And here we are again

Five years ago, I was amazed to see it had been five years since the previous post. I managed a second post, then life got in the way again.

And it was a good life. Happy, healthy and fulfilling.

Until it wasn't.
Last November, the scans associated with gall bladder issues revealed a mass on the pancreas. At that moment life changed forever.

In some ways we were lucky. The early detection and treatment bought us some time. The chemo seemed to be helping at first, but little by little it started to do more harm than good and we agreed he would stop treatment and move to just palliative care back in May.

The last two months were hard, but we spent them together. Constantly together. He finally slipped gently away in the early hours of 7 July. My wonderful, annoying, larger than life, enthusiastic, loving, kind, adventurous and gentle husband - the man who brought joy back to my life - was gone.

And once again I have to ask myself the question. What now?

Shhhhhh!

A brief site meeting this morning to discuss the positioning of a small shed beneath the large conifer to hide the oil tank had to be postponed.

The neighbours were complaining about the noise!

Can it really be five years since I last posted?

So many adventures between then and now. Far too many to recount.

Work on the little house in the moat stalled and restarted several times. The coldest, snowiest winter in years certainly didn't help. On Friday we went back for the first time in over six months to clean, take stock and plan what to do next.

There is still no proper floor downstairs and we sleep, eat and cook in the upstairs bedrooms. But at least the house now has the full complement of windows!
The ToDo list for inside the house is never-ending, but the sun came out for the bank holiday weekend, so we chose to tidy the minuscule veg garden instead of anything more constructive. We call this getting our priorities right!
The leeks, lettuce and spinach are last year's crops. Newly sown are broad beans, more salad, spring onions and radishes.

And Robert's garlic...

... and a few herbs don't go amiss either.

There is so much left to do outside though. This is the next area to be tackled. I'm thinking a tiny lawn and a dwarf apple tree. And perhaps a little flower border. There will eventually be steps and a path leading round to the front of the house, but that will come later. Lots of digging and weeding to be done before that.

Worrying

Back in the Before, I rarely worried about anything. What will be, will be. That truly was what I believed.

“What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

I don’t know whether this was the arrogance of Youth, or simply the confidence of a person who had not yet experienced any life-shaking events. But, of course, one day the worst thing did happen, and it shook that little belief system to its foundations.

Since then I appear to have become a world class worrier.

It would be nice if worrying actually resulted in something in terms of action. But no. I simply freeze and become overcome with inertia.

It also doesn’t help having just married a man who does this sort of thing on a regular basis.

Note the high-tech safety Birkenstocks, invisible head protection and Kevlar walking shorts...
It did nothing for my blood pressure to look out of the window one afternoon and find him doing that.

Nursing the two broken ribs that resulted helped even less. Thinking about what could have happened if he hadn’t managed to throw the chainsaw out of the danger zone before the ladder fell makes me feel physically sick.

And yes, we have had words about it!

I rarely worry about myself physically though, other than a vague concern about what the long-term future might hold. Seeing my Mum struggle with the slow onset of Alzheimer’s, I worry about losing my marbles and my dignity, but hardly ever about physical illnesses or problems.

So when my 50^th birthday coincided with my first ever invitation for a mammogram, it provided a whole new opportunity for worry. I have seen the awful and devastating effects of breast cancer at close hand among my friends, but since there has been no incidence in my family as far as I am aware, it had previously escaped my worry radar.

Older friends also had no hesitation in telling me horror stories about squashed and painful boobs during screening, which didn’t help at all either. I am a complete wuss about this sort of thing, and I’m not afraid to admit it!

I did find it completely surreal that the screening would be done in the back of a lorry on Tesco’s car park. But in the event, the lorry proved to be something of a Tardis, and I was welcomed in by a kindly and efficient lady who bore a very striking resemblance to Claire Rayner, thus increasing the surrealism quotient severalfold.

And of course waiting for the results was equally fraught with worry, despite the fact I had given the issue barely a moment’s thought for the previous n years. Three weeks later, however, I am very happy to report that my lovely postman arrived this morning to deliver the all-clear letter. So that’s that then. I can stop worrying about that.

