It’s just been horrendous lately!

It makes me think of that Christmas carol:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone…

Everything is frozen hard as iron, including my mood - I’ve been about as friendly as a bag of weasels… 

Mind you, Christmas was lovely - none of the bloodletting that I feared from having two blended families come together for their first holiday season. I anticipated all kinds of problems - starting with decorating tree…whose ornaments would go where…but it was all very smooth and lovely. We baked mince pies and Taid made his traditional sausage stuffing, and all the kids trooped into his little house to stir the stuffing - I’ll post the recipe - truly to die for!

Taid and the gang make Taid's traditional sausage stuffing

Rich gave me a sat-nav for Christmas, which has truly changed my life. I spend most of my time either being lost or afraid I will be. The sat nav originally had a sexy female voice on it, which started to make me edgy - who IS this female in my space? So Rich altered it for me - now I have a hunky fellow with an Irish brogue named Sean, who tells me where to go in the gentlest possible way…

New Years was quiet and sweet - we built a huge fire and made paper hats and stayed up until midnight, surprising ourselves.

No, it was only afterwards that things got hard as stone. I suppose some of it was the attic…

We got this great deal where people will come out and put loads of insulation in your attic for free. Lovely, and wonderful to decrease the heating bills. The only catch was, we had to CLEAR the attic, which was stacked almost to the rafters with emotionally charged items, including a lot of things belonging to Rich’s mother Biddie, who passed away eight years ago. 

We spent an entire soul-destroying weekend clearing and carrying things out of the attic, and burning lots of them in a huge bonfire, which Rich and George,19, tended faithfully. Everyone was filthy and nearly in tears by the end, but at least it was finished - the attic guys came and went, and the insulation is in. 

Of course, we still have boxes and boxes stacked in every room, and it seems much less urgent to get rid of them than it was to get them down! So I’m tripping over things and stumbling around and swearing at my own laziness…

And we can’t sort it out this weekend because it’s time to slaughter another batch of lambs. The butcher is coming round on Friday, and we’ll be sorting, packing and labeling the bags to go into the chest freezer on Saturday. I stay away from the sheds while the actual slaughter is going on, although I was surprised last time at how little I was distressed by the cleaned carcasses hanging on hooks. And how hungrily I attacked the traditional plate of fresh fried lambs liver, which is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten! Apparently it has to be completely fresh - once the liver is even a day old, it loses its flavor. Even Benjamin, 3, scarfed down a plate that must have weighed as much as he did…

We have had some good news, though - Ceris, 18, has been conditionally accepted to university! She’s going to study child development and education, and she’ll be brilliant at it - she has fantastic empathy and feeling for children. She’s struggling through her final exams at the moment.

Elly, 17, is getting ready for her own exams, and doing the art work that she loves. She gave me a beautiful painting for Christmas, which I plan to hang in the teeny-tiny office that Rich is building for me out of an un-used bathroom around the back of the farmhouse.

Elly and Ceris

And Joli, 10, just sat the scholarship exam that we hope, will allow her to go to keep going to the eye-wateringly expensive private school that she adores. Goodness knows, we can’t afford to pay to send her, so it’s all down to her efforts now! We find out on Friday whether she got through to the next level, where she’ll face a daunting interview with the Warden of the school…

According to the radio, yesterday was the most depressing day of the year. And I believe it!

And then there are my pansies…

Back in the autumn I planted three big half-barrels of pansies, with daffodil bulbs tucked underneath. I thought for the longest time that they weren’t going to grow at all - I ordered them online, and they were just little things. And it was so cold - there wasn’t much incentive for anything to grow. 

Then they - astonishingly - produced some yellow flowers! The plants were so small, I couldn’t work out how they managed it. But their bravery impressed me, and the sight of the bright yellow against the grey stone wall cheers me up every morning at 7, as Joli, 10, and I stagger out into the freezing darkness to take her on the long drive to meet the bus that will take her to school. 

Then it froze. My pansies turned into little liquid lumps of former leaves. That was it, I decided. Nothing could survive day after day of iron-hard ice. The soil was dry and frozen and looked as inhospitable as my mood. 

Then it warmed up a little, and rained again, and can you believe it, the pansies came out and started blooming again! I stood there this morning looking at them, and marveling. So ironic, that someone who is cowardly is called a pansy…Nothing could be tougher than these little shredded golden flags, lifting against the icy wind. 

And looking down at them, I saw the shoots of daffodils, starting to push through the rock-hard soil. I was so grateful in that moment for the sign of something new, of the inevitable processes of growth and the secret, subtle life that exists in the darkness, undeterred by lashing rain and frost. 

Every year they come up…reliable miracles…hand-holds to grip as we scrabble across the bleak, wintry days…