Nervous in November

 November saw Richard getting nervous about my blood pressure… so I was nervous, with the result that our blood pressure monitor began to show some very high and alarming readings. It was a very old monitor – at least 15 years – and not an approved type. In the end, I borrowed one from dear Sarah (who insisted on measuring my BP anyway, in efficient nurse fashion) and found that, in fact, I had nothing to be concerned about and all was fine. Bought a more modern and up to date device, and that was that. Phew.

But the real concern of the month was Storm Ciaran, due to make landfall the night of November 1^st. For a week,  both the news and the weather reports showed experts carefully tracking the storm, trying to predict where it might make landfall.  The radar pictures were quite astounding.

We prepared, along with the rest of the Channel Islands. Unusually, Guernsey and Jersey were named frequently in the weather reports and we knew that we would bear the brunt of the weather. Several rounds of the garden, stowing away all loose objects, moving tables and pot plants into shelter – or even inside the house – and even moving the motorhome to a more sheltered position, tucked in the L of the house to protect it from the wind. We had really no idea of how bad it would be.

And bad it was. I slept through most of the wind overnight, using ear plugs, but was awakened around 4.30 am by the wind buffeting the house, roaring around it in a way we had rarely experienced before. Rain lashed the trees, the storm stripping them of their leaves and tearing at branches. Opposite, our neighbour had a dying conifer down, inconveniently straddling the hedge across half of the road, with the result that all traffic had to slow down and stop in order to avoid it. The neighbour’s hedge was/is in dire need of cutting in any case…

At 8 am our neighbour next door, Catherine, spoke on the radio of how she and her husband had been awake for much of the night, listening to tiles falling off the roof. (Her children were unconcerned: two cool teenage boys and their younger sister, who slept through most of it!) We found shards of slate in our garden and pieces of tile on the roof, even though the tiles had come off the roof on the opposite side: it was almost as if a mini tornado had hit, as the direction that the tiles had been carried made no sense. A week later, I even found a whole, large slate lying in the middle of a bush at the back of the garden, well away from the neighbours’ property.

The storm raged all day as we all sheltered indoors. Schools had been closed and the public urged not to travel, as the emergency services and the tree surgeons worked to clear the 70 or so trees which had fallen all over the island. We watched with sadness as television reports showed how a whole estate on Jersey had been destroyed and families made homeless. We felt we had got off very lightly in comparison…

It took a little time the next morning to sweep up the patio, littered with leaves and berries, and tidy up the front drive. We helped our neighbour remove much of the tree – although there is still a hefty chunk peeping out of the hedge.

We began, also, to prepare for our trip to Tanzania at Christmas. I spent some time, as an avid recycler, in sourcing a second-hand (but barely used) suitcase to replace an old one which had ripped the last time we travelled. As a bonus, I found a pair of very comfortable winter boots in my favourite make for comfort, and two kitchen bar stools to replace ours. Cheap 7 years ago, they had begun to wobble somewhat dangerously and we knew that it wouldn’t be long before they broke. Plus a few visits to the toy department of our charity shop for items for Finn….

And Richard spent his days up in the loft, installing modern insulation – at the expense of his back, which became very sore… (and is why we had to travel Premium Economy to New Zealand…)

The month moved on, the weeks full - as was the bonfire pit. The rear of the garden is prone to flooding and we soon found that the pump would be put to good use as Guernsey endured three times the average amount of daily rainfall within a few hours...

It carried on!

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...

Mad March

March began wild and blustery. On the 3rd, I cycled home through FOUR different thunderstorm showers. Lightning, a deluge of water and flooded roads. It's hilarious on a bike - you're so wet, wet through to the underwear, that it ends up not mattering. And this was despite my wonderful 'Rainlegs' which cover my thighs and normally do an amazing job of keeping the top of my legs dry. That day, they seemed to give up: the water was splashing up UNDERNEATH them.  There were still a couple of inches near the top of my legs where I was still dry by the time I got home....

Fun. The dog, of course, hates thunderstorms and presses up closely against us while the thunder peals.  Usually, that is. Sometimes she just gets annoyed and goes round the house barking loudly, before she gives up in disgust and climbs back on to the sofa to curl into a small black ball.