At least until 3 years’ time when I am invited for screening again.

The demolition stage

Work has now started on the big kitchen.

We decided to go away for a few days around my birthday, largely to avoid being jollied into arranging a party as I have never had much enthusiasm for those. And – as you do – the last thing we did before going away was to demolish the much-hated arch that used to divide the room in two.

It put up a surprisingly good fight, but we won in the end.
Just that single act seemed to make the room double in size, and greatly increased the natural light reaching the previously dingy work areas.

While we were away, the window was enlarged to make a doorway to the outside and most of the old, damp plaster was removed. We came home to a freezing-cold house, a pile of rubble and a layer of dust about an inch thick.

Today the electrics and plumbing are going in and more holes are being made in the two-foot thick stone walls. Yesterday’s sunshine has metamorphosed into damp, bone-chilling Welsh fog, so I am huddling by the woodburner with my laptop, trying to work while ignoring all the drilling and banging in the next room and the arctic gale blowing in under the door. Internet access has been reduced to ten-minute bursts between power outages.

And when the noise stops, I shall emerge to clean up another inch-thick layer of dust and ascertain whether we yet have a working cooker. Tomorrow there will be another carload of plasterboard to take to the tip.

Am I downhearted?

No. Not in the least. I have been waiting ten years for this, and it will be worth every last bag of dust and crap I sweep up.

The end result may not quite live up to the megalomanic, magazine-worthy image that I held in my head for so many years, but that’s OK too. The budget has been significantly reduced for a start. Slashed, in fact. So no Welsh slate floor or handmade freestanding kitchen units. The finished room will be light and cheerful though, and it will look clean when I clean it. And, most importantly, the big table can now go right in the heart of the room, in the place where it has never fitted, but has always belonged.

I'm still standing

When I was in my late teens, early twenties, I remember looking forward to the Year 2000. That’s what it was called then – none of this Millennium business. Back then I remember thinking that I would be like THIRTY-SEVEN when it happened. My life would be over. I would be an Old Person who couldn’t truly appreciate such a momentous event.

Actually it turned out to be something of a damp squib.

R was working in IT for an insurance company, and had been bribed with a seriously large amount of money to come into work on January 1 2000 to do the Millennium Bug testing. So I spent the evening backing up my computer in anticipation of the chaos that would ensue the next morning, then we went outside to watch the fireworks with the neighbours, drank a couple of glasses of fizz and went to bed shortly afterwards rather than partying all night.

Last week I turned 50.

That 37 year-old seems to be a whole different person, almost from another country. So young, so full of ambitions and plans. With a whole life left to live, with a house move and complete change of lifestyle still to come. That was, of course, in the Before.

The 50 year-old face that looks back at me in the mirror doesn’t look all that different on the outside. Sure there are a lot more lines, and the jaw line is starting to sag a little. There’s rather more grey in the hair than I really want to see. The body is starting to slow down more than I like to admit, and I seem to spend a lot of time searching for my glasses. But on the whole it is pretty much the same as it was 13 years ago.

Inside, though. That’s a whole different matter. There are lumps and bumps. Tender spots. Scars. Closed-off doors to rooms that aren’t visited any more. Emotional muscles that are only just coming back into use.  But it is healing. Slowly. Even though some of the tender spots will be there forever.

The 50 year-old me doesn’t have many ambitions any more. She just wants to live and enjoy living for as long as possible.  Having experienced at close quarters the sheer crappy randomness of the whole life and death thing, it really is enough just to be here. To walk out in the glorious crisp, cold sunshine on a day like today and feel its warmth on my skin. To live in the present and make the most out of every moment.

50 not out. It’s not a bad score.

I wonder what the next half-century holds.

New shoes

Because I shall turn 50 next week and have never owned such a frivolous pair of shoes in my life. So it's about time I did.

Because I like the way he looks at my legs when I'm wearing them.

Because every girl needs a pair of ruby slippers.

