faith

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Island Blog – Tergiversator and Future Hope

This watching of grandlings growing into themselves thinks me. Although I only see them in explosive bursts, in holiday mode and intent, so intent on buzzing about on my quad, sometimes well overloaded, I can see they are moving into a new state. To me it looks like a very big space, full of questions like bluebottles around their heads. What they once believed unequivocally, they now challenge such as rulings within the home, opinions proffered which cause them to stop, confused, unsure. ‘I don’t agree with this’ can be flattened by one slammed fist of an authoritarian, carelessly dismissed and mocked. I remember that place. We are changelings in these awkward and spotty years, knowing what we don’t want but without the language to communicate. We have, in short, yet to learn the rules of the game ahead. We feel anger, frustration, a lack of recognition, but then even we don’t recognise the self we are fast becoming.

Change is a wonderful thing, in its perfect state, which doesn’t exist by the way because change is always upsetting for others. Think on it. If a dot in a perfect line of dots decides to drop a millimetre down or up, the line, once confident and assured now faces a void, a loss. Chaos ensues. What we once were…. that damn dot has ruined, ruined! This line has stood strong for weeks, months, years, generations, and now look. No, don’t look. There’s a hole in the straight line, in our understanding, in our confidence, in our family, in our workplace, on our street, and we are wringing our hands, lost, confused, angry. And why are we angry? Because we now, thanks to this Dot Dash, have no idea who we are anymore. That’s why.

In the Oxford Dictionary, there are many words for change, but what I have noticed is that there are many more swerves to the negative, and it wonders me. A definition begins with all that is good about change, slipping almost immediately into the gutter, into the dark, the menacing. This tells me quite a lot about how culture has, and still does, control wordage , language. Tergiversator, a word I might use now as light and lively once meant fickle, scheming, menacing even, and there are many more such definitions. This is because words shift and change shape and meaning, all the time and with every generation, with the infusion of new cultures, new beliefs, new aspirations towards a freedom, an escape from the structure of what once was so solid.

As a new young person grows beyond the langauge learned in childhood, there must always be some level of confrontation. The pillars and posts of the buildings that once stood strong (and controlling) will crumble because they must. New ideas burst in, new thoughts, new people. We need these new people, careless though they may be, crazy, certain of themselves, blundering and breaking rules, just as, once, the world needed us for exactly the same reason. Future hope.

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Island Blog – Freedom and the Pefficor

So what is freedom? A massive question and with a gazillion answers, for sure. For some it means a facilitated or courageous move away from confinement. For others it might mean, well, pretty much the same thing. I get that it isn’t always possible. I also get that it is possible, but would take huge courage and a faith that, eventually, a life would improve. It has to. Confinement is always wrong. Always. However, a person may have been complicit in the confining thing and that bit is often the one reason to stay. I agreed to this. I let this happen. I am to blame. We are such suckers for personal blame, as if it was born with us like a tricky twin.

Here’s a thing, one which might sound bajonkers. Not only might we be the one confined, physically or mentally, but we are also the pefficor, the more senior ‘officer’ in the ranks, of which we are but one. This nonsense is crazy but it is real. Inside our minds there are the critical voices, or just one, from our past, our childhood, and there is the pefficor, quite a gentle name for such an ungentle, who didn’t see us, not really, hear us, not at all, ask about us, our feelings, our life, well, maybe once or maybe twice. We can’t understand the power of that voice, nor why it keeps triggering us into a big response in the life we now live. I know what is missing. A good self-esteem, a strong sense of self within any dynamic, any workspace, any group of friends/ strangers.

The next bit is always inner work. In this world, so lost in the machinations of gain and power, even though all of us seek simple, gentle, loving, kind, we keep listening to the pefficor in our heads. Life is all about success. No, it isn’t. Life is all about listening, learning, uplifting, observing, slowing, watching, accepting. Striving for money is a death wish. We know this. We’ve seen so very many fall into that black, snake-infested pit. The wrong goal.

Whom do we admire? And I omit with a big omit anyone in fame because that place just doesn’t exist beyond a cloudal fluff. However, with many teens in my grandlings, I can see the power of the pefficor in their lives, the subsuming of self into the morass. I can see how tough parenting is nowadays and I am glad my kids, now parents, had the freedom of the wild.

