Solitaire

I've been living alone for two and a half years now, two of them in this house, and I walk alone a lot. It's not surprising, then, that I've had plenty of time to think, and those thoughts are often about The Meaning of Life. I went out this afternoon when I saw that it had stopped raining, and as usual I was uplifted by the very fact of being outdoors. The wind had dropped and it was mild enough that I quickly realised a thick sweater and a jacket were too much. For once my care-in-the-community hat dangled from a finger. I strode off down the hill looking around at the fields for hares, listening to the birdsong, and musing to myself about how contented I was, and that thought pulled me up short. So what is contentment then, I pondered. What is happiness? I suppose they are diffferent things for different people, but I wonder if we don't expect too much, that sometimes what we have is enough. I've just spent the whole weekend including Friday alone apart from a few hours at Snape, though I have spoken to people on the phone. There was a time not long ago when I would have found this prospect completely unbearable. But it wasn't at all. Living with someone can be comforting if not always totally pleasurable, and it's the comfort that is missed. The companionship. I think I'm a naturally solitary person as long as I have enough social interaction. Loneliness seems normal to me. It's what we feel when we want company, especially when we've been used to it. The trick is not to allow it to get the better of you, keep it to a minimum. Living alone is sad. It's not what's meant to happen. But if it does happen there are all sorts of compensations which have to be acknowledged and appreciated. You can do what you want when you want. There's no one to argue with. And if gets too much you can always rescue a dog.

Vincent

I was struck right between the eyes by the sky when I came back from a concert tonight. It wasn't even especially dark, but every star in the galaxy was showing itself in spectacular fashion. I've seen on television places in the world where the stars are ultra clear, and I long to see them for myself. But tonight's display would be hard to beat. I had just read a description of the sky over the cities of China, the pollution making it impossible to see the sun. Heavy grey dullness hovers overhead obliterating any trace of blue. The air is thick and poisonous, a continual threat to health. How can they bear it, the people who have to live there? Is there anything more unnatural than being denied access to the sun's light? I bleed for them, truly I do. There is no pollution in Suffolk, or very little. Shrubs, plants and trees are covered in lichen, the very epitome of clear, clean air. Lucky we are.

I now have clean windows inside and out. True to my word, and wanting to benefit immediately from the window cleaner's efforts, I set to work all around the house. In the end it was easy, begging the question of why it took me so long. Water and some e-cloths, that's all it needed. We had a cleaner once who, before she started working for us, gave us a list of products to buy. This list made me very uneasy, and every week when she left the house the cocktail of chemicals she used stung my eyes for hours, made me cough and sneeze. You don't need any of them, apart from a dash of bleach when the loo gets a bit stained. Vinegar and soda crystals make short shrift of anything that hot water and elbow grease alone won't shift. My cupboards are chemical free.

I've always given Salman Rushdie a wide berth, but I've succumbed to his book called "Shame". His style is flowery and pompous, his reliance on multi-syllabic words the sort of thing a spell on a creative writing course would eradicate. But there's a charm, a freshness and a confidence about his writing that has me under its spell. I've always mildly regretted not having read Midnight's Children when everyone was talking about it, but I suspect it'll be next on my bedside table. Funny how your prejudices can turn out to be baseless.

Always Something

Tony came to fit a door between my new study and the utility room. I was telling him about the window cleaner who washed all of the windows, sills and soffits a year ago for a very modest amount of money, and how I need him again now, and who should pull into the drive but him! He set to work straight away, and even came into the kitchen to do the insides of the tall picture windows. When the afternoon and evening sun shines through these it is a truly horrible sight. How embarrassing it was to watch him use a scraper to get the worst of the dirt off. These marks are mainly the deposits left by the insects that congregate all over the glass, and hopefully having my flyscreen fitted before next summer will eliminate the worst of their presence. I'm going to be less cheapskate in future and have them done more often: he's coming back in July. Anyway, the windows are clean and there is a door in place now which makes a big difference to that room; it feels more complete. I'm not really sure why there wasn't one there before.

And the view from the loo

For two days a couple of men erected giant scaffolding around Sarah's two chimneys, and now the builders are back again. It's a beautiful old house, part 18th century, part Victorian, and was clearly in need of a great deal of attention when she bought it just a few months before I moved in here. By the time she's finished it will have had a thorough overhaul. It's a wonderful thing to preserve an old house, but I'm just glad that someone else did mine before I bought it. I haven't finished tweaking it yet though. New work surfaces and sinks are next on the agenda. There's always something.

Poor old house

Coming Clean

I drove to Saxmundham this evening to see my physio, and had a slight sugar episode on the way. It's a sort of a wobble because I hadn't eaten enough during the day. How wonderful then to remember that Olivia had made me up a couple of little emergency bags which she stored in the glove compartment. After a handful of nuts and fruit I was good to go again. I found Jon when first we moved to Suffolk over seven years ago by one of those amazingly lucky chances. After years and years of crouching over first a typewriter and then a computer, holding in stress and tension, my shoulders were solid and unmoving, my back permanently ached and my neck was stiff. Jon came to the house twice a week for six months before easing down to once a week for the next few years. Slowly, very slowly he lifted my scapulas out of their atrophied prison, he freed up my back, he returned me to full movement again. He never gave up the belief that he could do this even though I often despaired. And through all those lengthy sessions we gossipped and laughed and put the world to rights. I still see him from time to time for a tweak and a massage. He's one of the very best people I know.

