In the cusp of the old year

In the distance across the valley - the tower of Pantglas: all that remains of an Italianate gentry mansion.


It's a strange time, those nameless days between Christmas and Boxing Day and the New Year. A time of waiting, almost. I have decided I will end the old year as I mean to start the new one, so I have been braving the weather out in the garden, and busying myself indoors with jobs which have been on my mental list of "fings to do" for months if not years. I am not the most organized soul. This afternoon I have been painting the corner cupboards in our kitchen in a cream colour (one had had a first coat, about 18 months ago). We will need another can of this paint (Crown period colour, "Bonnet") to do a further coat and paint a couple of doors elsewhere in the house.

My husband and I had a good walk in the winter sunshine just before lunch. I was struggling on the hills as I've had the edge of a cold (my flu jab kept the worst at bay) and it hit my chest in the night. However, the views very pretty as there was a wintry mist and it made for atmospheric photographs. We found another place where a cottage had once been. All that remained was a bit cemented-up and brick lump of fireplace wall, and a pile of broken and rusting tinware and a broken cauldron. How sad that a cottage's history could be summed up in a few rusting objects, especially the broken cauldron with its memories of thousands of meals and the link to the heart of the house. I cannot help but think of the womens' souls tied to it . . . . I will see which cottage it might have been whilst I still have my monthly Ancestry membership.


An oak tree up toward's Old Isaac's cottage . . .

The view from the top - looking towards Horeb and Felingwm.

The lane ahead and Merlin's Hill in the distance.

We saw Lapwings - once a common sight where I grew up in the ploughlands of Hampshire , but now an unusual visitor.


The misty view towards Merlin's Hill.

It was the chunk of boulder and the rusting tin bath which first caught my attention.

A pile of rusting rubbish that is all that remains of the heart of a little roadside cottage. It looked like someone had taken a hammer to the cauldron and broken it in two . . .

Walking into the view - the lane home.

A brisk walk

My husband, middle daughter and I have just returned from a brisk walk along by the river. There is a biting N-Easterly wind, so we all wrapped up warm, but I have to say I felt better for some fresh air and exercise. The light was too poor for good photos, but I took one or two I was happy with.


This photo pleased me as it captured the "arrow" of smooth glissading water as it was channelled between the boulders. If you enlarge it you should see the different colours in the water, including a slate blue between the boulders at the back.


I spent over 6 hours (all the morning in fact) making a warmer curtain for this room (my office). I had a hopelessly thin summer-weight ivory coloured tab-top curtain, but I dived into my stash of material and found a piece which was almost exactly the right size (with a slight extension in the hem department) so I spent a busy few hours doing invisible hemming down the sides and bottom. It is definitely warmer and the darker colours were just what the room needed.





I began knitting my middle daughter a scarf yesterday in some wool I bought on the Market in Carmarthen - it's a Kingfisher blue and so cheerful a colour to knit with. I am using a double moss stitch, which looks very pretty, so that is my evening "job" for the next few days until it's finished, and then she has asked if I will knit one for her friend . . . .

Another tea of "leftovers" - in this case some lamb I'd frozen from a big joint of hogget we had before Christmas. I'd best get started on the veg. I think.

Oh, and below are two of three Partridges we have visiting our garden at the moment - poor souls, they were sunbathing on the drive when we returned home from town yesterday, so they lost their spot and headed for the patio instead.

Christmas Books

Just a brief update first, on the pollution of our beautiful river on Christmas Day. Our neighbour by the river spoke to the Environmental Agency inspector yesterday morning and they know the area upstream where this took place and their investigations are ongoing. She was told she will "read all about it on the front page of the Carmarthen Journal in due course". He intimated that the book would be thrown at the culprit as this was "the worst case of pollution he had seen in his 30 year career". I hope he has to sell up to pay the fine.



Meanwhile, I had some splendid books this Christmas, although one of them was a present from me, to me - intended for a present from my son, but he bought me something else. It is a looooooooong poem - "Dart" by Alice Oswald. I seem to remember hearing it on Radio 4 a year or so ago, and as we used to camp beside the West Dart many years ago on Dartmoor, and fell asleep to its gurgles and glugs and shifting pebbles, I just HAD to have this book. Interspersed with the poem are short bits of prose, and the history of events on the moor, and people of the moor, woven into it:

at Staverton Ford, John Edmunds being washed away, 1840:

. . . . . all day my voice is being washed away
out of a lapse in my throat
like after rain
little trails of soil-creep
loosen into streams

if I shout out
if I shout in,
I am only as wide
as a word's aperture

but listen! if you listen
I will move you a few known sounds
in a constant irregular pattern:
flocks of foxgloves spectating slightly bending . . .

o I wish I was slammicking home
in wet clothes, shrammed with cold and bivvering but

this is my voice
under the spickety leaves,
under the knee-knappered trees
rustling in its cubby-holes

and rolling me round, like a container
upturned and sounding through

and the silence pouring into what's left maybe eighty seconds

From Alice Oswald's epic poem, "Dart". . .

I love the dialect words - my dad (a Devon man) always used "shrammed" and I still do too. I love "slammicking home". "Slammick/slummick/slommick" is untidy, sluggish. A very omnomatapaeic word . . .


Next is a wonderful New Forest local-produce recipe book which my friend Gay saw at the New Forest Show, and knew it was just "up my street" as we used to say. It has some lovely recipes in it. Think . . . Raspberry and Amoretti Ice Cream Torte, think . . . Carrot and Cumin Soup, think . . . Pumpkin Chutney. I think I am going to be returning to this again and again.