I have no idea why all this came to me as I sat down to write, but it did. All any of us ever want is the freedom to live, to love, to move, to lift, to change, to settle, to choose, to speak, to listen, to be heard. Not a lot to ask.

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Island Blog – Talk About Kindness

We talk to friends, to family, neighbours and those who sell us something from behind a counter. What we find difficult is talking to strangers for no apparent reason. We didn’t collide with them in a doorway, causing them to spill all the apples from their grocery bag. We didn’t stand on their toes, nor were we asked for directions to the toy store. And so we remain close-lipped, avoiding eye contact, as if we are ashamed of who we are. We want to invisibilize ourselves, don’t want to be stopped or bothered with a stranger. Why do we do this, I wonder? It thinks me, a lot. We are all lonely, after all, not everywhere but certainly somewhere. A lot on our mind means we are thinking circular thoughts, endlessly twirling the how-tos of a problem until even the mind cannot think rationally. And, as we rush onwards we miss the very thing we need most of all. Human contact. There is a huge wide world out there and, further in, there are cities and towns, villages and settlements, and all of them peopled.
It’s easy, isn’t it, to pull our own life in around us, like a shell, thus becoming too embroiled in our own issues and needs. To be open is for the confident folks, the sociable ones, those who find it easy to communicate, yes? No, unequivocally, No. And those who are shy or feel awkward around conversations often hide their light within their shell, when their story just might help us find the answer we need. Something they say, or the way they say it, their smile, the look in their eyes might tell us that we matter, when most of us think we don’t, not really. We may not even mention our problem, but somehow, and this is the invisible magic of connectivity, they up-skittle our circular thoughts into a straight (and often obvious) line. Offering up our seat on a bus, letting someone go ahead of us in a queue, moving to a smaller table when a big family comes in to a cafe, even though we lose the view, all these and more are little beginnings. Suddenly, ice melts and here is the chance to say something nice about another, their coat, hat, the book they hold, their dog, the weather, anything at all. Kindly words exchanged begin something, and doors fly open. We learn something about someone else, something that stops us chewing over our own problems, something that expands our minds as another’s story, spoken or unspoken, revives us like a cold drink in a heatwave. And yet, and yet, for some bonkers and unintelligent reason, we think we are stronger alone. Let the ‘masses’ get on with their unimportant lives, whilst I manage my own important one. So much rubbish and so isolating, so lonely. To be vulnerable, to risk rejection, to reach out in kindness is a brave, strong thing, one that brings magic in, loads of it. Because if we do this reaching out thing once, we can do it again, and again, and the rewards we will reap will not be a bigger bank balance, but a wider mind, an inclusive life, a feeling of connection and the reduction of loneliness. Some of the loneliest in the world consider themselves rich, living behind security lights and locks and boundaries and minimal communication. And those who do ‘risk’ encounters with strangers, anywhere, everywhere, are the richest of all because they have become an integral and important part of human kind. And, if we could all risk being vulnerable and open, making eye contact, proffering kindness no matter our problems or perceived pressures, the world would be a very different one.

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Island Blog – Survive, Flourish and Life

I watch a robin cling to a fat feeder, wings dinging. It can last just long enough to get a mouthful, pinging back onto the fence and looking around as if to say ‘ so?’ I smile. I think it smiles back as its wee black eye clocks me doing this watching thing, but I’m unsure about the ability of a beak to smile. I see sparrows do the same, their feet adapting to feeders, their learning pivotal to survival. And, it thinks me. We do it too, we humans, adapt when survival seems beyond our understanding. We become inventive. And, thus, we survive and flourish. At first, the robin floundered and wobbled and fluttered as if gravity had won, but not now. Now it holds, steadies, self-corrects and stays, as I said, long enough for a mouthful. I think of my own life and all the adapting I have undergone, and it makes a perfect sense, for I have encountered many, many of those who, or is it whom, I just knew were not going to make it. And that saddened me and still does.

From a young age, well, about 20 years old/young, I knew I wanted to be a survivor, more, a flourisher. I had no substance to support my knowing, no experiential wisdom, but I just knew. That, may I say, is a tough thing to hold inside, because everyone wants facts around any such pronouncement. I did not pronounce. I had no facts to support my ‘theory’. It just grew like a newing and a knowing in me until I found someone who, older than I by a decade, had tried out a few of his theories and was equipped with some gravitas. T’is a shame, in my opinion, that we don’t listen to the young and their beliefs, and still now we don’t, because our culture decides them into schools and subjects and noise and ‘success’, confizing a sunburst into a tiny, and ‘acceptable’ light. Just saying.

