dovegreyreader scribbles

Where did...

...that month go?

Thank you for all your lovely comments and for chatting to each other too. If there’s one thing I love about this place it’s that...if I disappear off for a while you’ll all keep the conversation going.

We are of good cheer here.

Bookhound has made excellent progress with all the post-bereavement bureaucracy from afar, following his dad’s death, and one lovely thing is the arrival of a box full of old photos. Not only those he’d sent his parents of our family but plenty from his childhood too. We’ve had some lovely reminders of days we’d almost forgotten about and it all makes me realise how vital real photos are. I hope we don’t lose the art of that in the world of digital. Remember how exciting it was when you picked up your folder of photos from the chemist, or they arrived in the post. I’ve started getting photos printed again this last year as well as doing a couple of photo books. 

Watching world events and reading fiction don’t seem compatible right now. History seems much more prescient and interesting, so I have happily slouched towards Bethlehem with Joan Didion’s essays from the 1960s and found myself wondering  whether she had a crystal ball. So much still seems so relevant. I’ve also preordered Frostquake by Juliet Nicolson, about the seismic winter of 1962-3, because it’s etched in my memory as a nine-year old, and I’m interested to revisit it almost sixty years later. I can’t think why because reading the synopsis it sounds far grimmer than I remember, but nevertheless we all survived that upheaval in the same way we’ll survive this one...

On Boxing Day 1962, when Juliet Nicolson was eight years old, the snow began to fall. It did not stop for ten weeks. The drifts in East Sussex reached twenty-three feet. In London, milkmen made deliveries on skis. On Dartmoor 2,000 ponies were buried in the snow, and starving foxes ate sheep alive.

It wasn't just the weather that was bad. The threat of nuclear war had reached its terrifying height with the recent Cuban Missile Crisis. Unemployment was on the rise, de Gaulle was blocking Britain from joining the European Economic Community, Winston Churchill, still the symbol of Great Britishness, was fading. These shadows hung over a country paralysed by frozen heating oil, burst pipes and power cuts.

And yet underneath the frozen surface, new life was beginning to stir. A new breed of satirists threatened the complacent decadence of the British establishment. A game-changing band from Liverpool topped the charts, becoming the ultimate symbol of an exuberant youthquake. Scandals such as the Profumo Affair exposed racial and sexual prejudice. When the thaw came, ten weeks of extraordinary weather had acted as a catalyst between two distinct eras.

From poets to pop stars, shopkeepers to schoolchildren, and her own family's experiences, Juliet Nicolson traces the hardship of that frozen winter and the emancipation that followed. That spring, new life was unleashed, along with freedoms we take for granted today.

New craft projects have eluded me for now, but I’ve settled down with the hexagon quilt and a determination to get it finished. There is a flow to hand quilting to the accompaniment of the radio (I’m still enjoying Scala) which somehow sends the world and the weather (rain, mud, ever such a lot of it) packing for a while.

And so here we are, almost into February, the day when the light floods back is on the horizon. All the bulbs I planted are peeking through and the snowdrops are up and running out along the lane...doesn’t seem five minutes since we stopped at that little church on Dartmoor last year, St Raphael, Huccaby, to look at the drifts of snowdrops.

Please do keep the conversation going in comments...

What you are reading, making, eating, writing, sewing, sowing, planting or doing generally...

Recommends for others...

And take heart, I think we’ll all be back out in the world soon.

 

Pleasings...

'Relentlessly Optimistic of Devon Here', let's focus on good things shall we.

Do you know whenever I look at this picture I can still feel that little owlet's plumpness and its heart beating, and the softness of those downy feathers. Our barn owl is still in residence and has taken to perching on the summerhouse verandah where we have a delightful spattered sea of white guano and heaps of pellets.

I hope you are all keeping chins up and looking upwards too There's a big sky to be seen out there, and the sun is making its way back to us (sorry Southern H. it's our turn next) though truth be told it's been freezing grey fog here all week so a lot of imagination and pretending required.

This was ages ago. I hope it's still there...

Firstly, a huge thank you for all your wonderful messages this week. I can't say its been easy dealing with so much from afar, and I suspect if Bookhound spends one more hour on the phone trying to sort something the thing will become welded to his ear. Everyone is working from home so access is limited, and as you can imagine there is a mass of 'stuff' to sort when someone dies 350 miles away.

Forgive me if I'm not around much for a week or two more...I've barely picked up a book but I am listening to Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (loving it) and I am making myself settle down with some sewing each day.

And it's time to think about the other sort of sowing too.

Did I say I'm going large on sweet peas this year? The autumn sown seeds are already up and growing in the cold greenhouse.

