What is to be seen

With all the new schools, new countries and new mathematical systems, I am mathematically illiterate.  I thought, fleetingly, that geometry was beautiful and precise and that algebra was essentially solving puzzles, but the majority of it was hieroglyphics to me.  With fingers, I can do any sum under twenty.  Sixty if the bots are at home and I can be arsed to take my wellies off.

I ended up doing Maths Studies for Baccalaureate - it is essentially colouring in tessellations and predicting whether you'll get an ace of hearts.  One of the few things I remember is truth tables - or was it logic?  The two were sadly not always synonymous in my chaotic school life.

Either way, I rather loved the spare, clear elegance of if and then.  If I get 39 points then I can escape to University.  If I hide my lighter up my sleeve, then I can have a sly fag before drama.   If I read Walden to the end without stabbing myself, then I will discover, allegorically, the secret of solitary self-reliance.

Poor Rose is mathematically blessed and will be doing GCSE a year early.  This weekend, as a sensible antidote to teenage hyperbole and contagious hysteria, school has taken her group far away to a forest, in tents, with three tons of pasta each and a squirty bottle of golden syrup.

Last night it threw down buckets and today is blowing wild and sunny; that fabulous, illogical weather that polka-dots the pavements with blossom confetti and induces madness with jangling new leaves and gusts of blinding, sunlit rain.

They will be soaking and starving when they get back; they have no phones, only maps and notebooks. They have to record fauna and count wild ponies and species of meadow-flower.  Thoreau would approve.

Thank heaven she's good at maths; it would be a nightmare removing those great sodden boots every time she got to eleven.

Like landmarks to a treasure

Right, that's at least 38 words today. 

Six more and I can lie down with a box of violet creams, a pint of amaretto and an oiled Liam Neeson. 

Result.

Like most literate sentient beings, I fell madly into The Secret History.  I adored its quirky characters, deft and mysterious happenings, intelligent, crisp prose and the elliptical, swooping tale which made me long to know Latin and wear dead men's coats in a freezing New England winter.

Also by the stunningly talented Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch has made my year for two reasons.

I have devoured it both on kindle and on audiobook as I have driven our ancient creaking Jeep for many hours this winter.  Through rain so hard that the wipers were a frenzied blur, and wind that walloped the old beast with a sideways, spiteful kick.

The talented David Pittu imbues the wonderful voice of James Hobart with a patina he himself would have stroked. Boris and Theo have stayed in my ear and heart for weeks afterwards.  If you haven't yet immersed yourself in this fabulous wringing mangle of a book, make it your solemn duty to do so soon.

If you regret it, I will come round and clean out the cupboard under your sink and leave flapjacks.

The second reason?  She took 10 years to write it.

Not that I will ever produce anything like that, but I take great heart from her glacial speed. And since Mary Wesley didn't crank anything out until she was 70, I reckon that's plenty of time to keep polishing and honing, singing on mountains and falling into sudden, deep ravines of self-doubt and despair.

Those kind souls still here, I am so grateful.  The short stories are undergoing a final revision and the novel is about a third completed. I went on a course run by a Very Successful Editor and had a comprehensive kick up the arse.

In the meantime, the cars swish by my writing lair, where I need a lamp on all day, spend silly numbers of hours brewing the perfect coffee and contemplating the astonishing number of shoes generated by only eight feet. And eating flapjacks.

I keep blowin' down the road

'Sorry, Jean, I can't get a fucking signal so no, I don't know how far it is to the bloody pub.'

'Yes, and my stockings have chafed something rotten.'

'Jilly, I hope you've got a charger in that massive backpack, you prim old tart; if we miss the X-Factor results, I'll swing for someone.'

This year, I needed more local walks, and being bone idle, thought it would be useful to wander along behind a random group of old folk in bobble hats, secretly recording the route on my whizzy app and then smugly take family, dog and visitors to unexplored parts of this beautiful bit of coast I call home.