I walked today beneath gale-strafed bows, the trees quiet but I know what’s going on inside their heads. Kathleen will return tomorrow, the gale thus named, resurrecting the waves, upsetting the fisherman, turmoiling the ocean into lifts and spits and deeps and discordance and none of us need it, not even the great Atlantic. I notice nubs of new growth littering the track, and it used to bother me. I thought, Oh No, the new growth is gone! Not so. The trees know what goes on here. The first fruits of growth push out anyway, the birds, hungry, long winter (and still not gone) pick off the growth to find the juicy life beneath. Their long hunger is lifted and I can hear them sing from those branches, inviting in a mate, life all over again.

And that is what I knew, without a damn clue, way back when I was 20, that life does that over again thing. We get through shit. We keep going. New life is beckoning. Trauma, bereavement, enforced change, even a move into a world we have never encountered. We can adapt. We can. And, we can not only survive but flourish, because we are strong and intelligent and an important part in what happens next.

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Island Blog – Rethink the Butterfly

I remember times when we could move in and out of each others lives without second guessing the wisdom of close encounters, sharing laughs and songs, music and chatter. I am sure you do, too. These past months have shown us how limited that freedom now is. We don’t like it. We feel confined, scared at times, at best, cautious. We have to think for ourselves and make our own decisions regardless of governmental announcements and that state can be confounding, overwhelming. I flit like a butterfly between overwhelment and decisiveness, caught up in the barrelling winds, soaked in the rain of it all, only finding rest inside my own home and alone. Many, many folk will know how this feels and for now we can see no end to this battering.

However, being forced to think and to make our own informed choices about what we do, where we go and whom we meet with is good for our brains. We are not schoolchildren. We have autonomy no matter the restrictions laid down for us. They are very important, nonetheless because nobody really has a Scooby about this virus and its dastardly plans. Is it dying or is it morphing into something even more destructive? Nobody knows, not the governments, not the scientists, not the medical profession for this enemy is invisible, secretive and immensely powerful. We move through each day with caution, most of us, and as we wake up our immensely powerful brains, we have to stand for what we believe in, even if it upsets someone else, or many someone elses. This is not an easy thing to do for we all want to fit in. We second guess ourselves. Is this decision not to attend a gathering based on wisdom, my wisdom, or fear, my fear? Well, the answer is both. We need awareness of fear, the knowledge of it, the inner study. We need, in short, to think and to question those thinks.

Not so long ago, wars raged for real with military ranks marching into battle. Those left at home faced huge restrictions, fear for the fighting men and women, shortage of food, of warmth, of security. Time dragged, days rolled into a long line of misery and frustration but in the middle of all that confusion, individuals stood strong. Mothers queued for many hours to make sure their children could eat bread. Young women and the men who could not make it to the battlefields, entered into the intelligence services. Folk butterflied in hospitals, on the streets, in soup kitchens, in schools, helping elderly neighbours, working on farms and in many other ways. The country pulled together because of the war, in spite of it because the human spirit will not be defeated.

We are in a different war now, but it is war nonetheless and every single one of us can do something to make life a bit better for someone else. Many have been bereaved and they need comfort. Many are lost in fear and isolation, the loneliness chipping away at their self-confidence, spinning in confusion unable to see more than one step ahead. They need friendship and connectivity, even remotely, through a window, on the phone, through a zoom or a text. I’m thinking of you. We will not emerge from this unscarred, none of us will. It has shifted the tectonic plates of our thinking, played shinty with our beliefs and shattered the structure of all we heretofore believed solid and strong.

And now Christmas is almost upon us, one filled with concerns and ditherments. Do we, should we, can we, ought we? I shake my head. I have no idea what to do. I know what my heart wants, as do you but if we look beyond our obvious desires, what do we want to see? Good health, yes. A future without viral attack, yes. But a vision requires restrictions in the present. Not at all comfortable. However we are fools if we pretend everything is okay or bury our heads and hope we won’t be the one to get sick, won’t be party to bringing sickness in for others. It is, in the end, all down to individual decision, popular or not. Easy to say, I know. Damn hard to stand strong and light in confinement and darkness.