Caroline finally managed to get her story of the family's first trip to Poland to me from frozen Iowa. Her husband cycled away from his homeland aged 16 after his family disappeared, and now many decades later he was returning with Caroline and their three small children. Caroline kept a very detailed diary of the month-long trip, in 1962, and she's turned it into a fascinating account. I'm going to persuade her to begin at the very beginning and recount her own strange childhood as the daughter of Edwardian bohemian intellectuals, and success as an international fencing champion like her mother. People like this are so interesting, especially when you get them to talk about themselves. I might make it the work of my last 30 years to get them all writing down their lives. Goodness knows I'm surrounded by them.

Distracted

I was telling the boss about my impending visit to the Norman house at Hemingford Grey, star of the Green Knowe books, and mentioned its extreme hauntings. And of course that developed into a ghost conversation. I had the usual hearsay (seesay?) contributions to make, friends who swore they'd experienced supernatural events and visitors, but she topped them with ease. There's a road between Snape and Woodbridge that passes through Rendlesham Forest where Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General during the Civil War, is often seen swathed in an expansive cloak astride a huge horse. This man was evil incarnate in his day, and in one two-year period he was responsible for the deaths of 300 Suffolk women accused by him of being witches. He was buried just over the River Stour in Essex but doesn't rest easily in his grave apparently. Anyway, on one stretch of this road, by day or night but far more frighteningly in the dark, Nick has experienced an atmosphere so dreadful, so unbearable that she often has to stop in the next town to recover. She is no lily-livered faint-hearted fluffy dame, that she's not. Once she caught a glimpse of something to the side of her car and, turning to look against her will, saw a ghastly figure looming against the window following her closely as she drove at crazy speed to get away. Intrigued, I said I'd love to see something like this but No! she said sharply, it is not pleasant. Nevertheless she's agreed to drive me along the road one evening so that I can see what happens. I suspect she's particularly sensitive to these things.

Despite these distractions I managed to see a client and speak to several on the phone. But maybe because of them I discovered I'd shredded one set of details without recording them on the system. I sweated, I looked inside the shredder when the coast was clear, to no avail. I tried 1471 to get her number, but this didn't work. Slowly I remembered who she was, where she lived, what her issue was. The only missing detail in the end was her phone number which we didn't need in this case. Phew. Panic over. In future I'll steer away from the shredder until I've double checked everything. You can't be too careful, especially with a "familiar" for a manager.

Blinded By the Light

A mad medley of gunfire has been ricocheting around me on and off all afternoon, quite impossible to ignore. I don't think I'd like to be in a war zone. There must be feathered carcasses everywhere. Horrible. Earlier I admired a beautiful, proud pair of pointers being lead down the lane by a strange group of men who I didn't recognise immediately as shooters. Too late I waved gaily. I take it back. I unwave. I was on my way to yoga where my legs did things they were not designed to do, and my inner thighs now feel as if they've been spatchcocked. It was too nice to get straight into a hot bath then, though my limbs and joints might regret that later, and so I got back into normal clothes, ie grdening clothes, and went outside. My first job was to take the tall, heavy leaves off the hellebores to let the flowers come into the light and blossom. It was a slow job but satisfying. I have a lot of hellebores. On ventures like this the trick is to focus on one job, one area, and clear just this space. I worked until well after one when my stomach told me it must be lunchtime, and at that point I could just about stand again. How lovely to sink down onto the sofa with my lunch and the crossword, and to follow that with two champagne truffles which the Co-op have marked down this week from £6-something to £1.25. I was so shocked when I saw the price that I checked with a passing assistant. They are completely delicious, the ultimate chocolate. I toyed with the idea of bulk buying, but I knew where the bulk would end up if I did.

Olivia and I are going to visit the Manor House at Hemingford Abbot in a few weeks, the setting for the Green Knowe stories. I have finished reading the author Lucy Boston's account of buying and restoring this Norman house - 12th century for goodness sake! - , and was amazed to find that during all the long decades when she lived there she would show anyone who wanted to see it around the house. People just strolled up from the river through her gardens and she would drop what she was doing and take them on the tour. After she died her son Peter and his wife Diana moved there, and to this day Diana keeps up this tradition of uber hospitality. I didn't quite believe this when I wrote to ask if we could come, but sure enough I received the most gracious response welcoming us at our convenience, looking forward to meeting us. It's a rare and amazing quality, grace. The dictionary tries to define it, thus: courteousness, politeness, manners, civility, decency, breeding, respectfulness, consideration, thoughtfulness, but I think its essence is much more subtle than any of these. It's a total lack of selfishness, a desire to please without a hint of effusiveness. It's kindness, a touch of noblesse oblige. Perhaps courteousness is the closest synonym, an old-fashioned word and an attitude that has had it day. I'm thrilled to be going, and to meeting Diana. Maybe some of her charm will rub off on me.

I took a few pictures of things in flower in the garden this morning. It's quite a big display. As I uploaded them onto this blog I watched the sky through my huge picture window turn to every shade of tangerine, then pink, then red, then puce, then purple, moving with not undue but some haste from sinister to dexter, south to north. My breath is taken. I am spectacularised.

