Beach Walk

The other day it was cold and brisk but also sunny, and I took advantage of the rare bout of rays to take a few photos on my usual walk with the dog to the beach and back:

The tide was out which leaves a lovely stretch of flat, damp sand, scattered with tide pools and rocks. The dog loves wading into the pool, even in subzero temperatures! I do not.

I'm not actually much of a beach person, although my limited childhood experience of the beach was the Jersey Shore, which might explain why I never took to it. An empty beach in winter, though, is something else entirely.

The dog surveys her domain and I enjoy a moment of solitude in an all too busy day, before heading home as the light starts to fade.

That is my house in the distance, by the church, looking, to my mind, very Wuthering Heights-ish alone in its little moor!

And so ends another walk. I'm looking forward to spring.

Harbingers of Spring

Today the air was cold and sharp with the promise of snow, at least another dusting, but in our garden I found this lovely promise of spring--even if it doesn't arrive here for awhile yet!

I've never seen snowdrops in the US, and I do enjoy this little reminder that spring will come eventually, even if it is cold and only early February. I'm looking forward to getting out in the garden and working on my vegetable plot. I am a mediocre gardener at best; I don't have a good instinct for plants and growing things and my weeding and pruning are rather slipshod but I do enjoy it. And last year we ate green beans, lettuce, onions, potatoes and a few knobbly carrots from my efforts outside, and I was very pleased.

And meanwhile I'll enjoy these:

Snow... or not

Last week it snowed here in the village. Not a lot of snow, mind you. Living as we do on the coast, we rarely get more than a generous dusting. People are still talking about the winter of 2010-2011, before we moved here, when it snowed an entire FOUR INCHES. Roads were closed, and food had to be shipped into the village by sea from Whitehaven. I kid you not.

As a former New Englander, I scoff a bit at this, I admit. When we lived in Connecticut we had several major snowstorms each winter, and by major I mean anywhere from 18 inches to 2 and a half feet of snow. But New England is prepared for that kind of snow. Within hours of the snow stopping, the ploughs are out and the streets are mainly clear.

My husband and I were reminiscing about the snowstorms in New England. There is something very serene and beautiful about a world blanketed in snow. I think the thing I miss most of all is the sense of peaceful silence. Everything is muted by snow; no one is out. The world is covered in softness. Of course, in a few days or weeks, that softness is grimy, grey, and making life generally difficult with puddles of icy slush--when we lived in New York City, there were absolutely treacherous puddles on the curbs of certain intersections, and the worst part was, they didn't look that deep. So you'd step into one only to find yourself sinking into icy, dirty water halfway up to your knee. Yuck.

So I don't miss that.

But snow can be magical, and when it snowed here last week (maybe a quarter of an inch, gone within an hour) my six-year-old daughter was absolutely entranced. She doesn't remember the snows in New York, and she gazed around in rapture at the snow still coming down and said, 'This is the best day EVER. There is so much to SEE!'

I'd like a little of her youthful wonder and exuberance, myself.

It was supposed to snow last night but there is nary a flake on the ground this morning. However, the distant fells look like this:

So really, I can't complain.

Fire at the Vicarage

Please forgive my absence from this blog; Christmas and all its attending brouhaha (a word I love to use) overwhelmed me. And then of course there was the fire.

On December 27th my husband put on a fire in the guest room to air the room out in preparation for our au pair coming back. Unfortunately, while he was out of the room, a spark leapt out (we think) and possibly lit the kindling stacked near the fireplace, or some other highly flammable substance, because a few minutes later the smoke alarm (thankfully!) went off and when he went upstairs the whole room was ablaze.

I am very grateful for my husband's clear, cool thinking, because I have to admit I am a panicker. Worse, I am a wring-my-hands-and-do-nothing kind of panicker. I've managed to improve slightly since having children--when my son, who was two at the time, choked on a plum pit, I possessed enough sangfroid to first give him the Heimlich and then when that didn't work, to fish the pit out with my finger while he sank his teeth deep into my knuckle. But back to the fire.

My husband told our two oldest daughters, who were oblivious to the fire in the room adjacent to them, to go downstairs and he put the contents of not one but two fire extinguishers on the blaze while we waited outside, shivering. At that point I thought maybe the mat in front of the fireplace would be a bit damaged, the room a bit smoky.

