What Did Did

Did came by this morning with his chain saw and demolished my last elder, making logs from this and all my earlier fellings. In a few weeks they'll have grown tall again, fresher and stronger. As he attacked a spiky blackthorn sapling on the other side of my fence, I gestured at the large outgrowth of brambles and said I'd be starting on them later. "Just watch this," he said, and into the huge bush he strode, lashing from side to side with the saw until it was all mincemeat. I felt a huge grin spread across my face, and when he looked up and saw it he grinned too. Just another two fires and it will all be history. And the view that has opened up is peerless. In answer to my queries Did is now bringing a roller to flatten out the winter bumps on the lawn, 10 bags of well-rotted manure, and a lot of Round-up to polish off the weeds. His "can-do" attitude is enormously appealing. "There's a small city I'd like to wipe out," I told him, "are you able to get hold of any nuclear weapons?" "Just leave it with me," he replied calmly. It wouldn't surprise me.

I returned to my car in the Co-op car park the other day when suddenly a man appeared in front of me, threw his arms around me and hugged me as if I was the most precious thing on earth. It took me a moment to see who it was, so closely did he hold me. It was Steve the builder who was due last May to do some alterations in my kitchen, along with his son Alex, and then never turned up. My phone calls and text messages were left unanswered, and in the end I found another builder. Steve is a wonderful man who always came up trumps when we had problems in Wilby. Often he refused to charge for small jobs, and he dropped everything when we needed him urgently. What could have happened? I puzzled for a long time, and then forgot about him. And here he was, pushing my fringe back from my face and patting my shoulder affectionately while his wife beamed through her open door. "Steve!" I exclaimed. "You never came back!" He hung his head and eyed me ruefully. "I was overwhelmed with work," he said. "And then it got too embarrassing to ...." and his voice tailed off. It was soooo good to see him and know he was OK.

I sometimes wonder about serendipity. They say there is no such thing as a coincidence, but often when contemplating an empty week ahead, out of the blue will come delightful invitations that completely transform the prospect. It may be normal, but it can feel like a blessing.

Don't Ask Me

I gave Sarah a lift to the Old Rectory for tea this afternoon, as it started to spit as soon as we set off on foot, and there was a mean rawness to the air. The long drive was thickly lined with just open daffodils, brave souls on such a day, but once on the other side of the gigantic front door the warmth hit us. Lovely old house, and right away I recognised the spot where the ghost had been sighted. I was shown the exact place, and the space between spectre and seer was no more than eight feet. Not much margin for error then. Not sure I would want to live there after that. And so we settled down to tea around the blazing log fire while hot cross buns were toasted on an old-fashioned fork, and naturally enough the conversation turned back to the  paranormal, and another tale. It seems that P brought home a Chinese statue of a bent old man one day, that he'd picked up from an antique shop near his work place. C took one look and said she hated it: it had a little row of shiny ivory teeth and ivory fingernails, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise in fear and loathing. P just laughed, and they agreed to keep it in the sitting room for a few days. The first night a painting above the fireplace crashed to the ground, knocking several precious objects off the mantlepiece and breaking them. Light bulbs exploded, teacups rattled in their saucers on the table, and a well-tended house plant died overnight. They moved it to an outbuilding, and one by one the lawnmowers surrounding it refused to start. 

P took it to another antique dealer whose Chinese wife loved it on sight, and a sale was agreed. The woman told him that it was a well-known Chinese figure, godlike in stature, and if you kept him by the front door and rubbed his head on entering and leaving the house he would bring great luck and happiness. Was it the old man who had displayed such anger in the Old Rectory, or the previous in incumbents, men of God one and all, objecting to their pagan visitor?

The weather had changed again when we left, and I had to get out for a walk. The ditches and grass verges are like a flower shop specialising in primroses, and the scent wafted through the air. I have never seen so many in one place before. The hedges are just beginning to show green, but the edge to the air is still wintry. We can wait.

Magic

I made a darned good risotto last night, simple but rich and delicious at the same time. It consisted of fresh prawns, broccoli, white wine, lots of garlic and lots of fresh coriander. I washed it all down with a glass of Waitrose own Chilean Sauvignon Blanc. Could have been The Fat Duck for all the difference. Eat your heart out Heston. I ate this feast in front of the television (I know!) watching a recording of The Voice. This kind of programme is not usually my thing, but somehow I caught a few minutes of the first episode and I've been hooked ever since. The singers are mostly extraordinary, the judges are lovely, and the whole experience is completely life-enhancing and affirming, a properly feel-good event. I don't really mind who wins. I just don't want the magic to end.