Just because!

Rituals

The start of a new relationship is such an exciting time. Full of spontaneity and passion. Everything is bright, shiny new and the possibilities are infinite. Two people dance around one another, experimenting with different tempos and steps.

But the familiar is good too.

When you walk side by side with someone for a quarter of a mile or so, you inevitably fall into step with them. The faster walker slows down or the slowcoach speeds up until a steady rhythm is reached.

For all the excitement of the new, it can be equally enthralling to look at a person and to know – know what they are thinking or intend to do. And there is a wonderful satisfaction from developing little rituals. Practised behaviours that you both fall into without deliberate thought.

Rituals cannot be rushed, however. Or created intentionally. They simply develop over time and then one day you realise that they are an integral part of your life.

Take coffee, for example.

For as long as I can remember I have had a bad coffee habit. Sitting at my desk, I would drink 6, 7 or 8 cups a day without thinking. Normally, dare I say it, instant as drinking that much freshly ground coffee would give me the shakes by mid-afternoon.

One day, about the time it became apparent that Robert’s car was spending more time outside my house than his, he turned up with an espresso machine under his arm. It was not, I am a little ashamed to say, welcomed with a great deal of grace – I had spent the previous couple of years attempting to declutter the house, and I rather liked my kitchen worktops to be empty. A space was made, however, and I agreed to give it a fair chance before relegating it to the Outer Darkness where I believed such gadgets belonged.

The first attempts were disastrous. The coffee pack may proudly state that it is “Suitable for all machines”, but a filter coffee grind simply will not make espresso – the water just goes straight through taking with it all the flavour of dishwater.

So a coffee grinder was needed. One that would grind the beans finely enough to make espresso. Teeth were firmly gritted as it took up residence beside the coffee machine.

The coffee-making learning curve progressed, but not 100% satisfactorily. Cappuccinos became drinkable, but still too foamy. Espressos or Americanos were fine but still nothing special. Despair was setting in with the owner of the coffee machine, as he knew its days were finite.

Then, one day, we discovered the flat white – and a whole new world opened up. Microfoams, cremas, patterns drawn on top of the cup. U-Tube videos were watched by the dozen. We suddenly understood how whole college courses can be devoted to coffee-making. The coffee painting became competitive, and we jostled for position in front of the Gaggia, arguing over whose turn it was to make the breakfast cup.

In the end, I admitted defeat. He can do the foaming thing better than I can. And paint the pictures. 

Somewhere along the line, the breakfast coffee became the only one that mattered – we sit and savour it, watching the birds on the feeders. Now it is almost impossible to imagine starting the day without my breakfast milky coffee – and I rarely have another one, unless after a big meal.

Rituals definitely take you by surprise, but they become an essential part of life.

And as for that cup in the picture – I bought it when I was still alone to use as a tea cup. It never really took off as such. 

As I said. You can’t force a ritual.

What I Learned Today

That there really isn't a good time for your barn to fall down.

But if it does decide to fall down, it is a heck of a lot easier ferrying stuff back and forth with two people.

And that it really is an ill wind that does nobody any good.
All the stuff that was stored in the barn had to go into the stable which has been housing a pile of junk that my neighbour had brought round "temporarily" while his garage was being built. That was nearly four years ago and, despite numerous requests and reminders, he has studiously neglected to remove it.

It was rather satisfying leaving the message on his answering machine to the effect that "all your belongings are now outside in the rain".
Amazingly, he was around within a couple of hours to pick it all up!

You wait ten years for a new kitchen....

... and then two come along at once!

The tale of my house renovations is one of stop, start, stop, start. I realise that it is nearly 3 years since I proudly unveiled the work that my brother-in-law had done for me in the granny flat. It was a cool, calm breath of fresh air in the otherwise cluttered chaos of my house.

Unfortunately I ran out of money and work downstairs came to a standstill. Then when I had the funds, Tim was busy working on other projects and never came back, as builders are wont to do. So the back kitchen has remained in this state ever since.

Enter Robert.

