'Tis the season...

...to receive lots and lots of parcels! Our postman arrived on our doorstep this morning, almost laden down with exciting-looking packages. As I opened the door he called out "Throw away your Christmas tree, you'll have to buy a bigger one!"

Speaking of trees, my Jesse tree is coming on well. I have made quite a few new ornaments this year; last time I didn't start until the 8th of December, so the whole thing felt rather a rush, but this year I started back in November, which gave me plenty of time. The strings of paper stars (for the promise to Abraham) give the whole thing a very festive feel, I think.

I have adjusted the symbols a little as well, and of course added in one extra, as Advent is a day longer. So far they stand thus:

1. Cartoon of God juggling planets (the creation)
2. Crab apple from a neighbour's garden (Adam and Eve)
3. Felt rainbow and paper ark (Noah and the flood)
4. Paper stars (the promise to Abraham)
5. Bundle of twigs (the offering of Isaac)
6. Gold-painted string ladder (Jacob's dream)

Rainbow and Noah's ark

7. Technicolour dream coat (Joseph the dream-interpreter)
8. "Stained-glass" burning bush (the calling of Moses)
9. Wooden lamb (the Passover)
10. "Sculpey" stone tablets (the Law)
11. "Sculpey" shofar (the fall of Jericho)
12. Cardboard crown (beginning of the kingdom)
13. Shepherd's crook (David - a shepherd for the people)
14. Stone altar (Elijah and the prophets of Ba'al)
15. "Sculpey" hot coal (the calling of Isaiah)
16. Glass tear drops (Jeremiah and the Exile)
17. "Sculpey" skull (Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones)
18. Picture of a lion (Daniel)

And now it's only one week until Christmas!

"We're all going on a Summer Holiday..."

"We're all going on a Summer Holiday, no more working for a week or two;

fun and laughter on our summer holiday,

no more worries for me or you -

for a week or two..."

 

                                                                  

Towards the end of May my parents and I (and the dog) went over to our house in France for a fortnight's holiday.

Cow parsley, buttercups and pink roses

We arrived to find the verges up to my waist in cow parsley (to be strictly accurate it was Burnett Saxifrage, but it looks like cow parsley), and tall golden buttercups. The drive was liberally bespeckled with leggy daisies so overgrown that they wobbled, and bobbed around in the breeze; and there were roses everywhere. They grew up the sides of the house, and tumbled down over the barn; they crept sideways along the walls, their buds peeping out here and there through a tangled mass of greater celandine; and they arched up and over, and twined their blooms amidst the sweeping branches of the weeping willow.

The weather was gloriously sunny and hot, and I lay on a blanket under the willow tree every day, and read Geoffrey Trease and Jennings and William Mayne and Hans Brinker, and 'Where Matthew Lives', and other childhood classics, whilst the bees hummed busily around me, and the cuckoo sat at the top of a nearby sweet chestnut tree and 'cu-ckooed' with all his might. It was a good holiday!

A bunch of Queen Elizabeth roses

At the end of the fortnight we had a leisurely drive up through Normandy, took the ferry over from Caen, and arrived back very late on the Saturday of the jubilee weekend. It poured with rain all the way home from Portsmouth. Oh to be in England...

But before we left France, our Queen Elizabeth rose had come into full bloom; and so we felt that whatever the next few days might hold, our jubilee celebrations had at least got off to a good start.

-8˚

This is the temperature the car thermometer registered when my father drove off to work this morning. Of course, I realise that compared to what Eastern Europe is going through it is a mere pittance, but it feels pretty darn cold to us!
Still, it always brings out the bird life. A female bullfinch came hopping round the patio this morning - the first time I've seen one all winter - and three robins have been occupying the same territory with hardly a scuffle between them, which is more than can be said for the starlings. Is it impossible for two starlings to eat from the same food dish without having stand-up fights every three seconds? And always accompanied by that un-earthly screeching that sounds as though the Doctor's Tardis is landing.

Last year, when the winter went on and on and the snow hung around for weeks on end, I began to dream.
I dreamt of blue seas and bluer skies; of daisies and irises and masses of tumbling roses; of tropical lemons and pink-rendered houses, and donkeys giving rides on yellow sands; and I dreamt of a sun shining hot and strong, creating dazzling sparkles on the sea below...

Meanwhile, back in reality, the sky continued to be heavy and overcast, the sun carried on being weak and thin, the snow still lay thick on the frozen ground, and life was generally murky and depressing. So I decided to make a collage.

It was a pretty big collage, made of two A3 sheets taped together (it had to be large enough to fit in all my requirements and still look like a plausible landscape), and it took me at least a month to finish it. I kept running out of deep-blue sky, and had to cadge travel-magazines from obliging friends and relatives.

By the time I did finish it, I had become so immersed in my fantasy-world that I felt as though I really had just got back from an exotic holiday; and when I finally looked up from my completed picture, I found the snow had melted away, and spring had arrived. My Summer Dream had created for me a Wrinkle in Time...

Exmoor

Exmoor - the heather-covered country of Lorna Doone, wild ponies, and Porlock hill...

In my opinion, Exmoor has it all - forest covered hills, rolling green fields, beech woods, moors,  heather, wild ponies, roaming sheep (not to mention the occasional highland cattle), cliffs, beaches, and stunning seascapes. Who could ask for more?

I have never enjoyed swimming in swimming pools (and have besides, a fear of being out of my depth), but one of the joys of my life is paddling - sometimes amounting to wading, if there's been a lot of rain - in the icy streams of Exmoor. Everything about it, from the bone-cracking cold, to the balancing act of finding a secure footing on the stony bottom, to the purity of the water itself, lends it an interest and mild excitement simply lacking in the sterile atmosphere of a man-made pool.
As to the bone-cracking iciness - I don't know why it is, but the streams down there do seem to be particularly cold. I went paddling in the streams in Yorkshire a couple of years ago, at the same time of year, and they were positively warm; well, perhaps not actually warm, but certainly mild compared to the invigorating coldness of those on Exmoor...

I asked my parents which town they would rather live in if they had the opportunity: Lynton - at the top of the cliff, or Lynmouth - at the bottom. My father chose Lynton, as he said he would always prefer to be high up than low down. My mother, on the other hand, said she'd rather live in Lynmouth, in order to be as near the sea as possible.

Cliff-top view over Lynmouth bay.

After taking a walk along a cliff path looking out over Lynmouth bay, with the heather-covered slope tumbling straight down beside me into the water, and the late-afternoon sun reflecting off the silvery sea, I decided with my father. Living down in a valley all the time would make me claustrophobic; let me glory in the heights, and gaze down on nature's splendour from above!