New Year's Eve walk

I've just blown the cobwebs away with a New Year's Eve walk - I have ended the year as I intend to start the next - with exercise. It was mizzling with rain all the way, but very mild, and I only needed the lightest of waterproofs to keep me dry. I didn't take the camera, so the above photo's a bit of a cheat, and taken on a November day, but shows you the landscape.

I walked solidly for an hour, stopping only to look at the colours on leaves and to notice the FIRST CELENDINE OF THE YEAR - flowering still in the Old Year!!! Blimey - never seen them this early before.

The Filipendula (Meadowsweet to you and I) are past blooming along the valley, some with yellowing leaves and browning tips, and others gone over completely to chocolate brown with dropping wet leaves. There were splashes of colour still in the hedgerows, especially the acid yellow of the wild strawberry leaves interspersed with brighter green ones, the glassy green of Harts Tongue ferns, bottle green of ivy and holly leaves reflecting what light there was. A few Bramble leaves looked like they were on fire with their fierce sherbert yellow and rose pink and scarlet, and beach leaves danced nut-brown in the breeze.

The hilltops were shrouded in low cloud, which had settled like a hug across the valley, sinking into the woodland and masking the trees. The dead bracken clung to the steeper hillsides like a cinnamon-brown blanket, whilst in the depths of the hedgerows tiny creepers of Goosegrass were already growing up towards the light, and Hedge Sparrows played hide and seek.

The birds were quite noisy, though hard to identify against the dull light (and without my glasses on). A Thrush, startled by my approach, ceased singing until he had reached safety at the top of the tallest oak tree along the lane, and a Bullfinch swooped into cover in the Hazel behind the hedge.

In the woodland Hazel catkins were already showing, with the tiny little scarlet male flowers, and the Alder trees showing up maroon against the grey-green of the oak and ash, wound about with ivy like a leafy scarf.

What is life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL.

Planning ahead

In this strange hinterland between Christmas and New Year I have had a sudden rush of blood to the head. I am busy sewing when I can - trying to finish an extension to a single quilt - a hexagon one I made for G to take to Uni with her to remind her of home - and which she handed back to me when she came home to her double bed. It has been keeping our feet warm all winter, and I began - probably a year ago - to piece the hexagons to make it full size for our bed. Anyway, during yesterday's scheduled power cut, and having taken down the tree (to let more light in the room) and packed Christmas away for another year, I pulled a chair into the bay window and sat sewing for several hours. Bliss . . .

I am currently accepting "orders" from my girls for their Christmas presents next year, which gives me time to make them! I have tracked down some fabric for cushions which I have wanted to make for a while, and just ordered that - 3 x 1/2 metre lengths - and a little bit for myself, another 1/2 metre so I didn't go mad (couldn't afford to!) I can't wait for that parcel to arrive.

Primroses on Christmas Day!

My eldest daughter and I had a lovely walk today. It was very mild, and has stayed dry - if grey - all day. We felt we needed to walk off some of the Christmas Excess! Anyway, we cheated a bit and got my husband to drop us off about half a mile from home (thus neatly avoiding the steepest and most tiring hill) and walked for about 2 1/2 miles at a fairly leisurely pace - especially up the inclines!



The grey skies meant that the light was poor for photography, but as it turned out, it wasn't really the views which tempted us, but things far closer to us, as we found summer flowers still blooming, and now spring flowers are coming to join them! We found Primroses in full bloom, and the bud of one of the little wild Daffodils. I'm sure in Cornwall, which is warmer, they have been out a while, but it's a first for us to notice them so early here.

A neighbour's Muscovy geese - and the fruit from old apple trees which have been forgotten, now that you can buy cooking apples in supermarkets . . .

The first buds on the little wild Daffodils.

One of the donkeys on our walk.
A view across the fields towards Carmarthen.

Walking into the view . . . looking out across the damp Towy Valley.

How the Primrose blooms lifted my spirits - they made me feel that even in the depths of winter, spring cannot be too far away. These have been in bloom several days so would have been out for Christmas Day!

Red Campion still blooming from the summer.

A wild strawberry makes an early start to the season. We found another plant half a mile on which had a green fruit too!

Meadowsweet still putting out flowers, having been in bloom since the summer.

