Life must be filled up

The temperature first thing was -5 and frost is still thick on the ground. Tomorrow may be even colder and guess what? We are having ‘a scheduled power cut for routine maintenance’. How on earth is a cold, old person like me to keep warm? Those of you who live in towns and cities, does this ever happen to you?

I’m dressed for the weather today in a new, very thick jumper from the White Stuff summer sale and fleece-lined joggers from Uniqlo. I really recommend these!

First frost of the season this morning. Just saying.

I had no power from Friday afternoon until Sunday lunchtime and it was absolute hell. The house got colder and colder and by Sunday morning, I was reduced to lying on the sofa wearing a woolly hat, with blankets and two hot water bottles. The so-called power helpline used to be just that. Now, you get an automated voice saying they’re very busy and will you please get off the line and look at their website. Duh! I now have to throw away a lot of food. I don’t expect to get a penny off my bill.

I’ve already had to be outside this morning because a chap has arrived to fix up my new safety mirror for getting the car on the road (the old one had rusted away at the back and was just dangling). OMG, the bitter wind! I’m so good at catastrophising that I’m already half expecting another outage. Moan over.

I was expecting The Big Freeze to be a documentary of the type you might watch on Talking Pictures, so I was disconcerted to see Chris Packham (rather a bête noire of mine) telling us that this was a special edition of Winterwatch. I needn’t have worried, as the bulk of the programme was taken up with a contemporary account compiled by the old Tonight team: Cliff Michelmore (what an excellent broadcaster he was), Derek Hart and Kenneth Allsopp. It’s strange how selective memory is. I don’t recall the twenty-foot snow drifts, abandoned cars and trains and starving cattle, although it must all have been on the news. I remember only what happened to us and as we lived in the suburbs, we were spared being snowed in, unlike so many people in country areas. My strongest memory is that in early March there were still great heaps of dirty, frozen snow at the edges of all the pavements.

My journey to school was quite long: a fifteen minute walk to the bus stop, then the bus followed by another, shorter walk at the other end. I don’t remember having a day off school but I may have got that wrong. We schoolgirls took to wearing thick, ribbed stockings (don’t get excited, chaps), to the bemusement of our mothers, who had bad memories of the black woollen stockings they had to wear to school. Ours were warm and, at that time, fashionable. That autumn, the fashion pages had headlines like ‘Remember last winter?’ and were full of warm clothes.

Keeping warm at home wasn’t easy. We had two coal fires downstairs, my parents had an electric fire set into a wall in their bedroom and that was it, except that you could keep warm in the kitchen if the oven was on and the door open. Porridge for breakfast set us up for the journey to school. We had one of those cylinder paraffin stoves (now regarded as antiques), which had previously been used only when my sister or I were ill in bed. We could lie tucked up, watching the comforting red light which glowed through the little window. Imagine allowing that now! The paraffin was bought from the ironmonger’s at the end of the road (how wonderful that shop smelt). That winter, the paraffin heater was put in the hall, an unheard-of extravagance. I don’t remember that it did much to take off the chill.

The striking factor about that freeze was how long it lasted. Some people are predicting a Waxwing winter this year. I do hope they’re wrong. I last saw Waxwings in 2010.

Yesterday evening, I experienced an unusual weather phenomenon. It was about nine o’clock and I noticed that the kitchen seemed flooded with light. Looking out the back, there was an extraordinary sight. Part of the sky was black, the horizon blue and the sun setting from behind the house. It had been a grey day but the garden looked bright as at noon, as though a heavenly spotlight were trained on it. Pink flowers glowed bright red while blue flowers had turned purple. I gazed for ages and felt calm and uplifted, a mood which stayed with me.

You may recall that the pruning job in the garden was left unfinished and that I lived with a terrible mess and a frightening amount of bamboo thrashing about in the strong winds. Yesterday was bright and sunny, although with a bitterly cold wind. My gardener turned up with a trailer and ‘Adam who helps me with big jobs’. They set to and have performed wonders. I’m especially pleased with the way the berberis has been pruned into exactly the shape I wanted. Now, when I look out of the windows, I see pretty much what I saw when I moved in; what estate agents are pleased to call ‘an open aspect’.

Photos on LJ.

The whole garden is waterlogged and it’s very frustrating to see all the jobs which should have been done by now but will have to wait.
I just looked up my LJ entry for exactly one year ago. Not a single one of the plants featured in that post is flowering now or looking anywhere near doing so. This makes me all the more grateful for the daffodils and primroses which put up with all weathers and fill the garden with cheerfulness now. Let’s hope spring will come all in a rush.

In the garden, snowdrops, hellebores, primroses, pulmonaria and viburnum are all flowering. Catkins are out. No chance of a photo, though, as there's a bitterly cold wind and the early sunshine has given way to the usual gloomy cloud cover. These cheerful tulips were on sale in Waitrose this morning at two bunches for a fiver. Who could resist?

Yes, roses, honeysuckle and clematis mingle happily on the house walls and foxgloves get taller every day. Yet all is not well in the garden. Late frosts caught hydrangeas, fuchsias and jasmine. We’ve had no rain for about two months and a cold wind seems to have been blowing for weeks. This combination has made the soil rock hard or dry as dust, so it’s absolutely impossible to think of planting out.

I spent part of this morning slashing all the pulmonarias to the ground, leaves and all. This helps prevent mildew later on. I weeded as I went round and continued my ceaseless task of pulling nettles which grow from the field right through the fence. Then my poor old legs gave up.

Oh dear. I’ve just posted a stinker of a review of a new book. When I look at what it will cost and think that I’ve had the chance to read it for nothing, I feel ungrateful but if I don’t say what I think, how will anyone trust my reviews?

I’m sure there will be no such problem reading the books huskyteer and I picked up at the weekend. It was Folk Festival weekend and a rather subdued one. The usual charities’ fair was held on the Minster Green, with a very large bookstall. As is the way with nearly all book hunts these days, there were almost no old books to be seen. huskyteer was pleased with her haul which included Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal by H E Bates. She read it and left it behind and now I’ve nearly finished it, too. Because it’s good! It came from a box which included several other old Penguin editions of books by Bates and, two days later, I’m still kicking myself for not grabbing the lot at 20p each.

I got three books which I look forward to reading. The Villa in Italy by Elizabeth Edmondson, yay! It’s the first of her books I’ve ever been able to find second hand. Next a book by Rachel Hore which I hadn’t read, A Week in Paris. When I got it home I found it was a signed copy. So that’s two nice, fat paperbacks for me. From a smaller charity stall I got an even greater bargain, a hardback 1st edition of H is for Hawk, in excellent condition.

The weekend was pretty wet, on and off, which was a shame for the folk dancers, the birthday teas for the Queen and the cricket at Lord’s. Yesterday evening rain was coming down in sheets and it’s still wet this morning, with regular showers. Ah, an English summer.