OMG, it's a blog post!

I can identify at least five types. Leaves on the decking in my backyard (disclaimer: not pictured). It’s one of those wild mid-November days when flying golden leaves make me think of the tornado scene from The Wizard of Oz – flying leaves, flying furniture, flying old ladies on bicycles who turn into witches. Only that was black and white.

Silver birch (bottom of neighbours’ garden [neighbours who by some quirk of Victorian development are the only ones in the block of terraces to have a garden]), lime (come over the roofs from the row along the edge of the busway), hawthorn (ditto, or from the mystery field  at the far corner of the terraces [dog walker heaven, full of shit, lined by plum trees that bear small but sweet orange fruits in late July]), sycamore (edges of same field, or small specimens along the hedge next to the limes) and oak. Oak? No idea. I’ll have to go and find it sometime; I didn’t know we had any nearby, but with this gale it could have travelled. Despite living in one of the North West’s reputedly shittier towns, I’m happy to report there are quite a few trees in the area along with quite a few patches of greenness, some of them officially sanctioned parks, some of them mysterious patches of grass and shrub and plum trees. The boy and I even realised there was a tulip tree on our walk into town the other day. We hadn’t realised until we saw its autumn leaves scattered across a flight of steps. And we only know it’s a tulip because of the wildlife club at a nearby museum where the boy had made a leaf-identification book a couple of months ago.

The tea must be brewed now. Yes, all of this has been flitting through my head while I waited for a cuppa to brew. Perhaps that’s why I’m known for my strong tea. Colleagues at my last job had a mug made for me when I left that read: Stewed not Brewed. I chipped the edge of it in the kitchen at my current job last week.

Today, I called in sick. Cue many thoughts about whether I really am sick. It’s not that I feel particularly guilty (sure, you reply, that’s why you have to point it out like that). It’s that I worry too much about what people think of me. And the thought that they’re thinking I’m the sort of person who calls in sick with a cold is too much for my psyche to bear. So I justify myself to nobody, in my head. Then I decide, completely on a whim, to start writing this diary. Subconsciously, I’m probably doing it just so that I can explain to the computer screen and you, my imaginary reader, that I really am sick. It’s not just my normal winter cold; it’s a cough and cold on top of a cold. I spend September to March every year either having a cold, developing a cold or trying to get over a cold. I’ve had dodgy sinuses all my life. Apparently, this is why I feel tired all the time – even when I’m asleep I get very little deep sleep. Doctor’s suggested solution: stick my head over a bowl of steaming water five times a day. Sure, doc, cos it’s not like I have a job, or a life. Anyway, I tried it when I had a few days off. Sinuses cleared a little from their baseline state for about twenty minutes each time then back to their usual state.

Cue another thought: Why did I write a job or a life? Why do we have to treat the two as separate, as if life is something that happens only after 6pm or crammed into the weekend? More on that and my perpetual search for the point of it all another time.

My tea is nearly drunk. I might go straight onto another mug. I went back to sleep this morning at 9.30 and woke up again at 1.30pm, which means I have a lot of tea drinking to catch up on. It’s going dark now (3.45pm) and I’m caught between the desire to rush out into the weather to get some fresh air – a phrase that carries vast meaning in my life associated with my uber desire to run away from it all to the mountains – and the desire to wrap up in a blanket, drink hot chocolate, pluck another book from the shelf and hibernate. So I’ll do what I always do when I can’t make a decision, or I know there’s some task that needs doing but I’ve overthought it into some mammoth undertaking: make another cuppa.

Sun, sea, sand

We've been on our hols, camping in Devon, the boy recovering from chicken pox. He enjoyed digging holes on the beach, lining up rocks and examining seaweed. But he didn't like the big waves, especially when mummy disappeared into them with nought but her cossie on. I expected him to wake with the dawn at 4am, but he actually slept til near seven every night, which I was so glad of. I've only camped with him for two nights at a time before, whereas this was six nights albeit with a friend to help out with the toddler-chasing activities. I'm feeling all refreshed in mind and spirit from the fresh air and sunsets, the rolling green hills and sea views. My body could still do with a month of early nights though.