He does this sort of stuff standing on his head. But he managed to remain very quiet and tactful about the general state of dilapidation, and besides there were other projects to keep him busy. Of which more in another post.

Just before Christmas, however, he asked whether I would like him to put the washbasin back on the wall in the downstairs loo. (Doesn’t everyone keep a washbasin on the floor?). And it sort of snowballed from there.

We excavated the flat-pack kitchen units from my Room of Doom, I bought some new doors, he called his carpenter and plasterer, and work started.

The plan was simply to get the annexe finished, then regroup to plan what to do with the rest of the house.

Well that was the plan.

On the Friday morning two weeks ago, I asked Robert whether he would replace the nasty, stained sink in the main kitchen with the stainless steel one I had bought five years ago. (Sigh).

No problem.

Unfortunately it didn’t fit. The discrepancy was only a millimetre or so, but the hole in the worktop was simply too big. So we considered whether to buy new worktop to replace the old one, which was looking distinctly tatty in any case. But the old cabinets were falling apart too. Why not rip those out while we were at it. And take down the horrible 1970s archway that I have hated since the moment I first walked into the house and that makes the room so dark. And pull up the ugly parquet flooring that was laid so badly.

Heck. Why not just redo the entire kitchen?

Well, apart from the fact that I had nothing to replace it with, why not?

Not a problem either, apparently. Two hours searching on EBay later, Robert had found someone near Bristol who was having a new kitchen fitted and selling their (pristine, as far as I could see) old one.

Saturday lunchtime we set off with the car and trailer, and arrived at our destination about 4 pm. Only to find the homeowners sitting in their lovely old kitchen, surrounded by cardboard boxes, with all the kitchen units still firmly attached to their respective walls!

“When were you thinking of collecting it?”, asked the gentleman of the house, fondly imagining that we had just come to check it out.

“Now.” said Robert, taking out his toolkit.

And so we did. Three hours later, all the kitchen units plus large cooker were quite miraculously packed on our 7’ x 4’ trailer and off home we set. It was like the opening credits to The Beverly Hillbillies!

Sunday morning we unpacked it all into the lean-to for closer inspection: for £500 and a road trip to Bristol, we appear to have acquired a large solid beech kitchen and a beautiful racing green cooking range with the cleanest oven I have ever seen. It is difficult to believe it was ever used. Result!

OK, so there is a bit of work still to go, but compared to the previous rate of progress this is lightening speed. And as soon as the electrics for the back kitchen are signed off, we can move into there and start work on the main house. I really can’t wait to attack that archway with a crowbar!

Couch potato

That photograph was taken just over a year ago.

I had just run my first 10k (for the record in 57:58 – not bad for an old bird!) and was feeling rather pleased with myself.
Flushed with that success I planned to work up to a half marathon by the end of 2012.

Ah well.
Pride goeth before destruction and all that.
I ran two more 10ks during the summer, then the niggly cartilage in my left knee started to nag. And then to hurt after a couple of miles. So I stopped running and started cycling. Slightly different muscles, but good exercise and it was something Robert and I could do together.

I had just got to the stage of thinking about looking for a “proper” bike to replace my old jalopy when the next disaster struck.
In early October, I spent an afternoon digging over the veg garden to get it ready for the winter. A short bout of mortal combat with a particularly well dug-in cabbage stalk resulted in a torn rotator cuff; an injury I would not wish on my worst enemy.

Not a stabby sort of pain, but what I would describe as impossibly severe discomfort. It got to the stage where I could not stand, sit, lie or walk in any position for more than a few minutes at a time. For a couple of weeks, all I could do was half-lie, half-sit in bed, propped up with pillows like some crotchety dowager duchess. I am not a good patient!

But I am fortunate in having a wonderful chiropractor.
He pulled and prodded, wiggled and jiggled until he was pretty certain where the problem lay.
Then the solution amounted to rest, ice and massage. Robert could provide the last two. The first was down to me.