Father-in-law was a great gardener in his day, a real expert at sweet peas and a member of the Sweet Pea Society.  I have benefited from inheriting a couple of electric propagators from his greenhouse so I plan to get my next batch of seeds started any day. I discovered Roger Parsons and the National Collection at Bracklesham Bay online and ordered a variety of seeds from his catalogue. I also treated myself to his book so I'm not messing this year...straight stems and lots of blooms.

I fancy a dedicated trench with cane supports and will enjoy watching Bookhound dig it while I supply tea and cake...he doesn't actually know about it yet, but might do now.

So now I'm realying on ALL of you. At least one Pleasing each if you can possibly manage it to cheer us all along. Among the other great achievements of my life at the moment are ...

Getting dressed before 11am...

Being bothered to wash the kitchen floor...

Not falling asleep in front of the fire before 4pm...

Hold tight everyone, we're getting through this. All will be well eventually.

Now over to you...

 

 

 

 

Farewell 2020...

Well all I can say is goodbye 2020 and please 2021 will you be nicer to us. I want to say good riddance but in a way I also want to say, well, thanks for the life lessons. 

I suspect we've all learned a lot through these tough times. Not only the value of treasured friendships and taking nothing for granted, but also recalibrating the things that matter, sifting them out from the things that matter much less.

Maybe we've got things done that we never expected to, maybe we haven't. 

Maybe we've just stayed afloat and that's plenty to be proud of.

Maybe we lost loved ones...

Bookhound's very independent father, aged ninety, died of Covid, 350 miles away from us, on Wednesday afternoon after a torrid month of worry in the run up. Bookhound and his brother couldn't be there, and can't be there now, making the sadness of what so many families have been through very real for us too. All you can do is be incredibly grateful to those NHS staff who cared for him and fought for him on our family's behalf. This has been devastatingly sad for so many and our hearts go out to any of you who may have found yourselves in a similar situation. 

But the vaccine cometh. and I'm predicting that by the time my sweet peas go in the ground things will be perking up nicely. We are doing our bit as part of the 150,000 homes ONS Household Survey, chosen randomly by postcode, and have been tested about eight times so far which makes us feel we are playing our own small part. 

I've planted tubs (and more tubs) of bulbs for spring loveliness and already first shoots are appearing. If I could remember what I bought that would be good, but as I can't we have surprises in store. I remember thinking back in the autumn these green shoots would be more important than ever and I wasn't wrong. 

So anyway, a huge thank you for your company this year gone by, thank you to those who kindly donate to me here (very much appreciated), and thank you for your support of the Think People Think Story Christmas fund raiser. Thanks to Covid restrictions Ugandans have found themselves without work, living day to day and without NHS, savings or back up, so this has made a real difference. From March through to December Tommy's projects have funded 33,756 meals overall... astonishing.

'The sale of 37 BOREHOLE TINS in our shop originally budgeted for 185 Christmas dinners but in true African style over 400 children arrived across the two teams and enjoyed rice, beans, cabbage and soda'

Here is the village enjoying their Christmas dinner...

And congratulations to Sally, owner of tin four who won the prize draw.

I know plenty of you enjoy visiting here, but this has always been a wonderful place for me to come too, and, as I scribble, to feel in touch with a friendly and populated corner of the world. We live in a very beautiful real corner of the world but safe to say it's sparsely populated, not a lot of passing traffic or neighbours to go out and clap with, or sing with, so at times it could feel lonely were we not used to it and happy with it. And we do know how fortunate we have been this year. 

And then we have books.

My reading seems to have been all over the shop this last year but I've reined it in for the New Year with a biography of Rosamond Lehmann and I shall follow it up with more of her fiction soon. My last read of 2020 has been The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham...what on earth was I thinking. Last read when I was about fourteen but still a brilliant book, and so much that resonates about threats and panic and human nature, the ability to deny danger and how people cope when that danger becomes real. Written in 1953 this is a book that has certainly stood the test of time so I shall revisit more by John Wyndham...Chocky, The Midwich Cuckoos et al. I'm also listening to The Owl Service by Alan Garner (in the bath) and Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith while I sew. I'm back on hexagons, have a small sampler wall hanging on the go, and larger hexagon quilt to finish hand quilting and the Knot Garden is also finished and ready for quilting, so plenty of projects to see me through to that day of bright light in February.

And so here's wishing you and yours blessings a-plenty for 2021. I think we all deserve a surfeit of them, don't you.

FOOTNOTE: Due to this week's events I might be a bit out of step here for a week or so. My apologies if comments go unanswered for a day or two, please do talk amongst yourselves as usual. I'll be back in the swing of things very soon so don't go away.