Words...

... for Knots in the String.

Dear reader, you may be quite shocked, put off even, by the language that follows, but bear with me if you can…

There are golden days in winter where the sun streams through our windows and I lean against the big pillows on the window seat and enjoy the apricity. Sometimes, I’m quite scripturient and will open my WIP and continue with the narrative.

Later, if it’s a particular chill night, where the wind snarks at the corners of the eaves and I can hear the willow dragging its shedding fronds across the roof, then I will probably spend time grufeling. It beats having a case of clinomania.

I’ll heat the yesterfang, an Irish stew, which is always better on the second night. We’ll have it with fresh sourdough and homemade tomato sauce and my husband and I will twattle and I will tell him we’re fudgeling when we both should be working in the evenings on our separate projects.

Then because we’ve had such a hard day, and are crambazzled, we’ll head off to bed. I’ll have a long soak in a warm bath, my mind slowly filling with cotton wool (or should that be sheep’s wool?). At this point in the evening, I’ll suffer from lethologica. But then as one would expect, the word I can’t remember will wake me at three in the morning whereupon I’ll toss and turn in an uneven sleep and wake with ghastly elflocks.

My husband will look at me and say, ‘It’s just as well you’re going to lunch overmorrow because it’ll take that long to get the tangles out!’

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Ye Gods, you’re no doubt thinking!

The truth is that a list of these marvellous old words crossed my path on Pinterest the other day. I love words, the stranger the better and sometimes will pick a word for the day. Recently, the word was crepuscular. Once it was gallimaufry. Another time, serendipitous. Pocket, although not strange, was another – or as Gollum would say – pocketses…

Gallimaufry (a confusion, a jumble) has always been a favourite. It rolls around one’s mouth like glass marbles. Once, when he was little, my now 40 year old son swallowed a glass marble. We waited 3 days for it to come out the other end!

Other things with less oblique words:

My fridge crisper has been filled with what was left of the apple crop. There has been no room for veggies which by consequence, had to migrate to the upper shelves and so OH and I decided to peel and chop 6 lbs of the apples, along with red onions and homegrown garlic and make more fruit chutney. It bubbled away like the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth (‘Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bubble’), the house becoming more aromatic by the moment. The scent of apple of course, but ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, white pepper and curry powder. When it was ready, we filled 12 jars of golden, chunky chutney. There’s still 3 lbs of remaindered apples and we also have 4 lbs of quinces, so we thought we’d mix them together in the same recipe. It will be ruby-pink, the quinces performing their alchemical miracle, and it will taste like a sheikh’s feast as we eat it on bread with cheese.

This has also been our week for shearing, so I’ve had cakes to cook for smokos. It’s a legendary time in the farming year. When dust particles and woolen fibres float in the dawn light slanting through the louvre windows of the shearing shed. When the sheep rumble in the back of their throats at the indignity of being shorn, their cloven hooves making a clickety-clack sound on the floor of the shed.

The shears will whirr all day and white sheep will emerge down the ramp and make for sunshine and pasture. Mills in China will spin the beautiful fibre into yarn from which all kinds of wearable clothing can be made. I never cease to be amazed and proud of the fibre that an Australian (specifically Tasmanian) merino sheep produces.

We have a new couch and ottoman in the cottage. I’ve thrown caution to the wind and chosen a natural-coloured heavy-duty cotton. I also have a large and very old water-stained photograph taken in the 1930’s of my grandfather’s first motor yacht as flag ship for the local regatta. It’s being framed and will go on the wall behind the couch.

The couch is a sinking-into kind. I’m writing this propped up by cushions and my eyes are heavy in the night silence. The pup is asleep, husband (whose new chair has yet to arrive) is debating heading to bed. The wall heater clicks and whispers and I can hear the waves. There’s no nasty night wind biting at the weatherboards and eaves, but the cold of a single-digit night is pushing against the windows.

This cottage is such a quirky small space that when we renovated it some 13 years ago, I said that if the walls were to be taken back to the studs, then could the house to be rebuilt with new materials exactly as it was? My son, the builder, thought I was dotty. But it was the quirk that we’d fallen in love with and we wanted to retain that feeling. So I acquired a new kitchen (cottage meets maritime but not Hamptons!), a new bathroom and a little house that I always say wraps around one like a hug.

I look for words that fit – cosy, secure, intimate, hygge (pronounced hyu-gah and Swedish for a quality of cosiness). Maybe intimate too and safe and calm. Calm is perhaps the one that fits the best. The colour palette is peaceful, nothing jars. Cream, oyster, putty, camel, taupe, navy and faded denim. A lexicon to describe such a limited palette…

When you think about it, you know, words are a writer’s paints and the thesaurus their paintbox.

Do you agree?

Song for this week? Something calm and mellow: