Old Year's Night

The garden is haunted by robins.  I have been putting the crusts out at breakfast time and there are dunnocks, sparrows, blue tits, blackbirds and large crows - Sheryl and Russell - and at least two robins that are very confident and wait for me on the iron garden chairs.  These are in front of the outside Christmas tree so they look very festive.  The birds are after the food as it has been bitingly cold for the last few days.  The temperature hasn't risen above minus 3 C all day and has now dropped to about minus 5.  A grey, foggy day for the last of the old year; a day of silhouettes and hazy distances.  

New Year's Eve/Old Year's Night is one of my feasts of Christmas.  We used to celebrate on 23rd December as we moved into our first house on that date; then something (perhaps fish) on Christmas Eve, the large meal and Table on Christmas Day (one long feast interrupted by chocolate).  And Old Year's Night as we don't go out - too busy, too hectic - and then the last Christmas feast on Twelfth Night, in a bare house with the decorations cleared away for another year.  Candlelight and austerity; a benchmark for January.  

So tonight we drink strong beer and sit by the fire, reading and remembering and looking Janus-like forwards and backwards, inside and out.  A roasted vegetable lasagne for the meal; then cheese/biscuits and probably in bed at half-past ten!  Won't be the first time...  But as my reader is probably more fun-loving than I am, then a Happy New Year to you.  It promises to be cold.  

A Fire Day

A safe journey home yesterday and the usual catching up today; dishes, washes, cooking.  Very cold here, minus two outside and a dank, grey day, old, stale air; 'experienced' in Ronald Blythe's phrase.  I have been reading his 'River Diary', a collection of rural thoughts rooted in history, the everyday life of the farm and the village and his work with the church.  He knows this part of the country well because of his connections with the church at Discoed.

I have been thinking about the flat Moss landscapes I saw over the weekend.  I loved living near those vast flat agricultural landscapes, those immense skies; but we began to realise that we wanted to live in the countryside and not near it.  I have also become fascinated by the marks that define the landscape, that create the pattern of fields, the hedges and gateways, the tractor ruts and field trees. I will chase this further on the Landscape Writings website, I think.  Cold here, a not-very-far-from-the-fire day, a typical between-Christmas-and-New Year day.  

The Winter Visitors

A journey north yesterday, a hundred miles to St Helens and the industrial north west. A visit to suburbia, the outskirts of places; Sutton Manor, Cressington, Formby. How to articulate a journey? A list of rivers, road names, a chain of sights and memories?

I had forgotten how in the woods this house seems. I sat at the kitchen table this morning and watched the sky pale before the cold dawn, the light softening through the trees, motionless black silhouettes. The daylight revealed a frozen world, and the weak sun warmed the ground but not the shadows; all day I saw frost-shadows, hidden places not touched by the sun. A wren in the kitchen bushes, puffed up against the cold.

Familiar places have their own beauty. Yesterday I touched the Moss at St Helens/Cronton, and this morning I drove along its coastal fringes. A very flat agricultural landscape, the ground churned to mud in field gateways, water frozen in tractor ruts and dulled to a pale silver. Hedges and distances, the suggestion of Dutch fields, a vast sky. Steam rising from a mountain of Council compost, the highest land for miles. I wrote 20 or 30 short poems for the Mosswalking exhibition and might track them down; the antithesis of the landscapes we now inhabit, the hills and valleys of the Borders.

Cold again tonight, another hard frost. Today is my nephew's birthday so we rang Canada and had a brief talk; they are under a foot of snow, even on Vancouver Island in the Pacific. I remember holding the baby when he was only hours old, so we will raise a glass to the lad on his day nineteen years later. Happy Birthday Benny!

The Feast of Stephen

Sharply colder today after the mildness of Christmas.  I forgot to mention with regard to our light feasting that one thing I love about Christmas is our seasonal use of china and cutlery.  A mish-mash collection of Victorian oddments, heavy tureens and serving dishes, large silver spoons and weighty engraved forks.  None of it has cost us more than a pound or so and most we have picked up for pennies; unfashionable, out-dated, cumbersome table equipment.  But full of stories, history, possibilities.  

A cold clear night, minus three in the courtyard just now, a clear, distant scattering of stars. Boxing Day is a more relaxed time than Christmas Day, a leftovers day, a walking day, a sports day.  We went to the Mortimer Forest near Ludlow this morning, somewhere we have visited briefly but never explored.  Some fine stands of silver birch, dense fir plantations, and very tall pines left for the drama.  We were reminded of Delamere Forest - a Christmas memory - and I loved the darkness between the trees, the sense of ancient menacing fairy tale woods.  I would rather see more open woodland, but even in a Forestry Commission wood there can be magic.

And a day of preparations.  Tomorrow we go up north to see family, the first of our winter journeys.  Clothes packing, car cleaning, present sorting.  There is something I find attractive about journeys in winter but I don't know what it is; I will give the idea more thought.      

Christmas Day

We have kept a quiet Christmas.  Good food that all worked, good presents, the family.  The essence of the season lies for me in small moments, whether sharing presents and food or watching a small window of coloured lights a hundred and fifty yards away in total darkness.  I love the idea of gentle lights illuminating a cold room; a candelabra from IKEA the sole light in the kitchen, presiding benignly over the ruins of the Christmas table, or a failing fibre-optic lamp on the half-landing, barely able to flash red/blue/green into the night, lights only visible in total darkness.   The valley lights are clearer because of the bare trees and one of the farms across the valley has an enormous lit up Christmas tree, a pale golden giant.  But from our lane in the darkness it is a tiny shape against the dark hillside.  Another moment on the landing this evening; the bare ash trees in the courtyard lit softly - ambiently, passively, accidentally - by the lights of Michael's kitchen.  X-ray trees, ghostly grey, motionless, the epitome of simple light moments, calm and peaceful.

