2024

Years, galloping.  In a swish of a tail, barely caught out of the corner of my eye, 2024 has gone and is racing away, over the hill, over the headland, over the sea.  Is this what the blogging is for?  To try to hold onto it?  Who knows.  Photos help.

January

Bright and cold, so unlike the grey dampness of the end of this year.  In January 2024 I hit the fifth anniversary of starting to run, using the Couch to 5k app.  Mostly I don't stop when I run, as I do very slowly, in case I find I can't start again.  This is a view across the fields to the Clwydian Hills.  It is part of my regular, short round of about 3k and I must have stopped to take it because of the blue of the sky.  I never stop feeling lucky to live here in this little known part of North East Wales.  It is very beautiful and very empty.  Very slowly plans are moving to  make this, now an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, into a new National Park.  I am torn.  I can see that perhaps we should share this glorious place with those who are not lucky enough to live here and I appreciate that many local businesses might be helped by more visitors, but I don't want the press of visitors and cars which swamp Snowdonia in holiday times.  I do love the quiet villages and the almost empty hills.

February

February saw the first of what has become a very slow production line of crocheted toys.  This is a little cat, christened Suki by her delighted six year old owner.  I would never have thought while I was working with barely a moment to catch my breath as I jumped on to trains and planes and juggled with time zones, that I would ever take such pleasure in making things, especially things for grandchildren.  I knew I could knit and crochet.  My grandmothers taught me.  When my children were young I made clothes but I was never very satisfied with them.  I made them out of necessity in a period when I was frighteningly short of money.  I bought things from charity shops and unravelled jumpers to reknit them or cut down adult clothes into pinafore dresses for my three year old.  I always thought they looked second hand, like poor children's clothes.  There was very little pleasure in it although some satisfaction that I could do it at all.  Now I love it.  I love showing the grandchildren patterns and letting them choose and going out buy soft, pretty wool and their delight when the toy finally arrives, just as they requested it, with clothes in a colour they have chosen.  I love using my hands to make things.

March

March saw the first emerging of the new garden.  I love our new house.  I loved the old one too but this house, right now, feels like the right place for us at this time.  When I come in I love the quiet and the warmth, the calm grey stone of the warm floors, the flood of light through the huge windows.  If I ever miss anything from the old house it is a fleeting sensation and I would not swap what we have now for what we had, beautiful though it was.  But when I have that fleeting sensation what I miss is the garden: the orchard full of the small Welsh daffodils that I planted myself over several autumns; the snowdrops growing by the walls which I kept track off, year after year, as they slowly increased, noting the number of blooms in my garden diary.  So I have recreated, on a very small scale, some of the things I loved in the garden and we have snowdrops by the chestnut paling fence and primroses by the ferns and I love them too.

April

We drove the campervan down across Wales and England and took the ferry to France.  We had a long cold drive down from Calais to Provence to celebrate a big birthday for a dear friend.  In Northern France it was cold enough for socks and fleeces in bed at night.  We researched small restaurants and paced our days with a long lunch in little places in city side streets.  We arrived at our friends' house with balloons and a birthday cake and mused at how long we had been friends and how randomly the friendship had been found.

May

And then a very full May with a week in Gers, in South West France, with the lovely Beth, talking, reading and talking again.  I had never been to this part of France and I loved it and I also loved meeting Beth.  Time and again I have met someone through blogging or Instagram about whom I have thought "Oh, I love your writing.  I think I'd like you" and it has always worked.  Read what someone writes over months and years and you know them.  She was just as clever, funny, kind and thoughtful as I thought she would be.

And then we moved on over the Pyrenees and into Spain.  We had intended to walk in the Picos mountains in Northern Spain but the weather was cold and wet.  One of the beauties of holidaying with your accommodation on your back is that you can follow the sun, so we did, driving further down into Spain with a couple of Parador stays to contrast with the campervan bed.  It is a privilege of this stage of life to be away for so long.  Even when we stopped working the needs of elderly or ill parents tied us here.  Now we can be away from home for six or seven weeks.  Life falls into a very simple pattern in the campervan of meals and walks and reading, the only decisions being when to move on and where to go.  

June

And when we got back home the garden was in its full glory.  It was its second summer and although the trees and shrubs remained small and spindly, the roses had grown and self seeders had popped up everywhere, feverfew and foxgloves, alchemilla and evening primrose.  I know I will have to do some more editing this year but it did make the garden feel like home.  Bindweed, buttercup and docks had popped up too.  It will take a while for the garden to feel like a cultivated space, rather than an area at the edge of a field with room for weeds to blow in but that's ok!  Looking after it is how I will get to know it.