I joined the Ramblers.

I did wonder quite how gentle a stroll it would be when I wandered up to my first walk to be publicly admonished for wearing trainers and not carrying waterproofs.  It was at the height of this recent tropical summer, but apparently we are like the Scouts and need to be prepared for absolutely everything.

When we broke for lunch, I secretly pulled a Diet Coke out of my pocket and watched as they unwrapped sandwiches in paper, for all the world like Enid Blyton people; one old darling had stolen a teaspoon from the cafe at the supermarket because they wanted over two pounds for a wrap, whatever the Dickens that was, so he'd gone for a reduced-out-of-date tin of sardines for his bait. They called him all sorts over that piece of parsimony. He smirked in the sun and ate his sardines with the contraband cutlery and enormous relish.  With extreme care, the rest folded their waxed paper and banana skins back into Tupperware, and shared tartan thermoses and malt cake.

I am pretty fit, but I have to say I was struggling to make conversation by the end of an extremely brisk ten miles.

Nest time I showed up in proper boots with a rucksack and cake.  They softened perceptibly.  There was an influx of youth on the roads because of our Festival and they told me great stories about the times they all went in the 1960s - 'we had two kinds of drugs, beer and booze.' 'We had a damn sight more than that, Martin, we just never gave you any.'

I have learned wonderful useful things; the names of wildflowers and the calls of birds; the fiercely fought invisible battles between the Footpath Society and landowners; how to mend parts of a Morris Minor with unravelled barbed wire; how to avoid paying for car-parking within a fifty mile radius of my home; the dignity and bravery of the elderly and recently bereaved who are determined not to die of unhappiness and loneliness; the astonishment of laughing myself sick at unspeakably profane jokes told by a twinkly and apple-cheeked old lady.

It's the last ramble until the New Year tomorrow; fifteen miles of gloriously dank December dun. I hope they'll all still be there in January as I have grown to love them all very dearly.  Apart from the one who asked me how old my grandchildren were, the blind old bat.

Eight years old

I am dressed like a falling leaf

Though I am sturdy as a mushroom

Rust, burnt orange, russet corduroy

The hillocks of my scabbed and warty knees

Raised to my vermillion chin, furrowed echoes

Of the cattle-trodden sliced-up earth

Below my perch of crenelated stone

Hoary and xanthic-splashed

Hard, sharp flat wind

Tang of sea

Sweet stench of decay

My palms sting, rust-streaked, raw

Their ferrous stigmata witness that

Despite my swooping dreams

I am too solid

To fly.

Dancing from within

"Fek's sake, I'll never get a signal up there.  Try your iPad. "
"No buggering way.  She's following me on Twitter as well."
"Nightmare.  And I forgot to put bloody trousers on."
"Revision it is, then."

If I had any shame I would be embarrassed at how long it is since I last posted.  It feels like a couple of days, so I have clearly fallen into a parallel space:time continuum that makes each second stretch to an hour.

I have had my nose gaffer-taped to the grindstone trying to finish what I started; not the most familiar of feelings to a bolter like me, but the rhythm of days you kindly prescribed (you know who you are and I thank you all) has held me fast to both task and chair and perhaps soon you can judge for yourselves if I wouldn't have been better off just defrosting the freezer or learning Swedish.

The seasonal rhythm continues outside my head too - the brown, dank landscape wears a flirty morning negligee of frost; the afternoon walks are muffled by a deliciously rank carpet of lime and scarlet.  The cooling pies and cakes have scented the kitchens of many women before me.  The muffled grumbles as bots are reminded of exam revision is also timeless; the furtive sneaking under bedclothes to broadcast complaint via phone and Facebook perhaps less so.

This afternoon, pea-soup fog permitting, I will break the rhythm with a two-day jaunt to see an old friend in Amsterdam.  There is a gallery opening, an exhibition of impressionism, some snert (ah, the fun we had with that) and that gut-aching laughter that comes from knowing where all the bodies are buried and not giving a fig.