Graham Thomas rose, way past its season

Shy white hellebore

Stray aster

Whaduyacallums

Vinca, periwinkle

Pink hellebores

chimonanthus praecox, or wintersweet

Solitary violet with snowdrops

Kerria japonica

Panies

 

Primroses

Stoopid

You really couldn't make it up. My replacement pump arrived and so I set about fitting the plug from the old one. This done, I popped it in the pond, switched on, waited for the water to surge out, nothing. I checked the extension cable was working: affirmative. So I took the pond back into the house, changed the fuse, and tried again, this time in the kitchen sink. Nada. Maybe the new fuse was also kaput I thought, so I tried a brand new one. Still nothing. Furiously cursing the company for sending me two useless pumps, I happened to glance inside the open old plug. The wiring was different. I had only wired up the new plug wrongly. Now I have to say this was a scary moment, by no means unique. How could I have forgotten that the yellow/green one is not live but earth? And that the brown one that is the colour of earth is in fact live? When I finally rearranged the wiring and switched the pump back on a huge jet of water erupted from the sink all over everything, me included. That should learn me. I was reminded of when Kitty was a young teenager, and had a television in her bedroom. Every night while she was in the bathroom I took the fuse out of the plug so that she wouldn't stay awake watching unsuitable programmes, and she never cottoned on. I should think she could teach me a thing or two about DIY nowadays.

It was a beautiful day, warm, sunny and springlike. As I fell asleep last night I planned what I would do today, and it included hoovering the house and cleaning the kitchen floor, plus much Italian study. But how can you cock a snook at a day like that? I went out with the properly wired pump, and immediately got so distracted that the pond was half empty when I looked again. Luckily for me the pump was still submerged or it would have really been kaput. Quite quickly I had filled the wheelbarrow with dead and unwanted detritus from the front garden, tufts of sprouting grass coming up from the wet ground with only the slightest tug, and the tall, floppy leaves of the red hot pokers surrendering to the secateurs. I worked on until my gluteal muscles threatened to seize up. It looks a lot clearer now. With so much new life sprouting in the garden there's a danger of thinking the worst of the winter is over, but I think there's much more to come. But we're nearly at the end of January, serious progress. I can remember one year, a long time ago, thinking I simply could not endure another January with its short dark days and depressing gloom. But so far this one has been a doddle.

Bridging the Gap

I wasn't due at Judy and David's for lunch until, well lunchtime, but as often happens when I'm going somewhere later I got nothing done. I did a bit of this, a bit of that, sharpened pencils, that sort of thing, and then suddenly it was past time to go and I arrived later than planned. They had already rung me to see if I had forgotten. It was lovely to catch up, though terribly sad to hear that Angela had died. Angela lived in the lodge at the end of their drive, and was a real character. She was never afraid to speak her mind, and in response to our old neighbours planting a cotoneaster hedge hissed at them, "This is not Surrey you know!" She was a horticulturalist, award winning as it turns out, and in retirement lived for her own garden. At her funeral they played the theme from Desert Island Discs as the coffin went in, and the Archers going out. I used to collect the Observer for her every Sunday, and once after she'd told me how much she loved Mars bars I bought her one and popped it through the letterbox as a surprise. But she was furious. "Someone THREW a Mars bar into my hall," she told me the following weekend. "So rude." I admitted it was me, a little treat, but she was already so cross that she just glared at me and didn't thank me until the following Sunday, with a sheepish grin. They definitely broke that mould.

David's youngest son Chris, full of unaffected charm and devilish good looks, is staying with them while he works to make his fortune dealing in Bit coins, so lunch was an even more entertaining occasion than usual. Afterwards the four of us played bridge until tea time. Judy and David hardly play bridge at all now since we moved away, and they thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon. I promised I'd have them over for lunch as soon as one or other daughter is staying with me, and that pleased them. But in another month Caroline will be returning from wintering with her son, farmer Jan, in Iowa, and our happy foursome will resume. Caroline has been emailing me to update me on the family history she is writing, which she wants me to edit. I've been encouraging her for years to write her story, and she's been doing it all winter. It begins with filling the back of a Transit van with old mattresses and piling the three tiny children in on top of them as they drove overland to Communist Poland. Her husband was a Polish aristocrat expat who hadn't been home since joining the RAF early in the war. Caroline's stories are wonderful, and I'm looking forward to reading this account.

I'd left the heating on, expecting to be gone only a few hours, and it was good to come in out of the bleak and rainy evening to a cosy house. In two days I'll have been here two years. It's hard now to remember feeling so at home anywhere else.

Close Cut

I was woken by a loud noise outside this morning, and having seen how frosty it was in the night when I went to the loo I guessed someone was gritting the road or something. What a delight then, when I flung open the curtains, to see that the farmer had done as he had promised, grabbed the first really freezing morning to negotiate the soggy field and come along with his heavy vehicle to cut my hedge! It looks great, the long growth of last summer trimmed to a smooth surface. When you watch these guys work it is fascinating to see how meticulously they manage to finish the edges.

View from the loo

Same view on zoom

Frosty garden, newly trimmed hedge

Hedge from the lane

It was very fitting that I too went off for a trim and a spot of anti-grey action. Anna and I have got the colouring down to a fine art now. As usual we enjoyed a good catch up, but nothing could have amazed me more than to hear that she has pretty well given up smoking, saving herself over £400 a month. I gasped when she told me that she has been spending this sum for years. If the 'Give Up Fags' lobby ever needed a poster girl she would be it, gorgeous creature that she is. When I left her I had to speed home and grab my Italian books for an afternoon of conversation with Ruth and Lesley. It was one of those days when a lot had to be accomplished, so it was a miracle that Ruth and I managed to be fed and in Aldeburgh in time for The Danish Girl. I must admit I didn't know what to expect having heard conflicting accounts of the film. I find Eddie Redmayne really off-putting with those dreadful lips that probably have an Equity card of their own by now. They have no definition, no colour, and appear to be a Botox disaster. But the man can act, and his portrayal of Lily in the male body of painter Einar Wegener was exceptional, heartrending. It was a beautiful story of love and the unquenchable desire to be oneself, and being based on Lily's diaries was a true account of courage.

