021. The first one is slightly random: I am going to stop (mostly) using biros and switch to sharpened pencils. Ages ago I saw a school in France who had banned bics, which seemed potentially treasonable given that Bic is French. They used the old plastic casings to plant seeds, and just used pencils to write, putting the sharpenings in the compost. Zero waste!

And as I read to the end of the Psalms at the end of the year, I got to this: Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground. Psalm 143:10. Not really a resolution, more a prayer. Maybe that's the lesson. It's always very basic here with me.

So, well done, Blogworld. May God's good Spirit lead you on level ground in 2021, and if it does get bumpy - God go with you still.

What I'm reading: a friend from church bought me this daily devotional which I am finding challenging but timely. It takes Bible prayers and arranges them as a guide for daily prayer times. It certainly helps with the perspective question. I finished Ali Smith's Winter last night, and think I got a bit closer to understanding the head of stone. Next up is the hilarious Richard Osman's first, and so far best, novel (his words) "The Thursday Murder Club". Let me know if you'd like to read it too, and I'll send you it when I'm done. 

What I'm making: I am now just over half way through Cushla's Comfort blanket! Hooray! So all other projects are on hold. Full steam ahead.

What I'm doing: Well, I hope you'll not be disappointed when I say that the sea swimming is also on hold. Our tight Lockdown means that group exercise is out of bounds for a while. We can meet outside (not in a private garden) in groups of up to 15, but not exercise, and I'm too chicken to break the guidelines. Ah, but Mags, you might say, you could swim with PC on coastguard patrol. I could. But I haven't! Bit too scared to get in the water by myself. 

I'm sure it might be the same near you, but a quiet walk out is pretty impossible round here with all the footpaths and parks completely bunged with folk. So I don't even want to walk along to the slipway.

I am about to submit my second assignment for my course as well, which feels miraculous after the last month.

And here's a doing and reading thing: MK posted about a reading challenge for the New Year. I'm far too aware of my limitations to commit to joining in properly, but there are some really interesting suggestions in there. So, I'm going to get my hands on a copy of Cymbeline. One of MK's genres is a Shakespeare play. This one is quoted in "Winter" so it's in my head, I've never read it before, and why not?

MK also talked about having one "reading day" a week where you have no screen activity, just reading. Today is not turning out to be that day, but maybe tomorrow...

I'll leave you with what turned out to be the only occurrence of Christmas baking in our house, except for the Christmas cake back in November. I made jammy stars for New Year's Eve. Prince Charming was most delighted. We had them with jelly and ice-cream for our dinner party dessert. Prince Charming had decreed that we get all dressed up for New Year. It was all as fancy as Bridgerton and significantly more wholesome. If you're thinking of watching Netflix's new Downton, don't. It's not Downton. It starts interestingly enough and it is certainly gorgeous to the eye. But the script is just a bit too cringe-worthy as episodes progress and once you've seen Episode 5 you can't unsee. We are feeling a bit bereft on the watching front now that we've got to the end of The Crown's fourth series. And it was a bleak enough thing to relive.

The dinner party was not quite as fancy as planned because I had made an absolute howler of a mistake with my grocery delivery. All the lovely New Year's Eve fare was put into tomorrow's order. Last week's driver left three loaves of bread on the doorstep. Not even any proverbial fish. So yes, the week where I am self-isolating has been spent making do with what we had in the fridge and freezer, in true Pandemic Style, and all has been well. As mad, old Julian said, all will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. Except that sometimes they're not well at all, and in that case we'll just have to keep going anyway. 

None of this is new to God, and He is still on the throne x

 

Second weekend in December is the third weekend in Advent

I forgot that last weekend was Hurricane Tree update weekend. It was completely bare at the start of November so it's still waving gloriously naked branches to the thrill of the cold air, and will be doing just that for quite some merry time. We've been doing much the same thing in our swimming group, and will be doing just that for quite some merry time! My house has to go into sELF isolation for two weeks over Christmas and the New Year before a little hospital thing I have to do, so that could be the end of my winter sea adventures - not sure my courage will survive so much de-acclimatisation!

So what I'm doing does still involve as much swimming as I can fit in. Yes, it's really cold now! But the exhilaration is more than worth it. The loving acceptance of this group is pretty huge too. That has quite unexpectedly become as important as the swimming. 