In Spring, the butterfly is a wiggly worm, a maggot, a nothing much. Inside the safety of its cocoon, it develops beauty. Then, one fine day, it breaks out to enchant anyone who sees it. This unbelievable metamorphosis is only believable because we know it will happen. In these dark times, in the wind and the rain and the uncertainty, vision, trust and faith are everything. If we are patient, careful, considerate and with an eye to the future, the lucky ones will emerge and fly once again in new colours, even more beautiful than before.

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Island Blog – Sinklight, Ice and Curiosity

When I was a child, I broke a massive rule. Not one of us was allowed anywhere near a food source and that included the larder filled with delicious leftovers and the big Prestcold fridge, fatly green and bulging into the room like she needed all of the attention. At the top, there was a freezer mouth, with enough room for ice cream, home made lollies and not much else. One day, whilst not being watched, nor followed, which was rare, I opened said mouth and noticed a spill of orange juice from the lolly rack. I could not resist. My hot tongue came out in anticipation of a sweet lick.

You may well guess what happened next. My hot tongue met arctic ice and melded. I was stuck. I could not move. I couldn’t even cry out because cry outs depend on a free tongue and mine was absolutely not that. I don’t remember what happened next, although I do know that my suspicious mother would have been quick after me, no matter where in the house I had forayed alone. I am sure she was kind with warm water. I am also sure she was harsh with remonstrations. My tongue, my poor tongue, was half ripped apart by then, the sheer terror of being trapped my driver.

I do remember, inside that terror of being caught in flagrante, that I did pause to look deep into the void mouth of that fat-bellied Prestcold fridge. I saw, just for a few moments, an arctic landscape. In spite of my mother’s studious attention to levelling everything so she could dust/control it, I saw lift. There was no light in there beyond the backlight from the neon (oh dear) kitchen light, and the gusts of my panic breath, that altered the ice mountains ahead of me. I wondered what it would be like not to be stuck by the tongue, but, instead, free to roam those mountains. And they were mountains. A big grown up woman looking in might tut about needing to defrost, but me, on my tippytoes and absolutely stuck by the tongue saw different.

I like seeing different. Today has been a day of sinklight. Rain from dawn to dusk. Endless, confining, tongue twisting, stuck. We have many of these days, and many more to come. But, through that sinklight we can stand on tippytoe and move into the landscape. It isn’t what we think. It never is. With my vulnerable back to the room and my tongue stuck, therefore the whole of me stuck, I could choose. Panic or look in. I chose the latter, even knowing the butt whacks would come soon enough. I think that was the very first time I made such a choice and the power of it has never left me. Once a curious child learns to look beyond the situation it is like a whole new world opening up. There is this thing, this one thing and yet it is not just one thing at all. The difference is held within the hands of curiosity.

Obviously I am not still stuck to the ice. Obviously it hurt a lot and obviously I was gently melted off, possibly pre butt whacks, I don’t remember that bit. In the days of Now, I see many things that may look dire at first, that may ‘stuck’ me for a bit. But I have learned how to look again in curiosity and it serves me very well indeed. As I care for an ailing, failing husband, a whole lot of what I do might make you recoil in horror. It did for me, at first, but not now. Now I see beyond the obvious drama of it, deeper into the landscape, following with my eyes the contours of new land, ice land, desert land, rolling land or sea, skies that go on for ever. This is hope. This is faith. I am not stuck. Nor are you. It is all in the curious looking.

This is the only way to live.

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Island Blog – Fly Right

The sealoch is flat, mirror flat, holding the sky in its belly. A lone gull skims across the surface, its wings never touching the water. How does it manage that? If I was that gull, there would undoubtedly be an error of judgement and I would tumble, wonky chops, into the brine. High overhead a young buzzard cuts the blue, chased and mocked by two gulls. I watch the slide and rise of them, the sunglow through their wing feathers, the way they tumble and flip. So free up there, it seems, but I know that’s not the truth, even if it does look glorious from where I am, stuck to the gravitous ground, pulled to the earth and destined never to fly unless inside the guts of a plane. Which won’t be happening for a long time to come. But, to watch these dalliances, these moments of sublime grace and wonder is to inhabit, just for a while, the world that is theirs, the world above my head, the world all around me, the world of nature, survival and imagined freedom.