Ha.

The fire reignited and my husband called the fire brigade--all volunteers, who were superb. They put out the fire and pried up the floorboards, using cameras to make sure there was no fire underneath. They also threw all the smoke and fire damaged furniture out the window.

So the room was a little more damaged than I thought. In fact, it was a burned out shell, and my daughter's room next door was covered in soot and grime.

But the good news is we have insurance. And the reason this relates to my village life? Within five minutes of the whole thing happening, people were calling, leaving messages on Facebook, offering to have us sleep at their house or borrow anything we needed. We hadn't even told anyone, but people could see the fire brigade (not to mention the smoke) at our house and so they called. They came to help fill a skip (or Dumpster, in American) with all the rubbish (trash). They offered to help clean and paint, and the girls slept in the living room for a week on a pile of a friend's duvets. I know things like this would happen even if I didn't live in a village. Friends would call round, offering help once they'd heard. I suppose the difference is how quickly the help came. How many people reached out, because they could actually *see* the smoke billowing up in the middle of the village! And despite the fire's damage, I'm grateful for how it made me count my blessings. The children had been bickering all week but the fire sobered them up a bit, drew us all together. Made us see how many friends we had, people who were willing and eager to help us. And of course we are very thankful that it wasn't any worse--if the smoke alarm hadn't gone off, if the fire had moved into the hallway and blocked the stairs... the whole house could have burned down. Children could have been hurt or worse. So yes, I am thankful.

A Cumbrian Christmas

It's that time of year again. Christmas! Or rather, Advent. I love the build-up to Christmas; I love the decorating, the baking, the buying of presents, and all the events that we have for school and church. Christmas concerts and nativity plays (this year at the primary school it is 'Christmas with the Aliens') and mince pies and mulled wine.

Here at the Vicarage we have a few of our own special events. The Thursday before Christmas we host the village's weekly 'pop-in' at our house; basically, it is a morning with coffee, cake, and chatting, finished off with some Christmas carols. I enjoy having people over and it also helps me get the house clean for Christmas, the kind of kick in the pants this reluctant housekeeper needs. We also have the Youth Group Christmas party next week, which involves a Yankee Swap (also known, I think, as a white elephant??) and lots of iced sugar cookies.

Next week there is a carol service at the Lifeboat Station down at the beach, and on Saturday my daughter is playing Christmas carols with the school band at the local castle (can castles be considered local? Well, we have one and it's twenty minutes away.)

So much busy-ness and fun, but amidst all that I try to find a moment or at least a second or two to be quiet. This December I am reading The Greatest Gift  by Anna Voskamp, who is the author of the bestselling book 1,000 Gifts. I'm enjoying a chance to reflect on the meaning of Advent and Christmas amidst the chaos of our household--the latest concerns/arguments being who gets to put the star on top of the tree (every year we put a note in the box of decorations saying whose turn it is, and every year the note mysteriously disappears) and who gets to eat the first chocolate in the Advent calendar. It's December 3rd and no chocolates have been eaten because this issue has not yet been resolved.

Do you look forward to the Christmas season? What do you like in particular? To celebrate I will give away one copy of my novella A Yorkshire Christmas (Kindle only, I'm afraid!) to someone who comments or sends me an email telling me something they like (or don't like!) about Christmas.

The Beauty of The Bath

I once wrote a short story about the different bathrooms, and mainly bathtubs, that a couple had through their married life, and how each bathroom/tub represented a different stage of life. I was inspired by my own life, because in some ways I can track our marriage (and family life) through our bathtubs.

Take the first bathtub we had, in a flat in Cambridge, England. We lived in the top floor of a nineteenth-century vicarage near Newnham College, and the bathtub was a lovely, long, claw-footed masterpiece that invited deep, long, bubbly soaks. Unfortunately, there was only enough hot water to fill it to about two inches. My husband was a theology student, we were ridiculously poor, and this tub pretty much summed up our life. When I became pregnant that year, my husband very kindly would boil kettles of water and pour them into the tub so I could have a bath--one of the only things that helped with my morning sickness. I have memories of sitting in the tub, naked and shivering, in two inches of hot water while my husband hurried to boil kettle after kettle, dear man.

