Air frost at New Year

This is perhaps my tenth New Year post (I've not checked if I did one the first year), it's something of a custom to commit to doing one. I've always been something of a party-pooper about New Year at the best of times, often tending to a Jeremiah-ish mood, and indeed,  these are not the best of times, in many ways, and it's difficult not to feel lugubrious and apprehensive about the year(s) to come, on all kinds of levels from the personal to the global, including the intersection of the two which I feel has a more ominous reality than it has really had for me before. Likewise, on the personal and wider world spheres, this has been a year of shocks and difficulties. We have hopes and dreams of our own, beyond the shock reactions and urges to flight after the fire, which have calmed down somewhat, yet the path to get to them looks sometimes steep, fraught and uncertain.

As often I woke early after sleeping fitfully; my body and its broken thermostat and other inner chemical workings playing tricks on me I could really do without, lay with a lot of rather dreary thoughts and a few more cheerful ones, counted my blessings backwards alphabetically, (one of a number of devices not quite sovereign but sometimes useful against insomnia and anxiety), dozed a little and waited for the late, late daylight.

When it came, action, affection, tea and toast restored my spirits as they usually do, and it brought what seems to have become rare and lovely thing, as well as a heavy mist, a glorious air frost and light of pink and blue and gold, which prompted me to another rather unusual thing these days, to get the camera out,

though these were taken from the comfort and warmth of the kitchen:

But Elfie and I were eager to get out and get sniffing and looking:

The mist came and went and shrunk the world as it does, so the road out of our village disappeared into oblivion:

But this is the weather that Elfie likes, and so do I:

In the frequent fog we've had I've been nervous about letting her off the lead, as her usual running distance would take her out of sight, but on this occasion I did, and she always kept in sight, and seemed to love the crispness underfoot and good smells.

The frost continued to form as we were out, making fine filaments in the fur round her ears,

and at one point I put my hand to my own hair and found it stiff with ice too, yet it turned to wet as soon as we got indoors again, rushing in, in vain, to show Tom the phenomenon.

Many wonderful things have happened to us this year too, as I'm sure they have everywhere. Tonight it will be guinea fowl pie, the last of Christmas dinner, and a dvd, and I imagine we'll be in bed and asleep before midnight.

Happy New Year.

Half a century and half a decade...

... which seems quite a lot of years. I am having a rather wonderful day, in fact.

My birthday treat was really to go to England last week, which was packed with activity and most enjoyable. I saw two siblings - lovely sister whom I stayed with and brother Phil too, and his Angela took the day off as well to come and meet us at the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge (after a walk through the beautiful botanic garden), where we ate wild boar tortellini and cake in the café* and looked at the exhibition of medieval manuscripts, where I shadowed a very erudite lady who was commenting and explaining the exhibits to her companion in a most fascinating way, so I was moved to approach her before we left and thank her. I seem unable to stop myself speaking openly and probably inappropriately to complete strangers once in my native language; when I took my older French students to the south of England some years ago they kept asking if I was related to all the people we met as I seemed so familiar with them. We spent a day in London, had delicious vegetarian lunch at this restaurant, and took in more medievalia at the V&A along with a very absorbing exhibition on underwear since 1850. I also spent an evening with Tom's daughter K and her family, eating spag bol, being shown music videos and having the drop explained to me by my step-grandson, and I went food shopping in Lidl in Harlow which, bizarrely, provoked the strongest feeling of homesickness I experienced during the whole trip - I think it was brought on by the sausage rolls.

I took the camera but no photos whatsoever, even though I told lovely sister I'd photograph more of her quilts, I just forgot. But I did bring back these little fellows:

They are know as 'shelves', a portmanteau of shelf-elves, elves who sit on shelves. They are exquisitely made with felt hats and boots, knitting-Nancy (French knitting, tricotin) limbs and sheepskin beards, and filled with kiln-dried sand so their cone shaped bodies sit cosily and slightly mobile in the hand like Kelly men. No two are exactly alike. My sister has been creating so many lovely and immaculately made things and trying to sell them for a fraction of their worth for ages, and suddenly she's hit on something everyone wants. It seems there's a story book, though she didn't know about it, and a new custom that has grown from it, of parents moving the elf and hiding him in a different place round the house for the children to find every day in Advent. On account of this craze she has produced about 150 of them in about three weeks, and they are flying out of the small craft and gift outlets where she takes them. She still charges ridiculously little for them.

