Rain...

...for Knots in the String.

Wednesday:

Eight solid hours sleep.

Heaven.

I’m sure I turned over at some point, but I don’t remember.

I’ve returned to the coast after ten days in the Big Smoke and obviously my psyche just sighed with relief, glazed over and turned out the lights.

This isn’t a retreat although it has the feel – wonderful to slip free and to know we have some time before the other life begins again.

For myself, I’m rapidly approaching the moment when I step off the merry-go-round. Say no, cancel, walk away. I do it every year about this time - saturated with busy-ness and craving no demands upon my time.

I read a great essay from the inimitable Mike Sowden

How I Learned To Read Books Again

and what sprang to my mind was no more rabbit holes this week – don’t click on links – immure myself – give myself time to read books!

As I lift my eyes from the keyboard and look outside, it’s early morning and the sky is cloudless blue. Hard to believe the weekend forecast. It’s time to hang the linen on the line where it’ll imbibe sunshine into its weave, maybe even the smell of the sea. I decide to walk the beaches with the Terrier because my brain feels spongy. Perhaps a swim then, before the strong nor’easterly arrives.

Later: I swim. The water is chill, firing the body to accomplish the rest of the day with profound energy. I sleep for nine hours this night.

Next day: A day in the boat, a day of farewells. A day of private memories. ‘Nuff said.

The same day: my cover designs arrive from talented Jane Dixon Smith who has managed to link The Red Thread, Book Five of The Chronicles of Eirie, to the four originals, designed by my daughter so long ago.

If it’s okay with you all, I’ll devote next week’s post to the reason I wrote another fantasy after leaving the genre behind (hint: linked to Covid). I’ll also do a cover reveal but in the meantime, you need to know about Jane who has been my regular cover designer for the last three or four books.

She’s remarkable – not just as a mum, designer and writer in her own right, but as a rockclimber, a mountaineer, an adventurer. She’s also an exceptional baker who has just released a book which will sit on my shelves because it’ll slot so perfectly into our life Outside. Yum picnic and hiking food, simply prepared.

https://mybook.to/thegreatadventurebaker

The following day: moving ewes and lambs to sheltered paddocks in preparation for the forecast heavy rains. Carting large round bales of sileage by tractor to the sheltered paddocks, for the newly moved livestock.

Taking the Terrier to the vet for his annual bloods etc. Exceptionally fit which is lovely as he turned 12 on Wednesday.

Gardening at the farm – planting Japanese lilies in a gap in the border, planting out a couple of wine barrels with succulents and hardy droughtproof plants. Ripping out the ancient jasmine which had twined with silver birch roots and through wire. Huge job for husband. Now a new bed is waiting for a hedge of pittosporum and some rain. Another new bed is now created in front of the storerooms with erigeron and lambs’ ears and tubs filled with pinecones and deer antlers. It was so dusty, so dirty, so dry.

Simply, we need moisture…

Each day: the Terrier and I walk on the beach. The sounds are balm. There’s just us and the rise and fall, whisper and shush of small waves. The odour of the sea is like life’s gift – salty and dry in the nose, a cauterisation. I wade through the water barefooted and wearing old denim shorts. My legs and feet become accustomed to the cool sea and I skim shells for the Terrier to chase.

This is the apogee! I want to skim like this!

Earlier in the week I had a birthday, and my daughter gave me a beautiful dove grey leather-covered journal which I’m resolving to use for a year. Not in the form of a diary but in a more eclectic way – poems, wisdom, reflections, postcards, scraps of paper that appeal. Tactile as well as textual.

Reading:

Kindle: The Echo of Old Books by Barbara Davis. Unusual. A second hand bookseller, an enigmatic gift whereby she senses the spirits of whomever may have touched or read the book. She acquires a novel/journal which drowns her in its emotions, and it becomes an obsession that she finds out about the writer.

Print: Katherine May’s Enchantment. A journal? Her reflections on a changed life after Covid Lockdown and what she needs to do to ignite joy again. Poignant and inspiring.

We had a scant 3 month Lockdown on our island for the whole of the global pandemic. For my husband and self, it was one of the most blissful times of our lives. The peace here on the coast was so solid, I could have cut and packaged it and sent it off as mail orders. Wildlife made itself known to us – barn owls, tawny frogmouths, mopokes, bandicoots, sea eagles, wallabies – shy creatures that had retreated in the face of population overdrive. We walked daily and saw no humans. There were no cars. I swam on deserted beaches, we boated on an empty sea. It was a gift to our souls, and I’ll never forget it, but for none of the sad reasons Katherine May relates.

There is a caveat though, and I’ll talk about it next week…

Audio: Still Ben Kane’s King, which proves I’m busy outside rather than inside and I refuse point blank to wear earbuds when outdoors.

Watching:

SAS Australia – perhaps in another life I might be an adrenalin junkie. Not sure.

Alone Frozen – binged the series. Quite in awe of folk’s wilderness skills, even more so as I sat watching with my toes under a rug on the couch and with a slice of birthday cake on my lap.

Tiny Pretty Things. I started watching because it featured a ballet school but it’s dark, cruel, beyond negative and I shan’t continue.

Happiness for Beginners because after watching The Ballet School of Horrors, I needed something sweet and charming to cleanse my palate.

Finally, last evening, being tired and grumpy from hard yakka , we switched the TV off, ignored Spotify and just sat reading, writing and thinking that a long warm bath seemed pretty good. Along with a tube of Voltaren and heatpacks.

But now the weekend cometh.

We must get through the expected rain, thunder and heaven knows what else.

How lucky are we that all we have to worry about are family returning to the fold after a tropical holiday, of roof spouts not overflowing, of the lucerne crops, lambs and all our newly growing veg surviving the deluge? Elsewhere the grieving, the homeless, the wounded, the starving and the thirsty are all in the grip of an awful anger perpetuated by political gain.

This weekend, I just want the rain to hammer upon our tin roof so that it drowns out the news stories…

PS: It’s raining…