The moon was very bright when I turned in past my smart new hedge tonight, and the temperature had changed dramatically from minus 4 when I went out this morning to plus 6. I lingered in the garden for several minutes enjoying the silence and the smell of, what, freshness, cleanness. But I needed a cup of tea and a pee so I had to quit mooning and get inside.

Blood Will Flow

I was blooded today, which is to say I saw my first client alone. I thought it was a trick, as I only dropped into the office for a few hours to have my training progress checked, and ten minutes before the doors opened the boss asked me if I would see some people. She thrust a pad and pen into my hand, and practically pushed me towards the door. I must have looked alarmed, and then laughed as I saw the rest of the office turn towards me in their chairs to grin at me. "You're joking," I told Nick, but she wasn't, and so it came to pass. It was fine, two lovely people needing a bit of help. When I came back in everyone was happy for me. "It's much better done like that, when you're not expecting it. Then you don't have time to worry and get nervous," they said. Amen to that.

Back home again I put on my "care-in-the-community" hat with the ear flaps and took off down the lane. The sun didn't actually come out until I got home, but it was bright and windless though very cold. I speed walked the whole way until I met Mike and Alfie coming back. Alfie is going under the knife tomorrow to have a lump removed from his leg. At 9 he is sprightly and active, and Mike told me it didn't matter what it cost as long as they put him right. I thought I saw a little tear escape from his eye, but he said he was having awful trouble with this cold air. In the distance I could hear a volley of gunfire, the last few days of the shooting season putting some urgency into the desire of a lot of men - nearly always men - in green to massacre flock after flock of pheasants. I wonder how many they will actually eat. There's something not quite so terrible about killing for your own table.

In Waitrose this morning where I stop every week on my way to CAB to buy a sandwich for my lunch and collect a free cup of coffee, I was told by the cashier that in the near future I would have to spend at least £5 in order to qualify for this perk. Really Waitrose. First you offered free coffee in the cafe for every MyWaitrose card holder regardless of whether or not they are regular shoppers, the news quickly got around, and every near 'down and out' in Saxmundham and environs quickly acquired a card and used the place as their sitting room. When that practice was stopped these people all vanished, the free-from-a-machine coffee for card holders seeming to be less popular. But this latest outrage? I spend thousands of pounds a year in Waitrose and have only recently started having one free coffee a week. If they want to keep their valued customer base happy, why do they not just check your spending status via your card to establish who should qualify and who not? Anyone could have told them their original scheme would be exploited. Is there nobody with an ounce of common sense in head office?

Sweet Winter

I passed a field full of fieldfares feeding on a fallowfield as I drove to the Woodland Trust for a walk this morning. Whenever you see a flock of fieldfares they are facing the same way albeit spread out, and the sun catching their light feathers made it seem like a field of sparkling quartz. I parked in the frozen parking area, and looked at the hard, icy ground with some alarm. Did I really want to risk slipping, maybe breaking something? As I stumbled hesitantly across frozen tussocks of long grass towards the track I noticed the only other car, that of my 80-year-old neighbour who regularly walks fat little Alfie there (no, not her husband), and I thought, well if she can do it I can do it. It was worth it, though not easy walking. At one point I was spotted by a young black labrador and it charged at me from a long way off, full pelt towards me. Had it been a Rottweiler or a Dobermann I think I'd have fallen in a dead faint, but even so it wasn't pleasant. Twice this dog flew at me, both times frolicking and leaping around me though not actually jumping on me, and when its owners came by and wished me a jolly Good Morning! I gave them a black scowl. Why do dog owners always assume everyone will love their pet as they do?

Back home I took the papers and my coffee into the summerhouse which was toasty and bright. In the garden I could see the periwinkle blue flowers of the two spreading vinca plants, a few yellow blossoms on the keria japonica (bachelor's buttons), some intrepid pink roses, and the pinky white flowers on the winter-flowering viburnum. In the front garden the wintersweet is in full bloom, its deeply scented flowers showing a thumbed nose to the weather. The ground is hard and I stayed off the grass with difficulty. I think another path, this time across the lawn, may be on the 'to do' list for spring.

On a completely different note I have been blown away, overwhelmed, by the work of the artist Alfred Munnings www.worldgallery.co.uk/artists/sir-alfred-munnings? 
I watched a film about his time in Cornwall in the early part of the 20th century, and checked to see what his paintings were like. God, they're incredible, mostly of horses with or without riders, and so vivid, so stylised, so utterly beautiful that my breath was taken away. And the body of his work is so vast. That is my new resolution: to see some of them in the flesh this year.

All At Sea

As I sat on the loo this morning gazing out of the picture window over the greensward spreading into the distance, a huge clamour of rooks swept past not 50 feet away. What a sight it was! I had to look up the collective noun for rooks, and I'm fairly sure this was not a murder of crows. I often linger on the loo because the view is so good, and there is nobody to see me. The blind almost never gets closed at night, and even with the light on in the bathroom I never feel as if I'm being watched. The very first time I saw inside the house, with Kitty to distract the owners while I looked around freely, she said she would spend all her time on the bathroom windowsill in a blissful state. It's a great place to look out from, with the window just two feet above the floor level. I've always hated bathrooms with opaque glass unless they're seriously overlooked. What's the problem?