Lastly, this one came from the just-before-Christmas car boot sale. The moment I read the title, I knew it was one for me. Who would DREAM of calling a book "Delightsome Land" in this day and age - it sounds very much of its period (1945). It has charming illustrations (as seen below) and the most wonderful (Yorkshire) dialect speech - "All them brassened browls have been taught by their mallywallops of mothers to behave like that," said Hannah, seceptically. "Doant daddle. We can't stay here all neet. Put t'lile bowdykite doon and coom alang." (The bowdykite was apparently the little gypsy baby . . .) I guess you know why it came home with me now!

<

Christmas Day

A slightly hazy view of the slurry contamination of our beautiful river. What must the otters be thinking of mankind? How will they feed now all the fish have been poisoned?



A quiet family day here, more quiet than usual as eldest daughter is very poorly with a nasty cold and has only been able to stay up for a couple of hours - she ate a bread roll and drank water and watched the rest of us have roast beef with all the trimmings, poor lass. Hers is plated up for tomorrow and hopefully she will feel a bit brighter then. She's been ill for several days now.

My DH and I managed a short walk down by the river this afternoon, me with my new camera clutched in my hot little hands. Since it seems to do everything bar make the tea, I am going to take a while to get to grips with it. We were horrified to find that our beautiful river had been completely polluted by some farmer upstream deliberately dumping the contents of his slurry lagoon in it. I should imagine all the wildlife in the river has now been killed. It STANK of cow sh*t as we walked by it, and was covered in foam, and heaving brownly. I took photos, and we and our neighbours near the river reported it to the Rivers Authority, but it would seem they were already on the case as someone had reported it this morning and the chap was out of the office, and I hope to God there is going to be a conviction and a really heavy fine. I've never seen anything like it in my life . . . apart from when our neighbouring farmer polluted our water supply some years back and the water came out of the taps green and honking of cow sh*t.

I just cannot conceive of anyone being quite so stupid as to think they could get away with this, or indeed, to want to do it in the first place. Have they NO respect for nature?

The first intimation that all was not well with our lovely river. Foam, and stink and thick brown water . . .



The brown swirls show how polluted the river is - and there is one heck of a volume of water going downstream in any given minute. I never dreamed that the first photos I would be taking with my new camera would show such wonton destruction.


Here you can see some of the froth from the pollution, gathering along the river bank.

The Oxen - Thomas Hardy

The Oxen by Thomas Hardy - a favourite Christmas poem of mine. He wrote it, I believe, on Christmas Eve 1916 . . .


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.

Wreath

I did the wreath this afternoon. We go for the natural look, with bits and pieces we have garnered from the hedgerows. I cut pussy willow twigs to form the base, woven together. Then long strands of ivy woven around that, then some lovely old-gold coloured oak leaves from a sapling at the bottom of a hedgerow, and some sprigs of ivy in flower. Then I wound round a length of the rag swag I had left over from making the big one the other evening. The ivy flowers on the left didn't want to tuck in any further, so I balanced it with the oak leaves on the other side. We prefer our "wildwood" wreaths to the sort you get in the shops and markets.


The new Christmas cat is still hanging around. We have called him Jasper as he looks like a Jasper . . . but there is family dissent over this! He is a dark tabby with very broad and few stripes, white paws and a white throat and little splash one side of his nose. He isn't too nervous about us, but moves away if we open the door. I'm not sure if he will stay - he might just be here whilst the hunting is bad . . .

Yummy mince pies

We finally got the Christmas tree up yesterday. We have a teddy angel - the children (as teenagers) chose her one year and she is firmly established now.


My eldest daughter and I decorated the tree yesterday afternoon. It is looking so pretty this year and is a lovely tree even without the decorations on.

I couldn't sleep last night, so I went downstairs and made a batch of mince pies, trying out a new recipe.

I have adapted this recipe as it originally used a crumble topping (I'll add this bit too for you if you'd rather try it). The water was nothing like enough, so you will have to add more - I probably used 6 or 8 tblspns NOT just 2! It's from Good Food magazine five years back.




85g/3 oz butter, chilled and cut into cubes
175g/6 oz plain flour
1 tblspn light muscovado sugar (I used Demerara)
finely grated zest of 1 small orange (I used a large Satsuma)

For the Crumble Topping:

knob of cold butter (about 1 tblspn)
25f/ oz plain flour
1 tblspn light muscovado sugar
1 tblspn almonds, finelychopped

pastry cases: Blend flour and butter until resembling fine breadcrumbs and then add sugar and grated zest, and add 2 tblspns water, adding a few drops more water if it appears a little dry (think Sahara sands here! I used about 6 - 7 tblspns water). Preheat oven to 160 deg. Fan/180 deg. conventional/Gas 4.

Roll out pastry thinly and cut circles using a plain 6cm dia cutter. (I used a bigger one and didn't make them into mini cases as this suggested). I got a dozen bases and then cut star toppings from remaining pastry. Filling was my home-made mincemeat, and I poured a little orange juice over the mincemeat and glazed the stars with it too. Cook for 20 mins.

If you are using the crumble topping, mix fat and flour together until mixture like breadcrumbs then stir in sugar and almonds. Sprinkle as topping over mincemeat and bake for 20 mins.

Both: leave to cool in the tin before lifting out. Very yummy! If making a double batch, leave the excess pastry to cool in fridge in between batches.

If it goes very quiet on here, it's because I've come down with a bad fluey-cold or the flu, as our eldest daughter has it - raging temperature, aching all over - poor lass, she was weeping this morning. I'm hoping she will drop off to sleep now she's had an Ibroprofen - she's been awake most of the night too.

Merry Christmas to you all - though hopefully I will be able to say that on The Day.

Deck the halls with boughs of holly . . .

My eldest daughter and I had a lovely walk to deliver a Christmas Card to a neighbour yesterday and then collected some greenery on the way home to decorate the house and to make a wreath from. The weather was distinctly drizzly, but it was such a lovely walk and we came home and had a huge leg of hogget (yearling lamb) for our Yule meal, eaten by candlelight. It is lovely to have all my family around me again.


A huge branch was ripped off in a recent storm, and lies, gathering moss now.

It's such a pretty lane to walk along, winter or summer.


I love to see trees as "themselves", without their leaves, showing their true character. There were some stunning ones which I noticed on my drive up North last week.

This tiny cottage is a holiday let. Sometimes I have to do the changeover cleaning if my neighbour is away, but it's a doddle as it's just three rooms.


A fallen giant. This was the best picture I could manage, and I had to stand on the bank to get this one.



This field has less and less grazing every year and the bracken has spread so only a little island of grass remains in the middle.

Another angel for Nancy, and surprisingly found in our local chapel graveyard. Sorry about the rain on the lens Nancy - hope that you can sort it out.

The ante has been upped!

This close to Christmas, things are suddenly going into over drive. I must now use a little of today to deliver (on foot) the last couple of Christmas cards and little jar of preserves to neighbours, and there is the greenery and twiggery for the wreath to be gathered too - hopefully at the same time, with my eldest daughter to keep me company. The gathering of the greenery at Yule, and the making of the wreath is one of our Christmas traditions and we look for interesting little bits of nature magic to incorporate.

I have two pineapples and a punnet of kiwi fruit to turn into some jam, and I have blown the dust off the American Christmas cookie magazine I was fortunate enough to find at a car boot sale a year or two ago for a ridiculous 20 pence.

There is a huge leg of local hogget lamb for our Yuletide roast today, and we shall light candles and turn off the overhead lights and celebrate Yule as a nod to our pagan ancestors.

Christmas Swag

I spent yesterday evening assembling this and it looks GREAT. All you need are approximately 2 metres of assorted Christmas prints - red and green obviously, but I had a creamy pattern too. Press and cut into strips 4" long x 2" wide (sorry, I've not got a metric head!). Take a ball of green jute string (which doesn't show if you haven't tied the strips tight together). I left my loose end inside the ball and kept pulling until I'd used my strips. Then you just fold each strip in half and then tie it around the string, alternating colours and pushing the rags close together to hide the twine. Put a loop either end and hang on wall. MANY thanks to Mrs T in America for this - check out her Christmas blog for some great ideas and inspiration.

When you're cross . . .

. . . gardening is a very good thing. I've just spent an hour cleaning windows , and then - suitably horrified by the amount of grass and weeds amongst a little strip of cobbling by the path to the patio, I set to with bare hands. As a stress-buster, it was very therapeutic. I got rid of 6 buckets of weeds and replaced with 6 buckets of gravel, to cover the gaps between the cobbling and indeed, most of the cobbles too. Looks tidier anyway. Front porch and path tidied, swept and washed. I still have NO TIME for the vet's receptionist, however . . .


If this Santa looks good enough to eat, it's because he is made from meringues (beard mainly), and marshmallow :)

We found this stone owl (on a wooden tree base) in the graveyard of Llandeilo Church. I'm not sure if he is meant to be a memorial for someone or what, but he certainly stands out amongst the headstones.


Here's a frosty scene from Llandeilo on Monday. I went looking for an angel on a gravestone for Nancy, and looking for a mare and foal in a bad way (and in need of help from Lluest) for my friend Nanny. I found the angel, but no sign of the mare and foal, though I searched where they were supposed to be. Nanny's husband will go and do a reccy tomorrow.



Now I'm back to my Christmas swag to hang over the fireplace . . . photos when it's finished. I've also been sorting out curtains and was able to fill the cist that had the big heavy plush pair with most of my bags and lengths of material up in my work-room. The curtains are hung in our re-decorated bedroom, and I have sewn brass curtain rings on the back of the Medieval-style pelmet which is going in the downstairs hall, over the big archway, with a matching yellow curtain beneath it.

These new curtains are SO warm and snug. The walls are actually a deeper raspberry colour and not so pink as they appear because of the camera flash. Below is the Medieval style pelmet which went with them when they were a shop window display (buying ex-display curtains is VERY good value - I got them half the price they would have been if I'd had them made to order). You can just see the lightweight golden lining material, which also backs the curtains above. Looking at them, they would be quite easy to make up - until you got the really heavyweight material (the gold with lettering) behind and I think I would have to hand sew that together as my machine would cough its last. Then the cord edging is hand-sewn too of course.

This is another ex-display curtain - and matches the design on the heavyweight material above quite well. It has four very deep French pleats with hooks so my husband is sorting out how to hang it up beneath the pelmet. I think I must have a thing about Latin writing, as I have it on my bathroom curtains too . . .


Tomorrow I am off up North to collect our eldest daughter, and hopefully will be blogging again on Saturday.

Book recommendation - Nella Last's War

Yesterday's sunrise - aren't the colours wonderful? I rather like the reflection in the icy puddles too.



In between jobs, when I need a five minute rest, I am reading Nella Last's War. This is her personal diary written during WWII and submitted for the "Mass Observation" project and I am sure will already be familiar to some of you. I have wanted to read it since friends at Creative Living mentioned it, and the subsequent recently-published Nella Last's Peace (which I also bought from Amazon). I am only in the first year of the war, but her writing has made me think about the demands on my time and how I would cope with the demands made on HER time then. Quite besides the managing on next to nothing, the knitting for our servicemen, the recylcling of surplus garments, material and wool into crib quilts and cot blankets for evacuees, Nella had the constant worry of air-raids (she lived at Barrow-in-Furness, and the shipyard there was an obvious target) and whether her sons were involved in the current battle abroad. Nella was very resourceful, and even used old woollen socks cut and opened up flat and then sewn together to form a utalitarian, but warm, cover. At an auction last summer, two very rough-and-ready quilts made from real oddments of mis-matched material were held up, and a rip in one let the contents fall to the floor - it had been lined with old woollen socks - at the time I thought it was necessity being the mother of invention, but now I realize that perhaps it had a different story to tell . . .

The WVS helped to organise the townswomen into productive groups, and the women in Nella's group were handed out wool to knit bedcovers and the material from dozens of tailors' pattern books taken to be sewn together into something more useful. These women knitted indefatigably: jumpers, socks, balaclavas, mittens, gloves, scarves, for servicemen and seamen. They made pretty things which could be raffled as a way of fund-raising for the war effort. Their hands were never still and a great sense of obligation drove them to push themselves ever-harder.

In Nella's diary, she had a knock on the door one day and opened it to find a young man with a bag, which he handed to her saying that the Dr had sent her something to care for (having come upon her nursing a sickly hen in the past). Inside was the tiniest baby she had ever seen - pre-term - its parents were terribly ill with influenza (the mother had a chest infection) and the baby would not have survived if left with them, as they were bed-bound and the grandmother lay dieing in another room. Unperturbed, Nella turned a dressing table round and made the baby a little bed from the drawer, warmly lined with a blanket from the bed, and with the electric heater on to warm the room, the baby was tucked up, swathed in layers of cotton wool and fed an eggcup-full of Nestle's milk and water every hour from a spoon, as there was no bottle available. The only washing it could have was to have a tiny corner of skin wiped down with olive oil and when that ran out - cod liver oil (bet it smelt wonderful after a week of that!) I was thinking how I would relax if the Dr suddenly sent me a tiny pre-term baby to care for in the middle of winter. My own husband spent the first months of his life also in a blanket-lined drawer under the dining table (in case of bombing - this was Manchester), as his mum had first flu and then pneumonia. His aunt and uncle looked after him.

Radio 4 are serialising Nella Last's Peace this week, and I sat down quietly to listen to it this morning, and like Nella, kept my hands busy cutting up strips of red and green materials to tie like hair-rags (does anyone remember their mum making curls for them that way? Devilish to sleep on!) to make a Christmas swag to go over the fireplace. I felt very connected with Nella, and all the thousands like her. She sounded very much stronger and more forthright than she is at the beginning of the war where I am in the book at present. At the beginning her nerves were twanging like piano strings and she sounded like she needed to top up her B vitamins and probably menopausal too!

It is a curtain day here again - have my new ex-display ones hung in the bedroom now and HOW much warmer it makes the room. OH has just handed me some (WWII!) brass curtain rings which I am to sew on the back of the Medieval (ex-shop-display) pelmet so he can do a Heath Robinson system of hanging it across the archway in the hall . . . Photos to follow.

Today's walk

The day started with a heavy frost and freezing fog - and guess who forgot to wipe the mist off her lens glass before taking a photo . . . Most of these should enlarge if you click on them.



I've just got back from my walk - the first for a week now, and I'm feeling good again. I decided to walk up to my furthest neighbour to take up a Christmas card and a small pot of jam. The views were fabulous - seeing the Brecon Beacons in the distance never fails to lift my spirits. I find that I have taken 41 photos today! I'm just loading them now and will see which ones to keep and which to put up on here too.



I had a fruitful morning at the Car Boot Sale, which was busy despite the dire cold. I got a brand new never-been-out-of-the-box Pasta maker for £3 (I think they cost about £30 in the shops); then a beautiful hand-painted cake stand and three matching plates (pre-1892) for £2 (excuse blurry picture above); a piece of red material for 50p which is going to be turned into a decoration and an old ladies' sewing tin for 50p, with old wooden cotton reels in it and bits of wool for darning. It seemed to be the morning for stuffed foxes and I was kicking myself for leaving the camera in the car. First of all the BIGGEST fox I've ever seen - stuffed or otherwise - in a case. It must have been nearly five feet long from nose to tip of tail and stood nearly as tall as a collie. Then there was a dealer wandering round with a stuffed fox (out of its case) under his arm.


Now the walk:

The view I never tire of - looking across to Black Mountain from Top o' Bank.

A small triangle of rough land fenced off could once have housed a cottage.

Another view across the valley.




The lane goes on and ends at the farm of another neighbour. Once it turned left and joined up with a road further over, but someone (local farmer's dad) managed to take a piece of heavy machinery along there and there was a land-slip or something, too bad to repair, and the lane was just abandoned. I mean to try and get along it one day, secateurs in hand (though it most likely needs a bulldozer!)


The view across our valley.


The frost was lingering on the slopes which didn't catch the sun.


Going back towards home and past a neighbour's farm (they have a stuffed fox in a case in their parlour, strange to tell!)


The mound just in view mid-picture is Dryslwyn Castle.




Back down the hill towards home.

This published a day late because the internet connection went walkabouts yesterday again . . .

In the bleak midwinter.

A corner of the garden in this week's frosts. Pretty much the same again this morning too.



I haven't done ANY walking this week, but hope to remedy that today when I walk the long mile and deliver all my local Christmas cards on foot. I am looking forward to it. We have had such DIRE weather - another day of skating rink conditions where we couldn't go more than two steps along the path, let alone make it as far as the car. Walking was definitely NOT on the agenda, which at least helped me get some inside jobs done. The sitting room decorating is finished, I am glad to say, and I am hoping to get back to the Morning Room again next week. OH has hit on a good way of getting the carpet laid which involves putting our huuuuuge Victorian pitchpine cupboard/glazed top bookcase in auction with a reserve. We do want to sell it, as it is too big to take with us when we downsize, but we will put a reserve on and if it comes home, we will have to hang on to it a bit longer. In the meantime, we can get the carpet laid . . .


The sitting room is now looking tidier and lighter.

Middle daughter is now safely home and the house feels more lively again (think loud music emanating from her attic eyrie). Eldest daughter is going to be brought home next Friday - not sure which of us has drawn the short straw for the trip to Yorkshire yet. Then I will be content - all my family home for the holidays.

Latest sewing project . . .

I had a brainwave the other evening, when I was stood shivering by the front door, as it's very draughty despite there being a sand-filled draught-excluder across the bottom.








I had a dig in my huge feed bin full of material and found this gorgeous Medieval-looking piece which was exactly the right size - so exactly in fact that I had to sew some extra material to the top to make it long enough to have a hem. OH and I hit upon the idea of tabs as he found - amongst his souvenirs in the old cart shed - this Victorian mahogany towel rail which was just the right length. I didn't have any plain lining material but I had been given this checked flannelette which was exactly the right width and a bit left over. It makes it really warm. I had bought the cord tieback and tassel when I got the material. As the walls and everything are wonky in this house, I had to allow for this and sew a hem one inch deeper on the left than the right, but it worked out OK. Now I am tempted to start on the new curtains for the kitchen . . .

The Thought-Fox - Ted Hughes

This seems appropriately wintry and I am busy sewing right now, so apologies - back to normal tomorrow I hope.

THE THOUGHT-FOX

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

A Free Day . . .

This is Paul's Himalayan Musk which grows in the greatest profusion across the back of my garden and which presents me with thousands of blossoms in June . . . I needed a reminder of summer today, when it is like the Cresta Run outside . . .



Well, put it this way, instead of having to rush around trying to put cards in envelopes and stick on stamps this morning (which I gave up on doing last night when my eyes were drooping), we are Confined To Barracks and no school for D. It was rain on top of frost again this morning and when I saw Trixie fall over on the path when I let her out before it was light, I roused my dearly beloved from bed to come and Do The Driving. However, like one day last week it was SO slippery underfoot - sheets of ice, not just black ice in patches - that we are going nowhere until it thaws a bit. So now I have the time to write the cards, add to the Christmas letter, pack the parcels and generally Get Sorted.

I am going to get my sewing machine down from the sewing room too , as that's up in the attic, and perishing cold - certainly not conducive to sitting down and sewing for more than 2 minutes at a stretch. I've looked out a length of heavy brocade material in a lovely deep aubergine colour with gold in it, that is destined to be a curtain for the front door, to keep the draughts out. OH has to do his bit and put up a curtain pole.

I woke at 5 a.m. again - having fallen into bed just gone 9 p.m. last night. It was too cold to get up so I laid there for an hour, my mind busy. All sorts of random thoughts going through my head, about books I had read years and years - half a lifetime ago. Does anyone remember the books by Derek Tangye? They told the story of how he gave up his life as a newspaper columnist and his wife abandoned her PR job at the Savoy in London to live in a tiny cottage on the cliffs at Minack in Cornwall. How they earned a living by picking their early narcissi and daffodils for the London markets, and packing them to go up on the milk train. They had cats and donkeys and an enviable lifestyle. I recall when his wife Jeannie had to go to Hospital to have a possible cancer checked out, wearing a bright red coat, and walking back down the lane in her bright red coat, knowing that her life was nearing its closure as she refused treatment for her cancer. I don't know why that should suddenly come to me, but it did. Along with John Seymour's Self Sufficiency, The Good Life on tv, Elizabeth West's 'Hovel in the Hills' and subsequent books Garden in the Hills and Kitchen in the Hills, and compounded by the wonderful books of Jeannine McMullen, who wrote of her smallholding here in Wales (not a million miles from me as I think she was close to Black Mountain and probably still is) these things gave me a leg-up onto the path in life I chose to take - moving here to our smallholding in deepest rural Wales.

Llanarchaeron - a gentry estate

Llanarchaeron is now owned by the National Trust. My husband and I visited it on Sunday as they had dressed the house for Christmas, and there was a Crafts Fair and Farmer's Market.



There had been a hard frost overnight again, and after doing the grocery shopping we drove up towards Aberaeron along the main road via Lampeter, rather than going our usual back roads short-cut way.

