My Xmas week is over and I had to take Kieran back to his mums this morning so I dropped him off on the way into the office.
It's always a sad day when he goes back, however it's New Years Eve so I imagine that tonight I won't be my usual 'Kieran has gone away' miserable, or if I am at least I may be very drunk when doing it!
There has been a fairly large amount of rain over the last week which has led to the ford on the river being higher than usual, luckily this isn't the way out of Garrigill, but that isn't to say that the drive this morning didn't
involve
various flooded roads and bridges. It kept our interest when every time
we turned a corner there was a bit of a splash. It makes the journy
more fun anyway.
Earlier in the week the hills got a touch of the white stuff, it was a surprise when it didn't work it's way lower but yet again we seem to have escaped.
The morning drive in is getting noticably lighter too as that extra 11 minutes a day starts to add up.
At work I have hung up my new calender.
This year I will be treated to the dream of a VW camper van every new month,
and meanwhile Akasha keeps painting things that remind me of summer....and driving around in a VW Camper....
Perhaps one day!
It has been a fantastic week, one of the best christmas's for a long time.
I'm feeling all warm and content, must be the new hats...or the company I am now keeping
:-)
The shortest day may have passed but it is still very much winter.
In the summer this place may become an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) but right now in the dead of winter it truly is the Arse End Of Nowhere, and as it has different types of rain, hail, snow and other cold wetness falling from the sky, you really do need a variety of hats to deal with them all.
I have mentioned in the past 'ways to tell the weather' in the AEON and another one of the ways is to look at the types of hats that the locals may be wearing when out.
Most people have some sort of leather or oilskin fully waterproof for the torrential downpourings and after that you go into hats of various stages of wet weather and warmth right through to summer ones for eye and sun protection.
A quick look out of the window at any time and as long as you can see through the lashing rain at the hats you can always tell just how much it's raining and how cold it is.
This year I received many hats as Christmas presents as my stock of various weather hats is low. This is because I am still a newbie out here and I have yet to set myself up fully for the various weathers that I see out of the window. hats and gloves and various coats are much needed and very well received, but by far the most talked about and best hats this year were a present from Karl, Sue and family over in the USA.
Without any prior knowledge of the importance of headwear to this very climate sensitive area they sent us matching AEON hats which have gone down a storm in the George and Dragon.
Yes, in a place where hats are a way of life (or death) a good hat is a conversation piece and our new hats have really gone down well with the friends.
Over the last few days there have been a few flickerings of power and once or twice we have wondered if we would be plunged into darkness for a day or four.
It hasn't happened yet, but we are expecting it, probably at the time when the snow is deepest and the logs for the burner are low.
You can tell I'm an optimist eh?
So far it's been a damned easy Christmas. We have not been snowed in, not once! The rain has fell in buckets, but this is the place where all rivers start and so we don't flood, all the water from here usually ends up around the cities causing problems for those who don't live in the wilderness, so we may have to have very fine hats of various types, but we leave the choices of waders to the people in the lowlands.
The lights just flickered again! I am told if the power goes off that the village meets in the pub!
I'm not sure of there is any reason for this other than the ale is hand pulled and they have a huge log fire for warmth it may even be because everyone checks that everyone is ok. I imagine it's the former as that seems to be the better reason, and everyone here likes a reason to meet up so perhaps losing power is a sure time to arrange to meet your mates and have a laugh about the power going off.
Whatever the true reason is, I don't feel (being a newbie) that I should
try and change a schedule brought on by years of power loss and
community spirit.
It's winter! It's cold, and this is the Arse End of
Nowhere!
I have a hat to prove it. I'm not about to fight tradition so if those with more experience
think a trip to the pub in the dark is the way that things should be,
who am I to argue, because for sure you can't argue with a man who knows the right headgear for any circumstances, no matter how foolish he looks.
It's raining in the Arse End of Nowhere. It's been raining pretty heavy for many days and thanks to the time of year every droplet carries that icy winter sting that feels like a freezing pin prick on contact.
None of this really matters of course because it's close to Christmas and also because as Billy Connolly once said "There's no such thing as bad weather...just the wrong clothes" Out here we all have the right clothes and these usually include some sort of neck and hand warming device, various hats (of which there will be a blog soon) and multi functional coats.