So essentially I spent from the end of October until Christmas sitting by the woodburner, slumped on the sofa and doped up with ibuprofen, either typing or obsessively knitting – the only two activities that didn’t hurt. Most of my family received scarves as gifts!

It took until the first few days of this new year to realise that the pain had largely dissipated.
In the meantime, all my muscle appears to have turned to blancmange. I don’t appear to have put on any weight, so it must be true what they say about muscle weighing more than fat, but there is a definite squidginess about the mid-section that really has to go.

As last year’s hubris appears to have courted disaster, I am reluctant to put forward any sort of plan. But my walking boots are by the door and the constant rain of the last two months seems to have metamorphosed into light snow and frost, so there is every possibility that the next few days might result in some sort of exercise.
At last.

Living in the Real World

It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that the Internet saved my life. But back in the darkest days of my grief, I’m not so sure that it didn’t save my sanity.

Through the Internet I have made some wonderful friends. Some live just a few miles away, others I probably will never meet in person. And all stops in-between. The common feature is that they have all given totally non-judgmental support when I needed it.

It is also where Robert and I found one another. I think it came as a surprise to both of us that we did, or at least so quickly, but it would be rather churlish to complain about that!

And it is a constant feature in my work. For research, for moving files around, for working on servers half a country away. I fondly remember the days when assignments turned up in brown envelopes through the door and research necessitated a bus trip to Manchester Central Library. When deadlines were measured in weeks, not days. That sort of timescale would be unimaginable now.

Lately I have found myself drawing away from it though. My life seems more and more to be firmly rooted in the Real World. I am doing less paid work, and we are working more on house renovations. Not having animals in the field means we can lock the doors and simply leave home behind for a few days without having to organise people to dole out feed and water and put the poultry to bed at night.

Over Christmas I went on a complete Internet fast. Simply turned it off. Pulled the plug and hid my laptop out of sight for nearly a fortnight.

It was an unexpected pleasure. More time for reading, hand-sewing and knitting. More time to sit in front of the woodburner with a garden plan and seed catalogues in hand. More time to simply chat and laugh and plan and eat and share a bottle of wine. What could be better?

In all this cutting down, however, one thing I have really missed has been this blog, and having a place to record the passing of the days.

2012 was an incredible year for me.

Not just getting married. But relearning how to be truly happy. How to share my life again.

There were difficult parts too. Robert had to go into hospital for a small surgery under general anaesthetic. I was almost paralysed with terror. Hospital for me was still a place where people go to die, not to get better. It is an irrational fear, I know, and on this occasion was unfounded, I am happy to report.

There has also been some bad, bad stuff with his ex. It is still ongoing, but there is an end in sight now, and working through it all has been very good for us as a couple.

And I lost my precious friend Moose in the Autumn.
His back legs had become very wobbly, but he was happy pottering around at home. He still enjoyed his food and barking at the postman. Then one day he had a sort-of-stroke. It left him with severe vertigo and he was unable to stand up. All he could do was look at me with such confusion in his eyes. It was heart-breaking to see, and the time had come to say goodbye.
I still miss him every day that passes.

But mostly the year has been fast-moving and fun, full of passion and movement and change. I regret not having recorded it all on these pages. So the beginning of a new year seems like a good time to kick-start this blog again. I seem to remember writing something very similar at this time last year, but perhaps I may be able to make more time for it in 2013.

Alpha and Omega

Supper this evening consisted of the very last home-grown bacon joint alongside the first of this year's new potatoes, broad beans and parsley.

The old with the new.
A fitting transition.
There is always new, isn't there? New life. New growth. New experiences.
All good.

And there are no photos because it has all gone!

Antici....

...pation.
To be said in one's best Tim Curry voice!

The hungry gap is always a frustrating time. The only edible things available to eat from the garden are a few herbs, a mass of rhubarb and some tatty spinach left over from last year. Sure there are plenty of greens available in the wild - sorrel, jack-by-the-hedge, wild garlic and nettles - but is not quite the same as that first harvest of the year.