Then, mid-month, suddenly SPRING CAME.  For a day, initially. The next was back to grey and mist and mizzle and drizzle. And more wind than was on the forecast.  But we had a glorious Monday of full sunshine.  The daffodils have already been shouting out their glory for several weeks, but now the odd crocus has appeared in the garden, with a shy cyclamen flower struggling up from underneath a stone.

So, now, daffodils have sprung up everywhere. I planted a bagful of bulbs I had brought with me from Barnsfield - by the time I got round to it, in December, the poor bulbs had become fed up with waiting for me and had put their roots out already, becoming hopelessly entangled with each other. It took much soaking in water and gentle pulling to disengage them from each other.

But the bulbs I planted - and which have bloomed so generously - seem like nothing when I see those which are already here. Clumps of green spikes and then yellow flowers have appeared everywhere: under bushes, in 'bare' patches, on top of the grassy hedge banks and even growing out of the vertical sides of the banks themselves. The garden blazes with yellow fire in the sunshine.

There are unusual varieties as well: fragrant narcissi perfume the air from the troughs outside the front door; creamy yellow lacy trumpets hide behind the nerines; on the banks, I see bright yellow outer calyxes with deep orange tubular centres: the aptly named and unusual Will Scarlet, perhaps. Other narcissi are the ubiquitous creamy pale thick clusters:

These grew, unsolicited, at Barnsfield. Their perfume was strong: so much so that, one morning early on in our stay there, I had gone out into the garden and picked a bunch which I displayed in the kitchen. I went out again, only to find them, on my return, lying disconsolately on the paving outside the kitchen. The scent - cloying, pungent, almost redolent of cow dung, at times - was too strong for Jonny. He had come downstairs, recoiled at the smell, located the offending blooms, opened the kitchen window and... simply plucked them from the vase and threw them out. I learned not to pick them again...

So the daffodils have been a welcome brightener in a month dogged by fog. I like it, myself: I love the silence, the deadening of sound, which the fog brings. Even the traffic sounds quiet and of course the planes do not fly... and there is something eerily beautiful about the mist:

Otherwise, my bike commute home is, for the most part, through tranquil lanes. The banks are studded with primroses, celandines  and the odd violet. Daffodils erupt on the field edges; Brussels sprouts, nearing the end of their season, still stand on stalks, slightly brown now. I near the house and see the sea... This is such a welcome change from my previous commute which wound its way among houses: ribbon development on Guernsey dominates, so I would see glimpses of fields between and behind the buildings, but now I travel through countryside....

Apart from the weather, the month seems to have been packed with meals with friends, here and away; and a fund-raising quiz one evening - mostly about TV programmes, which was amusing as only 2 out of our team of 6 had a television and one couple are South African and not familiar with British TV programmes. Then there was a breakfast - where we talked, non-stop, about deep things in our lives, gaining strength from one another. And school.... reports; a school musical (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat - it will be awesome); Saturday mornings of entrance assessments, a hockey festival, tag rugby tournament; encouraging 40Acts of kindness at school....

But the joy of the month has been the flowers....

Hyacinths in blue by the front door

Unusual daffodils from the garden in my tiny Kitengela glass jug

Unique daffodils from a friend chime in with my Mother's Day creamy white primula

And then there were the Amaryllis....

And finally....the warmth and the sun return, bringing bright mornings....

Island life

April 'showers' have been April downpours and gales.
Force 7 today.
I didn't cycle to school.
I didn't take the dog for a long walk. - just a short, let's-get-out-and-back-quickly one.
I didn't decide to stroll along the Castle breakwater to watch the fishermen.
This is why...

(Photo taken by George)

At school

Phew - what a day! Rain, with gales building. Kids inside ALL DAY. Surprisingly good, and there has been a lot of disruption today with rehearsals for our 60 years' celebration tomorrow and talks about the Guernsey Youth Games (equivalent of mini Olympics for Years 5 and 6).

Meanwhile, my husband is having a day off at home with the Hairy Hot Water Bottle. Cosy.