It's only a few days until Christmas now. I have one more day at work tomorrow and I am picking up my son on Christmas eve from his mum and I have him for the whole week :-D
Everything is ready here, the attic room which was storage has now been made into his room, all presents are either hidden or wrapped and there is about four days worth of dry logs stacked around the fire ready to add the colour, warmth, smell and atmosphere that only a log fire can bring.
We managed to get a mix of the old and new which suits the cottage quite well. There was a search for holly, which would you believe is quite hard to find in the middle of the english countryside, do we have a national holly shortage or something? However in the end we managed to find some which went very nicely onto the fire held in place by the skulls and the coca cola santa clause's :-)
Those who used to read my old blog will remember that I don't like to cut tree's for Xmas so last year I sprayed a dead twig and hung things from it. I think that may be a Xmas tradition that keeps going with my wonderful new life. This year we went out with the dogs and found a piece of Hawthorn that sprayed up lovely and looks damn fine. It's a bit quirky, but as we keep getting told we are both 'just the right amount of strange', and for the second year running I can happily say that "no tree's were harmed in the making of this Xmas"
I
t's going to be a very good Christmas in Garrigill, family, warmth and the company of nice people from the village so in the end, who cares if it rains?
Meanwhile the local metropolis of Alston (population 1.800) brushed up the cobbles and set the lights atop the market cross which on dark nights ensures that no trucks drive into it. I'm not quite sure if it would be seen from Google maps though.
See how the road is wet in that picture.....raining.....!!!
In 7 days it will be Xmas day. It's a strange sort of christmas but one that I am looking to enjoy because I will be with my youngest son and my girlfriend for a whole week. We are spending it in Garrigill in the cottage and we are going to have a traditional christmas with joy & laughter, pressies, home cooked christmas dinner, log fires and I hope a smattering of snow.
I don't usually get into christmas early, and I can't say I will ever be one of these people that puts the decorations up in November or early December. For me christmas usually starts when we have the works christmas party and that was just a few days ago.
This one was better than the last couple of parties were for me because I went without a companion to the last two. This year, not the case :-) This year I am with someone sociable who dances and joins in and my eldest son also works with me so he and Kasha got to do a bit of mad dancing together when my feet gave out.
I always had a good christmas as a child. I am lucky that I have lovely parents who always did their best and tried to make things special. That magic sort of goes away for a few years in youth when you spend christmas away or alone but it soon comes back when you have children and they make the magic happen all over again.
My youngest is 15 now and I imagine in a few years that he will be making his own Christmas without me and my christmas day will become more sedate, and quiet but at least not lonely.
I was thinking back a little earlier, last year was quite a bad christmas day. Since the end of my marriage we have passed Kieran about on Christmas day, and last year I woke to an empty house because he was with his mum until lunch time.
At that time I was a month out of another relationship and I felt pretty low counting the minutes until he walked through the door with my mind wandering to other places and wondering what it was like to not be sitting there with nobody. Of course I wasn't the only person in the world that was going through that, and at this time of year the media doesn't help with the adverts of family and friends and people together. The sharing message is not what you want to see when you are 'not through choice alone'.
My...how different things are just a year in the future.
I am looking forward to going home tonight, I have a box of decorations that will be placed in special places around the cottage, I will laugh as someones face goes grumpy and grimacy (in fun) because she likes a pagan christmas, but I will find crowns of oak and holly and we will mix evergreens with Coca Cola santa and bouncy snowmen and see what comes.
At least this year I have access to a real chimney which is always important for the leaving of the mince pie.
It's nice to have a very well used village hall, and Garrigill does have one that it both well used and well supported not least thanks to some individuals in the village who do lots of fundraising.
What this means is that if you need the hall it is quite easy to get use of it and last weekend it was used for an 80's night with much dressing up, lots of retro 80's dancing and overall a massive amount of fun.
As usual most of the dancing was done by the girls, but the whole atmosphere and dress up was fantastic, and as I dribbled more wine into myself and with the extra help of a few G&T's supplied by a new friend even I started to jiiggle a bit by the end of the night.