Everything is so tantalisingly close to being ready.
It is time to cover the strawberries. As soon as the first hint of pinkness appears, the blackbirds start paying them rather too much interest for my liking. This year I WILL eat them myself, rather than donating them to the wildlife.

The first sowing of peas was eaten by something (probably mice or voles) before they had a chance to get going. The plants look delicate, but are as hard as nails if I can get them through the first couple of weeks with their heads out of the soil, so the second sowing was made in a length of guttering in the greenhouse and then planted out. And there are third and fourth sowings almost ready to follow in their footsteps.
I don't think it is possible to have too many fresh peas.
Broad beans of course. Dwarf varieties only this year as the yield is pretty good and the plants don't need staking, which is always a bonus up on this hill.

I have really been enjoying my garden this year. With two of us tackling it, the place is starting to get straight again. Robert likes the bits that involve petrol-driven machinery, so the hedges look tidy, the woodpile is full and the lawn gets mown more than once in a blue moon. Which leaves me with time to plant and weed and pot on - and to take pleasure in them, rather than simply rushing to get everything in.
Not having chickens scratching everything up helps too. I miss the chooks - and the eggs and manure - but not the frustration of finding a couple of hens dust-bathing in my newly-planted seedlings. I'm sure there will be chickens in my life again, but they probably won't have quite such free rein as was the case in the past.

The lettuces are almost ready too. It's a shame that the sun has disappeared temporarily, but I'm sure it will come back eventually.

The Spring planting frenzy happens every year. I always worry about being too late, so I put in the poor tender seedlings too early, then a late-May cold snap turns up with the result that they sit in the ground and sulk until mid-June.

I know this will happen because it is always the same. My old-boy neighbours tut despairingly over my hastiness, and offer me their leftover plants just in case mine turn up their toes with the cold. And the late-planted seedlings always catch up with the early ones, and often do even better. But I just can't stop myself doing it - the first sunny day in May, I am out there putting in those little plantlets and hoping that I will have got it right for once.

But it never happens, and the first couple of weeks of June are always spent pacing up and down, waiting to harvest something.

Anything!

A rare success

I love my garden.
Vegetables, flowers, trees, grass (well maybe I grumble about the grass sometimes). There is very little that gives me more pleasure than pottering about outside, pruning, dead-heading, digging and planning. It is all good.

Houseplants are an entirely different matter.
My intentions towards them are always honourable, but I cringe inwardly when someone gives me a potplant as the odds are that it will be a brown and crispy husk within six months. Having most of my windowsills point due South doesn't help either as the poor plants have the choice between thermal shock cycles there, or sitting further into the room in semi-darkness.
I could give the roll call of houseplants that have gone before, but it would be too depressing for words. Suffice to say, it is long.

So last year, when a visiting friend gave me a beautiful Phalaenopsis, I admired its beauty and simply expected it to go and join its predecessors on the compost heap eventually. But the blooms continued to flower month after month, and the plant appeared to enjoy my benign neglect. When the flowering stem finally died back, I felt that something so pretty and so tenacious deserved a chance.

After taking advice, I moved the pot to overwinter in the spare bedroom where it more or less dried out, but was given a watering whenever I noticed it - which admittedly was not very often. Amazingly it started to put up another flowering stalk a couple of months ago, so I moved it to where I would see it more often, gave it a bit of a feed and waited.

Last week it rewarded me with this. So lovely, and quite undeserved.

It seemed like a good idea at the time

This is something I seem to find myself saying quite a lot.

When we decided to hold our wedding reception in the garden at home, I inevitably found myself looking around the place with a critical eye. There are so many things that I have left undone over the past four years, due to lack of either time or oomph.

Take the pond, for example.
It was quite a nice pond when R and I first moved here. Goldfish, waterlilies, flag irises and marsh marigolds, boggy area, home to dragonflies, pond skaters and water boatmen, frogs and newts. Unfortunately it was in entirely the wrong place - in full sunlight and under a couple of deciduous trees that shed their leaves directly into the pond every Autumn.