The production line of toys continued.  Why had then ten year old granddaughter chosen a sloth for her toy, and why on receipt did she gleefully name him Bob?  I do not know but it makes me smile.

July

So after being away for so long July was the garden and the house and the pleasure of settling back into a routine of weekly Pilates and runs and calls to family and catching up with friends.

August

August was dominated by planning and having a big party on the 30th to celebrate my 70th birthday.  My birthday wasn't until September but with adult children in work and grandchildren in school we tried to fit the party into the very end of the summer holidays so everyone could come.  It was a perfect blue and gold late summer day.  We rented the village hall here which doubles as the school hall.  That meant that with the doors open the children could spill out onto the playing fields  so they were either inside, eating lovely food or queuing up for cake, or outside playing football or running around.  Friends came from all over the place.  I have lived in a number of places and worked in London and Manchester and lived here now for nearly twenty years.  Having most of my favourite people in the same place at the same time felt like the most amazing luxury.  I don't think I stopped smiling all day.  

September

A couple of days in Abersoch with some dear friends.  This glorious colour of sea and sky is not the norm for Wales.  Everywhere looked like the Mediterranean except that the hills and the mountains and the fields were a vivid Welsh green.  I loved it.

We went to Chatsworth in Derbyshire with some friends who live near.  Inside I found the whole house overwhelming, overbearing, overpowering, overstuffed.  Outside the gardens were wonderful.  Our friend had recently received a Parkinsons diagnosis and he managed a disability scooter with real aplomb.  In the tiny amount of time since then he was also diagnosed with a galloping cancer and died just after Christmas.  Spend time with those you care about.  Tell them you love them.  Life goes in an instant.

October

In October we went to Sicily.  These images are a fine illustration of the inadequacy of relying on images alone.  Much of Sicily is beautiful and fascinating.  The ancient remains are astonishing.  We stayed in beautiful hotels and ate wonderful food.  Yet the entire holiday was not an unqualified success.  We hired a car and the driving was something of a challenge for Ian who is a great driver and has driven in all sorts of places over the world without turning a hair.  I had a couple of days of feeling unwell with diverticulitis.  In some places stunning beauty sat cheek by jowl with piles of rubbish.  We were glad we had gone but when we finally arrived home after a long delayed flight at around 3 in the morning I felt like staying in our lovely house for ever.  Naturally this feeling has now passed off.

November

The greenhouse kept producing huge tomatoes, long after they are normally finished.  A new animal began to come off the crochet hook.  The mahonia bloomed.  It is beautiful (Mahonia media Charity) but it is still only about two foot six inches tall.  It will grow.  Perhaps it is my intensified awareness of how time moves that makes me long to see it taller than I am.  And as always the views through the grasses and to the trees or up to the hills were and are a reliable daily pleasure.

December

A month full of travelling.  We had arrangements to spend some days in Devon in early December and then in South Wales to help first our son and his family and then our daughter and hers.  So there was much driving around already planned.  We expected a couple of weeks at home before going back to Devon to spend Christmas with Chris and family.  While we were back home a message came in from older daughter "I am in hospital.  Don't panic".  We didn't panic but we were back down to South Wales and then up to Manchester before returning to Devon.  Many, many motorway miles.  These pictures are from Bantham Beach on Christmas Eve.  All is well.  We had a good Christmas and daughter is now home waiting to be recalled for an operation.  

A full year, full of family and celebrations and good times and some sadness.  2025 is here.  Nowadays I hardly ever use cheques to get used to writing a new date so how long will it take me to feel that 2025 is the year?  In an odd sort of way I never really got used to it being 2024!   Snow is forecast tonight.  It is very cold.  I wish you joy of the New Year.  I wish us all joy, and contentment and the pleasure of an ordinary day but every now and then, like a shot of sunlight, a moment of joy.  Here is one of my moments from this last year, seven out of the ten grandchildren, with the three oldest boys missing.

Some of my joys will be to do with them.  Some will be the everyday joys of Ian coming in through the door, coffee in the morning, a perfectly cooked poached egg, a long awaited book to read, a glass of white wine, the colour of a Himalayan poppy.  Take your joy where you can.  Happy New Year.