My vegetable garden, but not yet

Yesterday I conjured up more magic in the shape of fire. The jungle of felled trees and bushes which had bestrewn the bottom of my garden was just biding its time before self-immolating, but someone had to be the catalyst and that was me, with my friend the south-westerly. The discarded Christmas tree, which amazingly has still not shed any needles despite having languished in the garden since December 30th, got the thing going with a whoosh, though my practice of starting bonfires inside cardboard boxes where the wind is not an issue was used as backup. It was hard work, keeping the blaze fed, but I took my time and before two hours was up the whole lot had gone. Did is coming to chop up the branches for me, to add to my firewood stock. I'm feeling very chuffed, and also not wiped out as I was even yesterday after some small effort in the garden. There's still much to be done before the serious planting can take place. Keep that magic coming.

Transportation

Driving to and from Halesworth in full sunshine on Friday after a gap of three weeks, it was a shock to see how advanced the spring was already. Lambs skeetered around the estate grounds, showing up their unimaginative mothers who just chewed grass and gawped. Remind me to never become a sheep. Blossom bedecked the trees and daffodils strung around village gardens brought light to the dull earth. Ten miles north of me, can it actually be warmer here? Or perhaps more sheltered? Whatever, it was a cheering sight, and I wished like mad that I hadn't agreed to sit indoors for three hours playing bridge. After a dull grey morning when the eclipse might as well not have happened, it felt like a miracle.

Yesterday was dull again and freezing, a northerly wind tearing across the countryside disturbing everything it encountered, including me when I stepped outside to bring the bin back from the road. For two days running I've been without the crossword as The Times printed an old one online. The first time I tried it took me two clues before I realised I'd done it the day before. So instead I tackled hotel quantities of white bed linen on the ironing board while Ireland thrashed Scotland in the final Six Nations match and eventually won the Triple Crown. I love Saturdays like this, watching the match while bringing duvets and pillow cases back into submission. My airing cupboard looks lovely again. I'm ready for the next visitors.

And so I ended the day back at Snape for a concert of Masses, one by Haydn, the other Faure. First I treated myself to supper in the bar - beef pie and a glass of red wine - and for the first time in donkey's years I felt slightly uncomfortable dining alone. It might have been because I knew a few people there, and they were with large parties. I thought I looked a bit odd by myself. So I resorted to texting friends to entertain myself and, more importantly, look entertained. Ridiculous! I spent 20 years eating for the Restaurant Guide, relishing solitary meals when I would pull out a book or a crossword and savour every mouthful, or most of them. I love going to concerts or the opera alone, and often do so by choice. So I surprised myself last night. But the music was intoxicating, and the contralto in the Nelson Mass, Angela Simkin, is one to watch. I was transported. And it was worth any amount of discomfort to experience that.

Slow Learner

I should have known better. (Isn't it funny how almost everything reminds you of a song: "Shoulda known better than to lah lah lah"?). After missing my overnight trip to London I thought I was better, but the thing has a kick to it yet. Mother's Day in Cambridge didn't help, what with the champagne and then the white Burgundy, and then the St Emilion. I came back on Monday after a shopathon in John Lewis, and followed that with a drive to Ipswich, most difficult-to-negotiate town in the country, and thought I must be over it finally. Which was why I went down the garden this morning an hour before going off to play bridge, armed with a saw and a pair of stout gloves. I felled another tree, but if it looked pitiful lying there on the ground, branches akimbo, I looked worse. I managed to struggle back to the house, and sat down to recover. But when I looked at the clock I knew I had to ring Helen and cancel. Whatever possessed me? And now I'm shattered again, too tired even to knock the top off a pint bottle of Adnam's Broadside which I'd been looking forward to all day. Big sigh.

I have beautiful flowers to look at anyway and cheer myself up with. Mother's Day might be an artificial construct designed by the card and flower industries to make money for themselves, but it certainly provides the feel good factor.

