welsh hills again

Gardening in January is a miserable thing.  Paths are muddy, soil is cold,  and all those things you didn't cut down in the autumn so as to be wildlife friendly and which you hoped would stand whorled with frost against a low sun droop and drip sadly in a soggy, bedraggled tangle.  All the talk about winter gardens and structure which you can ignore in the summer when your garden is flowering its socks off comes back to haunt you.  Yes you do need the hardlandscaping and paths you can't find the time or money to sort out.  Yes indeed, you should have more evergreens.  I usually cope with January by staying inside by the stove.  This year in particular I have been knitting. I made a Moebius cowl, partly because I loved my first neck warmer so much and partly because I have always been fascinated by the Moebius strip which apparently has no beginning and no end.  Actually knitting one was amazing.  I still don't really understand how it w...

In November we hit four years of living here. I think we can now safely say that we are not going to get cold feet and run away back to street lights and cinemas and delis. I think we are going to stay put. A friend asked me the other day what we felt about moving out of the city and whether we felt we had made the right move. I could tell she didn't quite get it. People come up here and some say "You are living my dream" while others are too polite to say so but go away clearly thinking we are nuts. I am in list making mode today having been making Christmas lists as an alternative to actually doing something so here are Things I miss about the city: living round the corner from a really good delicatessen. the view from Waterloo Bridge. slipping out for a curry. that sense of being at the heart of things. and some things I don't miss: dirt, rubbish blowing the streets. crowds, especially on rush hour tubes, where you end up crushed up against somebody's armpit. n...

Did anyone read the diary of a country mole in the Sunday Times? It chronicled the move to the country of a city girl and her family, a disastrous move which ended in their return to London. From the very first article her entire unsuitability for the project screamed out from every paragraph - self pitying, self obsessed, with a mind as closed as a clam and the resourcefulness of a used tissue. (Life being what it is, I shall now somehow meet her and she will be utterly delightful and I will be unable to look her in the face.) So I thought I would have a try at some advice for those considering relocating: what is life in the country really like when the weekenders go home and it is raining again? You spend a lot of time on your own so you need to like your own company. Days can pass without a soul coming along the track and you can find yourself hanging around in the post office, as desperate for conversation as the old lady on the bus who lives on her own. You need to use the intern...