Not reached
the end of January yet, but, well, jeepers!
Today is YET AGAIN WET, MUDDY, FOGGY and MISERABLE.
Dog walking
has, at best, been a dodge between showers or a walk in the rain. Access to the
cliff path has become impossible without gumboots, so we have been exploring
the lanes behind the house.
We’ve
managed not to get lost, despite our neighbour referring to the area as The
Bermuda Triangle. He has a point, but we are definitely getting a feel for the
Wrong Direction now and usually manage some pleasant circular rambles without
wandering too far off track. Time, too, to stroll along the seaweed-strewn
beaches, left ravaged by the storms. Vast swatches of sand have been washed out
by fierce tides, exposing stripes of prehistoric peat or forgotten rocky
slipways.
We have had
this weather for at least a month now if not longer, interspersed by just a few
drier days.
I can’t even
say DRY, because they weren’t, really. Some cloud, a little sunshine at times,
the days growing imperceptibly longer until now, more than a month after
Christmas, Spring does indeed feel less far off than before. Daffodils have
been blooming defiantly for some weeks, robins are making their presence known
in the garden and, on the way home yesterday, a crowd of sparrows in a stand of
bamboo sounded like a flock of weaver birds on their nests.
So, some
hope of better weather, then. Today is foggy, but the log burner is lit and
glowing, reminding me of Christmas.
We began the
month with fierce thankfulness. Cat and Andy had left us the day before but we
were SO glad to have had the gift of ten days with them over Christmas.
So we kept
telling ourselves that.
Practising
gratitude, holding the sorrow of parting in loose fingers.
Keeping busy
– I was back at school (only two new initiatives so far this half term, another
new one planned for March), Richard preoccupied with various home projects.
(More of those later...)
Meeting
friends. We hosted on half a dozen occasions; went out to dinner a few nights, catching
up; got together for chats over tea. Precious relationships.
 |
| Mike and Clare came round to help us cook a special Indian meal, using spices from The Spicery, a mail order subscription spice kit which Cat gave Richard for his birthday... This one was BBQ India. |
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| Dum Aloo |
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| Homemade mango chutney |
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| My signature naan breads. |
And some
lovely moments. Possibly the best, for me, was a story from a friend who
teaches some of the boys I had in my class a couple of years ago. The boy
suddenly said, in the middle of a Maths lesson, “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t
for Mrs Pollard!” (A good thing – he is glad to have passed his entrance exam
and so was able to go on to the secondary part of our school.) Teaching is so
strange... we pour ourselves out to the children we teach, year after year,
enabling and equipping them to continue to grow and develop. Yet we rarely
encounter them again and very, very rarely do we ever know the impact we have
had. So many celebrities talk about the teacher who encouraged, challenged or
inspired them to greater things, but for most of us, we never know what effect
we have had.
On the home front,
Richard has been delighted to have, he hopes, solved the problem of mould we
have in our bedroom. Morningstar is a
lovely warm house, made more so by the wood burner Richard installed shortly
after we moved in. As a consequence, it is almost draught-free and so
condensation has tended to develop on the window and wall of our north-facing
bedroom, resulting in a little black mould which, left unchecked, threatened to
spread to the ceiling and back of furniture.
Solution? A
continuously running, low noise, efficient, extractor fan in the bathroom and
some efficacious chemical to paint on the wall which has removed the mould
completely and claims to seriously inhibit its return.
We shall
see, but we hope so.
The other
ongoing project has been the repair of the garage side door, which blew off in
one of the many storms which have blown over our island in the last few weeks.
The latch had been rather ‘iffy’ since we had to replace the lock in the summer
(the lock had jammed shut, just a few days before we were due to go away) and
so a strong gust caught the door one night and ripped it off its hinges.
Clever
Richard has repaired the wood, turned the door upside down and is waiting for ‘outside
working weather’ to finish re-installing it....
Add to that:
fine-tuning our house listing on Airbnb ready for summer guests...