Next time I want a flourescent wig...
Weather seems to be having a small effect. On Tuesday the North East had 2cm of snow, a pitiful amount that brought traffic to a standstill and had me driving 3 hours to get to the AEON, 2 hours of that on the A1 doing 1/2 a mile an hour.
Then on Thursday the snow decided to trick me as we had chilly rain all the way apart from the one section of the road that sits at 2000ft up which decided to have 8 inches of snow in just one single 2 mile section.....on a slight incline. Believe me, a Ford Focus without socks gets a bit slippy slidy in fresh snow, and didn't it just have to be on the bit with the highest drop over the edge. It's all exciting stuff, but I had to get to Garrigill as there was a long weekend arranged for Kasha's birthday. I arrived back to see her fretting over a painting while I fretted over the lack of snow socks for the car, this snow sock thing may be a recurring blog entry until I get some. Xmas is coming, perhaps I will get socks in my stocking?
On that thought, I learned the lesson a while ago that women don't think like men at Xmas.
Men, and by that I mean proper men tend to be functional and we don't mind getting presents that we need in order to do a thing. Screwdriver sets, saws, things for bending pipes...all of these things are good as Xmas presents. However..... a woman may go on for ages about a slow cooker or special pans or other functional stuff and other such things not kitchen related, but if you buy one as a present you end up wearing it. It's a concept that for men is hard to understand and often painful to learn.
Which moves un on quite nicely to the birthday girl. There was a promise of breakfast in bed, but in the end it was decided to have breakfast downstairs while watching the rain through the AEON window. Then on to the opening of the cards.
The highlight of the morning came when on just the right day (birthday) the postman dropped a big package through the door that had come from America.
There was much excitement as the packet was poked and prodded, shook, sniffed by the dogs and then exitedly torn open.
There has never been a brother at birthday time before and so this was and exciting moment.
The top was off, the nose was poked in and what emereged was one of the lovliest birthday thoughts I have ever come across.
If you don't know the story read the blogs earlier in the month, but to summarise Kasha knew she had kin through her fathers side but never knew who or where and we found her brother a few weeks ago. For the first time in her life she has family beyond her mum.
And then she had birthday cards.
One for every year of her life that she and Karl had missed.
49 hand written birthday cards, each with a special message relating to what was happening in the year it should have been sent.
There were smiles and tears, and weepy warm bits at some of the messages. There were 49 years of laughter and joy and sadness and sharing, it was lovely.
Of course now Karl can say that he never ever missed a single one of his sisters birthdays and Kasha has a set of cards to remind her of that, and they will be treasured forever. There is already a search for a special box to put them in.
I like happy endings
It's minus 5....I need my car socks....
We are expecting a drop of snow or so in the next few days and as the AEON is down in a valley (a valley that sits at +1000ft above sea level) I am expecting that there may be an issue getting out.
The thing about valleys is that they are really easy to get into in any weather, but when snow is on the ground a good valley is quite hard to get out of.
No matter which way I go to try and get out I have to climb straight up about 500ft.
Last week it was mentioned in the pub by an AEON expert that my car might need snow socks. I know that when walking the dogs that my feet need snow socks, preferably in multi pairs but I had never heard of snow socks for cars. Chains...yes, snow tyres....yes but socks? This seems to be a new thing.
So I have been trawling the great interweb of knowledge and I now know an awful lot about snow socks, but the bad things I have learned are;
A, Granny can't knit them for me and
B: They only come in one colour.
It isn't fair, I want my car to have rastafarian snow socks, and if they could be knitted out of that camel hair bristly sharp painful wool that my nan used to make jumpers out of for me then I am guessing that the traction would be great because no matter how soggy my old school jumpers got, they always had spikes.
So I need to get some snow socks, and lets just hope that the postie can get in to us to deliver them.
It's usually raining, but if for some reason you can't hear the drops of rain on the window and you get confused then the best way to check what the weather is doing is to go outside and look at Sissy.
That explains why my feet were so cold.....
involve
various flooded roads and bridges. It kept our interest when every time
we turned a corner there was a bit of a splash. It makes the journy
more fun anyway.