Anyway, despite having such a grand time, and despite Ryanair diverting the flight, because of fog which was nowhere to be seen on the ground at Dinard but was deemed by HQ in Dublin to be too severe to land there, so we had to wait around at Rennes for a couple of hours then be bussed back, it was lovely to get home. Elfie greeted me with equable but not overwhelming good humour, she'd had rather a nice time being spoiled by Tom and dragging him around the countryside, since he didn't dare let her off the lead he just followed her everywhere. She had a huge marrow bone to distract her the day I left (too much, she threw half of it up again but it didn't distress her), and was generally very good.

I haven't done anything special today, since there would be nothing open on a Monday in December and anyway, we had a firewood delivery. But Elfie and I had a lovely foggy morning walk, with a stripey partridge skittering away under her nose and getting her all excited, and two white egrets fishing in a puddle in the cow field below the house, who took flight and drifted off into the fog like spirits, and made the hair on the back of my neck rise. Our friend J rang and asked had I opened her present yet? She had said it was 'just a jokey one' which rather made my heart sink as J's jokey cards and presents are usually awful, and I'd put it away and forgotten about it. 'Unwrap it now!' she insisted on the 'phone.

In fact it was unexpectedly pleasing,

a pair of large, plain white mugs designed to look like Aran knitting. We had hot chocolate in them.

I made eight jars of white currant jelly so I'd have something to give people for Christmas, then had orzo (possibly my favourite pasta shape, what's yours?) with pesto and bacon for lunch, while Tom had an apple sandwich, which he prefers, then the wood came, which I'd ordered before I left.

For nearly twenty years we have had free fire wood from the farmer who farms our field. We negotiated a cord when we arrived, and he has faithfully delivered it every year, sometimes we've bought an extra one. As the cost of firewood rose and the value of land rental stagnated, this became a very good deal for us; the paterfamilias retired but still continued to honour the arrangement, but this year I felt he was avoiding the subject and us. I finally spoke to his wife on the phone, who prevaricated then said that in fact Pierre was no longer occupying himself with the wood, we'd need to talk to their son... We knew we'd as well talk to ourselves, cut our losses (which weren't losses anyway) and went and ordered supermarket wood. It is beautiful stuff,

clean and dry and fragrant, rounded at the corners from seasoning and turning. It came wrapped on pallets and took about an hour for both of us to unload and stack. I only wish it were cold enough to justify a fire, but it really isn't.

So now we are luxuriating in a comfortable level of fatigue, looking forward to a decadent convenience food supper of Fray Bentos steak puddings, tinned marrowfat peas and mash from the freezer, plenty of red wine, and a DVD of The Mill on the Floss. Bloody delightful.

Thanks for cards, e-mails and other treats. My cup runneth over, as always.

*where I also had a run-in with a nervy American girl who had used her backpack to reserve a table for four for herself alone while she went to queue. Seats were at a premium, the correct protocol was to queue, get food and then look for seats, as we had done. I moved her backpack and we all sat down together, and when she appeared claiming her 'reserved' seat I said, politely I thought, that I didn't think one could do that, we were four and needed seats and a bag on a seat was not a person. She went off, found a single seat then came back near to tears saying how rude I was, and I heard her bending the ears of the people she'd sat by about how ill-treated she'd been. Poor snowflake. I am such a meanie.

First frosts and fires

The first real frost we've had and quite a hard one, which doesn't leave the grass all day in places. The pastures look blue with it. Wrapped in Icelandic wool with leggings under jeans and fleece gloves under wool mittens, I'm happy now winter's properly here, and the late afternoon sun is glorious. It's the tipping time of autumn, I realise, that prompts seasonal malaise, that and lightless, cloudy and foggy days.

