The Shape of a Day…

Each day of the week has a different shape and Saturday’s is the best. Because mostly each week I can draw it a fresh new shape if I want…
Waking to a clean house and the laundry up to date offers a delicious freedom and sense of well-being, call me a shallow old dear if you will, but these things I like…
A slow awakening with the rustle of a goose down duvet, and a lemony morning light as my Clumper is clumpering about in the kitchen making tea, the ambrosial nectar of the morning! Anyone remember the Clumper from the tv series, “Victorian Farm? Well he was the most beautiful broad-shouldered plough horse, who good- naturedly just Got Through the Jobs, and so that’s what I’ve nick-named my Drew…he’s a very good hard worker, and apparently tireless…
“So her beloved saddled up his steed and made for the land, to bring home fresh food for the larder, eggs from the chicken run, fine leeks, swede and carrots…” sigh, I’ll try to be more truthful. OK, after breakfast, he clambered into our beat up old Ford Focus and hied him to the allotments, to go pull up some veggies from the cooling earth…

My first thought was to selfishly scuttle down to the cabin and play with some newly delivered fabric but no, I will be a good wife, and chop some wood…It’s a newish axe but not as sharp as I’d like which means you have to hit the wood harder, to make it first bite. I didn’t want my hand near that, so wedged the piece of wood between two logs until the first cut, then whacked it against the path where is graciously split, and spit spot, into the basket… and soon a basket was gleefully filled. Oh yes, me and Ray Meers…

So, I laid a fine fire, filled the coal scuttle and the log basket, and then the bread machine pinged; the dough was ready to come out. First time I’ve made these lovely rolls, called “Parkerhouse Rolls” after the posh hotel in Boston USA where they were invented. So when Drew returned, we had lovely home- made Moroccan Roasted Vegetable soup made with that gorgeous, warm and aromatic spice blend, Ras El Hanout…lush.

We wanted to go for a walk in Chicksands woods, the afternoon was cooling but still bright and fresh, a walk was a joyful idea…
I slung the camera round my neck and Drew slung an Ikea bag round his; we wanted to find pine cones and twigs for kindling, the scent of them crackling in the fireplace is so heavenly it’s worth the sparks. So off to the magical greenwoods we went…

Amazing vistas, golden, dappled sunlit clearings, a greening on trunks. Bronzed bushes on fire with light and Autumn, a cushion on the forest floor, of drift upon drift of fallen leaves; oak, bramble, conifer needles. A quieting effect, easy walking.

Last call for colours, the leaves spotted and motley, a blaze of glory nearing its end as the days shorten and the darkness comes early and deep.

The scents and textures of the woods are so dense and varied. I’m drawn to the textures on the fallen tree, could be on another planet it’s so strange, dead yet oddly still alive…

More texture, and similar, with evidence that something, some creature, has made a little world on this section of another log, apparently with a mini drill to make perfectly round front doors for his family! It’s a tiny landscape, a microcosm.

“And the first tree in the greenwood
It was the holly….”
Maybe, maybe not. The gloss and the spike on the leaves, the scarlet of the berries, such a fresh, vibrant bit of colour, firing up the wood with a patch of glamour in a dark corner. I will think of it come Christmas, all by itself in the wood, by then the berries will probably be lost…