January: jeepers!

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.

Dum Aloo

Homemade mango chutney

My signature naan breads.

Laughter and light and warmth in the darkness.

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...