It was such a gorgeous day that I decided to take a walk by the sea in the morning in case the weather changed. Everywhere was frosty and white, the grass sticking up in petrified clumps and the pond frozen and hoary. I wrapped up well and chose Sizewell beach for my stomp. But I had forgotten that I was wearing a long-sleeved thermal undershirt. With the sun blazing down and no wind, within half an hour I was steaming. Off came the hat, the scarf and the gloves, but still I sweltered. Silly me, I should have remembered to remove the wretched thing. Still, it was lovely walking along the waterline, the hard sand mostly revealed but disappearing every now and again as the tide rushed in and surprised me. It's easy to feel young and skittish at the seaside. I found a concrete block and sat for a long time gazing out to sea, and was rewarded by the sight of a seal swimming along towards Southwold just 50 or so feet out from the shore. It was going slightly against the tide, but every time it disappeared to swim underwater it emerged several yards further along, so it made good headway. I felt ridiculously pleased to have seen it.

Back home I finished my painting of windowsills, and settled down with my CAB file for some serious revision. I'm going on THE course in Norwich on Monday, and after that I'll be seeing clients on my own. Now that is scary!

Heavy Weather

I drove back from Yoxford in a wild blizzard last night, fat flakes of snow swirling around the headlights and completely disorientating me. It was a shock, this sudden descent into winter. It had been forecast for the NE but not Suffolk. The wind was blowing furiously from the north, and as I often do under these conditions, snug and relatively safe in the warm car, I wondered what it would be like to walk home across frozen fields, a farm labourer already soaked to the skin, being battered by the wind and pelted by snow. I shuddered at the image. Back home I wasted no time in lighting the woodburner, my beacon in the long, dark days, but I was out of kindling and made a dog's dinner of getting a blaze going with bigger pieces of wood. All night the wind battered the house, and with just a splinter of a moon it was very black. How lovely then to wake up to a sunny morning.

On Gardener's Question Time they recommended spending the day outside doing all those 101 jobs that could be seen to before spring. But had they felt how cold it was? I did get out, a shopping trip to Ipswich for B&Q type things, and a stop off in Woodbridge to deposit a cheque. I tried to buy some chocolate cake but reasoned myself away from temptation. How I wish I hadn't listened. But I did buy some creme fraiche, half fat, to go on an apple crumble I'll make for pudding tonight, so all is not lost. But as I walked down the Thoroughfare I heard the sound of a tenor recorder, sweet and clear music rising above the hats and scarves that swaddled all the passers by. I lingered, listening in awe to the sound I've tried and failed to make on mine. At last I approached the elderly player and flicked £1 into his box. "What a beautiful sound you're making," I said. "It's really lovely." He stopped playing and grinned at me showing a few brown teeth in his gums. "If my hands weren't so cold I would be better," he said. "I need a hair dryer or something to warm me up." "You'd get chilblains then," I said, and we laughed, and I thanked him for the music. I wonder who he was. I hope he has somewhere warm and cosy to curl up in when his hands get too cold to play and the sun does its daily disappearing act. And somewhere to store that recorder.

Killing Time

Two hares the size of spaniels frolicked in the field for a long time yesterday while the sun shone down on them and turned their coats to bright auburn. Surely they don't think it's spring? I hope they aren't mating already and will produce babies in the snow. I had such a strange day. Helen and I played bridge after a long gap, and were so bad I wasn't surprised to find that we had come last in  our section. That's a first. A first last. I was meeting Ruth later to see He Named Me Malala, and decided to go straight to Aldeburgh and kill time until the evening, so headed to the good old Wentworth Hotel for tea. Wouldn't it be funny if it was closed, I teased myself, and laughed. But 'Closed for Refurbishment', the sign outside said, which I didn't see it and had spread myself all over my favourite comfy sofa before someone spotted me. On to the White Lion Hotel then, not quite so luxurious but fine. I found another sofa and went to order tea which I didn't really want, but the receptionist was on the phone and in the end I just made myself at home, free. I tried to concentrate on the crossword, but couldn't ignore the arriving couples being checked in for their mid-week breaks. How happy they all sounded, pleased to be staying in this lovely old town in a hotel right by the sea. Book in for dinner? Oh yes please! Early morning call and tea? Oh yes please! Paper? Please! I recognised the sensation, being chuffed to be on holiday and eager to make it great. At last it was time for my fish and chip supper, and I ate this in the car as usual, silently gloating as as the vehicle filled with steam and passers-by did a double take at the sight of me in the dark. I was just opening my ice cream tub in the cinema foyer when Ruth arrived half an hour early, and brought some normality to the day. I probably won't do that again, especially in the winter. It was a pointless economy.

Doctored

I went to see Dr Zhivago put on by the Aldeburgh Cinema Club yesterday afternoon. It had been made 50 years earlier, and the place was heaving with those of us who had seen it when it first came out. That made me 17, though I think I was 18 when I got to it. It remains the fourth highest box office success ever. The club president told us in advance that it had been filmed in Spain, not Russia, due to the mildly adverse political situation there in the 60s. The snow was fake, the figures huddled in furs and astrakhan were actually sweltering in temperatures of high 20s. The iced lake across which the dragoon charge took place was a dried up river bed covered in cast iron sheeting and sprinkled with marble powder to look like snow; the frozen house in the country was filled with frozen beeswax made to look like icicles. And on and on, information that might have been interesting after the film but not before. However, in the end it didn't matter. The wonderful love story between Yuri and Lara wove its magic around the aging audience, and in the intermission the talk was all of how old people had been in 1965, where they had seen it, how it had affected them. I remembered my own early response very well. I thought it was a model, a yardstick of what to hope for in terms of love, a grand passion that would sweep both parties off their feet and keep them locked in bliss for a lifetime, or at least until the revolution was over. It's over now.