What I'm also doing is being utterly absorbed in the world of sons. Their difficulties at school are myriad this year, and thankfully they are coping valiantly, most of the time. I'm finding that my coping strategies are as simple as they are difficult. Remembering to breathe very deeply at difficult times, making myself get outside to walk, and praying. Also, deliberately finding things in which to rejoice and for which to be thankful. 

I was "chatting" virtually to two very good friends last week about how you can get through most days by just doing the next thing. But, and this is my tenuous link to today's Gaudete Sunday, life is so much better if I can make the next thing, the simplest possible next thing, as beautiful and enjoyable and joyful as I can. And we've had a gorgeous weekend, with lots of simple joys. Gingerbread and candles have dominated today!

So that's what I'm doing in December: swimming for the next two weeks, finding joy in the small things, and praying as thankfully as this small human mind can. Waving my bare branches with as much exhilaration as I can!

Here's the maple that was still so gloriously clothed in at the start of November. What I'm reading, just to keep my little archive is Ali Smith's Winter (have just finished Autumn), the annual Christmas Mystery, a wee Agatha Christie sneeky short story from Mattman's Midwinter Murders anthology when he's not looking, and I'll be escaping into Winter Solstice anytime soon! Getting to the end of the Psalms. I'll miss them.

And what I'm making is still Cushla's Comfort Blanket, though it definitely at least feels like a blanket now. I'll miss it too when it's done! I gave up on the baubles for work colleagues - I'm leaving a box of oranges with a chocolate orange on the staff table instead! And I finally made the two zipped pouches - hoorah! They are all bagged up ready for my Santa run this week. I'm going to deliver everything I need to this week so that we can have our hibernation with all jobs done. 

 I do hope you've all seen our Emmanuel God and his hope, peace and joy in this Advent. And I wish you all great love as our journey to Bethlehem gets closer to its destination. Exciting! And just because our Advent season seems to be all about the videos this year, here's one I was asked to do for church!

First weekend in November

The hurricane tree lost its last leaves sometime in the middle of the week. I had been watching them carefully, but then they were suddenly all gone even before Storm Aidan blasted through this weekend. The skies are steely, the days are getting dark, and it's now November so, while it's not really cold enough yet, I suppose I'll have to start getting ready for Winter!

What I'm still reading then this Winter: Psalms right up to Old Year's Night, and I'm in Psalm 119 now. I didn't know that it's an acrostic poem - every one of those intriguingly titled sections represents a letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and in the original every line of each section starts with that letter.  Also still reading Kierkegaard's Lilies and I should really read the last essays in my William Morris book. I think I'm not going to try to read anything else, except maybe Ali Smith's Autumn and Winter. Oh and I find I'm already looking forward to Rosamond Pilcher's Winter Solstice (I do love that Scottish house with its big Belfast sink). But mostly I'm finding it hard to settle my mind to reading. It was the same at the start of Lockdown - I just couldn't still myself. I feel some of the same unsettled fragility just now.

What I'll be making this Winter: up to Christmas it will be all about Cushla's Comfort blanket. PC helped me do some hard ratio sums today based on the seven out of 26 balls of yarn used thus far and I think it might turn out alright in the end. Still spending Wednesday Hookery zooms on my shawl. Still hoping to make the Harris Tweed Christmas presents pouches before Christmas! And would I be able to make ten crochet bauble covers for the ten teachers in my school department? We'll see...

What I'm doing: the course - first assignment submitted last week - and swimming. I was in the Lough this morning so that definitely feels like winter swimming if I got to November! Will I still be swimming in the first weekend in December? Oh, what an exciting question!

Here's the maple tree right outside our living room window. It's gloriously vibrantly defiantly red, during the day when we can see it glow. So it's my next leaf counting project.

 

First weekend in October

 Hello, and Happy October to all the northern hemisphere bloggers for whom this is the happiest time of the year! The Hurricane Tree is resplendently golden (in the right light, though that was not today), and mostly bare on its north facing side. It's still quite green on the south side though. 

It's not particularly cold here yet. I did see the temperature below 10 degrees on the car display one morning last weekend. Otherwise it's still comfortable enough to be going to school in my raincoat, which I do leave in the car if I think the day will stay dry. However tights are most uncomfortably back after a blissful six month absence. 