Well, the goldfish survived on neglect for quite a few years.
And then I got ducks...
Ducks are lovely. Brilliant entertainment. Lots of eggs and the surplus drakes are rather tasty. They loved the pond and promptly stripped it of all greenery, ate the goldfish and as many tadpoles as they could get their greedy little beaks around. And they pooed. Into the pond that was already silted up with the sad remains of all the green stuff they had eaten. Without any oxygenating plants, the water promptly turned green and changed to the consistency of pea and ham soup.

In one of my Bridezilla moments, when I realised that the guests would have to walk past the pond and survey its awful green sludginess, I decreed that it would have to be drained, dredged and refilled. Husband-to-be quite sensibly didn't argue with this, but took the submersible pump from its shelf in the barn, removed a large tubful of frogspawn and pumped out all the water.

Then he handed me a bucket...

It took me two days to remove the 6-inch layer of noxious primaeval gloop and barrow it to the compost heap (mustn't waste all that organic matter!). I also removed many of the large edging stones that had fallen in, half a dozen planting baskets which, pre-ducks, had held waterlily roots and a mysterious collection of green-painted funnels (no idea what those were all about).

We then refilled the pond, returned the frogspawn and waited for the stirred-up stuff in the water to settle and change from dark brown to the clear, limpid pool that I fondly held in my imagination.

Only it didn't.

A week later the water had changed colour.

Back to bright green. Roughly the colour of pea and ham soup.

I wasn't happy. Not happy at all.

There was only one thing for it.

We would have to get some more ducks!

Perfect day

It's a funny thing, getting married after being widowed.
However happy you are, there is always a little voice in your head telling you that things shouldn't be so good. You always need to be careful about hurting someone else's feelings. It doesn't matter that you have thought about your loss for every one of the previous 1370 days or 32,856 hours or roughly 1,971,360 minutes, it still seems wrong to be happy at having good news to pass on to someone who may feel sad as a result.

In the end, R's family decided that they couldn't come to our wedding. I understand their feelings, but I so wish that it had been different. They gave their blessing, but didn't feel they could give their presence. I missed them very much. There were quite a few other people whom I thought about inviting, but they had been primarily 'his' friends, so it just didn't seem right. This may have just been my problem - I appreciate this.

But all those caveats aside, it truly was one of the happiest days of my life.
It was cold, but the sun shone on us. We planned a relaxed, informal event full of fun and music, and that is exactly what we had. A smallish private ceremony was followed by a ceilidh in a tent in the garden at home, with additional music from our favourite local bluegrass duo and other friends.

It was wonderful, joyful and full of people who care about us and wish us well for the future. And I guess that is all that matters.

The silence of the lambs

Yesterday I sold my little flock of sheep.
There are still three of the ram lambs here in the village, on a friend's land, but the rest of them have all gone. Including the ewe with her baby that was just born a few days ago.

They had to go. For the last couple of years I hadn't managed them very well. There were too many sheep on my small field, and the grass wasn't being rested. I missed the opportunity to send last year's lambs off to the abattoir before Christmas, which meant that they hung around all winter, eating me out of house and home. My hay bill this year was phenomenal.

So when lambing time came around this year I didn't have enough grass. And when Robert and I decided to have our wedding reception here, it didn't really sink in until the last minute that I would have to take the sheep off what grass there was so that it could clean up for the marquee. Apparently the hirers of such equipment don't take terribly kindly to erecting their pristine white tents in a field full of sheep poo!

As a result, the last month or so has been very stressful, calling in favours from friends to help me move the sheep and asking for access to any bit of grazing in the area going spare. And then I lost a lamb for the first time ever. It probably wouldn't have made it whatever we did, but seeing the little soul just fading away before my eyes after initially seeming to rally was just heartbreaking.

I had come to terms with the fact that I wouldn't be able to keep the sheep when we move into town, but after a week or more of sleepless nights, trying to work out what to do with them, I finally came to the conclusion that they would have to be sold. Sooner rather than later, but I wasn't keen on sending them to market as the whole flock would probably simply be bought for slaughter which somehow seems wrong for lambs that are so young. I know that most of mine have ended up in the freezer, but at least they normally had the best part of a year in which to run around with the sun on their backs. Not an entirely consistent moral position, I know, but it's not all about logic, is it?