We moved to a college flat the next year, in the top of a bell tower, and this time we had a deep tub and unlimited hot water. Bliss! Plus the bathroom was on a floor above our flat, having to go up eleven twisting, turret stairs, and you couldn't hear a baby crying from it, which was also bliss. My husband would take our squally newborn for an hour while I would lie in the tub and wonder just what we'd taken on. Sometimes I still wonder that.

Next tub was the house of my husband's first curacy. Tiny, olive-green, in a semidetached house in Hull. We had two children and very few baths.

Moving on to America: a decent tub but not extraordinary by any means. Three children, and the bathtub usually saw them all squeezed in there together, water slopping over the sides.

And then New York: no bathtub, but two marble showers. Which sounds far more luxurious than the 1950s box-like apartment was, but at least the kids liked it and one of the showers was a two-person one which meant you could bung them all in there together for a quick evening bath, or rather, shower time.

And finally here, the bathtub in a two hundred year old vicarage. Six feet long, nice and deep, and an immersion heater to make sure you have all the hot water you could ever need. And, quite importantly, a fan in the bathroom that keeps you from hearing the often-incessant knocking on the door, the requests to play a game, mediate an argument, find hockey kit, and/or free up the bathroom for the other six people in the house.

I've been taking a lot of baths here. In winter, I take one almost every night. And no, I don't have a compulsion to be clean. You could say I have a compulsion to sink into deep, hot, bubbly water, sip a glass of wine, and read my book. After a long day working, writing, cooking, cleaning, and managing the lives of five children, a half-hour or so in the bath brings me back to a good and peaceful place. And, as a bonus, it keeps me warm! Even with new windows our house can be a bit draughty (but that's a whole other post) and I love going to bed with my skin still lightly steaming.

You could say my bath is my guilty pleasure, but I don't feel remotely guilty about it.

Just What Is Bonfire Night?

On Monday night we went to the village's annual fireworks for Bonfire Night, otherwise known as Guy Fawkes Day (Or Night? I'm not sure). This is one of those villagey events that warms the heart and makes me glad I live in a small place where everyone knows everyone else, or just about. We congregate in the sports hall of the private school, where parents serve drinks and my children beg for toffee apples. (Has anyone, I wonder, ever finished a toffee apple? When I have relented and bought one, my child takes maybe two bites and then hands me the sticky mess. They look delicious, but they're not. They're apples on sticks with a little bit of covering.)

I recognize most of the people there, and usually manage to chat to quite a few, although this year I was chasing my fearless toddler, who thinks nothing of zigzagging through the crowds at full tilt, in search of the door to the outside and freedom. Then there are the fireworks, which are quite spectacular for a village our size.

This is a photo I took on the night; sorry it's blurry. But there is a sense of solidarity, standing outside in the cold and the dark, watching something together. It makes you feel part of a community. Which is why it's easy to forget the origin of Guy Fawkes Day, which is remembering a man who tried to blow up Parliament in 1605. Apparently people lit bonfires in thanksgiving for the king's life being spared, and Guy Fawkes was tortured, hung, and then quartered, with the parts of his body being sent to the four corners of the kingdom. Try explaining that to your six-year-old.

In many parts of the country people still burn a 'Guy' or a straw man on the bonfire, although this custom did not actually start until the mid 1800s, due to a high anti-Catholic sentiment at the time. There are few effigies burned in West Cumbria,  as it has a large number of Catholics, for which I'm thankful, because I don't think I'd like to explain that element to my children.

However, its grisly beginnings aside, I do enjoy Bonfire Night, or Fireworks Night, as we call it here, since there is no bonfire. And it seems appropriate to have fireworks to celebrate some fireworks that didn't happen. 

I included Bonfire Night in my upcoming book Rainy Day Sisters, and offered an American's perspective on some of the more gruesome aspects--having Guy Fawkes Day explained to me as a new ex-pat was, I remember, a bit unsettling. One good thing about having the country's annual fireworks day in November, at least, is that you don't have to wait until nine o'clock for it to be dark enough to set them off, as you do in America with the Fourth of July. We watched the fireworks and were home by eight o'clock. Excellent.

My eldest daughter was born (in England) on November 3, and the sound of fireworks can still bring me back to the days after her rather difficult birth, when I was cradling her and listening to the hiss and booms of fireworks going off in the distance. She turned sixteen on Monday and came to the Fireworks Night with me. And so time passes.