At the bio shop, along with spelt milk for Elfie (don't ask) we buy small, very purple, fresh figs, a few big Spanish chestnuts - in honour of first fires, I can't bring myself to buy many as to me they should simply be a seasonal free resource - and a big bunch of watercress, which will shortly mostly be soup.

There are fieldfares in larger and larger numbers in the countryside, and groups of noisy migrant blackbirds in the garden. I see a number of wrens flying low and urgently between hedges, and on the road outside Marcel's house a dead one, crushed but perfectly wren-shaped, its speckled markings and cocked tail clear and bright. No doubt it was fuddled with cold and hunger; we must start feeding the birds again now the cold weather's here, but there is little you can do for the ones that eat only insects.

Tom goes outside to break up some stuff, and snags the base of his thumb badly on a wayward screw, leaving a trail of blood spots into the house, where I find him at the sink and patch him up with my usual cartoon style, belt-and-braces first aid dressings. Nevertheless, when we come back from our evening walk, the fire is lit, Elfie's dinner is prepared and the windscreen of the car covered against ice so he can drive me into St Brieuc for a mammogram (just a regular screening check) tomorrow. He gets a glass of sloe gin for his pains.

Fire can be good.

'I would not give you false hope, on this strange and mournful day...'

Walking back through the November twilight, waved at my 95 year old friend at his window, it's a little cold these days for him to lean on the gate to chat. I pulled a sprig of bay leaves from his tree to add one to tonight's dinner; we have them in our garden but I wanted them there and then. I feel reluctant to take our late walk these dwindling afternoons, and yet when I do I'm always glad of it, the evening gentle, redolent, somewhat melancholy, full of low light and good smells for a dog, and we always walk further than I think we will.

I remembered a bit in 'Diana of the Crossways', a book I read a couple of chapters of for Librivox, and which I found a trial. I must get back to recording for Librivox, and walking dogs for the SPA, and other socially useful activities. Diana and Redworth return from the Crossways, she unwillingly having had her flight from disgrace forestalled, through a November evening, and she says that now she understands now why he always takes his holidays in November, which pleases him because she has not only remembered but also understood a detail of his life. A nice detail of a tedious book remembered vividly. That sometimes happens.

This has been going through my head lately.

(Worth hanging around on Youtube afterwards to hear other selected Paul Simon stuff: 'Slip sliding away', 'Loves me like a rock', 'Me and Julio' etc, I remembered Az singing that one to me, and other things.)

January ticking over

I don't seem to have checked in here for a bit. An agreeable number of small, fairly constructive projects and events have been occupying me, here are one or two.

My first week or so of recording for Librivox. I've used them a lot over the last couple of years, and very much admire the aims and ethos of the project, an appreciation which has grown since actually becoming involved, it really is a work of patience and integrity. It struck to me as a worthwhile and useful outside activity to which I could commit some time and effort without in fact having to leave the house. It does demand, however, an early start - for quiet, solitude, concentration, lack of self-consciousness and free time on the big computer -  respecting external deadlines, learning some new technical stuff with the software which I find not intuitive and fairly challenging - they don't turn anyone away because of their reading skills or lack of them, but do insist on the recording quality being as good as possible and a level of self-editing with it. I also find that it's helping with the lack of focus I mentioned before; reading with a view to reading aloud demands an attention to detail and meaning, like making yourself chew small mouthfuls. I'm getting over my intense, if fairly normal, dislike of my own recorded voice, and possibly improving it a bit, trying, with care but not too much artifice, to smooth out the staccato crackle I always thought made me sound like a petulant six year old, and the occasional sliding into sloppy Estuary vowels (Hertfordshire isn't quite on the Thames estuary, it's true, but it's heading that way.).

All of which is doing me great good, and it's also rather fun.

Early morning recording session

As may be seen, my recording arrangements are rather makeshift. I very quickly realised that the flimsy cheap desktop microphone is unsatisfactory, or rather unsatisfying, since with a bit of fiddling with the software an adequate sound track can be achieved, but I find myself hankering for something better, more solid, more directed, which doesn't require balancing on a pile of books and total physical immobility other than moving one's lips, and, I admit it, which looks rather more the business. Another volunteer compared it to taking up tennis, at first you make do with your cousin's old cast-off racket, then when you start really enjoying the game you start wanting a good one of your own. So I've got a rather nice looking Samson on a little stand on order; it's cheaper than a tennis racket, honestly.