When I got home I continued the cook-in that I'd started in the morning. Three boards contained a variety of chopped vegetables, and I'd already softened the onions. Thereafter it was easy to knock up a delicious cashew paella for my supper and at least another three, and a vegetable lasagne that will probably make four or five meals. Fish in cheese sauce will go into the freezer today, and I won't have to cook again for a couple of weeks, unless I fancy a simple roasted salmon cutlet with potatoes and greens to break up the routine. After I'd eaten, the kitchen was so cosy that I decided to spend the rest of the evening in there with my book and not bother lighting the wood-burner. I had an early night too, to be up bright and early for my first yoga class today. I feel better already, everything stretched out and eased. You can't put things off when you get to a certain age.You use it or lose it. As Barry Cryer said in I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue yesterday, " I'm so old I don't even buy green bananas anymore, just in case."

Coloured

I touched up all the marks and gashes, gouges and scratches on the walls and windowsills today, using five different tins of paint though one was covered in a thick, soft crust of mould and at first looked unusable. Quite unfazed, I scooped the gunk off with a spoon and the paint underneath was fine. But how to identify the two colours of white on the ceilings - Wimborne White or All White? Only one way to find out, and the first one I tried was not right I can see now that it has dried. I'll try the other one tomorrow. But the windowsills have all come up fresh and clean, and the hole in the wall where the mirror fell off has been repaired, repainted in Joah's White, and the mirror rehung on a stouter hook. Of course, no sooner had I put the tins away and washed the brushes than I found all the other places that could do with a small tarting up. But why oh why do Farrow and Ball use the word "white" so recklessly? Do they not know that white is an uncolour, a not colour  (though Edmund de Waal would take issue with this)? Putty, earth, grey, cream and fudge are NOT white.

After lunch and the speediest dispatch of the Times crossword - usually a devil on a Saturday but not today - I filled the big bag with logs for tonight's fire, and donned suitable clothing for a walk. Horrible weather was forecast - a briefish band of heavy rain and strong winds - but not until later, so I went on my favourite road stomp at a brisk pace up and down the hill. I took the precaution of adding the hood to my jacket although it was dry and not cold, but at the farthest extent of the walk, a full mile from the house and facing into the weather, all hell was let loose. It soaked my face and glasses, but otherwise I was so snug, so well wrapped up and warm, that I welcomed it. Walking back through a gauntlet, or guard of honour as I preferred to think of it, of swaying ancient oak trees each threatening to topple me with its wayward overhanging branches, was a bit nerve-wracking. But I thought I'd hear the splintering of wood and have time to run if anything started to fall. Nothing untoward happened, and I spent the rest of the afternoon happily doing Italian exercises in my warm kitchen. Era tutto piuttosto deliziosa, devo dire.

Manãna

It was one of those days when everything went wrong except the weather, and for once the bright sunshine after a frosty night wasn't enough to tip the balance. I went off into town after a busy, pleasant morning to do some hardware shopping, and I seemed to get what I needed. Short, stubby screwdriver for getting into tight spaces - tick; radiator key - tick; strong picture hook for wayward mirror - tick; vent hose adaptor for tumble drier - apparently tick. But no, that last one was a cross. The man in the shop assured me it was what I wanted, but bleeding knuckles and slightly damaged hose later I knew I shouldn't have believed him. Annoyingly, not only does the adaptor not adapt but the 3 metre hose I thought would suffice isn't long enough to go out of the window. Well, it is, but there's not a lot of give. I identified the extra piece I need on the internet and have ordered it. So not a disaster, but irritating.

After that I pottered about in the garden, putting another couple of slabs in position with the others, and generally checking and looking at stuff. It's one of the things I do best, looking. The level in the pond was high again so I thought I'd just quickly pump some out. It didn't work. I tried everything, including putting the pump in a bucket of water to see if it was moving any water, and it wasn't. I only bought it at the beginning of December and have used it three times. But I can't remember where I bought it from. I found it on the internet but actually ordered it by phone. There must be a way to trace it but I'm too annoyed to do it now.

I had planned to do a little painting, touching up the walls and woodwork that got marked over Christmas, the worst offender being me swatting a fly with a brightly-coloured magazine that rubbed off on the wall. I identified all the different Farrow & Ball paints that I needed, there being no fewer than four, but I've gone a bit cool on that job now. It'll keep. There's always manãna.

Lakeland

Cats and dogs hammered from the sky all last night and all morning, and the consequence of this further violent outpouring of rain even in the driest place in the country, East Anglia, is to be seen all around. Not up here where I live, but driving down into Yoxford today I had to plough through lake after lake, the water nearly coming into the car and my brakes useless until I stopped each time and pumped on the pedal. These sights are depressing enough, but how much worse it must be where the water invades people's homes. "Much worse" is an understatement: devastating and catastrophic are more to the point. Bleating about not being able to do much in the garden when the skies clear and the sun comes out because the ground is sodden feels shameful. So I won't. Bleat.

Once the sky lightened it stayed encouragingly bright until nearly five, and I was able to see my way clearly into the woodshed to get another pile of logs when I returned home. Tonight was going to be my last two episodes of The Bridge III, and I needed to set the scene properly - cosy woodburner, lowish lighting, supper eaten so that I could concentrate on the subtitles. Goodness it was affecting, this series, my first viewing of the amazing Saga and her kindly sidekick Henrik. I was so bowled over by the performance of Sofia Helin that I found intereviews of her talking on YouTube, and I have to say I would never have recognised her. She has teeth! She has a beautiful smile! How she stays in character as the detective with Aspergers is beyond me. It's all over now. I had thought to get the boxed sets of I and II, but I don't think I have the emotional reserves to go through it all again. Wouldn't have missed this last series though.