A few days ago, a chance conversation with the man doing some groundworks at a friend's house found me a buyer, and the deal was done quickly. For once in their awkward little lives, the sheep all loaded quickly and easily into his trailer, some cash changed hands and that was it. Off they went to look cute and cut the grass and clear some woodland around his caravan site. They will enjoy that, I'm sure.

It is a relief that they have gone, but it is quiet here now. Very quiet. There are no more farm animals on my little patch of land. I'm looking forward to not having to get up and feed them, or worry about worm burdens or shearing.
But it is very quiet.

Life still has a few surprises

I have been struggling to rediscover my blogging mojo for a while.
Lack of time and lack of inspiration, or simply the moments passing faster than I have time to write about them, have stood in the way.

And then there has been my stalker, Mr G. Reaper, who has remained ever-present since the start of the year.
I had intended to keep this place a dead person-free zone, but it hasn't been easy.
Hardest to deal with, of course, is the fact that it would have been R's 50th birthday this year. A double milestone - another birthday ticked off, and a Significant Date as well. It has helped having a broad shoulder to cry on this time, but the pain and searing loss doesn't go away, does it?

Then a good friend and work colleague passed away a couple of weeks ago, six months after her retirement. She gave up work so she and her husband could spend more time travelling, and was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer just two months later. The disease progressed so quickly that we never did get the chance to have the retirement meal we were planning.
Anne's funeral is on Wednesday.

Our little village hasn't been immune either. In the last two months, we have lost my lovely next-door neighbour, Mary, and another friend's husband, Mike. Two people from a village of around 200 souls in such a short time is felt deeply. One percent of the population. It creates a feeling of unease in addition to the sadness.

And yet, all around the land is waking up. Coming back to life.
Gardens are filling with flowers, buds are starting to break on the trees. We even had to mow the lawn last weekend.

Every field seems to be full of lambs. Including my own.
I decided to have one last lambing, a swan song, as it were. I may not be living here for that much longer, but while I am, it will be full of little faces.
The first ewe produced two beautiful little lambs last weekend. Then yesterday, I went out for a couple of hours. When I came back, I could see that Robert was waiting to tell me something. "Come outside and take a look at this." he said excitedly.

I certainly wasn't expecting this:

Genetics was never one of my strong subjects at school, but I would love to know how that happened!
Mother was pure black, as were her grandmother and great-grandmother. Dad is a pure-bred (or so I thought!) Black Welsh Mountain ram. I guess every family has the odd skeleton in the closet if you go back far enough!

And twin brother is black too.
Makes for a lovely picture though.

The hidden cost of cheap flights

It has been a horrible winter up here on my hilltop.
Not cold, crisp and snowy like the previous two winters. I don't mind those at all. Given sufficient stocks of firewood and red wine, a full freezer and no particular place to go, I can simply wait them out.
This one was a real Welsh winter though. All leaden skies, fog and constant rain from the West. For days on end. The sort of winter for which the term SAD was invented.

By the start of February we were both desperate for some sunlight. Added heat would be a bonus, but just light would do.
A quick scan of t'Interweb for cheap flights led to 10 days in Portugal, the Algarve to be specific. Never having been there before, I had imagined it was all golf courses and expat Brit retirement villages. Well yes, those are there, but there are also orange groves, cork oak forests, neat terraced smallholdings clinging onto hillsides, a wealth of birdlife, azure seas and dramatic offshore rock formations, glorious seafood and char-grilled dishes, and a whole wealth of other camera-friendly sights and experiences.

Sadly, though, the most memorable thing we brought back with us was a really nasty bout of 'flu. Caught, I am absolutely certain, from the Ryanair pilot sitting next to Robert who coughed and spluttered for the entire flight back.
Which is the really strange thing. You certainly don't get anything else for free on a budget, no-frills airline!