When the gorse is out of bloom, then kissin's out o' fashion! You're OK in these parts, apparently!

One of our neighbouring farms, Allt-y-ferin, showing that this site has been inhabited for thousands of years as that is a Norman motte and bailey castle - or rather, where one once stood), and that itself is on the site of a prehistoric Promentary Fort during the Iron Age.

We have had a lot of rain recently. This little stream pouring down from a field met up with all its family and friends in recent heavy rain, with the result that our lane has been much damaged and will need to be repaired where the tarmac has been ripped up.


We were glad to get home to the warmth of the kitchen.

The Home-made Christmas

One of the first things I made were some felt biscuits (as you do!!!) having been inspired by the cover picture on Mollie Makes magazine a couple of months ago. I thought they looked fun, and they are delightful to sew. I thought the Jammy Dodgers were a bit too big from the pattern given, compared with the other biscuits, but they looked good all the same. The felt was all taken from a selection of felt squares I had already, some of which came from a wonderful £2 auction box a couple of years ago. I am sure its original owner would be delighted to know I am still using her craft things.


The pretty pressed glass plate they're displayed on was £1 from the car boot sale. It's the sort of green glass I collect myself, but it was just right for what I had in mind as part of G's Christmas present . . . I happened to have the crochet doily amongst my collection of such things . . . as was the tablecloth beneath in the photos.

G had been saying that her bedroom was very bland and she wanted some colour in it, so I decided on turquoise as a colour theme, and bought some ready-made pillowcases from a certain well-known supermarket, and put pretty edgings on (fat 1/4s from the patchwork shop). Not as well-done as the lovely ones on Morning Minion's blog - I shall add that extra border another time - bu she was pleased with them all the same.



Then I did the same for her sister.




The scarf is a very simple pattern called Old Shale. I seemed to be knitting it forever as scarves need to be long, but it was eventually finished and G pleased with it.



This frame was 50p at the car boot sale. The Aida material was some from a big bag of Aida fabrics from a charity shop (£1 the lot). The embroidery floss is something I use regularly and carry on adding to my skeins. The design of the House Martin and Swallow comes from a booklet of Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady designs I must have had 30 years now. I return to it still to work more of the same designs or try a new one. This was to accompany a little blue bird brooch for T, which I found on an antiques stall at Wells Market back in early Autumn.


I also bought some hand towels and used fat 1/4s to give a pretty border. This one went to one of my aunts, and there was a 2nd I forgot to photograph, which had a pretty dark green and red patterned border.


This one was more purple than puce and I had to use the ONLY design that matched for colour, and I did deliberate long and hard as it was part of a wonderful parcel of materials that Mornings Minion sent me and which is destined to become a quilt for our bed - perhaps this winter now that I have some time to spare (I hope). The photograph doesn't do the print justice as it is just the PRETTIEST design I have ever seen, with purple hollyhocks.

And of course, you already know about the bunting . . .

Christmas with Thomas Hardy

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL.



This poem is taken from "A West Country Christmas" compiled by Chris Smith.

'It's not difficult to conjure up a picture of that marvellous man of Dorset literature, Thomas hardy, sitting by the fireside at Christmas time as the flickering light from the fireplace draws shadows on the walls - an atmosphere perfectly captured in this poem:

While I watch the Christmas blaze
Paint the room with ruddy rays,
Something makes my vision glide
To the frosty scene outside.

There, to reach a rotting berry,
Toils a thrush - constrained to very
Dregs of food by sharp distress,
Taking such with thankfulness.

Why, O starving bird,
When I one day's joy would justify
And put misery out of view,
Do you make me notice you?

Thomas Hardy.


Extract from "A Child's Christmas in Wales" by Dylan Thomas, because I cannot have a Christmas without mention of Cats!!!


Here is Jarvis, posing nicely. He is called Jarvis because we are - somewhat distantly I believe - related to musician Jarvis Cocker, through my mum's Battams family.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.


Now for my favourite of Hardy's seasonal poems and I make no apology for repeating it year on year!

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come; see the oxen kneel,

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

Thomas Hardy.