As the day unfolds, so do I. In a good way, naturally. The thoughts I had yesterday, the things that happened, the word exchanges, the moments of understanding, release and acceptance unfurl like petals to let in the sun. I am wholly delighted to be one with faith in my higher self. Despite sinking at times into the cold watery darkness of a sea-loch, I always hold fast to the belief that all will be well in the end, and, if it isn’t well, then it isn’t the end. Not because I am so damn smart at living, but because the invisible beneficent powers of goodness are always working for me, for all of us. It isn’t down to just me, the one who could misjudge my wing flaps and tumble into the brine, and thank goodness for that. I have no illusions concerning my ability to straighten up and fly right all of the time.

When I got the call yesterday to say that we are now to ‘shield’ for another 12 weeks because of the high risk factors in this house, I sank a bit. Another 12 weeks? That’s end August. Not only that, but my weekly escape to the shop is now cancelled. Further, we are asked to separate within the home. Now that bit is impossible. Not only is this a mouse house, but I am primary carer and contact with my husband is required regularly. So, the requirement is that I go nowhere apart from my solitary walk for fresh air and exercise. Enter fear. I already knew that self-isolation is going to continue for a while yet, because my husband is very vulnerable and needs superhuman protection. But hearing it spoken out gave it gravitas and heavy boots. It was a wonky chops moment, the chance opening of a doorway allowing fear to slide in.

And then comes a new morning. The pines stand as tall as they did yesterday, backlit sunrise pink, the colour of a smile. The air show lifts my spirits and I know that fear will not survive on my watch. No matter how long this confinement, we can get through it with sparkle and laughter. The sign is outside the gate. ‘Please don’t come in’. It felt weird writing those words. I am more known for a Welcome sign, but in this time when the best I can possibly do is required on an hourly basis, I know I am not alone. I know there will be hundreds, if not thousands of people facing an extension of lockdown in order to protect someone vulnerable.

And if they can do it. Then so can I. All I need to do is fly right, most of the time.

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Island Blog – Keep Your Dreams

In these times, it is easy but not comfortable, to begin to believe that the dreams we had before this enemy came among us are right now diffusing in the winds of change. They are not. We need, more than ever to catch them and to hold them close. What any of us wanted to achieve, those lifts of magic in our hearts, from heading up a corporation to being better at being who we are have never had such gravitas, such depth, such height, such a chance.

As I plant seeds, in the dark of the compost and soil and la la mix to make it as perfect as possible, I consider the dark. Seeds don’t need light to germinate. They just need time and patience. Once the shoots appear, things change, as we must, if we are the one who cares for this precious new life. And that goes for dreams too. We may be fedded up with the whole waiting game, we may lose faith, we may trouble ourselves with fears and doubts, but if we can just hold tight to those dreams of new life, breathe, walk, notice EVERYTHING around us, the cycle of life, Mother Nature’s gift to us, year on, and, if we are careful, year on again ad infinitum, carrying our dream like the most precious possession we could ever, will ever, own, then our future will rise and flourish and flower and give delight to so very many others.

Let’s do it.

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Island Blog – From There to Here

Leaving 40 degrees and arriving back to zero in the belly of a couple of planes with the ambient temperature of an airport or two in between requires a person to be vestment canny. Well, I really don’t know what I was thinking as I packed for Africa but it appears I put little thought into my return. Today I am wearing most of my frocks over jeans with a vest at skin depth, a long sleeved tee over the said frocks and a jumper to complete my shapeless bulk. When I step outside, I add to that a puffa jacket and a scarf long enough to wind into a neck brace. A most fetching look.

I noticed, among my fellow passengers, as a foggy Glasgow appeared at the windows, that they had considered a vestment strategy. How had I not? This question has thought me a lot since I returned to zero. All I can guess is that I was in such a flapdoodle as I packed for the sunshine that my brain dealt only with the immediate. Then I realised that dealing with the immediate has become my default, for everything is immediate around dementia care and any unnecessaries are pushed into the shadowland. Although it is delightful, in many ways, to realise how much of life can be unnecessary when necessary, it behoves a girl to remember those things that still await her in the wings of her life. In Africa I went to a spa and had my nails done. This was a first for me as I usually just bite them off or clip them to the quick so as not to scratch anybody by mistake (or intentionally). I have enjoyed watching my French polish flash little white moons into my looking and this little indulgence will not revert to the shadowlands again. Although this indulgence may not be a regular thing, at least I know the pleasure of it. It isn’t just the nails and how they look. It is the time taken for myself, to sit and watch someone else caring for me. This is important, for all of us, not just me. Taking time to spend time with Me is not something many of us talk about without either getting embarrassed at the blank faces around us as we try to explain what we mean, or getting the giggles. Well, it does sound a bit ‘out there’ does it not? I think the key is not to bother explaining it at all to a world completely caught up in logic and the daily dash to Nowhere. Of course, not everyone is doing this dashing thing but most of us are if we are honest.