I will be back next week. In more ways than one.

The fire which enlightens

Is that Master Edward in a feather boa? Don't be daft, he'd never be seen dead in fishnets. They're all bloody pie-eyed those Londoners.  Think they're hiding any left-footers? I can smell 'em. 

There was usually a houseful, crammed into a little cottage on the green in Newick in East Sussex.  We always went down for Bonfire Night, bringing duvets, sausages and booze.  The cottage belonged to Edward's parents who lived abroad, and we took full advantage of it.

It wasn't a typical Bonfire night; Sussex has a long and proud history of rebellion and to this day Bonfire Night is a celebration of poking fun at authority, remembering martyrs and expressing anti-Catholic sentiment with vigour.

That wasn't of enormous importance to us in out twenties, though.  We cared much more about the hog roast and the enormous cold-fighting brandies Edward poured that made it possible to stand in the raised front garden and overlook the parade as it passed under our noses.

It was loud and colourful and occasionally sinister.  The village, plus other nearby bonfire societies, turned out in their hundreds, dressed mainly as pirates for some reason.  If you really care, I'm sure it will tell you why here.  They streamed below the fence, with blazing torches and blackened faces, singing rebel songs and chanting.  They dragged behind them iron trollies to carry the spent torches; the sound of  metal wheels cannoning off the stone roads was mediaeval.

Being rather giddy by the time the parade started, we often dressed up in the things we found in the cottage; one year, a girlfriend and I put on in full tropical officer's mess kit and took the salute from paraders.  Another, we set up the ancient gramophone on the lawn and wafted about in kaftans, waving cigarette holders and offering cherry brandy from hip flasks.  Often, we had to reassure any Catholics in our party and persuade them to come out from behind the curtain indoors.

The firework display took place on the green right opposite the garden gate; a closely guarded secret until it was lit, the huge wooden structure lit up satirical pictures.  A priest pushing a baby's pram, the Pope in a variety of vulgar poses, any politician who'd failed to keep his electoral promises and/or his trousers on.  It was mad, wildly insulting to many people and usually very witty indeed.  When the two-story-high bonfire was lit at last and the Guy thrown upon it, the baying was fantastical to hear.  We would usually retreat inside at that point, leaving the village people to dare each other to leap the flames and keep the torches burning.  It would still be smouldering the next day as went across the green for the papers, then carefully carried our hangovers here for the world's best Bloody Mary.

The anodyne, health-and-safety-bonkers display to which we take the bots these days is  a far cry from that pagan excitement. Last year, we had to stand miles away from the fire, no hog roast and no brandy; the fireworks just went off, nobody was pilloried.  I bet all the Catholics felt safe as well.

Whistling blackbirds and the sun of October

October is a wonderful month.  I love the rhythm of routine, the cosy lamp-lit evenings, the smell of the first fires and the sweet crackle of pork belly on a Sunday.  But it is also a month of gravitas.  Much more so than September, with its frivolous conceits - new uniform, new faces, pencil cases bristling with sharp points of resolution.  No, October is where the real thing starts.  It's a month of putting your money where your mouth is, of living up to all those easy promises made in September - reading the books, sustaining the friendships.

Seductive one-last-time Indian summer sun gives way to briskness and the need for serious clothes - the unyielding clamp of long boots adding purpose to a stride; the serpentine shrug of scarf and weighty heft of jacket.  Darkening nights demand a sporting commitment too. Training under sodium light as the fine cold drizzle haloes the scene is a far cry from the flirty kick-about of last month. New uniforms soften and fade, pummelled in mud and pride.

Decades ago, I started University in October; cold blue skies filled with cascades of Cathedral bells; nose-tingling coldness and a sense of freedom and promise. New books and new friends, many of whom are still there, cracked and worn but still capable of making me question, debate and laugh until I can't breathe.