While with many of the more obscure texts one might be inclined to wonder why bother to record them and who will ever listen, I can see that that's not entirely the point, it's really more like archiving or even archaeology, a question of faithful and patient excavation and recording, in the broader sense of the word. Yet despite all the work that Librivox have put in over the last ten years (and they don't object to duplication anyway), there are plenty of interesting and delightful books still unrecorded.  So far, and it's been fairly slow going to get the hang of what I'm doing, I've recorded half a dozen Alice Meynell poems, one of a collection of Irish folk and fairly tales, collected by Yeats and Lady Wilde and others, about a smartarse atheist priest who gets his comeuppance, and I'm working on two chapters of the second book of William Morris's The Well at the World's End, of which I'm also listening to the first book. Odd to be immersing so in Victoriana, much of it so heavy, ornate, ponderous and melancholy, like some of the furniture I grew up with. Yet beyond the distracting noise of the language, Meynell's 'thees' and 'thous' and aura of religiosity, and Morris's sometimes quite impenetrable emblazoned mediaeval pastiche, sometimes some true and fresh psychological awareness or sweet originality of observation shines through. Good to be renewing my fondness for Morris too, apart from anything else, I think, despite the historical image he has sadly inherited of Rosetti's put-upon cuckold, consoling himself with beardy, romantic Utopianism and pretty curtains, he honestly liked and wanted to understand women in a spirit of real generosity, friendship and admiration.

~

Still knitting plenty, of course, amongst which my first foray into Icelandic wool, which was in fact three balls of the standard (ie pretty heavy) weight Lopi which I bought not in Iceland but Amsterdam back in September. I felted a sample of it, and went on to make a felt hat. Long ago I had a Nepalese round hat, a kind of pill box shape with a gold-yellow crown and a coloured patterned band around it, which fitted perfectly and always made me feel good. Don't know what happened to it, but I've often thought I'd like to re-create something like it. On this occasion I did not succeed.

The combination of the felting and the depth of the crown looked kind of nice off but wearing it feels like my head is being squeezed inward and upward (can't bring myself to enlarge this photo).  I made the design myself, tulips from Amsterdam, I'm fond of yellow tulips and like ochre shades but can't wear any great expanse of them. However, I have found another use for it as a receptacle for other knitting.

meta-knitting

Trouble is the tulips are upside down, I should have stuck with an abstract pattern. It would work quite well as a busker's hat for collecting money in.

I've been on a mitten-making binge too, here are a couple of mitten still lifes.

I find homes for them or keep them.

Even more totally frivolous playing about with colour, I discovered this site, where you can make those kind of colour palettes I see all the time on Pinterest and elsewhere. You simply upload a photo URL, or use one they randomy generate, to pick out colours and make a palette selection, either by clicking directly on an area of the photo or using the grid of shades which the software automatically extracts for you. Here's one from a photo I took of the lake in Reykjavik in the twilight:

and another of a Reykjavik street view, I loved having mountains at the end of the street

and another of darling Molly in the garden on a summer day, not long before she left us

People use them supposedly for decorating schemes, or quilts, or their next season's wardrobe, or whatever, but while I like to imagine knitting handsome Icelandic wool pullovers from the colours of the townscapes, I probably won't get around to it, really it's just a way of pleasantly idling a few minutes when I doubtless ought to be doing something more useful.

Like pulling the school bus out of the ditch just up the road, where it finished up on a morning of scarcely visible black ice which took everyone by surprise:

Not having access to the heavy plant required for this task, I couldn't have done this, though I did go up and offer the lady driver shelter and a cup of coffee, and to commiserate with her on her vehicle's de-roaded state, sharing with her the memory of the time when a full cement mixer truck had done the same thing and had to be left there overnight, no longer turning so presumably the concrete within must have solidified and had to be extracted by heaven knows what process. She declined the coffee as she was waiting for her boss to come and sort things out, the children having been already transferred to another bus. Indeed, a surprising number of people appeared as from nowhere, offering their help and company and curiosity, including Victor of course, next to whose patch the event occurred:

Then Ludovic from next door-but-one who works for the municipality  in some capacity with gear and tackle and some other blokes with a van and the shiny blue commune tractor arrived and the consequent confab lasted a good hour or so, by which time I, like Victor, had retired back to the house, taking photos from the upstairs window. Finally the bus was removed from the ditch and driven off, and life in the village resumed its habitual January quiet.