Carolling

Whilst we don't go carolling hereabouts, I did in my Southampton childhood (being a Hampshire Hog, though of Devon stock through and through on dad's side.) Just a bunch of kids, well wrapped up in the evenings leading up to Christmas, and hoping for a bit of spending money - which we normally got - a sixpence here or a thrupppence there, and the Posh House once giving us half a crown between us, so we must have sung well for them!

Here is fellow Hampshire Hog (and more claim to it than I) Norman Goodland's take on Carol singing:

"Carols is funny things! They bain't all to do wi' Christmas! if you dont ring 'em oout proper, they might not answer the door, not gie thee nar 'apence!"

Foster Father was delivering his annual lecture to the Baughurst bell-ringers, of whom he was Captain. They practiced in Foster Mother's scullery, on the handbells.

I remember them - big bewhiskered men, shirt sleeved and leather belted, standing facing each other in a double row. Flashing up the brass bells. hecking the swing with broad thumb, to make them 'speak'' in their clear, fluid tones. It was all taken very seriously. Standards were high; they had to be, to impress the gentry upon whom they called.

They walked from Baughurst to Wolverton, back through Ramsdell and Pamber End, and home through what was then known as the 'gypsy'' village of Tadley. Or made their way up to Heath End, aiming for the high spot of the season - Aldermaston Hall.

"We had to watch they sarvint galls!" Father once told me. "They was always up to mischief!"

"We was invited up to the hall oncest. We 'ad to go in through the back, an' through the kitchens, y'see. An' we left our 'ats in the kitchen along wi' they gals.

"We went in and give a tune or two to the Master and the Mistress, and them as was there. They gie us a sovereign! They told us to go back to the kitchens and Cook would gie us a drink.

"So we done that. And when 'twas time to get on, they gals was round the door away from the light. An' they wouldn't gie us our 'ats until we give 'em a Christmas kiss.

"Waal - yu never put yer 'at on inside a gentleman's 'ouse, luk. So we put 'em on outside in the dark - so we didn't see what was gwine on.

"Anyways. We went on down to the Hhind's Head, t'other end o' the street. We went in, took off our 'ats - an' everybody started to laugh! We didn't know what to make on it! 'Til we looked at each other - an' then we seed we all 'ad white 'air - like a bunch of old men!

"Twas they sarvint gals! They'd put flour in our 'ats - whiles we was a-carollin' for the Master!"

Father and his bell-ringers faced some competition from other Christmas and New Year rounders - the village bands of the time - The August Hill Drum and Fife Band. The Temperence Bands; one from Tadley, one from Baughurst. But is is said at the end of their rounds, the Temperence Bands were not more temperate than Father and his bell-ringers, when they came to clanking up the garden path well after midnight, to collect their bicycles and wobble their ways home!

Taken from "A Hampshire Christmas" compiled by Sara Tiller.

People were tougher then . . .

At yesterday's car boot sale I picked up a little book called Exmoor Wanderings, by Eric R Delderfield. I have a couple of others by him too (The Raleigh Country and Just Wandering in Devon). They are all published in the 1950s, when I was a little tot. By golly, but life was different then. E R Delderfield was brother of the novelist R M Delderfield and their father was editor of the Exmoor Chronicle. HERE'S a link for you if you want to learn more.

Delderfield writes of one old boy, still living (at that time), who, when he felt rather ill and went off his food, kept himself going on beer instead. And not just a couple of pints but 30 PINTS A DAY FOR FOUR MONTHS!!! I can only assume it was home-brew, and on the weak side. Apparently "he was very ill before he got better".

Then there was the farmer, Bill Ridd of Challacombe, weighing in at 30 stones if he was a pound, who managed to sire 8 children, never left the district (he died at Brendon in 1916) and despite his bulk, was out managing his farm every day, riding on - not a Shire-proportioned cob - but an Exmoor pony which must have been delighted at its master's demise! I have always known that Exmoors are tough (and stout) ponies (for photos see HERE) capable of carrying a man all day, but carrying 30 stone takes some beating.

Then there was the weather. Imagine snow so deep that even 5 bar gates were buried beneath it - which was the case in the dreadful winter of 1915. The farmers were going out with feed for their stock, using a horse and cart, and walking over the TOP of the gates! 1947 was another bad winter across the country, and it was 10 weeks before the roads were all cleared of snow . . .