By the time we got there, the car park was packed, but we managed to get a space. I was very disappointed to discover that the very thing I wanted to photograph MOST (e.g. the "Christmassing" of the house) was forbidden, so you will just have to rely on my descriptions. All the voluntary staff were dressed in Victorian costume. The contents of the dining room table is best described as a page from Mrs Beeton. There were bowls of tangerines and nuts and sugared almonds; a massive (cardboard!) iced Christmas cake; a huge bowl of fruit; and of course silver candlesticks and gleaming silver cutlery and the best plates and napkins neatly folded.



In the hallway there was a splendid tree and someone had done a wonderful job of tearing sheets of cotton wool carefully to lay on the branches and represent snow - must try that. It was carefully guarded by a really authentic-looking butler too, whose florid face looked as if he had the key to the wine cellar . . .

In the kitchens they had the most wonderful cream Aga (once the Only colour). It was a double sized one and the room was SO warm. A scrubbed kitchen table was laid out with a cornucopia of winter vegetables - leeks, onions, potatoes, carrots, cabbages, swede etc. I recall seeing a wonderfully-restored range too in another room. OH and I would love one, but our Hergom (black enamelled cast iron with brass rails and fittings) is a passible replacement.


Someone was playing Christmas carols on a piano when we went back to take this photo of the house. It sounded so right, and made me long for a Christmas where entertainments were all from the home and not the television . . .

Because of the craft fair, the usual displays had been squirrelled away. This is a cream seperator from the Dairy. I actually have the business part (made by a company in Haverfordwest, as this one was too), and I am now nagging my husband to make me the base. It would dress the bottom kitchen, with its enormous inglenook, perfectly . . .

In the photograph below, you can see the cheese press - you would have built up some good muscles moving these stone-weighted presses up and down . . .


In the wonderful courtyard at the back of the house, rooms which originally house the Dairy, the Bakery, the Laundry, the Brewery, the cold room for hanging Game etc, housed the poor Crafts people selling their wares, and huddled, shivering in corners. I felt sorry for them and hope they sold lots. There were more stalls in small tents beyond the yard, but they had problems with condensation and the lady with the hand-made soap had to move out as her stock was being ruined, and the man with the turned wood items wasn't best pleased either. My husband fell in love with a beautiful turned yew-wood box (he has a thing about yew) and I bought it for him from our offspring as a joint Christmas present. I also spoke to Jane ??? who had some marvellous hand-made baskets and picked up a leaflet about two courses she is holding at the end of January and I hope to go to the two day one and carry on with my basket-making skills, as I really enjoyed the course I did at Lluest last year. In one of the (lovely) Victorian stables, someone had seen fit to allocate a loose box to several rocking horses which were for sale! I wish I'd taken a photograph . . . I was fascinated by the hay rack which was built against a circular scoop in the wall, rather than just being put against a flat wall, which was the norm.






I couldn't resist this photograph as someone on Creative Living forum was hankering for a basketwork shopping trolley recently.


The Farmer's Market was excellent, and we both had roast lamb rolls for lunch, which certainly hit the spot, and then a wander around the walled gardens, marvelling at the beautifully-pruned and maintained old fruit trees.

The gardener's loft-cottage (one assumes!) which was above the stables.

There were fan-trained cherries all along one stretch of the walled garden.

One of the rows of wonderfully-managed fruit trees.


Between the borders of fruit trees were vegetable plots.

More fan-trained fruit trees and herb beds.

I wish my apple trees were pruned like this - so much easier to pick! The varieties were old apple species, eaters and cookers, designed to supply the house with fruit from autumn to late winter.

Back in the morning

I made the mistake of washing off the wall beneath the window recently and big chunks of paint flaked off. I decided it would have to be redecorated, so in the past week, that's what has kept me occupied in between walks. Now we have paler terracotta walls (the light in this photo is bad - old colour suggests room had been Tango'd!) and sparkling white woodwork. I never want to lift any heavy furniture again, or have to vacuum the dust from the tops of upwards of 250 books . . .


I will post properly tomorrow. I have had no broadband connection between 9 a.m. and 7.15 p.m. today (and not very happy about it either). I shall post when I can - about to go get a bath to rid myself of paint splashes as we've been cracking on with the redecorating in our sitting room and have finally finished the walls! One skirting board to do and then I can get back to the Morning Room and finish painting that (imagine Sherbert Lemons and egg yolks and you're not far off - really suits the room as it's big and high-ceilinged.)

No chance of a walk today as so busy and then it came on to rain steadily this afternoon, but tomorrow is another day . . .

Walking challenge - over 6 miles today

As I'd been busy painting since Tuesday, I decided I needed a longer walk today to make up for the lack of exercise, so I got OH to drop me off at Whitemill (3/4 of the way into Carmarthen) and I would walk home along the lanes. Gosh but I'd underestimated quite how cold it was going to be in the valley bottom, before the sun showed its face over the hills. I walked about 6 1/2 miles home, stopping to take photos on the way. It took me a shade over 2 hours, so not bad going. My legs have told me that they would like a rest tomorrow, please . . .

The start of the walk - lovely sunshine, but I was in the valley bottom for the first hour - think FROSTY!

A different view of Merlin's Hill to the one I'm used to.

A different wooded cwm to the ones I'm used to as well.


A lovely farmhouse basking in the sunshine.

Past the church wall and round the corner.

A pretty little church, surrounded by 4 or 5 yew trees.