Which quiet I am greatly enjoying, with some worthwhile projects and agreeable home-based activities, a few other plans still untroublingly small on the horizon. The ice on the road was exceptional, the winter is generally mild and manageable. I walk often, dance sometimes, scarcely visit the garden, mull but don't mope. Sic transit January. Time to go make postcards of my sister's quilts.

Iceland, riding

On the evening of the day we went to the Blue Lagoon we went out after the Northern Lights. We were lucky and saw them on our first trip out ( if you don't see them the first time the companies that run the trips offer to take you out again until you do, if you're available). Tom succeeded in taking one or two photos (no mean feat without special equipement), and the guy who took us, a well known successful Lights chaser and photographer, took more including one of us in front of the aurora where we look like a couple of stuffed owls who died of hypothermia, and I think Tom will probably use them - he's doing Iceland posts over at Gwynt and we're trying to avoid too much uxorious duplication. The funny thing is, it was initially the Northern Lights which drew me to the idea of Iceland in the winter, but while I found them impressive to be sure*, and while I'm very glad I did see them, they weren't really the high point of the trip. I think perhaps that was the horses.

In Iceland, we were told, no livestock or even fodder may be imported. There is but one breed of cow, whence cometh the excellent milk, butter and skyr - the yoghurty product of which two pots were left in the apartment fridge when we arrived as part of the next day's breakfast I'd ordered; it is, it seems, almost devoid of fat (presumably that goes to make the butter) and yet has a remarkably thick, rich texture. There is one breed of sheep, which furnish the rough thick Lopi wool with which I am currently besotted, which comes in all shades of earth but also every hue of jewel and berry too, taking the colour with the depth and luminosity of silk; they also provide delicious meat, which, along with the milk and the wool is one of the few things which are plentiful and inexpensive there. And there is one breed of horse, the Icelandic horse, of course, which, though not tall, must never be called a pony.

I hadn't initially thought about the possibility of visiting much less riding any of these marvellous creatures; for some reason I thought it would involve going far into the hinterland and perhaps wouldn't be possible in winter. However, it turned out there were plenty of companies offering visits and rides, even for the likes of us, neither of whom has sat on a horse since we were kids, since when our flexibility and weight have waned and increased in pretty much inverse proportions. We booked a 'Nature Comfort' trip with Ishestar, which was the first I came across, but there are other and smaller operators too.

This was about the most basic option, and included being picked up from the apartment late morning, a twenty minute drive into the frozen hills, an hour or so to mooch about at the centre - where we had an excellent roast lamb lunch for about a tenner, some of which Tom sneakily managed to share with the resident springer spaniel - and then an instructional video and an hour on a horse in the surrounding countryside before being ferried home again. As we were the only ones taking that trip that day we had the minibus and the ride entirely to ourselves except for driver and guide. A bigger group of young people, who I think were probably on a longer riding holiday, were just coming in from their morning out. One girl was saying to another something along the lines of '... oh, it was OK, the snow was soft, no harm done',  to which the other replied 'yeah, I came off yesterday, you just have to relax...'.

From where we were sitting we could see their horses just released in the paddock (Tom took these pictures).

 

Beautiful beasts, every colour known to horse, but somewhat rambunctious, I thought. The packed ice and lumpy volcanic rock didn't look too soft to me, and I decided not to relay the overheard conversation to Tom.

I needn't have worried. We were duly togged up with helmets and introduced to our mounts. I had Alder,

and Tom had Early,

(their names are as they sounded, not sure of the spelling). 