Bounty is rare, but worth seeking.  Spiny sloes will bring a throaty sweetness in the black of winter if you hunt now.  Dress for thorns and sudden downpours.  Fill your poacher's pockets with tiny crab apples and your larder with jewelled amber pots.

Many Octobers ago, came a wonderful gift. Wrapped in a white blanket embroidered with oak leaves, my long, self-contained daughter with wise eyes and see-through hair.  Whose birthday we have celebrated with pumpkins and witches, ghost walks, bonfires and curry. Who is, bar none, the best gift of all.

Drowsy with the harmony

Freddie, Rose, your mum and dad have arrived.  See, they've made a banner.  And that's quite a big camera they've got. Should your dad really be standing on that table? Ah, that's sweet, they know all the words.  And they're dancing, how charming.  Look, your mum's crying her head off.  Aren't you going to say hello?

This year, both the bots were finally old enough to go on the senior school music tour.  Two coach loads of singers and musicians, plus overexcited teachers, go for a week every August to somewhere fantastic in Europe.  They sing and play jazz and swing in squares, by lakes, in churches.

It was Freddie's birthday while they were away.  He was a bit thoughtful about that and so we suggested Edward and I fly out for a week.  We would attend the concerts and on his birthday take them, any little chums they cared to invite, out to dinner.  Rose immediately asked to be excused; the whole thing would be embarrassing. And anyway, they had a rooftop pool at the hotel.  And anyway, it was Freddie's birthday, not hers.  And anyway it would just be really, really embarrassing.

By the time we waved off the coach, prior to our dash to the airport, Freddie had also decided that he'd be fine on his birthday, and in fact, we really didn't need to come to any of the concerts.   It would probably be embarrassing.

I had made a list of the paintings and sculptures I thought we should see.  I organised early-morning bookings at the Florentine museums, googled restaurant reviews and made reservations.  We sorted out a hire car and printed maps and directions to the five concerts they were performing.

Our hotel, which turned out to be a castle, was in the absolute middle of nowhere.  It dated from the 14th century and was a cicada-filled paradise; great scented bushes of ancient greying lavender and rosemary; crumbling ochre walls; thoughtful spots of shade for the wimpy Inglesi. That dry, throbbing heat for the sun-worshipping Scot. Heaven. That first night, the bots texted - it's fine, don't come.  Please.  You'll be embarrassing.

We negotiated attendance at one evening concert.  The tiny cobbled square was pinpricked by candles; we perched on rickety old chairs and tried not to cry or clap too loudly.  The bots muttered 'Hi' as they ran past at the end. It took three hours to drive back to the hotel.

The next morning, we cancelled the tightly-packed schedule of reservations we'd made.  We didn't see a single masterly brushstroke.  Not a solitary marble rump.  Not a shaving of truffle passed our lips.  Instead, we spent the entire week reading by the deserted swimming pool. Giddy with solitude and  freedom, we played Marco Polo, pushed each other in and did cannonballs. I did yoga and fell over a bit.  Edward found an old wooden ladder and scrumped white peaches and tiny pears from the orchard.

How really, really embarrassing.

there ain't no need to go outside

"Come, my babies, let us dance dance between the raindrops"
"Fek's sake, I'm covered in stud marks and I've got hypothermia, are you mad woman?"
"And I can't see the new One Direction video cos the shagging internet is bust. I wish Madonna would adopt me."

When I was a small girl, pedalling furiously about on my sturdy bike, looking for wrongs to right and injured animals to bandage, the weather was usually on my side.  Anything below a Force 9 gale warning and I would be belting outside after breakfast, free, off up trees, climbing walls, licking the satisfying blood-like taste from my palms after swinging about on rusty iron poles.  And really, in the north of England, you're pretty safe if you prefer inclement times.