Act Naturally

I've just been watching two magpies mobbing a lone crow, dive-bombing it and generally harassing it until it flew away, when they followed it. Horrible. It almost makes me regret setting one free when I discovered it trapped in a cage with a dead chicken. Cruelty begets cruelty, but you don't have to be sucked in. Otherwise I've been up a ladder hacking at my wisteria and trying to bring it under control. The galloping postwoman became a leaping one when she had to overcome various tangled obstacles to get to the front door. Such a nice natured woman, unlike the magpies, always smiley and friendly though she does her round at top speed. The weather forecast for today was bitter winds sweeping across the country from Russia, but so far there's barely a breeze and it's nice and warm. I started out with fleece, scarf and hat with earflaps, but one by one I had to strip them off. Next time I'll get down off the ladder first - I nearly came a cropper when I leaned back too far to shrug off my sleeves. I was only on the fourth rung but it felt like the dizzy heights when I teetered. I'm resigned to fewer wisteria flowers this year, but expect it to bloom exuberantly next spring. Sometimes you have to take one step backwards to move ahead again. Hear that wisteria?

Better

I cancelled my trip to London to see a rarely-performed Purcell opera and spend the night at night at my daughter's flat, and blow me if I didn't feel better today. Lousy timing, flu bug! In all fairness I probably wouldn't have been fit for the journey, what with all that walking between tube lines and the stress of being in the metropolis. I did a bit of gardening - mostly raking up old debris and dragging more wood to the putative bonfire. Between 2 and 4pm I slept in the summerhouse, out like the proverbial light, legs dangling over the end of the short sofa, arm thrown across eyes to keep the merciless sun off my face. When I woke up I knew I was better, and so I took a little walk down the lane instead of the London train. God, it felt so good to be out and about again, though I didn't go far. Wrapping myself up in cotton wool has paid off, and I've got better relatively quickly. But how I would love to have heard that music, seen the production.

I've got three books on the go at the moment, and they're a a right mixed bag. Elizabeth Is Missing was an unqualified success, a young writer mastering a difficult subject - dementia - with flair and sensitivity. The Narrow Road to the Deep North can go and bury itself in quicksand for all I care - what a load of overblown pretentious rubbish! It deprived the deserving Ali Smith of the Booker prize thanks to the muscular taste of A C Grayling's casting vote - shame! I tried to get into it but it's just not worth it. How To Be Both is much more rewarding, though why she can't just tell the story is beyond me. And Stet by Diana Athill which I bought last year and have rediscovered is a gem. I'm also reading Five Children on the Western Front written by Kate Saunders in the style of The Railway Children's E Nesbitt had she thought to write it, and it's, well, it's a children's book. Whatever possessed me? The Costa judges raved about it but, yes, it IS a children's book.

There's one potential prize left, Nora Webster by Colm Toibin. I hated the much lauded Brooklyn, but sure who can resist an Irish book, especially one set in the 60s? Not me. And so I'm following the trials and tribulations of the
eponymous Nora. I'm anticipating the poor woman in the stranglehold of the church, repressive parents, pregnancy and trip to London for abortion, and the over-riding narrow-minded pedantry of the yokels. I love a good book.

Breakthrough

I'm to have company! After a week of seeing no one, living in self-imposed purdah as I try to keep my germs to myself, my sister has broken through my defences and is coming to stay. How strange it will be, to talk to someone who is actually in the room, eyeball to eyeball. I feel a bit like Miss Havisham, covered in cobwebs and dust, surrounded by untouched squalor. How the dirty dishes pile up when you're not doing them regularly, not quite plentiful enough to put the dishwasher on for, or so I tell myself. And the table, so easy to clear, is covered in detritus - Italian grammars and dictionaries, binoculars, books, unopened post, finished and half-finished crosswords. I still haven't changed the sheets from the visitor last weekend (was it really only then? Seems like months since the house suddenly burst into life and laughter), but the fresh lot are ironed and waiting in the airing cupboard. It's another lovely day, and I shall fetch the paper and then decamp to the summerhouse. Yesterday I couldn't resist a little gardening, and so I sank to my kneeler and feebly flicked a few weeds around with my trowel before collapsing back into the heat of the room and falling into a deep sleep. It felt so good though, to be outdoors and making a start on bed tidying. My head isn't throbbing quite so much this morning. Dare I think that I might be emerging from my wraps to shake my wings in the sun once more? No. Writing crap like that tells me I must still have a temperature. My critical faculties haven't completely deserted me yet.