These two were clearly used to the geriatric shift, they plodded round good-naturedly with us on board, and while I appreciate what must be the wonder of the exceptional gaits of tolt and pace special to the Icelandic horse and often described as 'explosive', 'dynamic', 'fast' and other such alarming adjectives, I am happy to say we were not called on to experience them. Early on the young woman who escorted us turned and seeing Tom allowing Early to pick his own slow way over the icy road advised 'you may have to be a bit firm with him'. 

'To make him stop or to make him go?' I enquired.

'To make him go,' she replied, as though talking to an idiot and biting back the 'of course'.

Slow and easy it may have been, but it was altogether a magical experience in delightful company. Our guide (who wasn't really sarcastic) at one point turned around and said sweetly that she hoped we didn't mind that she wasn't talking much, but it was the most beautiful day she had seen in two years of working there, and she liked to just listen and enjoy the landscape, which was exactly how we felt.

It was truly listening to silence, no bird calls, scarcely any human sound except the odd distant engine of a vehicle coming and going, the occasional neigh of a horse from the stables, which made Alder prick up her ears and doubtless think about her nice warm box and sweet hay, but she clip-clopped on patiently. The sun had been up an hour or so and just skimmed along the horizon of the bowl of hills where as we made our circuit before making its way behind them again by the time we finished; it was windless and washed in glowing pink and lavender and gold. Contrary to expectations, Iceland in winter is full of colour, hard to catch in photos, in good weather anyway, and we were lucky with the weather.

A tour guide we had the following day, clearly another Icelandic horse enthusiast, told us that they are so comfortable, safe and stable that you should be able to balance and drink a full glass of beer while riding one without spilling a drop. Indeed, they were rather like big equine armchairs, even in these icy conditions. Now and then their hooves slipped, but they are built for this climate, know where to put their feet, and for good measure have special winter shoes on. Once or twice we experimented with steering a bit but mostly let them find their own way. Nevertheless, I wasn't quite confident to let go too often to take photos, and when I did getting straight horizons wasn't easy. 

But I was able to take some more when we got off. Up close it's clear why they are horses not ponies: they have a bulk and substance about them which just feels big, their height notwithstanding, there's nothing about them that's on a small scale. These two were so gentle and fun and friendly, though, lovely characters.

We had saved our breakfast apples for them, Alder cheekily snuffed at them in Tom's pockets. It turns out however that this is another regard in which Icelandic horses differ from other equines, they don't much care for apples. Alder turned mine down altogether, even when I bit off small pieces to tempt her; Early finally condescended to try one, but only if Tom would hold it and turn it so he could munch on it bite by bite, rather as a human might, then wipe his foamy sticky muzzle on his sleeve.

'He's a nice old fellah' I remarked to the girl (meaning the horse). She smiled, 'He's polite' she affirmed.

~

We scarcely saw any cows or sheep, they being tucked up by now in their winter quarters. The horses, however, can stay out of doors all the year round, even through the savage storm that had swept the island a couple of days before we arrived, subsisting on scant winter grasses and other vegetation; no animal feed is imported into the country because of the risk of disease, just as no livestock can be brought in, and any horses that leave can never return. On the following day we had a long tour of the Golden Circle, the popular tour from Reykjavik which includes the most spectacular and accessible geysirs, waterfalls, Thingvellir etc. Photos and impressions from that are still being sorted and mulled over, but the driver pulled in at short notice where some more horses had come to a fence to be fussed and petted.

That's my hand rubbing that one's nose. I jumped out of the minibus and in my excitement with stroking and photographing forgot to put gloves on; by the time I returned ten minutes later my hands were so cold it was much longer before the pain in my thumbs subsided.

There were some crusts of bread which they were willing to eat, and some people were pulling up handfuls of dry grass to offer them, 

but mostly they seemed happy just to stop for a chat and a pat.

and to pose in the afternoon sun against an impressive backdrop.

Handsome beasts, I think you'll agree.

~

* it was 'moderate' activity, but there were good views. I think, however, that the fault lay not in the particles but in my night vision, which, this rather confirmed, is not good, I felt I was peering to see it through a veil of poor sight, such as I don't experience with my corrected daylight eyes, it seemed rather indistinct and I couldn't really see the colours in it, though I suspect these show better in photos than the reality anyway.