Bad parenting at the forest

I'm a bad mother. We went to The Forest today. That's Delamere Forest, although anyone who lives in Cheshire just calls it The Forest. It was about 7am when I decided we'd go. I thought we'd go early while it was still quiet. Just after 10am, we actually left the house, packed lunch in tow. But it seems I do not observe proper parenting practice whilst in the great outdoors. I did not, for example, expect him to stay clean. I did not tell him off for sliding down sandy embankments on his backside. I did not tell him off for getting green, mossy stains on the knees of his trousers. I did not tell him off for using his fingers to gouge interesting stones out of the earth. I did not tell him off for straying off the path to inspect every unfurling fern frond, every potentially climbable tree, every perfectly seat-like tree trunk, every half-nibbled pine cone, every mysterious rabbit hole. I did not warn him every five seconds about the nettles. Somehow, he managed not to get nettled. Somehow, we managed to have fun. Somehow, we managed to walk a couple of miles. Or so. I wasn't measuring. Another parenting fail. I had no buggy (it's been relegated to the loft). I couldn't pick him up due to the hernia op recovery, hence had no sling either. And I had only a vague idea of where we were going and how far away from the car park we were. Although I do have a tried-and-tested good sense of direction.

So now I'm raising a glass to my parenting failures, and to fresh air, and to dirt, and to exploring. Must do it more often.

Winter sun

A bit of winter sunshine and I suddenly feel all mellow and daydreamy. I'm affected to a ridiculous level by the things and people around me, including weather. I tell myself that winter gloom is okay. (I hate it when people complain about the weather all the time, except when it's me going on about snow...) I tell myself that winter means opportunities for wearing silly hats, coming home in the dark to the warm (electric) glow of home, getting cosy with a mug of cocoa. But after Christmas it starts to drag. And it has been pretty gloomy here most days.

This weekend, however, the sky cleared and the sun came out. And immediately I started to think of summer camping trips (something's whispering 'Devon' in my ear), lazy picnics, barbecues, growing things, wearing sandals. There's a lot of winter left, but it's nice to have sunshine. I listened to Paolo Nutini in the car instead of Biffy. I drove more slowly (although I still muttered 'twat' at several other drivers). I did some yoga after the gym this morning. Mellow all round. It's what I think of as 'acoustic' me.

It's not so nice to see British daffodils in the supermarket. I do usually buy daffs as early as possible. But surely to have them on the second weekend in January means there's a corner of southern England covered in acres of heated greenhouses?

Holiday scenes

With apologies for the point-and-shootness of my camera and photographic skills, some pix from our hols in North Wales:

 'Mummy, it's bumpy, mummy.' The tide had just gone out at Llandudno's West Shore. And little man likes to make sure you know he's talking to you by putting your name at the beginning and end of every sentence.

View to the mountains from the RSPB reserve at Conwy. I'm sure there were lots of rare and interesting birds there, but this is the one that came close enough to snap:

 Flowers in November. Gotta love gorse, even if it does smell of coconut.

A typical bit of damp autumn riverbank, just over the road from our holiday cottage in Betws-y-Coed.

Getting away from it all

The little man and I have survived two nights' camping in Silverdale in north Lancashire. The rose-tinted, blogsville, let's look on the bright side version goes something like this:

• The weather was stunningly warm and sunny, which meant we got a fantastic view over the Lake District from the top of Arnside Knott.
• We did lots of little ambles, pottering through the woods, sauntering along the beach, finding empty snail shells, checking holly leaves for prickliness, tripping over tree roots and marvelling at butterflies.
• Little man particularly enjoyed the muddy beach at Arnside. Not only did he get to scoop up handfuls of mud and throw it into the incoming tide, but he also got to watch trains go over the long bridge over the Kent estuary. Boy bliss. I drew him pictures in the mud with a rock.
• We ate yummy proper ice cream, prompting his first ever demand to go to a 'shop'. I eventually realised he meant the cafe where we bought ice cream and played with their ride-on car.
• We had a hideously nutritionally deficient picnic mostly consisting of sausage rolls (from a craft bakery, of course!), crisps (the organic sort aimed at babies and toddlers for no reason I can actually fathom) and a satsuma. We sat on the picnic blanket in the dappled shade of some oak trees and watched squirrels scampering about. Little man is charmingly fond of going for a 'picpic'.
• There was plenty of space on the campsite for little man to run around, mostly without the usual worries about traffic or vicious dogs. He was very excited about the tent and kept going in it to play, despite the fact it must have been about 40C in there in the daytime.
• I feel like I've had a break just from being somewhere so beautiful and peaceful. I saw a little stone place called Woodwell Cottage where I could happily retire, right now, and spend my time knitting bobble hats and making wonky pottery jugs.

