During December...

I started this midway through the month, the day after my mother's birthday. She would have been 95... but am only posting now, in January, when we got back from Tanzania. (So much going on in my head and heart that, to be honest, I forgot about this post!)

Time passes.

We hurtled towards the end of term and our departure for Tanzania. I didn't add much to the post after that. Not that there wasn't time, but my heart was full of family and friends and Africa....

This month was good. Reports finished and signed off; Christmas letter finished and sent out. Decorations - only a few, as we had housesitters coming to stay while we were away - put up. Obligatory/traditional Christmas baking - always Swedish pepparkakor.

Cara Grace grows. We pray for her health, for energy and sleep for her exhausted parents. We are so thankful for her safe arrival.

We grapple with wind and rain, coughs and colds.  This is December.

Off to sunshine for Christmas...

February fun

February had scarcely begun before the days seemed longer, the mornings kinder, the evenings lighter... still a long way to go, but daffodils were beginning to burst out on the banks and snowdrops dazzled among daisies.

I cycled to school, just a little. Well, several days a week, anyway.  Then it turned cold, which coincided with parents' evenings and so driving became an acceptable and face-saving option.

We longed eagerly for snow, but, despite our proximity to France which received dozens of centimetres of the beautiful white stuff, we were disappointed. A few sleet and hail showers, a  little fog and quite a lot of wind was all that the February Freeze had for us.

Oh well. We'd had more than enough moisture in January. The front lawn was still suffering the effects of skidding cars, with pools of water lying in ruts in the grass. It will all grow back. Eventually.

My parents' evenings were a delight, as always. I was amused to discover that one of the parents had been to school in Nairobi for a short time, born in the Middle East: very interested in what Cat and Jonny were doing in similar places...I love discovering connections and relationships. That aside, it is always good to exchange information about the children, finding that, in general, we were all on the same page in setting careful boundaries in order to set a firm foundation for the future.

Tiring, though. Interspersed were a couple of evenings of Sozo training: fascinating to see what a simple healing process it can be - looking forward to finding out more.

Then, one particular joy was being invited to our neighbours on each side and making contact again with Pat and Peter opposite.  Catherine was celebrating her 40th, mostly with nursing friends and family. Her children are so delightful that it never matters when they kick the football over, though their parents are embarrassed about it. We certainly don't mind.  The evening was great fun, particularly as there were two school parents there who were pleased to see us, and it was also easy to discover various Guernsey connections with various friends and relatives. Then Nicky and Richard had also invited us to supper a couple of days later...

After that: off to France for half term in The Beast.  Details on TravelsWithPickle as usual.

The temperatures started to drop as the week progressed. By the time we were back at school on the last Monday of the month, we were treated to some snow flurries, with more coming in overnight. Woohoo!

Tuesday morning was snowy, clear and icy. I waited expectantly for the news that school would be closed... except that it wasn't!  All the state schools on the island were closed and it was only ours, and the private girls' school, which remained open. Drat.

Rachel, a, colleague living nearby gave me a lift and we crept in together. Everyone was VERY cautions so our drive took 40 minutes instead of the usual 12. Better safe than sorry.

Once at school, I had 14 excited children, an extended breaktime out in the snow - both settled snow in the sunshine and then, half an hour later, thickly falling snowflakes - and a staffroom of disgruntled teachers, all with skidding car or 'having to walk in' stories.

The snow eased off... then started again... so thickly that Rachel and I started to wonder how we would get home. We live the greatest distance away from school and walking home wasn't an option... eventually we got permission to leave early, so crept home again.

An hour later, the sun came out. #feelingguilty  #colleaguesandchildrenstillatschool.  Oh dear.
An hour after that, a heavy blizzard came in. We'd timed it to coincide with a dog walk: we all returned encrusted in snow. Pickle was NOT amused. We thought we'd have a long 'drying off' job to do on her, but as soon as she approached the front door she gave a vigorous shake and the snow flew off. Didn't know she was so sensible....

So the snow settled, ready for the last day of February. Temperatures below zero, so freezing on to the ground. Tomorrow is another day....

Evidence of a trespassing rabbit, having a good look around...

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...