Lights

The sky is losing its pink stripes as darkness falls. Ice has arrived, accompanied by glorious sunshine these last two days.

I think we should only have Christmas every two years. I am never ready for another one after a year. The Christmas tunes in the shops make me want to lie on the floor. I am sure it has all been said before, but I can't really bear this Capitalism-fest any more. I like the tree and the turkey, I like fairy lights and candles and some time off. The rest you can keep.

It really is almost dark, and there are still lights on in the school, where someone lingers, marking books and keeping company the kids with working parents, til they turn up to collect them. And there are streetlights and carlights.

Last night we had the Valley of Lights parade and festival in town. A little flavour of handmade parade in Winter. Plus a shadow performance of the tale of the summer floods and the town's recovery from them, featuring a sort of phoenix-heron rising from the soggy wreckage. It felt part of a very ancient tradition of making stories and plays and songs about local events, and was infinitely preferable to BBC news coverage.

Real

Mean

We bring in logs in the dry times between the rain and wind. Some are split, their pale inner wood revealed, some are round, their circumference still intact, lengths of branch sawn across. We stack them to wait beside the wood burner. We light the fire after dark, and tend it until we go to bed.

Parsley in a pot on the windowsill, beside a beautiful jug, terracotta and blue and yellow and white, glazed with patterns that seem to have begun life as stripes, that were teased into wiggles somehow (I don't know how). A birthday present.

There seems to be something hidden in the shaft of sunlight illuminating the pale throw over the sofa arm, and my red bag. How our minds search always for meaning.

Wild

I got the job!

Bitter experience has, as most of you know, made me very cagey of saying much here about my work life. However what I will say is hurrah! And I start in January, so time for rearranging my head and my life as necessary.

No time for more now, except to say a wild wind is blowing up here! Noisy and inclined to pick up objects not adequately weighty to stay on the ground.

Limbo

Not then and not now, a kind of inbetween place where the dark comes down and the birthday flowers are still rich reds and golds though they are dying, though their water is slimey, and at last I take down the cards and fold them inside one another. Limbo limbo between futures, only this moment can ever be certain. Maybe. Yes, the dark comes down and down and the sun moves out of Scorpio into Sagittarius, from sun to moon in my natal chart, which feels strangely auspicious.

On The Train Home

He's getting a new front door. Thank God!

The train is a sanctuary.

A blind man's guide dog, wet with rain, wears a label saying please don't distract me - I am working. The ticket man tickles his/her chin each time he passes.

Still, the train is a sanctuary, and warm too after waiting half an hour for a delayed train on a cold and windy platform, in preference to a hard and smelly waiting room full of tense people whose train is delayed. I have warmed up now, but it's taken hours to get through to my bones.

Yes, I am home, which is the best sanctuary of all. London brought blessings and trials both. Learning, connection and brightness, also panic, sleeplessness and exhaustion.

Helter Skelter

Rather a lot going on one way and another. My ultrasound results came back and the receptionist told me the doctor had written on the report normal, no further action required. Relief. Sense of weight lifting, new lease of life. Then the next day an email inviting me for an interview at the girls' school next Wednesday. Good news, but stirs up all kinds of anxiety and complicated feelings I have to take care of....

My uncle will be home from hospital tomorrow, with a whole new set of challenges for him and my aunt, in a house with many steps outside and in. But at least he can get something he likes to eat.

And now... tomorrow I'm off to London, where I shall briefly visit my sister and family, go to a training day about doing therapy with children and young people (the main purpose of the trip), visit old friend K, and then go to visit my mother, also briefly. Back Monday to catch breath before the interview.

Seeya.

Uneasy

My uncle fell over in the cellar and broke his hip and thigh. Has had an operation involving a rod or a pin or some such and is still in hospital. My mother, his sister, worries, feels helpless and cannot entirely remember the details.

I attended the hospital for a pelvic ultrasound scan this morning. The one where you must have a full bladder so they can see your womb and ovaries through a sort of urine-filled window! My bladder was not full enough first time around, despite following instructions to drink a pint and a half of liquid an hour before, so back to the waiting room to drain cup after cup of water from the cooler (too cool - tea would have been nicer but not on offer). Half an hour later I was 'filled' and the ultrasound woman's warmth and responsiveness more than made up for the cold water and the wait. I have little reason to fear the results, yet the fact I was even there makes me uneasy until they arrive, hopefully middle of next week.

I have applied for a job, counselling in a girls' high school, and am waiting to hear if I have got an interview. Waiting longer than I anticipated, and there's an unease in this too. I so much more than meet all their criteria I was sure they'd interview me. Now a little worm of doubt nibbling.

It's raining today. Dark at five and the outside world is shut out behind the curtains for 15 hours a day. A sense of entering a tunnel. We always come out the other side don't we?

Wordless Wednesday

Firework

The wooden stick and unfurling wrapper of a rocket, yellow, blue and red, float in a puddle. Standard the little logo in the corner.

Celebrated

Fireworks that made me laugh so much the tears ran cold down my face under a sky full of stars. Danced my legs down to the knees in front of the wood burner. Sweaty and joyful. A roomful of friends.

Walk

Standing in the mud on the valley side, I look down at white water falling over rocks. Red leaves above and below. Friends in front and behind.

50

About 45 years ago. The girl in the hand-knitted cardigan with the brass buttons, on a beach, in Wales.

And today she wears badges saying 50 and Fantastic and Looking Good, eats chocolate cake baked by her wife, and enjoys a large vase of wonderful autumnal flowers. The cake candles are now stuck around the head of yesterday's carved pumpkin, a little melted but still spelling out HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

She is grateful.

She says yes.