Obviously, there were some fairly significant negative aspects, mostly concerning sleep, or the extreme lack thereof. Also tantrums, the first proper kicking and screaming type ones (something tells me this is not unrelated to the previous point). And running away, not due to the innate desire to explore but due to the desire to disrupt whatever boring but essential task mummy's trying to get done, such as cooking dinner, washing up or packing the car. And cooking on little gas burners with a toddler about wasn't much fun either. I don't think I can adequately describe just how much harder and more exhausting it is being alone with a two-year-old in such circumstances.

But hey, I'd do it again. In fact my memory of the bad things is already fading, as it helpfully tends to. I quite fancy Rhosneigr on Anglesey and Eskdale in Cumbria. I just wouldn't recommend it to anyone else unless you, like me, have a ridiculous need to 'get away from it all' into the middle of nowhere every now and again, and you have the ability to sink into ever lower depths of knackeredness and frazzledness and somehow manage to carry on regardless.

Three nice things

1. Cross stitched hearts on linen. They may become an embellishment on some kind of little bag or picture made from my fabric stash, which is mostly old clothes.
2. Flowers in a salad, namely pansies and chive heads. Salad is good at the moment. Lettuce, radishes, beetroot, mangetout and courgettes are all provided from my dad's allotment. Herbs and flowers from the pots in my back yard.
3. The lighthouse on Ynys Llandwyn. The picture is not great as it was pissing down with rain and I got drenched. I wanted to take pictures of the pretty snails all over the island, but the camera was getting too wet. On the other hand, if it hadn't been raining, the snails wouldn't have all been out.

I love those blogs I read that often come with beautiful photography. The sort that inspires you to get off your backside and do something creative. My pictures are very much point and shoot I'm afraid.

I'm being dragged off to see the snails in the fish tank now. They're not supposed to be there, but I don't suppose they're doing any harm. So bye for now.

Mooching

It's quite like pottering but more weekend-like. Going for a stroll and watching the tide start to come in. Listening to skylarks. Finally starting to sew some curtains. Dining with family. Enjoying a glass of wine or two. Chasing squirrels. Kicking leaves. Drinking imaginary tea. And real tea. Chatting to pygmy goats and Bobo the donkey. Just a random selection from the past two days. I'm counting Friday as the weekend as I work on Sundays.

We heard the skylarks while we were walking along Hale shore. Something about their song always makes me feel sleepy in a warm, summery kind of way. Today wasn't warm and summery, but it wasn't cold either. The walk was somewhat gritty. The views were of chemical works and oil refineries. We got to see lots of flotsam and jetsam washed up by recent high tides: wheel hubs, tyres, rusty old fridges, thousands of plastic bottles, gas canisters, plastic crates. And (yuck factor alert) tampon applicators. Another reason to use the wonderful Mooncup.

Little man enjoyed watching all the aeroplanes taking off from Liverpool Airport. And he enjoyed poking about in the stones and sand with a stick. I built a tower of stones, a la Makka Pakka, which little man happily kicked over. I sat on a rusty wheel hub while he scrabbled about, but I had to keep an eye out for him going near any broken glass or rusty nails. Like I said, it was gritty.

Spring!

It's March 2nd. It's 8am. It's frosty, but sunny. Later, it might even get slightly warm. I'm opening windows. It must be spring at last! And that means it's time to sort out my tatty back yard.

I have patio doors from the kitchen onto decking. The decking is a bit grotty looking and worryingly bouncy in places. The seller left all sorts of junk underneath it as well as a hideous, half-rotten table and a couple of plastic chairs. The whole thing faces north. The far corner, where the table is, gets a bit of afternoon sun in summer.

In my gran's garage I have a nice table and two chairs and lots of empty pots rescued from my old house. The primulas and narcissi were an impulse purchase yesterday; I have no particular planting plan yet but I do have some garden centre vouchers.

I think some big wooden troughs would be good, so as to avoid just having little pots dotted all over the place. I even think I might make them myself. Can't be that hard, surely? I will need some evergreens, some herbs, some solar lights, some quirky ornaments (stopping short of gnomes). I've decided I would like all flowers to be in the yellow-orange range or shades of purple. Although I do like bright red pelargoniums a la French and Spanish mountain villages.

And while I'm at it, I might indulge in a little Guerilla Gardening and sneak in some narcissi or the odd blackberry cutting in the grass verge by the busway.

