Scum

A child's hat on a wall, knitted, patterned, Norwegian-style, blue, grey and white. Tufts of each colour on top. Long ear-flaps. It has emerged from the snow, which concealed it for days, and now looks damp and flat, far away in time from its owner, though not perhaps in distance. Many of the same people go up and down the hill each day. But maybe it belonged to a Christmas visitor, who has now returned to their home, far away from here, hatless. Or maybe they had several hats, and this one was not so special.

My coffee has a strange powdery scum on the top, which makes it look utterly unappetising, though it tastes good. I leant a long time on the grinder button, longer than usual, maybe inadvertantly reduced some of the beans to dust. I'm frustrated because it is proving hard to get a response to a request for attention to our boiler at the new house, which has stopped working... House cold, decorator not able to start til house warm, date now set for moving, stress elevated... No-one answering phone at carpet shop or pine furniture workshop. Only activity, a man coming to quote for moving our furniture.

It's bitterly cold here and pavements are treacherous with old snow, compacted and icy, though most of it melted up on the fields a day or two ago, when, briefly, it grew milder. More is apparently possible, though the forecasters are hedging their bets. This house at least is warm.

Biscuits

I shovelled snow off the car with a dustpan. Loose, powdery stuff, flying light through the air as I hurled it towards the pavement. Lots of it. My neighbour was removing snow from her car with one of those small windscreen scrapers. Her daughter came out and requested an egg - she was making biscuits - I stomped snow inside the house and brought a cool egg out in the palm of my hand, presented it to her. Noticed she's had a haircut. Returned to the shovelling. My neighbour drove off. Daughter emerged from next door's front porch with a bowl containing a mixture almost certainly containing the egg. 'Mum!' she said - 'she's gone...' I said, smiling, dustpan in hand. 'Oh' she said, disappearing inside again.

Settling And Unsettling

I sit by the window, tapping out words on the laptop, a cup of Lady Grey tea steaming beside me. I look across to the Christmas tree, the lights glowing brighter as the daylight starts to fade. To my right, on the high bookshelf, cards from friends and family tucked in between the books. Over the mantelpiece, more Christmas lights. I look out of the window, to my left, and see that fine snow is falling once again. A woman in a black woolly hat and deep pink waterproof walks up the hill, the awkward, effortful walk necessitated by the combination of the steepness of the hill and the quantity of snow on the pavement. On top of our wall and our green gate perhaps four inches of snow, the car barely visible beneath its white coat. Bus A goes down the hill, filthy from snow-melt and road dirt, empty. That will be the bus we take down to town and bus B back home when we move to the top o'th'hill. Soon now. And sometimes of course, we will walk - 25 minutes up, 15 down... Tomorrow I'll walk up to meet the man who does floor-sanding, so he can look at our three bedroom floors and give us a quote for sanding and varnishing. Up at the house today are the builder and the plumber, struggling with our leaky boiler. We want to get the heating on to avoid the risk of burst pipes, and to warm the place up a bit so the decorator can start whenever he's ready.

And soon it will be Christmas and we shall have (a few) presents and a feast, and celebrate warmth and light and plenty in the midst of the cold, dark time of the year. L is languishing in bed with painful sinuses, periodically descending to eat soup, breathe steam, check emails... We are confident she will be well by Friday. I wish I could do something for my mother, currently feeling stranded in her flat, the paths outside too icy to manage. I am not sure why the retirement village doesn't take better care of that. Maybe I should get on the phone, speak sternly to them...

I feel my recovery from recent events well under way now. My spirit is reviving, my sense of humour and creativity awakening. And I begin to taste the freedom of having escaped the tyranny of the job. I feel my life become my own again, and am grateful to have this unstructured holiday time to feel my way back into it, and to discover what I want to do next. Though of course, in between the unstructured time, we will be busy sorting and packing and planning, and there are still a few decisions to make about the house, a few things to organise and buy (lighting, curtains, washing machine, marmoleum floor tiles). But we have about four weeks and no other real demands, so it will all be ok, though I guess there is no house move that is not stressful.

Winter Solstice

Here Comes The Kitchen

We walked up to the new house through the snow this morning, and arrived, glowing, to find the very last of the plastering underway. The house we will live in is emerging, with its lovely new skim coat on.

The kitchen units are in these big boxes, awaiting their moment to be revealed, and installed in their appointed places...