But the wisdoms keep coming. They go back to Rumi, to Ancient Greece, and further back, and we still don’t listen, because we have not learned how to live this way, the way of emotional intelligence, the way of good health, calm hearts and heads, peaceful sleep, gentle breathing and love of self, not matter what the demands of our lives. I don’t think it’s easy, far from it, but I do know we need to wake up to a different way of being. In a hysterically busy world we are but cogs in a million wheels, or that is how it seems. children, work, families, governments, religions, rules rules and more rules can overwhelm the very best of intentions. We can feel like tumbleweeds in a desert wind.

So how to change that feeling of being out of control of a life? I am no guru with a mouthful of answers but what I have learned in this decade of dementia care with all its associated ‘immediates’ is that I want to come out of this as intact as is possible. Too many of my compadres have fallen sick as a result of intense caring over a long period, wherein any time for self was intermittent and without a plan. Perhaps, like them, I thought it wouldn’t drag on for years but it does. Perhaps, like them, I thought I could wait for me, that I would be there at the other end, just as I was before. I don’t now. Now, I know better. This is a journey and there is no map, no destination I can stick a pin in. And it’s ok. In fact, I would not have learned the valuable lessons I have learned had dementia not come knocking. One of these lessons, the one I most value, is the importance of self love and how it never seemed important before. I don’t believe I am alone in this. With accusations of selfish up-yourself coming from older generations, schoolmarms and all the other ‘For Your Own Good’ ies, it would have cried anarchy and that meant trouble at any age. But I have learned to own the ‘selfish’ accusation and it fits me well. Let them think that, is what I said to myself and myself grinned wide.

There is no rule book for self love either. Only this. Stop and listen, as the world threatens to swallow you whole and the noise of it is deafening and the demands relentless, to what your heart whispers. Hear it and do as it guides you. Just once will do for now, because when it whispers again, you will hear it more clearly. Then go with it a second time, a third, a fourth and on and on until your heart is a match for both the outside world and the inside mind. I admit there is quite a lot of stopping required at first, until you get in step with You, but the rewards are endless. Eventually the outside of you fits the inside no matter what Life brings.

I arrive home tomorrow. Let’s see how clever I am at walking my talk when the old ways and I collide on a familiar doorstep. One thing I do believe in is all that stopping to listen to the inner whisper.

It just has to have made a difference.

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Island Blog – Spring into Winter

Tomorrow I leave African Hothot, traversing space and time over 24 hours, to land in what sounds like an icebox. En route I will meet, without meeting, thousands of other travellers going back the way I came or on to lands I may never see for myself. Many, like me, will be confused about what to wear during our journeys, knowing that what lies ahead of us is drastic change. I find change is often like that, but that’s another blog altogether.

I will miss the sound of inexhaustible cicadas and frogs. I will not miss the mosquitos. I will find myself listening for the lite bytes of sound across the bush from maids and gardeners I cannot see, who josh and laugh with each other all day long as they go about their work. I see them delivered and collected, standing together on the bed of a truck, butterfly coloured, their teeth white dazzlers in the sunlight. They look but never wave unless we do first, at which point they leap into action and we feel like famous people. Always friendly, always smiling, always generous, proud of their work, with a strong faith and a strong community, these Africans could teach us all a thing or two about how to be an effective human.

In the local town when buying food or cogs for machines or plastic grommets for piping, some folk recognised me, as I did them. Two months of exposure does that. I will miss the crazy drivers and the dirt tracks in game reserves; a sudden 6 metre giraffe by the roadside or a baboon family under a shade tree, invariably scratching. The jacaranda, coral, frangipane and other wildly coloured up trees will be just brilliant memories as I wing my way into winter. And Spring, back home, will come again. The dead time is Nature’s rest and she needs it as we all do. Unlike many, I love the winter as I love the sunshine warmth. Winter is a time for reflection and reading by the fireside, for bracing walks, long johns and hot buttered toast.

And Christmas is coming……