On the way home I dropped 22 bottles off at the bottle bank, not all of them wine. But what a responsibility it is, especially but not exclusively in the dusk when it's hard to identify the colours of the bottles. Might I have ruined whole containers by dropping the wrong colour in, brown looking so like green in that dimming light? I hesitated before each deposit, agonising again and again until I saw the mixed glass container. Thank goodness for such a sensible option. Why aren't they all mixed?

Peachy

I was disappointed when Helen rang to say she couldn't play bridge as she is ill, but my feelings turned to joy and relief when I saw what sort of day it was going to be. Warm, sunny and windless, it was another spring day in early January. How much better to spend it outdoors than cooped up with a load of biddies spreading flu germs on the playing cards. I don't mean Helen here. She is not a biddy. She is a full ten years younger than me.

I had bought half a dozen paving slabs yesterday, and I was able to heave them out of the boot and walk them around to the passage between the garage and the oil tank. At the moment there is just shingle there, but it sticks to my muddy boots every time I walk through on my way to and from the compost heaps, so this will be a better solution. I laid four, but they were heavy and I'm trying to keep off the wet grass so I stopped there for today. It already looks very nice. The water butts were all very full so I attached hoses to them in turn and drained them into the field. I must get some more hose. What next? Oh yes, I cut back all the dead geraniums and crocosmia and took the rotten foliage away. I'm positively itching to weed the beds and rake them smooth, but it's all much too wet. It'll keep. After a while I started to ache a bit so I went down the garden and sat on my new bench gazing across the landscape. It truly was a peach of a day, so warm I had no jacket on. After a while I had to get moving again, so I set off on a good long walk still without my jacket. There was nobody around, nothing moved, silence was everywhere. Such bliss. And a dose of vitamin D to boot.

When I came home it was time for refreshments, so I cut myself a piece of rapidly dwindling Christmas cake to have with my tea. I told a woman at CAB yesterday how I am ekeing it out to make it last. "There is no such thing as a sliver of Christmas cake," she announced firmly. Earlier she had admired the report I wrote of a meeting we had jointly held with a client. "Your writing is beautiful," she said. "Very elegant, very prettily phrased." I grinned at her, amused, and she asked, "What job did you used to do?" I told her I had been a journalist, and she looked at me nonplussed, and then we both burst out laughing. Suddenly it just seemed funny. I read the report again and it was nothing special. Ah well.

The sun has gone down now but the sky is still pale blue and clear. It's just after 4pm but still nothing is moving outside. The school bus must have gone by, and soon the odd worker will pass on their way home. It suits me so well, this calm. In truth I love being alone with my thoughts and my occupations on days like this. If only it could always be thus.

Lighting Up

I knew I had another box of matches when I laid the fire and set about lighting it. The box on the hearth was empty, the last spill used the night before, but where was the spare, a pack full of long cook's matches? I searched everywhere, even in the fridge, but whoever had used them last, lighting candles for the Christmas table probably, had secreted them carefully away. The trouble is that I have no other means in this house of making fire. You don't get red heat in a Rayburn, and my induction hotplate isn't capable of making a flame either. I stomped around feeling increasingly cross, and decided there was nothing for it but to go out into the dark night and drive into Fram. Boots on, coat on, gloves on, I looked around the kitchen one last time and my eyes fell on the toaster. Hah! That would do the trick!

Think again. I used paper spill after paper spill - I counted seven when I finally cleared the mess away, and though they smouldered they wouldn't catch light. Once I was successful, and I rushed into the sitting room to get the fire going, but it went out before I got there. I don't like unhappy endings, and nothing was going to send me out when I had a working toaster. I finally managed it, triumphant at last. Having a fire in the woodburner is more than a treat on a winter's evening, it's a necessity, not only for the heat it gives out but for the lovely warm glow it generates. Earlier in the day I had hauled in a huge pile of logs in my new bag resting on the wheelbarrow. I never get tired of doing this however heavy the load as the payoff is so great. And I'm watching The Bridge in catch-up mode, four episodes down, six to go. It's the first time I've seen it and I'm hooked. Saga: has she ever got a tale to tell.

Cats and Kings

Unlike Bear Grylls, I wasn't prepared for my adventure. It was a lovely calm morning, and so I decided to repeat yesterday's feat minus the gales and go for a cycle ride. I headed off down Bannocks Lane, barely having to peddle for the first half mile, then up the hill and down again steeply into the Alde Valley. The lane was very wet and muddy, strewn with debris, and I could hear the streams and ditches running and gurgling with fast water. At the bottom I stopped at Garden Cottage where last year I met the owner and we watched the river hurtle within a few feet of her back door. It was in spate again this morning but not so flooded, and as I stood there her husband Robert came out and introduced himself. We chatted about the river and the height of the water, and then I set off again along the long Low Road that, oddly enough, houses the B&B where once I was so ill. It wasn't easy cycling, what with the small potholes and fissures in the road surface, but much worse was the very low sun flickering through the bare trees and hedges and messing with my sense of perspective. A baseball cap with long peak would have been ideal. I ploughed on though, enjoying being outside and on the move, until I came to a long flooded section of the lane. Water filled the fields on either side, the trees rising spectrally out of this huge lake. What to do? I'm not a 'turning back' sort of person, so on I went on, trying to go steadily but not so fast that if I hit a hole I wouldn't be able to stay upright. The water got deeper and deeper, and I could see it stretching far ahead of me, but I was in it now and had no choice but to keep going. My feet were wet, half of my bicycle tyres were under water, and I felt mild panic rise in me. I was not in danger, though if I'd come off and hit my bare head I could easily have drowned. But that was me being fanciful again, and I laughed at such projected drama. It was scary, though, and a few times I thought the bike would stall as I pushed through mud and vegetation and stones. But at last I was out, and I stopped and looked back at my progress with admiration. But where was I only outside Sandpit Farm, home of the sickness phobe. It is a beautiful property, perhaps the nicest house and grounds I know. I regret that I was too ill to explore it when I stayed there, and now it's too late. But the summer screen is bare now, and I could clearly see what I had missed. A cat can look at a king.