But the famed Summer of '76 was a nightmare of glaring sunshine, and I was like a stray dog in a dustbowl depression-era film, mewling unhappily and slinking around to cower in the shade, unmoving.  My mother would slather us in Ambre Solaire oil, a smell that to this day spells sticky enforced displeasure.  And we would be sent out to Make The Most of It.  I hated it.  I would be winkled out from behind the curtain, re-reading the bit where Ginger dies in Black Beauty, wallowing happily in great hiccoughing sobs.

That summer was followed by emigration to the West Indies. We had sun every sodding day.  I lost the joy of hearing chilly rain splatter heavily against the window, the haunting song of blasting wind and the indescribable pleasure of uncurling your raw, scarlet claws from your bicycle handles and feeling the prickling sting as you shoved them under hot water.  But you get used to anything as a child and soon we were berry-brown and barefoot and couldn't remember log fires or twilight or slush.

It came back in spades, though, yesterday.  Lamps were on all day, I cranked up the heating, gleefully dug out my boots from the attic. The internet fizzled out, some branches came down.  Fantastic.  The bots' matches were called off half-way through and they were as navy-blue as their kit as they dripped miserably on the doorstep.  I ran hot baths, roasted chicken, lit candles, shook blankets.

They moaned like mad about the cold, the grey sky, the rain coming in under the back door.  "You love this, Mum, don't you?" they accused crossly.  They did prep, theatrically thumping about and shivering, incandescent at being cut off from Facebook, internet research into King Lear and respiratory disease.

I made gravy and moved soggy mountains of blue stuff about it the laundry room.  I made those unconvincing soothing noises that come from a place of unspeakable smugness that never again will I have to do prep or enforced team sport.  I could hardly keep the smile off my face. Today it's still slashing down.  A man is coming soon to hang great thick blackout curtains over the huge windows in Rose's room.  The second they're up, I'm taking the dog, a huge mug of tea, a loo roll and Black Beauty upstairs to road test them.

Illustration here

They think warm days will never cease

Blackberry picking in Cumbria in the 1970s was an endurance sport.  The cliffs from which we harvested once held a Roman amphitheatre; occasionally, your welly would encounter the russet stone remains of something ancient and you could follow the curved line of centurion's seating through the huge ancient thorns.  If you slipped, there would be a split second to decide between saving yourself from slithering down spiky perilous falls or saving your precious berries.  If they fell, black beauty winking heartbreakingly in the gorse and coarse grass, the Northern Socialist would be unsympathetic.  "Aye.  Bad luck.  Start again."

The sun would always be out, lighting up the usually murky Solway Firth, and the bucket would fill with a satisfying blue-black heft.  I loved it, though of course we kids moaned like mad.  I loved the tiny thorns that would catch in my ink-stained fingers; the thrill of silently finding a great cache of huge fat blackberries hidden from view and quickly, greedily eating the biggest one of all in an act of breathtaking defiance.  I loved the depths of sweetness that would explode with mellow lusciousness; the shock of the occasional badly-judged blackberry which puckered the mouth and sent me quickly into the damp depths of the bucket for another to take away the taste.

We would come home that week to a saccharine fug in the kitchen; the huge old windows running with condensation; the battered jam pan rattling fiercely, hissing clouds of sugary steam; glossy amethyst smears on cold saucers.  Blackberry jam is my Proust's madeleine - one lick of the knife and I am eight years old again, devouring slightly burnt toast with a slab of cold butter and a seed-flecked puddle of complete heaven.

When we moved our little family out of London eleven years ago this week, I went first, staying with my parents in their mad old house.  Edward stayed on to downsize our conference company from over twenty down to four, and supervise the house and office moves.  I put Rose into nursery school and went with my parents and Freddie up the downs to pick blackberries and fight the feelings stirred up by my little girl's first big steps.

I sobbed silently a little bit, stealing comforting sun-warmed handfuls of perfectly ripe blackberries; the absolute silence we have up the downs throbbing a little in my ears.  My Ma and I picked and talked about the stoicism we need in the face of motherhood.  The NS had stayed in the car to listen to the lunchtime news and when we climbed back in, eyes red and mouths and fingers stained magenta, he told us how the world had changed in a very new and final way.