The pears are still on the tree: please advise! We have discovered that there are in fact four of the wonderful things. One is much smaller and hides shyly above its three big siblings - I hesitated there on the gender of pears. Are all plants androgynous? Do I go out and pop them greedily from the branch, or wait for them to fall (there's a wee American pun for you) into the thick vegetation weeds below, risking never to be seen again by human eye?

I do get a thrill out of free food at this time of the year. It's like any time of the year when you can stand in the sunlight to warm up: free central heating. Our grocery delivery man brought four jars of jam this week. I should point out that he brought the rest for the order as well. 

I told him to take back three of the jars, thinking I'd ordered them by mistake. But he re-appeared at the door ten minutes later. It turned out that I had only ordered one jar, so because it was easier he told me to keep all four. That was more free food, albeit much less Godly!

I can more honestly claim the blackberries in the garden. We're not supposed to pick them after 1st October, according to folklore. A friend told me this morning that after 1st October the berries start to be eaten, from the inside, by little insects. I took the risk after lunch today.

I was at the same time able to be still picking strawberries, which seems utterly incredible in Northern Ireland in October! That mess of a broccoli bed has been cleared out and filled up with new strawberry plants that I had put in pots over the summer. They are long strawberries, with a strength about them. The flowers are pink rather than white. They must be a very hardy breed. Hopefully they'll do well in our rough environment!

There weren't as many ripe blackberries as I'd hoped for, so I just brought lots of branches inside to stick in a pot. The pumpkins are coming out too! I never quite know when it's the right time to be putting up "Hallowe'en" decorations. That only ever equates to pumpkins here anyway! Our half-term holiday is still three weeks away, so I will most definitely need the cheering up of much orange around the house before that! Our health minister is talking about a circuit breaker Lockdown when the schools would be off anyway, as seems to be the plan for the rest of the UK. The big question is will he give us more than one week off to make the circuit break more effective? You can guess which answer I'm hoping for!

And so, fine Blogland folk. blessings on your October! Here's what I'll be at:

What I'm reading: Psalms (up to 107 just now and isn't that refrain structure wonderful?); more of Lilies for Gretchen (I know, Gretchen, I'm nearly ready to talk about this!); the end of this William Morris collection (if you haven't read News from Nowhere, these Covid times are the ideal times).

What I'm making: Cushla's Comfort, and I'm back past the heartbreaking point at which I ripped it all out last month to work with a more comfortable hook; my Hookery Shawl which might get into its orange wool at some point this month, which is unbelievably exciting; two zipped pouches with gorgeous Harris Tweed remnants that a friend gave me and that are currently cut out and waiting for the Elves to come round from the Shoemakers.

What I'm doing: just about getting through the school days - I was so tired on Friday that Prince Charming made my porridge and then drove me to and fro; I signed up for that online course and now need to show up at some online tutorials, and probably even do some work; at the weekends I am still outdoor swimming in Belfast Lough with the wonderful women who have been doing it every day for years, and now that I've made it into October I find myself wondering if I can keep going to the end of the month when I too could swim every day for the week I'll be off...

Stay well, lovely bloggers, and prayers for the President; be blessed x

First weekend in September

Here is the Hurricane Tree. It's right outside the kitchen window, and above it's outside Mattman's bedroom window which is where we stood ? years ago when Hurricane Ophelia blew through, relatively kindly as it turned out. We thought we could track the strength of the storm by how bare the tree would get hour by hour. It didn't! So here is the tree in the first weekend of September. I imagine month by month bare is exactly what it will get. And I am really very happy to see the first few orange leaves and to feel that different coolness in the air and to hear the crisper rustling in the branches that whispers Autumn. Is it too early to get the pumpkins out?

I'm also very very very happy that my little pear tree has THREE pears this year. It has only ever had one pear per year, and that only twice. So this is a rich harvest indeed. I am very excited. I am less excited about the potential broccoli harvest. Mattman and I joined the home produce enthusiasm over Lockdown, but I have to admit that growing food has never been my success, and if we get one head of skinny broccoli, we will count ourselves lucky indeed.