The old track up to Godor.

A trackway up past Tanerdy which I will try another time - it had turned into a stream this morning, with all the rain we've had recently.

Back into our parish now and past an old farmstead.

A wonderful outcrop of rock.

The little river which once formed the boundary of the lands held by Talley Abbey.

Trinity Church.

Christmas footsteps

Thomas Hardy's cottage at Higher Bockhampton.



Sometimes I am in a writing mood. I wrote this just before last Christmas - some of you may have read it elsewhere. Anyway, I've been decorating and not walking today, and so I'll share this with you instead, to put you in the mood for Christmas.

Icicles hang from a Christmas window, reflecting the dancing light inside. A tendril of ivy skitters on the wall, tapping on the swirling glass of the window pane, and rocked by a keen wind. Heads nod as the children bob for apples, shaking wet hair from their eyes as they laugh: "Mine's rotten - I just got a worm!" The old lady in the chimney nook smiles a gappy smile and her fingers tap in time to the sound of the fiddle and the tenor voices approaching along the stoney lane. His father and uncles burst in with a blast of cold air and swirling leaves, and the boy's sister leaps up from the floor to fling herself into her father's outstretched arms.

"Snapdragon! Snapdragon!" The small boy's voice demands attention, his eyes intense and bright in his pale face. His mother's sharp glance and pursed lips quell him but a moment, before she gives a nod of her dark head and smiles, "Later lad, later, calm you down now. Let's have a song."

The boy picks up his accordian, fingers running gently on the keys as he begins to follow his father's merry tune.

The old lady mumbles her jaw and watches sparks fly up the chimney as the ivy taps ever harder against the glass and a robin presses himself deeper inside his chink in the thatch.

The log falls, sparks shooting up the chimney and waking the old man from his dream. He gazes around him at the velvet curtains hanging where bare windows should have been; the plush upholstery where should have been the stick-back chairs his father made, and the carpet beneath his slippered feet.

He sighs, and rises stiffly, walking to the table on old man's legs. Staring for a moment at the blotting paper, carrying all these thoughts in reverse, he picks up his pen and begins to write:

"Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock,
'Now they are all on their knees' . . ."

Nant Gwilw walk

A view from yesterday's walk . . .

If you look at the central ivy-clad oak tree in this picture, and go back one field to the smaller trees behind it, Ffosgrech, of which nothing remains other than a census entry, stood just where the three trees meet the woodland on the left. A lovely spot on a day like yesterday. Not so good when it faced into the wild wet westerlies we are used to here.



After two days without a walk due to resting (Monday) and weather (it would have been MADNESS on Tuesday), yesterday's clear blue skies and ice-cold sunshine tempted me out, in my new walking boots. I planned to walk about 4 miles - up to Nant Gwilw and back. Nant Gwilw is a ruined farmhouse - currently under offer (but only the bravest would take it on!)

I have written about it before, but it is easier to repeat myself than to link back to the earlier posting.

http://www.jlb2005.plus.com/walespic/llanfynydd/030222-4.htm

The above link shows you how Nant Gwilw looked a few years back, and tells you a little about the history, including the legend of the Nant Gwilw iris, which made it all the way to America. I know of no battle hereabouts, but when I was there yesterday, the house held a very negative and unpleasant atmosphere - so much so I couldn't wait to get away from it . . .

Just inside the wood margin along the top, is the trackway which led up to Grosfrech, and the picture is just one field across from the one at the top of the page.

The beginning of the trackway up to Ffosgrech, and my weekend walk will be up this trackway, up through the woods and back along the lanes . . .

View across the valley to where I was walking last weekend.

This was a converted barn, using by a printing company back in the early 1970s. Doesn't take long to fall into complete delapidation . . .

Steps up to the top floor of the barn, where any farm servants would have slept.

They had some interesting sanitary arrangements it would seem . . .

You don't get much more dilapidated than this - roof half off, top floor fallen along with the staircase, and everything just fallen in.

Or covered in ivy . . .

Or smashed . . .

It sits between two streams, but still manages to be in a bog . . . As you can see, not much roof left either.

The remains of the orchard, where only two aged apple trees remain. I picked up two apples to try and grow on from seed. The nearest identification I can get is a Crimson Bramley, but they could be an old Welsh cider apple type for all I know.

Opposite the house is a massive maiden oak, which must be about 700 years old. I'm sure it could tell some tales . . .

The road home . . .

Nostalgia

Squirrel's Leap! A fenced off field on the edge of Cricket Camp.

I am wallowing in it right now. That's what comes of doing research into Victorian times - it begins to seem as real as the present. I seem to be stuck on a loop from where I grew up in Southampton - in the 1881 census the road I lived on wasn't even there. A few cottages up at Thornhill were called "Thornhill Cottage" and only one of those can I remember from my childhood, the one along the Roman Road - I daresay the others were flattened before the council estate and high-rise flats were built. I remember it vividly because I used to walk my dogs up there on a Sunday morning, and once Tara, oblivious to my shouts, shot into the garden there and killed a big rat! Whilst I was apologising for her bad behaviour, the owners were pleased she'd killed the rat! Sometimes we went further and over to Cricket Camp - where as children, Glynnis and I used to ride on Snowy, an elderly Section A pony who lived at the Snooks' smallholding. Visiting this summer, Cricket Camp was orderly and pathed and fenced and Council-organized, but a good place to walk and ride along by the River Hamble. The Snooks wooden "bungalow" - there were plenty of them around built between the wars - was long gone, and a totally out-of-place "des res" sat on the plot, and it was now an "equestrian holding" as estate agents are wont to describe them. No longer somewhere with a productive orchard, chickens for eggs, a big veg plot to supply the family and the rest sold locally - often "out front" with an honesty box.