Even watching the news, as we all did, all over the world, over and over, that strange and awful day, it didn't make sense. One of our competitors lost 16 employees and 65 delegates, doing exactly what we did every day.  And yet, I had to get Rose from nursery school and shrink my world to match her life and somehow, we all stumbled through, as did everyone else - the heroic, the brave and the terrified alike and here we are, eleven years later.  I sometimes think of the girls I knew who had never become mothers, whose lives had ended in sudden nothingness on that sunny New York day eleven years ago.

I have just been up the downs with an old colleague, who has become a dearly loved friend. Our girls are teenagers now and are taking even bigger steps. We need the same maternal stoicism as we did for the first ones.  I craved the comfort of toast and blackberry jam; we unpacked buckets and dogs from the car.

But the brambles have all been cleared so ramblers can see the sea.  I don't understand the role of pectin, and anyway, the bots hate blackberries.  We walked for miles instead, under a bright azure sky, watching the buzzards hover and the sun dazzling on the sea.  We followed the curve of the downs, emerald patchwork fields falling away below us, fat highland cattle watching lazily through silly long fringes.  We talked about being mothers.  We cried a little bit but we laughed a lot more. It was just as good as jam and toast.

the frailty of our human clay

This morning's two minutes' silence happened at the beginning of Freddie's Sunday League Under 11s football match. It's been hotting up recently; they are unbeaten so far this season, and are through to the semis of the Shire Cup. So there was quite a large crowd of parents and grandparents huddling under huge brollies along the touchline. The promised rain lashed down on us and the car boot sale with which we shared the field.

The goalie for the opposition, who were also unbeaten, was wearing a black armband. His Grandad was just down the muddy touchline from me. "His dad didn't come back from Afghanistan last year," he said quietly. The two teams lined up to observe the silence. The car boot sale was like a frieze - ordinary people in waterproofs and soggy fleeces stood with bowed heads in the rain. Two rows of small boys, napes bared poignantly to the elements, looked solemnly at their boots. The referee and the opposition manager stood protectively behind their goalie, a hands each resting lightly on his skinny damp shoulders.

There were no medals. No hymns, no bands, no wreaths. Just ordinary people respectfully remembering. The most genuinely moving two minutes' silence I have observed in years.

And we're through to the next round,

talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations

Yesterday, I took my imaginary black dog and my very real taupe dog to a meadow close to my house. The taupe dog leapt about like a March hare, pausing suddenly, stock-still, in hunting pose. Her ear pinkly folded back, paw cocked, nut-brown nose quivering before dropping her haunches and charging madly off in the opposite direction to the ball I had launched.

I lay in the grass and thought about how long it felt since I'd been warm. Fat, mauve clover and leggy eager-faced buttercups have carpeted the ground in a matter of days. The sun was so strong it almost throbbed. I could smell the lacy drifts of hawthorne, heard bees, boats on the river, distant shouting. From my prone pose, I threw the sopping ball, then tensed as I heard her thunder back to throw herself heavily on top of me, panting delightedly and proudly.

I am alone for the weekend. The sun has been blazing for hours, mocking my pitiful gloom. The roses from my birthday party are soft and wilting. I am making a flask of lattte to take to the beach with the dog, the paper and a grisly murder on my i-pod.

Later, I'm making a complicated curry for the bots coming back tomorrow night. That's when the sun will really come out.

Brass Monkeys and Brass Necks

'F*cking genius kid, you actually cried. Brilliant. What a dozy old tart your mother is. Now get an arse on before the chippie closes.'

Yesterday, Freddie appeared at breakfast. Not in the warm mufti they are instructed to wear to school until the Polar Ice Cap unfreezes, but still in his pyjamas.