And because of a blessing in my school's timetabling on Friday, Prince Charming and I got a walk all to ourselves on Friday, and it was sublime. A bright blue sky sort of a day with coast and tides and blackberries and muddy paths and languid cows and fields of corn. It was good to be right out of the city, after two weeks back in school with masks and visors and a circuitous one-way system, and to walk far and wide with lungs full of clean and healthy air.

And so, fine blogland folk, blessings on your September. Here's what I'll be at:

What I'm reading: Psalms; Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo; Lilies for Gretchen, finally.

What I'm making: a tartan mask for my Scotland loving about to be 80 years of age father; Cushla's Comfort, a blanket in a secret colour; the Hookery Shawl, which only advances by six rows a week at my Hookery Crochet group which has been meeting in Zoom for six months now.

What I'm doing: getting used to us all being back at school (see Psalm 91); still thinking about signing up for an online course, deadline this Thursday; outdoor swimming in Belfast Lough with Jordanstown Lough Swimmers, and wondering if I can keep that up into October...

Happy Autumn  (let's all be like trees flourishing in the house of the Lord, whether we're back there physically or not, and whether they grow out of our heads or not) x

 

Stables and trees

 

I've been thinking about books this morning. This is a fairly common diversionary tactic for me, but now more than ever is there need for good books! I was listing in my head, as I ate my porridge, the books that were precious to me. I was thinking about Wendy Erskine's Sweet Home with all its illustrations of East Belfast life that manage to be illustrations of lots of life. She signed my copy at the book launch. And she used to be my head of department when I worked in her school. So lots of precious between the covers of that one.

And then I thought of Jostein Gaardner's not quite yet seasonal A Christmas Mystery. Definitely a book I'd want to throw in a bag of books to be saved in the event of a house disaster but obviously after my children (and Prince Charming) were safely out! I was trying to remember the end, and don't read on if it will be a spoiler, but Elisabet wonders what she'll do when all the others' roles are fulfilled and she decides that she'll bow her head under the lintel of the stable door, and she goes in to meet the Christ-child for herself. (Doesn't she?)

It strikes me today how very easy it was for Elisabet and the shepherds and the kings and the everybody to meet Jesus. They didn't have to book their place in advance, worry about how many of them would be inside or about how many households they represented, make sure everybody had a mask, that all hands were sanitised, and that there was enough ventilation. I'm very confident there was enough ventilation.

And what I think about all that is that today it is still very easy to meet Jesus. In fact, God is all over the Internet in these days of online church. Our local church is taking a return to the building very slowly and carefully, but my goodness, what an array of creativity has emerged. From services to a reading of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and amazing resources for all age groups. Prince Charming's Live Worship is there too from our mostly tidy book room! Have a look here, if you have any more time in the day!

We are less than two weeks from the return of schools here in Northern Ireland, and plans are still coming through from our Department of Education. One leading city school has this just this morning announced that face masks will be mandatory to protect staff. We'll all have different opinions of this, but I'll confess this house reassured by any strategies that acknowledge the need to manage fear as much as the virus.

I'm so grateful in These Strange Times that it is still easy to meet God. Easy to lift up His Name. Easy to call on His Name. And so worthwhile, since I do fully believe that history, even covid history, hinges exactly there.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 

But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.

What I've been reading during the Covid Spring and Summer of 2020 when I haven't been blogging

 I had ordered Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light a good while before our Lockdown*, but had been more than slightly daunted by the size of it! I was daunted as well by that fearful anticipation you suffer when the last episode of anything comes out, and this one had been so very long awaited! It turned out however to be the perfect Lockdown read: long, consuming and a very good place to hide during my early Lockdown very sleepless nights. Not that I'm sure the court of Henry Tudor would have been a good place to hide at any time of the day, as dear old TC did indeed find out. Why couldn't he have just retired to Launde? It reminded me of the very little that I recall from my English degree - the idea of the overreacher in literature from around that time. How do you know when much is too much? Tome though it was, this much of Mantel is definitely not too much. I thought she closed the saga beautifully. Thank you, Hilary. It was worth the wait.

