A Flat Start to the New Year

Hello.  Thank you for bearing with me, I have been neglecting my blog.  Actually, I have spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I have read and appreciated your comments, but I just haven't been able to write anything.  It's all felt very odd.

Like many people whose lives are determined by the rhythm of academic terms, September usually means New Year - for children there are new shoes, new bags, new teachers and sometimes new schools.  For adults there are new routines and often new adventures and new horizons as children grow older and become less dependent.  I have always liked September, partly because of these new possibilities, partly because I like the return to routine after the sprawling school summer holidays and partly because it opens the gate to Christmas (I have printed that word in a tiny font because really, it's far to early to talk about it!), and I do really love Christmas.  September also brings Autumn, which is my favourite season. 

This year, however, felt different and I am not really sure why.  Perhaps it's because the summer was so disappointing: the weather was warm but, apart from about three days in July, not hot and it rained a lot, almost every weekend, I think.  I had hoped for some camping trips - there are so many destinations on my wishlist - but apart from a weekend in July and our folk festival trip, we didn't go anywhere because the weather was too poor for short trips.  We did have two wonderful long weekends away at short notice, but four lovely weekends do not a summer make.  So at the end of our seven week school break (seven weeks! ) I felt very unsatisfied and not really ready to move on. 

Or perhaps it's because the Best Beloved doesn't have enough work at the moment and I am very anxious about how we will manage the winter expenses.  Or perhaps it's because I slowly realised that a relationship which I thought was a personal friendship is actually merely a professional friendship, and I am mourning the perceived loss of that imagined personal friendship.

So, September came and brought with it the sunshine we missed in July and August, but my spirits were low.  Here is the hawthorn tree outside my bedroom window, laden with haws beneath a blue sky.

For the last few years I have cycled around the parish foraging for blackberries, crab apples and elderberries to turn into jewel-coloured jars of hedgerow jelly, but this year I had no heart for it (for which I heartily apologise to The Beau, who is very keen on it - I am afraid you are on the last of last year's jars and the cupboard its bare).  Nor will there be any blackberry vodka to sip on Christmas Eve this year.  We celebrated the equinox on 23rd September with a proper pudding: it had to be apple really, it could have been plum but the Best Beloved doesn't like plums so it really did have to be apple, especially as I was given a bagful of them from the curate's garden, and I turned to Delia for her baked apple and almond pudding which is delicious hot or cold (I served it hot with a dollop of thick cream). 

Yummy, and extra good for being naughtily eaten during the week!  I thought that it might be a turning point as I really wanted to show you at the time, but I just couldn't do it.  And even though I was unexpectedly offered a new job and am now earning Real Money (a very small amount) for the first time in almost three years, I couldn't drag myself out of the slump, not even to write my monthly family history post, and I usually love writing those.

Then the Sunday before last I was reading the Observer Magazine and I saw a Waitrose advertisement which read "Autumn.  Britain's warmest season" and something just clicked in my head.  I had found a way to write!  I do LOVE autumn for its warmth, its colour and its fruitfulness: the rich reds, oranges, yellows and burgundies of the leaves on the deciduous trees and shrubs, the acorns, beech mast and conkers which ripen and drop from the trees, the fungi which spring up from the damp earth.  I love lighting tealights along the mantelpiece as night falls and later on, when it's cold, we shall light the fire.  We have so far enjoyed blue skies and warm sun - the Best Beloved and I went for a walk that Sunday afternoon in short sleeves, in October!  Dragonflies and butterflies danced around us and my spirit lifted itself up and joined in, gratefully.  The leaves are beginning to turn but this is only the starter, the main course is yet to come. 

And here, for no other reason than "just because", are a few pictures of our afternoon at Lilleshall Arboretum, which is lovely because (a) there are lots of trees and (b) it's free.

See you soon (I hope).

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x