On modern life

I've finally joined the 21st century and bought an MP3 player. My birthday treat. I like the idea of not having to own CDs. To have music that doesn't exist as an object cluttering up my shelves and needing dusting and eventually disappearing in the way that the one CD you decide you want to listen to always does. Where is my A-ha Greatest Hits?

I'm not usually a fan of the latest technology. The sort of technology that clutters up your life and demands your attention all the time. I still have a pay-as-you-go mobile phone that is now two years old and is looking a little battered. I won't replace it until it actually stops working. I've never bought my own television; I always seem to get given them, which is handy.

I think this time of year is a big reminder that for all the trappings of modern life we're still creatures of nature. I reckon most people are waiting for that little bit of spring sunshine that lifts the spirit and makes you want to get off your arse and do something. Despite being able to watch all manner of crap TV or play space invaders online at any time of day or night, most of us still have an instinctive emotional response to a bright, sunny morning or a grey, drizzly afternoon.

I'm off to put The Levellers on and pretend that I'm fourteen and that it's summer and I can still get away with wearing tiny denim shorts and mobile phones have not yet been invented.

Waiting...

... until it's a reasonable time to go and pick up my boy. I think 7am is a bit early, although he's probably up. Then again, his daddy claims he has slept through and had lies-in (lie-ins?) while he has been there. I'm going to assume that means he wakes up with me because I'm so special he can't pass up the opportunity for extra cuddles. Maybe. Anyway, I'm missing him from his crazy curls to his ticklish toes.

While I have been child-free I have collected him some new shells: pink stripy snail shells from the Great Orme in Llandudno. It was a particularly, shall we say, exhilarating day with gale-force winds blowing the unmistakeable scent of goat across the hillside. And I have attempted to start knitting him another hat but I keep gaining or dropping stitches on the cabling and am now about to start my sixth attempt.

Kicking leaves

Fun in the park today: kicking piles of leaves, chasing squirrels, making piles of sawdust whilst sitting on a perfect toddler's-bum-height log, watching diggers and dumper trucks.

Unfortunately, he is full of snot. I mean a really impressive amount when he sneezes. I have found a plug-in vaporiser refill in his drawer and hope it might help him breath tonight and avoid too much waking up. He slept for about an hour and a half at lunchtime, which is highly unusual, then slept again for half an hour in the car on the way home from grandma and grandad's just before teatime. And he was still tired at bedtime, although he needed a lot of cuddles before going to sleep tonight.

My current stress levels: around 80%. I'm expecting 99% by the weekend, when I'm moving most of my stuff out of the house and moving in with my parents. That will probably then drop to around 70% until it's time to move into my new house, when there will be another brief spike before everything settles down and I will embark upon an idyllic stress-free life of relaxing country strolls, knitting and baking.

Our holiday: the overview

Our holiday at a massive farmhouse near Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway. In brief: beaches, woods, farms, tractors, diggers, nee-nor nee-nor or nor-nee nor-nee depending on which little one you listened to, sun, rain, gales, sand in everything, tea and cake, wine, Aga cooking, knitting, crafty places, castles, boats, whinging, scuffles over toys, scuffles over mummies, falling out of bed for the first time and very broken nights every single night due to the imminent arrival of canines.

More to come when I have caught up on some sleep...

Five things...

...that I like about autumn:
1. The colours, obviously.
2. The contrast between warm days and cool nights.
3. Misty mornings and dew on spiders' webs.
4. Fat, juicy blackberries.
5. The drawing-in-ness of it all.

Autumn mist

Accompanied by the sort of blackbird song that happens only in the darker months of the year. And by me springing out of bed at 7am thinking I feel much better. Must attempt to still take things easy. To the left of the picture, you can see my silver birch tree, planted shortly after we moved in nearly seven years ago. It's one of the things I will miss most about my garden when I move. But my new home, assuming everything runs smoothly, does have a view of a birch from the back windows and yard.

Sending out big hugs...

I seem to know a fair few people at the moment who are having pregnancy problems! So first of all I want to send big hugs to them all, especially to allgrownup who has had her c-section postponed despite severe SPD.

Little man has enjoyed some good puddle splashing today. We managed a walk into town to get the ingredients for tea without getting rained on. He slept in the buggy; it was too windy for the sling as I couldn't have held an umbrella up over us. But as soon as we got back it bucketed down. Again. So when it stopped he got his wellies on and we went off to show grandma and grandad his favourite puddles in the alleyways behind our street. As soon as we got back home, it chucked it down again.

