We are now well into our eighth day of snow; a thaw is promised but today the postman warns of black ice on all the approach roads to the village. Normal routines have been suspended for some, unless you happen to be farmers, like my neighbours, but new routines quickly take their place.
The dogs are now used to racing round in the garden in the mornings rather than going down the steep hill to the woods - the single track lane is far too perilous. But in the afternoons, their harnesses go on, I put grippers on my boots, and we set off up the hill to the fields, which lie under nine inches of snow.
Each day, the snow deepens and the light changes; sometimes the sheep are a just hazy line in the mist; yesterday there was sunshine. Today, grey skies.
Beautiful. Harsh. And to the dogs, just one big playground.
Today the dogs and I walked in mizzle, the West Country term for a mixture of mist and drizzle, a drizzle that is deceptively heavy. Not a day for the heavy of heart. To counter the mizzle, I might have posted something bright and cheery or amusing or musical, had the heaviness of heart not been mine.
Two nights ago my niece died, thirteen months - almost - to the day since one of her older brothers died. She was just 49, as was he. She had two children, as had he, although hers are younger, still at school. There are other parallels too.
It is very hard for my brother to lose two children in such a short space of time; it is not the natural order of things. I can only begin to guess at the pain that those who were closest to her are feeling; I do, however, know what it is to lose, within six months of each other, two people whom I had once loved dearly. The shock and pain one is feeling from the first loss is still so palpable and raw that the mind and body put up a kind of shield against the shock and pain of the second loss. It can take months, years, for the second grief to work its way into one's consciousness, demanding to be acknowledged - and set free.
I cannot say too much of the circumstances and there is to be a post mortem but whatever emerges is her story and belongs to her loved ones.
As for me, I am grappling with something. The old hippie in me has always wanted to believe that love is the glue that holds everything and everyone together and that if there is enough love . . . but, sometimes, even all the love in the world is not enough. It is the hard, true thing that we all have to learn, sooner or later, but we also have to learn to keep on loving right through the pain because not to love would be unthinkable.
It is inevitable, I suppose, that as we get older, memories of Christmas past tend to merge, until one ends up with something vaguely resembling a generic memory. But Christmas 2012 was so different in so many ways that it will probably stand out. For a start, I've never spent December in a whirl of rehearsals and performances, while trying to juggle end-of-year accounts, work, dog care, Christmas preparations and all the routine domestic stuff that has to be done. Not to mention the dead Aga, which I just have. And no, it was not rescued in time for the Great Midwinter Feast. By Christmas Day I was running on empty.
Meanwhile, the Grown-Up Children were installed half a mile away at an organic smallholding owned by family friends, caring for the livestock (rare breed pigs and sheep, plus a dozen hens) while the Smallholders were away for a couple of days. The intention had been that they would head up here for meals and general Christmas jollity. Another family friend and one of her relations, whom none of us had met before, were expected on Christmas Day to join us for dinner. . .
The Smallholders came to the rescue and offered us the use of their large farmhouse kitchen, while they were away, which did indeed save the day. The Great Midwinter Feast was prepared, served and enjoyed, although we spent the last hours of Christmas night returning everything in the borrowed kitchen to pristine condition.
The Grown-Up Children returned to the Chilterns a few days later and before I knew it, New Year's Eve was upon us and my Salad Days Friend arrived with her husband and their two new rescue lurchers - Queenie and Duke. The Edinburgh Boy and Miss P, pictured here
were much taken with their new friends; the youngsters racing around the field, while the the now elderly Boy looked on contentedly. Come the evening, cue another feast, this time Indian and vegetarian, with the evening devoted to music, comparing choir notes - they sing with Sammy Hurden's Freedance Choir - and discussing Buddhism. After almost 40 years of friendship, our lives still run on parallel lines.
Their choir recently took part in Sammy's specially commissioned work The Hare and the Harp (sponsored by Johnnie Boden; yes that Boden) at Dorset's ancient Powerstock Church. You can catch it on YouTube here - a marvellously sonorous, deeply English piece that seemed to reach back through the ages, while still sounding entirely new.
We all agreed that once you start making music - playing an instrument, singing - you begin to listen to music in a different way. And you begin to appreciate types of music that, at one time perhaps, you might not have been drawn to. Take The Student Prince, for example. Operetta. Hmm. Film starring Edmund Purdom, his voice dubbed by Mario Lanza. Hmm. We were once forced to watch this at my convent school; it was deemed suitable viewing for Sixties girls.
But this Christmas the BBC kindly reran the enormously popular Proms concerts given by the John Wilson Orchestra in 2011 and 2012. John Wilson has probably done much as anyone to make people sit up and take notice of musicals, with his superb orchestrations of classic Hollywood and Broadway showstoppers. I confess that, in the past, I have had a patchy relationship with musicals; I loved Rodgers and Hammerstein, West Side Story and anything with Fred Astaire but not much more. The list certainly didn't include The Student Prince. And then I watched the 2011 Proms concert in which tenor Charles Castronovo performed Serenade. I played this clip for my friends on New Year's Eve; in the 1970s, we would have been listening to Bowie together, or Dylan or Joni and we listen to them and love them still. But this song, this performance, had us spellbound.
Thought for life
The House of Breath, William Goyen
We are the carriers of lives and legends - who knows the unseen frescoes on the private walls of the skull?
Thinking about . . .
Daniel Klein, Travels with Epicurus
I too listen to music more and more. Throughout my life, music has stirred me more than any other art form, and now, in old age, I find myself listening to it almost every evening, usually alone, for hours at a time.
Julia Blackburn, Thin Paths
I began writing because I liked to write things down. I learnt foreign languages because they seemed to enter my head by a process of osmosis.
Joan Bakewell, Stop the Clocks
I live contentedly alone. It's better that way and I am often thoughtful about what has been and what might have been. There are many like me.
Patti Smith, M Train
Oh to be reborn within the pages of a book.
Patti Smith, M Train
Why is it that we lose the things we love, and things cavalier cling to us and will be the measure of our worth after we’re gone?
Judith Kerr, Observer Magazine, 22 November 2015
I don't believe in God. I find it much easier to believe in ancestors. I like to imagine they are pointing us in the right direction.