Beautiful, just beautiful

The lane beside Sandpit Farm, dry here

I love this bed of pinks and blues

Pushing On

I'm very keen to keep my fitness level up, and so when I saw how calm it was outside this morning I decided to cycle into Fram for my paper and some shopping. The weather forecast showed a horrible band of rain reaching these parts by noon, with wind strengthening from the west, but I planned to be back before then. Generally it's a trip of around 45 minutes, involving as it does an almost completely downhill ride going and the opposite coming back. I set off well prepared, cagoul, hat, gloves and bottle of water fastened on the seat behind me, and almost immediately the doubts began as the wind got up and the cold hit my chest. I argued with myself almost the whole way into town: Go back! No! Turn around! No! It'll be fine. It won't! What's the worst that can happen? I'll have to walk back in a rainy gale! And on and on ....

I made it OK and got my shopping on wobbily legs. It was much windier now, so I decided to put on my spare clothes before leaving. There's a long, slightly uphill stretch between the castle and the college, sheltered by tall trees, and I tackled this with comparative ease. Then I turned up the very steep hill beside open fields and had to get off and push the bike. It wasn't just the steep incline but also the wind which was tearing across from my right and threatening to topple me off the bike. Back in the saddle at the top, sheltered again by trees, I heard the cry of a curlew and stopped to look for it. A couple of joggers approached, the pink-clad woman leading. We exchanged polite greetings, and I told her how refreshing it was to see the woman in front of the man. "But he made me take the lead," she laughed. Further on, now really battling to stay upright, I pedalled past a grey-haired woman power-walking towards me. We laughed when we saw each other, two 60-somethings out in a gale, pushing ourselves hard. "You're brave," she called as she passed me, and I felt that I was. As I turned into my lane, which follows sharp geometric angles, turning first west, then east, then west again and then south, I simply couldn't stay on board. The wind was very fierce and gusting strongly, so that while I could just about keep riding as it hit me abeam it would suddenly lash at me and make me swerve violently and dangerously.

I made it back, of course I did, and how triumphant I was as I put the bike away and entered the warm kitchen. Yesss, I hissed, and as I look out of the window the rain started. But what had happened to the wind? The trees were not moving at all now. Wind or rain. Wind and rain. The weather always gets the better of you.

Memories

The house is back to normal again now - no Christmas tree, no cards, no red berries and no Swedish candolier lights in the windows. The latter are packed away in their boxes and stored for next year, the tree is awaiting a very dry spell so it can be incinerated on a bonfire, and the rest have been binned. I've hoovered up all the needles and picked some out of my clothes. Only a couple of tupperware boxes filled with turkey breast remain in the freezer, and a dwindling chunk of Christmas cake. I've polished off the leftovers, spag bol, fish pie, buttterbean cassoulet, and am back to cooking from scratch again. That's it for another year then.

I'm reading a fascinating book that's really gripped my imagination. It's called A Woman on the Edge of Time by Jeremy Gavron, and describes his search for the mother who killed herself after taking him to a Christmas party at his nursery school when he was three. She was never mentioned again in the family, but now in his 40s he tries to find out who she was, why she took her own life, leaving him and his brother bereft. His research takes him to the people who knew her, and who each offer him something of her personality, a memory, letters, photos, diary entries, so that he can build up a picture of who she was, and crucially why she did what she did when he was three. Another book over 20 years ago had the same powerful effect on me, and that was Possession by A S Byatt. I can hardly put the Gavron book down, but I don't want it to end either. His scholarship and sharp, immediate writing are near faultless.

Thinking about memory, as both this book and my very recent discoveries about my much earlier associations with this village have provoked, I recall yet another stay not half a mile as the crow flies from my door. On one of our regular house-hunting trips we stayed at a beautiful old house in Bruisyard, run by a tyrant of a woman who I often see in Waitrose. I became very ill on this trip which began three days earlier in the west of the county, and by the time we arrived at the B&B for a four night stay I immediately took to my bed and stayed there with a handy basin beside me. I couldn't view any of the properties but had to stay behind and hear about them afterwards. The lady of the house was not happy with this arrangement, and suggested that I be taken home. She had an abhorrence of illness, especially sickness. We refused, naturally, but she remained slightly hostile until we left. Friends who know her more intimately than I do confirm that this was all perfectly in character. So now I have three positions marking my visits to this village. I really have no idea why we chose this small spot. We often stayed at other Suffolk places for long weekends away before we ever thought of moving here: Aldeburgh and Southwold for example, two beautiful towns on the coast that attract a lot of tourists because they are quite unspoilt and unchanged. But Cransford and Bruisyard? Three separate visits which I have only just connected together. Each time we returned I had no idea we'd been before. There's no dead mother. But is there a story?