'I've got a sore throat,' he said in a tiny voice of sadness. 'Get dressed. Now.' I countered. He smelled metallic; in our house that is either tonsilitis or morning breath. He cried and felt a bit warm. I felt terrible and bundled him back under the duvet; he smiled bravely at me. I left the Colonel with great lists of instructions about temperatures, how to make chicken soup, the importance of staying warm, which books to read to him if he felt well enough.

About eleven, I called from the office. My cleaner answered. 'Don't worry, Love, 'e was 'avin breakfast watching Soccer AM when I got 'ere. 'Im an' the Colonel's been 'avin a right laugh all mornin'. I think they've gone sledging.'

I picked up Rose after school and we stopped for hot chocolate. 'Is Freddie OK?' she asked. 'Harry really missed him and the Headmaster said to get better soon.'

When we got home, Freddie was under a duvet on the sofa. There were four wet wellies melting ice on the doorstep, two large, two small. I called him into the kitchen where I was sitting at the table supervising Rose's homework. My foot was drumming ominously on the floor. Being nine, he is unable to look at a lady and read The Signs.

'How are you feeling now?' I asked. 'GREAT!' he shouted. 'Me and the Colonel went out for fresh air and I felt SO much better that we went to the chippie and spoke to all the people about who likes vinegar and I had chips and then we went sledging and then I did dog-sledding then I watched football and it's been SO MUCH FUN.'

In a quiet, scary voice I asked him to go and put his pyjamas on. He dropped his jeans enthusiastically to show me he was still wearing them. The Colonel joined us. Being 53, he is well able to read The Signs, he just still doesn't know what to do when he's read them.

'Isn't it GREAT he's feeling so much better?' he gushed. 'You'll never guess, we took a tray and the dog pulled Freddie along SO fast on the ice, AND the field has a REALLY icy bit now that we just FLEW down. Don't worry about supper, we had loads of chips just now.'

There was silence apart from the tapping of my foot and the plop of Rose's tear onto her maths prep.

The Colonel put Freddie to bed double-quick. Rose got to watch Wayne's World in my bed and have three of my secret stash of Godiva chocolates.

Two bots have gone to school today. The Colonel has fixed the bathroom radiator and made pesto for Rose. He has got Wallander lined up to watch on the i-Player and has texted that he'll run me a bath later on.

I should bloody well think so too.

The weather in the streets...

Soak of rain as taxis swish by you and drench your darned stockings; long walk home in the drizzly gloom; fruitless wait by the shared phone in the hall for your lover to telephone; no milk, no money, no coal, no hope.

... can bloody well just about sort itself out, frankly. It's wet, grey, slushy, icy and downright miserable. After almost a week of feeling like someone in the inter-war years, I am losing my grip on the present. We have been housebound, bar the odd granny-shuffle down the icy hill for bread and milk. The Colonel has a horror of powdered milk, so much of the days have been spent mapping routes to the most likely milk-sources and preparing for lengthy ration-like queues therein. We've had to clear out the freezer and have been eating old-fashioned fare like chops and sausages. The bots are studying the 1930s at school and wondered before Christmas if they could 'try' bread and margarine for tea like the depressive bedraggled herione of their textbook. Ha, they wonder no longer as the butter supplies have dried up since lorries can't get to our shops.

I haven't quite been darning, but I have been making cushions, huddled round the fire. I have also cleared out everyone's wardrobes, de-pilled my jerseys by hand with a razor, turned my shelves into a Bennetton shop, matched every sock in the house and baked scones. We've played board games and read a LOT. We've drunk gallons and gallons of tea, had endless discussions about the weather and listened to the wireless. Now we ALL live in the 1930s.

Despite us all now being back at work and school, I am reluctant to leave my happy gas-lit world of make-believe. So I am re-reading, as I often do at this gloomy time of year, the ultimate feel-ghastly book The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann.

Her own story is pretty good, including an affair with Cecil Day-Lewis, the spineless Poet Laureate. She also wrote the iconic Dusty Answer and Invitation to the Walz, both imperative reading for any girl on the cusp of adulthood.

