welsh hills again

OK, rant over.  Normal service is resumed.  It was great though to find how many of you share my wish that we could all relax, accept that we grow older,  and be comfortable in our own skin. Saturday here was a beautiful golden day, autumn at its absolute best.  Younger son and daughter in law were staying for the weekend and we all went walking.  I love the way here that you can walk, really walk with grass and heather, hills and views to the horizon, right from the door. The dog loved it too.  You can just see her at the top of the path, whizzing back to check where we were, before heading off again at a joyous lope. As we walked up to the end of the road we met a local farmer.  "Better just hop over the stile there" he said.  "I'm bringing the cattle down."  Safely  on the far side of the gate, we watched as the herd came down from the hill, driven from behind by two guys on one very small moped. I don't know how many th...

  I barely believe this but I did it - look, two socks! I took Pipany's advice to put my time by the fire to good use and here they are.  Inevitably the second one is better than the first but only I know where I struggled.  Now they are on my feet and incredibly cosy. Anyone who has read my blog for any length of time (both of you) will know that I am bit conflicted about women's traditional skills.  As a 70s feminist I embraced wholeheartedly the idea that the most important thing for a woman was financial independence and I have lived that life, partly by choice and, when I was a single parent, with no choice at all.  I have worked in a traditionally man's world for twenty years and loved it and thrived.  And if you have children and a job it is hard to find time to blow your nose, never mind to make aprons and peg bags and to darn socks as my grandmothers did.  But because I grew up in New Zealand at a time when everyone learnt and practised pract...

I have had a few days away with my parents, catching up on family things.  It was lovely to see them but very good to come back home at the end of the visit.  Funny how being away makes you very aware of the patterns of life that are so woven into your day you hardly think about them when you are in your own place doing your own things: the time you get up, the time you go to bed, when and how much you eat.  Coming back home yesterday and settling into my own bed was ridiculously blissful.  I had been sleeping in a perfectly comfortable bed but my own bed folded itself around me like a lover.  I must be getting seriously fixated. The wind has blown cold up here today but in the morning the sun shone bright and I wandered around catching up with the garden.  Snowdrops are filling out now along the bottom of the stone walls.  I found three eggs nestling in the nest box, the first of the year.  I had them scrambled for lunch with buttery toa...

My friend (I hope I can use this word about a relationship in its early tentative real stages but further along perhaps in virtual life) Friko has inspired me with her miscellany blog so I hope she won't mind my pinching the idea. What has touched me, meant something to me, this week, large and small? Last Tuesday I went to a service of thanksgiving for the life of a blogging friend who died far too young.  She was one who had made the leap from virtual to real friend.  A group of us living on the borders between England and Wales (she on the English side, I on the Welsh) met  a couple of years ago and found a mass of things in common.  She had struggled for years with serious ill health but was the liveliest, sparkiest, least self pitying person you could find, looking outward when she could have been forgiven for looking in, fascinated by the world and by people, the kind of person who is quietly, consistently kind.  We gathered in a tiny c...