It has rained an awful lot in the last ten days or so and although I try not to whinge about the weather, I've had enough of it now. It hasn't just been showers. It has been absolute downpours accompanied by strong winds sweeping into the back of my house straight off the Irish Sea and over the Lancashire lowlands. I think it's about time we had some of those cool, misty early autumn mornings with dew on spiders' webs followed by warm sunny days that can still ripen blackberries and then cool clear evenings when it's nice to put on a jumper and get cosy.

Nightfall: Part II

I had to put my lights on driving home from work! At 8.30ish! It seems to have crept up from nowhere and now, wham, the evening light is disappearing. I guess it happens like this every year, and yet every year it takes me by surprise. It's like the way that every summer I cannot imagine it ever being cold enough for hats and boots and jumpers. And every winter I cannot imagine it ever being warm enough for a t-shirt, linen trousers and sandals.

I'm so glad I live in temperate climes where there is a real difference between the seasons. And please don't anyone moan that we haven't had a summer; we've had loads of warm, sunny weather as well as lots of rain showers. Well we have here in Lancashire. A typical British summer in other words. (I'm not trying to deny climate change is happening, by the way. It is. And that's not my opinion, it's the conclusion of the vast majority of scientists.)

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Little man once again woke up happy this morning. As in he played with his cuddly toys and babbled instead of immediately crying. I think it happens when he wakes up refreshed from a decent night's sleep instead of waking up a bit too early but not being able to get back to sleep. He was crying a bit at 3am but a tummy rub did the job then!

Daddy picked him up this morning and little man gave us both a succession of sloppy kisses before giving me his very cute wave goodbye. I told him to have fun and that I had to go to work. Who knows how much of this he understands?

Bag of tricks

Finished this the other day, pattern courtesy of http://bluemountainhandcrafts.com/bethsfreepatterns.aspx found via www.knittingpatterncentral.com. Modified slightly by me, as if I knew what I was doing! My first double-pointed needles creation and my first I-cords. In case you can't tell, it's a little pouchy-sort of bag. Now I need to decide what to use it for! And yes I do have a bigger knitting project on the go that I should have been getting on with, a cardi for little man that may or may not fit as I have once again been rather blase about using the correct weight of yarn and checking my tension.

In other news, little man trotted off on a little blackberry hunt at Beacon Country Park this afternoon, promptly tripped over a bramble and now has a thorn stuck in his palm. Any ideas for removing it? Tweezers at bathtime unsuccessful.

Nightfall

Still to do: mortgage, tyres, mushrooms, cottage, campsite. Oh, and pick the courgettes that are threatening to turn into marrows.

I've just been out to the garage to put some washing on. The washing machine is out there to make room in the kitchen for a dishwasher. Don't look at me like that: it's AAA rated. Anyway, it's the fact that it's 9.20pm and the light is failing that I wanted to talk about.

There's just something special that starts happening at this time of year. It's a turning point marked by the pagan festival of Lammas or Lughnasadh, the first harvest. You really start to notice the nights drawing in; it's actually dark when you go to bed. You start to see all your Boris house spiders appearing. I don't know where they go the rest of the year. Although you will have harvested some things from the veggie patch already the real glut starts. The annual flying ant infestation occurs.

I like it. I like to know that autumn is on its way and it won't be long before we get misty, dewy mornings and cool nights when you want to burn something to stay cosy. When I move house I am going to treat myself to a wood-burning stove and I hope it's going to be before autumn gets too far under way.

About half an hour ago I was out clearing some junk from my car, before it went dark, and in banging the bin lid I disturbed a wren. I've noticed one a few times lately - today it was desperately trying to catch a very large moth - and I wonder if they're nesting in the ivy.

Join my commune

What we need is a bit of land somewhere nice. Hmm. Then we're all going to live in yurts. I was going to say tipis, but a virtual friend tells me yurts are more luxurious. It's going to be a family commune with lots of babywearing, attachment parenting, baby-led weaning and unschooling going on. And so much fresh air all the children sleep soundly every night.

I think going by the BLW forum and my virtual friends' facebook profiles we can cover quite a lot of the essential skills for a self sufficient-ish life: growing food, cooking, hen keeping, winemaking, brewing, sewing, knitting... there's probably even someone who could spin and dye their own wool if we keep a few sheep. Then we'll need some musicians, artists, poets, campfire storytellers, treehouse builders, renewable energy technicians... Who wants to be our pagan priestess?

Apply within, but please don't mention any of the dull so-called realities of life that might make it perhaps just a little teensy bit unfeasible.