So on my walk today, my thoughts will be of childhood, of a way of life which would seem Dickensian to children today, as they have no notion of growing up BEFORE everyone had cars, at the end of the horse-drawn era, where shops had delivery rounds still, milk was delivered by horse and cart (Brown and Harrison's Dairy), the rag and bone man still drove round with his odd call, driving a scruffy little chestnut cob with lots of white splashes, called Suzy; and the didakois (as we knew them then) drove up to old Queenie's wooden "bungalow" opposite our house, and put their bad-tempered dock-tailed mare Mandy in the yard at the back. Lord knows what they did to their horses, but they had two that would attack people on sight - I often wondered how on earth they caught them (well, Mandy was tethered) but Bill . . . thank heavens for the Safety Tree in the orchard or we'd have been pushing up daisies long since . . . I am smiling - they were such happy carefree times, and we had such freedom . . .

Walking into the view

The view of Black Mountain from the top of the hill . . .



I'm trying to get into the routine of doing a 5 mile walk on a Sunday (weather permitting). It was dry yesterday, but chilly, and I chose a route I used to take Fahly on sometimes (only the other way round to the way I walked it). The views across the valley to Black Mountain (and beyond on a clear day, right across to Pen-y-Fan) and along the valley, are stunning. The mile and a half uphill is a bit daunting, but I am getting quite fit now and actually managed it without having to pause for breath - just one stop to take a photo of the white stuff on Black Mountain.

The lane across the valley takes you past two farmsteads, one with farm-buildings both sides of the lane, and a gate which is shut across the lane when they are moving stock. I can remember the first time we drove along there, when we had only been living in Wales a week or two. In our part of the world, we never came across farms that had gates across the road and felt like we were trespassing.

In the furthest white-washed barn, the farm servants would have slept in Victorian times and probably up to the 1920s. The steps up to the loft can just be seen.

The light on this mossy old oak tree was stunning.


I passed the almost sheer hillside clad with wet alder carr type woodland, and past another little farmstead hugging the hill, walking down into the view. The steepest bit of the hill would not be an attractive proposition today, after last night's hard frost. Like our hill after rain, I should imagine it freezes like the Cresta Run . . .


"Into the view" - the lane downhill.

Another ancient trackway, now long fallen into disuse.


I passed the farmstead where I used to buy lovely organic hay for the horses years ago, and down to the old trackway up through the woodland. One of these days I shall check with my neighbour and see if he minds me exploring it. It looks so enticing.

The enticing trackway.


Then down to a charming little cottage in the cwm, which looks such a lovely family home.


Along the next stretch of the road I spotted a big dog-fox in the undergrowth of a field margin and watched him for some minutes, being downwind of him he couldn't smell me and when he did notice me, wasn't at all peturbed, and just climbed through the fence and wandered up to the grazed field with two ponies in it.

The next stretch of the lane held at least one ruined cottage that I know of, and I looked out for more. I found the one cottage easily, and my rule of thumb about the particular cottage hedging ran true. All that was left of the cottage (and I shall check which one it was and update this) was a pile of mossy stones. So sad.

On a raised bank opposite, we have found blackcurrant bushes growing - obviously planted up there away from any passing livestock and still surviving 40 or 50 years since the cottage was left derelict!

The cottage hedging - a give-away now I know what to look for.

It was a sunny day, but "brisk" with it!

Then past a success story. A farmhouse which has been totally restored and is now a family smallholding. When we first moved down here it was in the last stages of dereliction, with the roof falling in and too dangerous to enter.

The next property tells the same story. Abandoned, complete with all the old furniture - deemed so old-fashioned in the 60s - when the old folk died, they just shut the house up and tacked out the land. Now it has been almost doubled in size and is a working farm again.


Coming along the final stretch, an old barn settled into the landscape.


I was glad to get home, and pretty tired as there were some very steep sections of hill - the sort that have an arrow on them on a map to show they are precipitous! Today is a day off, and I am busy with needle and thread instead.

Stepping into the past

Another scene from yesterday's walk - looking across our valley.


There was a very hard frost overnight. The worst of the winter in fact. Fortunately my husband is doing the school run, so I didn't have to freeze rigid getting the ice off the car.

If I expected to sleep well last night I was mistaken. I fell into a very deep sleep by 9 p.m. (!) but then at 2 a.m. I was wide awake, and walking the 1881 census of Sholing, Southampton (where I grew up). I couldn't get an internet connection past 5 p.m. last evening, so I had a wander through the 1881 census disc for Hampshire instead. I discovered - amongst other things - that there were other brickworks, down by Millers Pond - as well as the one at the back of our house in Butts Road (our house had been built for the Brickworks Manager).

I realize now that where we used to go and scrump plums, and pick long-abandoned fruit bushes, had been a market garden in the 1881 census. I imagine it was abandoned around the time of WWII. There were extensive apple orchards too (one lot definitely under bricks and mortar and a goodly part of the other orchard as well.)

So I spent the night tossing and turning, and walking the roads and fields of my childhood and got up this morning feeling tearful and nostalgic for my childhood. That's what lack of sleep does for you.

Back later with the walk.