This one is just for dark, tending-to-depressive, when-will-the-winter-ever-end misery-lovers like me. Olivia, the herione of Invitation to the Waltz, is back. Ten years on with a failed mariage behind her she meets again, in proper Brief Encounter fashion, the caddish bounder Rollo. On a train. With lots of smoking and tea in proper cups. He breaks her heart all over London and in expensive motor cars and cheap 30s motels. She bravely washes out her stockings by hand, drifts about being brave yet teary, eking out her chilly existence shilling by careful shilling while Rollo, shining with Brilliantined hair and too-wide smiles, lives a life of great luxury. It's tragically predictable, but oh, so exquisitely written. It's like spending a week in an early David Lean film; clenched, terse declarations of love, much holding back of tears and gazing blindly out of greasy bus windows.

If you're feeling brisk and modern, stay away. You'll just shout at the book or throw it in the fire.

On the other hand, if you're anything like me, you'll wallow in it and appear red-eyed for tea and bread and margarine, scratching hopefully about for a shilling to put in the gas meter. Bliss.

Icy Surrealists

Sheep! Move your bloody arses or I'll swat you with a BA blanket and flick cold coffee on your wool. Oh yes, I'm prepared for all eventualities.

Several worried texts, a couple of calls and an email had me leaving the office yesterday two hours early to pick up Rose from netball, as apparently it was going to snow. A man down the hall insisted on escorting me to my car through a couple of pathetic flakes and hanging about like a bad smell to make sure it started. My eyeballs couldn't have rolled back further in my head as he approved the blanket lightfingered Rose liberated from British Airways a few weeks ago, that was crumpled on the floor of my Jeep. I sniggered 'half a Starbucks left from this morning, might come in handy too.'

It took me an hour and a half to make the 25-minute journey to netball practice. The snow was coming down pretty fast and furious by this point and the traffic was averaging ten miles per hour. The netball coach was standing outside with a roll-up in his mouth, watching the girls belt about in shorts through what was by now very thick snowfall. I grabbed Rose and her chum Leona and popped them in the car to drop Leona at home.

Leona's mum Natasha is an artist who also makes tiny celebrity pixie shoes, and yes, it is as surreal as it sounds. She said, 'you'll never get home in this, stay here. The radio says it'll get worse. I'll light a fire and make hot chocolate. It'll be like in a film.' Pffft. How I snorted. Rose, disappointed at no emergency sleepover, slumped in the front seat. Off we set.

Two hours and a fruitless, frozen and frighteningly skiddy half a mile later, we were back. Natasha was black-faced and red-eyed. 'I've set the house on fire,' she said. And she had. In the slowly dispersing smoke, a man was pouring water on the rug and brandy into a glass. 'You'd better have one too,' he said and crept carefully off into the white night. 'It's like being in a film,' said the faerie cobbler several times as we ate dinner, watched the girls build a snowman, chatted to a random bloke from New York who was passing the gate, listened to the snow cracking her ancient iron drainpipes, sat on the Aga to warm our frozen arses, popped a bottle of Champagne and made Jerry Hall's miniature cowboy boots dance on our fingers across the floor of her studio.

We finally made it home this afternoon at 2pm. We gave two hitchhikers a ride. They had both abandoned their cars. I positively oozed Dunkirk spirit. Rose had the blanket on her knees and I considered splitting the cold latte with the strangers. The 12 mile journey was littered with abandoned cars and a Morrison's lorry had jacknifed across the big roundabout and sat empty. Tree branches had fallen, and we listened to the local radio station taking calls from pretty much the entire county who had also been taken in by strangers. There were a couple of hairy brake-lock moments, but we made it. There has never been snow like it in these parts. The Colonel was waiting with two bum-shaped rubber sledge things we bought in Denmark on the offchance, and he, the bots and I have spent the afternoon whizzing down a hill and filling each other's collars with handfuls of snow.

Really, it's been just like a film.