'Best Day Ever...'

... for Knots in The String.

I froze this week as the sky sparkled blue.

The cruel bite of what we call the Down-The-River-Wind pushed The Terrier into his padded rug for the first time this year.

It takes five minutes to rug him for our evening walk, but it takes us hours to dress.

Polar fleece top, polar fleece vest, #Uniqlo jacket, beanie, 2 pairs of gloves, woollen socks and either fleece-lined boots or runners. I roll out the door like the Michelin Man as the cut-glass air strips flesh off my cheeks and eyeballs.

On bitter nights, the dog doesn’t linger to smell the bushes on the foreshore. He wees, does his business which we bag up and deposit in the bin and he trit-trots home, allowing himself to be de-rugged, to then crash onto his fleece bed in front of the heater.

The cold has flattened us after a few weeks of beguiling winter warmth. I had the idea that with climate change, maybe this winter I wouldn’t wear boots or woollies at all.

Hah!

This week I wore fleece-lined boots because chilblains had emerged within 24 hours of the Big Chill settling in. My beloved #Uniqlo down jackets were unearthed and in order to clean the autumn leaves from our flood drains (we were promised 100mls of rain), I wore wetsuit gloves and garden gloves.

So one wonders why I opted to swim?

Because it was the Winter Solstice this week and I wanted to mark it. Because from now on, the days become longer.

And knowing that possibly 100mls of rain sheeting off the muddy rocks of Paradise and the Thumbs and into the bay will turn our waters brown, I knew I needed to winter-swim in the crystal water that has been bestowed upon us till now.

It was a grim day because the sky rose in a grey mood, heavy and low, and just got heavier as the day moped along to evening. Anyone else might be depressed. But in the ocean, I could look down as my black-booted feet shifted along white sand as I walked into deeper water. Here and there a few clumps of claret-coloured weed drifted around my toes in the tide. No fish. For one brief moment, after the cold water flooded my wetsuit and boots and whilst the wetsuit gloves warmed my hands, I rolled onto my back and tasted the salt on my lips. I could almost feel summer coming.

The chill of the water creates such exhilaration. The way my skin burns for the rest of the day, the way my eyes fill with a heaviness born of effort – effort to stay warm, effort to swim, effort to walk home in the teeth of the Down-The-River-Wind – it’s remarkable.

My Time:

It’s been a fraught week in different ways. Which is why the swim became important – a sloughing off of tensions.

But positively…

I finished writing The Red Thread and am now reading and editing. After that’s completed, it will be emailed to my longtime editor in the UK and hopefully in the meantime, I can do a cover reveal. Who knows?

*We had a wonderful day with our grandson – he singlehandedly warmed us through as he left by saying ‘That was the best day ever!’ He’s such a squidgy-yum!

*I did an amazing ballet class. Let me say that when I started back at ballet after a fifty plus year hiatus, I never envisaged being able to turn. Even less so when seven years ago, owing to a freakish vestibular event, I permanently lost all rightside balance. So imagine my sheer wonderment when this week, as we waltzed, I was able to turn three times! The last turn left me feeling a little hazy and off-centre but what a sense of accomplishment!

To me, it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt of the power of neuroplasticity.

*I’ve done quite a bit of stitching – settles the mind. Some little hearts for 1000 Hearts and I’ve added a bit to the #BrendaKinsel bag. The colours of the bag have an effect on my psyche - everything that’s warm, happy and joyful which led me on quite a journey this week.

The Little Book of Colour by Karen Heller

And The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St. Clair

It seems I love brights more than I thought and yet, show me a fashion statement of neutrals or a neutral interior and I’m in a feather-light heaven.

Watching:

The Great British Throwdown. Husband and self are learning so much about the artform of ceramics and the chemistry of glazes. We realise that every penny that ceramicists ask for their pieces is entirely justified.

Hope Street. It has its ups and downs. But given that neither of us are in need of thinking TV all the time, this serves the purpose.

Listening:

The final book in the Sons of Rome trilogy – Masters of Rome by Simon Turney and Gordon Doherty, read by Jonathan Keeble. This has been such stellar listening and what a team are the two writers!

Reading:

The same as last week. Biography, fantasy and my own hist.fict

Substack components of my reading life this week have been small but filled with warming emotion.

Elizabeth Beggins of:

Sally Frawley of:

Ramona Grigg of:

***

I’ve been observing what some Substack folk read and listen to, and I think how small is the intellectual input in my life.

So I’ll be honest.

I am at a life stage where I only have an interest in being mindful, of seeing what surrounds me – colour, texture, sounds. Because of the kind of world we inhabit (of which I am fully aware), I don’t want to be dragged down. I want to celebrate life, to enjoy and revel and laugh and love because it will add to others’ quality of life and therefore my own.

So I soak up that walk in the freezing Down-The-River-Wind, feel the keening on my skin, listen to the soughing of the achingly cold wind in the pines, marvel at the ice-blue shade of the water as it flows to the sea (before the rains). Laugh at the black cockatoos fighting over the last of the winter pinecones with banshee shrieks and much feathered pushing and shoving.

Stare at the Front Beach and admire the wind-buffed surface – barely a fret upon it.

When I see and feel all this after a walk with the Terrier, hands crammed into the down of my jacket, ears warmed by the New Zealand headband, I’m glad, grateful and really thrilled that all that fills my head are what I see and feel, the words of my manuscript and my little grandson saying This was the Best Day Ever…

My song choice?

8 pages later on Google there was no option, it had to be this one!