 I read Ali Smith's Spring just before Lockdown, but brought it to my At Home At Hay digital festival week because Smith was one of the many fabulous events that I had booked to stream from my makeshift festival tent. Instead of the usual conversation that other authors set up with the very serious Peter Florence, the sparklingly original Smith shared an extraordinary film of still images narrated by that scintillating word play that lights up all her work. An absolute gift of thirty minutes exploring the "and" of these covid times. Up until the film I had been thinking what a broadside covid had been since the seasons books are being written in real Brexit time, but not quite real enough for covid. Smith is obviously not so easily defeated. I'm not sure if the film is available anywhere yet, but it's worth looking out for. And after all those blissful events in my bookish haven, what did I read first out of all the erudite discoveries from this monarch of literary festivals? Pyramids by Terry Pratchett as recommended by the classicist Stephen Fry himself!

 My boss brought me two books when we had a socially distanced cuppa in the garden as soon as that was allowed back in early summer. I read Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens first. Sad; beautifully sad; but sad. I was slightly distracted by the changes in pace. Measured, gentle telling of the first chapters. Then into the segmented sequences of crime and detection. Then all of a rush of the rest. Glorious twists and turns and eddies and roars. And achingly sad. I posted the Crawdads to Catherine in Glasgow. My boss is religious about recycling.

By which time homeschool was out for summer, and they opened self-catering accommodation and the National Trust rang us to say we could after all have our lakeside cottage for four nights at the start of July and we went. Feeling very brave despite the fact that we took everything we could possibly need in the way of food and all else to obviate the need to visit a shop. I took my Boss' second book, as she reassured me that this would not have me in a constant state of tension. She was wrong. Where Crawdads was sad but beautifully sad sad, Kate Atkinson's Big Sky is depressing, but interestingly depressing. Admittedly it does turn out to significantly less distressing than you fear and from the little I know of her work, Atkinson does write the most eloquent detective fiction I've come across. I read When Will There Be Good News because it was intriguingly on the A-Level Literature syllabus. Jackson Brodie, interesting guy, and the nanny from WWTBGN is one of the main characters in Big Sky, so there was enough of a continuity to intrigue. Also interesting, and mostly very accurate, commentary on National Trust members like us.

I left Big Sky in the cottage with other novels that previous guests had left behind. I thought my Boss would approve, and sent her this picture to tell her that I was exchanging her book for a German novel. I have a German-teaching, Germanophile friend who would appreciate a German read, I thought. I am still wondering if that lies within the etiquette of holiday cottage stays. I somewhere reasoned that there really couldn't be that many German-speakers booked into deepest, darkest, wettest Fermanagh this summer?

 And here we are, moving inextricably towards whatever level of normal the Assembly wants us to reach. And I am reading Bill Bryson's The Body: a guide for occupants. I'm missing the rip-roaringly laugh-out-loud-in-public funny of Notes from a Small Island, but then since I'm not much back in public yet, that's ok.

 This is next on the pile of To Be Read, and it's an ambitious pile because of Hay "purchases" and having had a birthday. I don't know how you're feeling right now, or what sort of a boat you're using to sail through this same storm that we're all apparently in. I'm a bit fed up with that image, to be honest. All the different boats seem to do is either sail too close to each other just to try to sink that sort of a nonsense fearful excuse for a vessel, or sail circuitous routes around anyone approaching in that silent ballet that we've been dancing round each other for four months now. I'm in the second boat. Don't rock it! Apparently Bernardine Evaristo's Girl Woman Other is utterly devoid of punctuation to make it easier to swim into. I'd be happy enough to swim through the rest of this storm as hardily as I can if the sea could be utterly devoid of boats at all.

I have learnt one thing from Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, in all these months. The word egregious. He used it last week and I will confess that I had to look it up. Isn't it interesting that the archaic meaning is the complete opposite of what it means now. That seemed to me to be a better image for These Strange Times than boats. I know how shockingly bad these months have been for many of us, maybe most of us; but for us here, they were most remarkably good. And that does indeed feel archaic now, as we inch our way slowly and quietly out on to The Other Side.


*Lockdown for us started on Thursday 19th March which was the boys' first day of school being closed, earlier than the blanket closing from London as schools here began moving teacher training days to that week in the expectation of the inevitable announcement. Prince Charming started working from home two weeks later, and we have spent four months now healthy, with everything we need, privileged with space and digital devices and wifi enough for four sets of online needs. It has been remarkably good indeed. I do most sincerely hope that you and your families have all found happiness and health in the midst of your circumstances.