Deliverance

I toddled down to the summer house this morning, swaddled like Baby Jesus in layers of clothing. It was warm in there, and I settled down happily with the crossword though it quickly defeated me. It's the height of frustration, being unable to crack the clues. Usually I find that letting your mind go slightly slant, using a bit of intuition along with logic, enables rapid breakthroughs, but not today. I was staring crossly at it when something outside caught my eye, and there was the postwoman running, no galloping, across the garden. She didn't spot me and by the time I registered her she'd gone, skipping nimbly around the shingle path to the front. She'd been delivering parcels to the woodshed in my absence, and that could only mean one thing: books! Now, I know that delayed gratification is a sign of maturity, and so I made myself wait, frowning at the crossword for at least another minute before I retrieved them. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, How To Be Both, and Elizabeth Is Missing; the other two are coming tomorrow. Yum yum, delicious. But which one to start with? The Ali Smith will be thought provoking, a bit challenging though beautifully crafted and fascinating; the Richard Flanagan is a painfully personal account of his father's experiences as a Japanese POW; and Emma Healey has pulled off a coup with a detective story starring an old woman with dementia. I think I'm feeling a bit too delicate still for the POW one, and judging by my efforts with the crossword a bit too intellectually impaired for the Smith. So it will be the latter. Again, yum yum. I'm still feeling fragile, bunged up and headachy. Yesterday a sneeze exploded out of me and ripped through my middle. My tummy area was so sore I thought I'd be walking doubled up but it eventually wore off. They say most accidents happen in the home, but crippling yourself with a sneeze? There's nothing amusing about that.

Tempus Fugit Not

When the highlight of your day is a blackcurrant-flavoured (with real fruit!) throat sweet followed quite rapidly by another you know you're in trouble. It's just the sort of day for getting warmly wrapped up and fiddling in the garden, sun strong and warm, wind nippy but bearable. Instead I'm locked indoors trying but mostly failing to amuse myself. A friend warned me against watching daytime TV as a distraction - "It's all incontinence pads and Stena stairlifts" - but I'm never tempted, although yesterday I did watch a recording of Mrs Miniver for the umpteenth time to help while away a few hours, and sniffled quite contentedly into an already very damp hanky. All those American accents doing a Dick van Dyke: "Awroight Mairy Popp'ins?". Truly terrible, but even British Greer Garson sounded transatlantic. And there's always a cute but shrill very un-English child like Shirley Temple overacting horrible: "Oh Mormmmy, do I gotta?".

Earlier I realised that I'd read all my Christmas books and couldn't find anything appealing enough on my shelves. So I took advice and ordered a load of treats off Amazon. The bill came to just under £50 for six secondhand editions, and there ensued the usual conversation with my built-in persecutor. "That's a bit extravagant isn't it?". "So what, why else do I have money except to spend it sometimes, ideally on myself?". "Wouldn't just one or two have sufficed?". "I've wanted all those books for ages - some people would have bought them new". "If you can live with yourself ...". "Oh, just f... off why don't you!". It's all quite amiable but weirdly predictable, provoked by an illogical sense of guilt. It never stops me anyway.

I've been watching a large wood pigeon sitting on a thinnish branch on the ash tree opposite. The wind is blowing quite strongly now, and the branch is swaying madly, but the pigeon is just going with it, balancing and rebalancing, it's body perfectly toned and muscled from a lifetime of bird pilates. I wish I had a sound core like that. I might try joining it up the tree when I'm better, and let the wind force those unwilling pelvic floor exercises out of me. Cheaper than going to a class.     

Apocalypse Now

Having a west-facing kitchen with massive windows means you get to see the sun set in spectacular full-frontal format, but it has its down side. Today I've confined myself to the kitchen sofa where I'm nursing a stinking head cold, and the Rayburn is blasting out the sort of comforting heat you need when you're feeling sorry for yourself. Between lethargic bouts of learning Italian verbs and reading the paper online I've watched the day unfurl around me. To the left of me the sun had already crept into the room when I raised the blinds early this morning, and it gradually moved along to the next window, just low enough to reach me as I lolled on my day bed. I became aware of the wind increasing, but suddenly it smashed into the big window at full blast, bringing a blizzard that hit the glass with ferocious force. For a few minutes the whole house rattled, and I feared the window would shatter under the onslaught. At times like that I feel vulnerable and unprotected, dreading the consequences of eight double-glazed panels measuring a total of 12 by 8 feet crashing into the room.

Snow lingers on the upper panes

Messy "sick person" kitchen

Alas, the prevailing wind is south-westerly, and this is the point where it regularly attacks. Snow quickly piled up outside the glass, menacing me with its awful power as the sky blackened. Non-primitive though I am I feared the wrath of the gods and the awful punishment they could exact. And then suddenly it was over, the wind had subsided and the sun was out again. Did I imagine it? Well, no, the snow still lies on the ground outside and sits on the window the sun hasn't yet warmed. But the sky is clear and blue again, the leaves on the evergreens softly murmuring in the light breeze. Weather! So unpredictable.