The door was open to keep the air moving to dry the plaster. The builder's hands must have been like ice...

After the carpet man had been to measure the hall, stairs and landing, we walked home, now in sunshine. The snow looked particularly fetching on the brambles...

And on the walls...

Squint

Driving in the dark, dazzled by oncoming headlights, I squint to make out what's coming towards me, what's moving between the cars. My eyes water slightly. I sit in the heat from the engine, blown through little plastic vents into this space inside a box of beaten metal. Here I am, moving fast, turning this cool wheel a few degrees this way, a few that way, so I don't collide with other vehicles, walls, lamp-posts. So I can keep on flying through the night, not have to stop, not have to stop. Blue lights flash in my rear-view mirror - a fire engine coming heavy through the night, its siren shrieking. I slow down, steer towards the curb, approaching a sharp bend, hoping for the best. It barrels past - the weight and the speed and the sound, and that beautiful blue all coming into the field of my senses, and then leaving it again, in a few seconds.

Goodbye

One of the less obvious things that was so painful about what happened with the old blog, was that all these people read it, people I'd never wanted to read it, and not one of them said anything about the content other than that my responsibility for its appearance in the public domain was to be regarded as 'gross misconduct'. I myself thought there was some pretty fine writing in there. So, in honour of my three years' posting at the old address, and in honour of 18 months' hard work for the old organisation, whose payroll I leave today, and in honour of all the children we worked with, here once again is a poem of which I am proud.

Taking God to Friday Assembly
after Kerry Hardie

I took God to Friday assembly,
had him sit beside me at the back of the hall
in the empty hush before the children came in,
whispered that's the head teacher and that's the team points cup
and this, now, is Mozart's oboe concerto, very quiet,
and a slide on the OHP to tell the children it's Mozart,
to ask them can they hear the oboe?
Look God! I hissed here come the children now!
and God watched with me as, class by class
in blue sweatshirts, they filed more or less silently in
and sat down in their own part of the hall.
All the classes have the names of rivers I told him.
I showed him the small pale children,
their anxious eyes, their hunger, their soft hair,
the quiet scuffles breaking out, and the little lad who came
to sit cross-legged at the feet of Ms Ahmed to escape being pinched.
God looked at his legs, his plimsolls, the top of his dark head.
God felt the danger, knew the size of the hall.

Glad Game

All the work on the house bar the decorating will be finished before Christmas (or so the builder said this morning)...

We have had loads of enquiries from prospective tenants for our present house. One very strong contender...

We are going to the cinema tonight to see Bright Star - Jane Campion's latest, she of An Angel at my Table, The Piano and Holy Smoke! fame. All of which I'd rate as amongst my favourite films ever, so let's hope this one joins their ranks...

Two lovely bottles of wine have just arrived - a white Burgundy and a Medoc, which is a good claret - from my dear Aunt and Uncle, who treat us in this way every Christmas...

Tomorrow is officially my last day in my current employment. L and I will celebrate with dinner in our favourite restaurant in town...

The sun has shone all day!

Deconstruction

The new house has been stripped back to the bone. This is our kitchen!

The acro props are keeping the ceiling up, until a steel beam is installed. Actually, there isn't a ceiling - it fell apart when the paper was stripped! The acro props are more accurately keeping the upper floor up! You can see where the new wiring threads through the joists.

All the stuff that's been removed is in the skip, awaiting collection.

Here are all the stones that once formed the wall that used to divide kitchen and dining room.
Now the interior is gradually being put back together, new layers built up. The plastering is half done, and today we met the man who will lay our reclaimed floorboards.

The strange parallels between the house's process and my own fascinate and inform...

Reinventing

Aiming not to get bitter. Aiming to use anger as energy. Hoping to learn from what has happened - lesson one: never blog about your job (hey, that's easy, as I haven't got one any more...)! Hoping that lesson two won't be: never trust any bugger again, ever. Knowing it won't, as that would be getting bitter... Trying to heal my bruises, smooth my feathers, be gentle with myself. Keeping an eye out for opportunities. Finding my voice again, my voice, my voice, my precious voice. Remembering, reconnecting, reinventing.

Rising

Emerging, shaking ash from ruffled feathers, blinking, spreading wings tentatively. I'm back, I'm back, praise be I'm back...