Christmas is a secular festival with religious roots, like Easter and Halloween.  I have been wishing people 'a lovely Christmas' as this year it seems a gentle sincere phrase replete with kindness and good cheer.  I have no idea how many people if any read these words, but whatever your faith or none-faith I hope that you have a lovely Christmas and a happy New Year.

The Yule (B)log

Jobs finished late last night, we sat with our meal and strong Hobgoblin beers in front of the fire. When the time seemed right we put in the Yule Log.  The Log should find you, I have heard, and this short fat unchoppable monster arrived with a bag of logs; gnarled, iron-barked, ancient.  We left it burning gently when we made an unsteady way to bed and it had completely gone by the morning.  But when I made a start on the fire this morning the ashes were still smouldering, so in a way the Log has warmed the house for a day and two evenings.  

Woodsmoke and Candlelight

Another working day, another day of preparations.  Christmas Eve is always a busy day, as we don't decorate until today and so the day is absorbed by a lot of little jobs.  The two beech branches look good in their pots, minimally decorated with glass and silver objects; some 30 years old, family pieces, 'stories of Christmases long long ago'.  We hope to move house in January and have decorated sparsely, as if on the move already.  

A cool grey day.  As it began to go dark we went delivering cards to the neighbours, a different perspective on our house from each of theirs; the cottages on the edge of the Moor, the cottage on the road but with stunning views across the valley.  The Hill looms large from all of the cottages here.  A short day, steeped in woodsmoke, from our fire or the neighbours', the very air seemed scented with it.  And for the first time in a long while we have lit candles tonight, the house cleared and cleaned and decorated; tomorrow December is replaced by Christmas, at least until the few working days reappear, like a patch of ground in melting snow.  

Little Christmas Eve

A day of preparations, a sense of closing down connections with the outside world.  I spent the morning making marzipan and icing our Christmas cake; the other two will travel up to family between Christmas and New Year.  The two long beech branches have been found pots which have been filled with burglar gravel from the driveway; completely free Christmas trees.  Michael came round with a large bunch of mistletoe and holly, complete with berries, that he had harvested from his fields this morning.  The mistletoe bunches will go over the doorways as they are poisonous.  I was looking at the old apple trees in the paddock behind the house this morning as they are festooned with mistletoe, gigantic clouds of it, and judging by supermarket prices worth about £1000.  Strange Druidic echoes, ancient oaks on the hill and giant bunches of mistletoe. The holly we will bring inside.

And I sorted boxes and cleared space and hauled the decorations in from the garage.    A grey day, gloomy and mild, although it is turning colder tonight.  I have read Jostein Gaarder's moving Christmas fable 'The Christmas Mystery' and it seems a Norwegian tradition to call 23rd December 'Little Christmas Eve'.  

Solstice

A day caught between two spells of winter's darkness; the loneliest days, the days most distant from other days. A time defined like no other winter-time by an absence of light; these are the shortest days, eight hours of light between nights sixteen hours long.  

A misty day perhaps uncertain of its brightness, spent on house jobs and bank jobs, last minute groceries.  We drove up to Old Radnor and met the woman who runs the pub with her husband, but had no time for a pint.   The day began to fade with the mist coming down the valley, and what warmth there was left with the last of the light.  A fire wood stop on the way home for tea and yesterday's biscuits;  it was getting dark at 4pm.  But from tomorrow, minute by minute, the days begin to lengthen again.    

And no images at the moment due to a virus threat; how differently words read alone.  

Gathering Winter Fuel

A foraging expedition this morning, the weekend before the shortest day, to gather beech wood for the fire and to find a Christmas tree.  The run of mild days has continued; the sharp frosts and clear skies of a week ago seem very distant.  It seems almost warm at 9 or 10 degrees Celsius.  So the woods were muddy and the ground was heavy.  A shoot on the lower slopes but nobody in the woods; we climbed the stone road past the lower pine woods to the long beech ride across the upper slopes of the hill.  Occasional blue skies and  sunbeams through the trees, making us realise how long it has been since we have had a sunny day and a clear blue sky; even the clear frosty weather seemed grey.  Two good bags of beech branches gleaned; and two large beech branches that, draped in clear glass baubles, will make our Christmas tree and perhaps somewhere to hang the cards.  A cool morning, the wind in the trees, a natural, harmonious and peaceful way to spend a morning.  'Better than shopping,' said a woman we passed on the way down.  

December's Slow Fade

Soft as falling snow December becomes Christmas.  We have started receiving Christmas cards and sent all ours yesterday and today.  This morning I baked the three Christmas cakes and we have already rejuvenated some vintage home-made mincemeat (with Cointreau) and made a fresh batch.    And the Christmas cacti that we inherited with our last house have flowered; spectacular pink flowers like fuchsia heads, sitting on the kitchen windowsill.  I thought they were Easter cacti and have argued this corner for some time; but flowering in Advent more or less decides it. There are some general applications to be done but the working year is over in terms of real paid work; our work as writer and artist never finishes, we are never not working.

The house is slowly filling with the smell of baking fruit cakes.  In a while we are going foraging and hope to find a large branch to hang Christmas cards from and a bag or two of beech branches as firewood.  Exercising our ancient common-law right to glean the woods for firewood.  

December's Moods

A run of cool, wet days that have drained the landscape of colour.  A moment out of the busy day to stare into the woods, and they are universally grey, as if the remaining leaves have gone from greens to browns to greys.  The tree trunks were a pattern of brown-greys softening in the thin light to the same colour as the clouds.

I love this time of year. I don't know if I prefer the wild raw days of wind and sleet or the milder grey days of soft light, misty distances and silhouetted trees.  What gives December its magic is the contrast between the hot mad shops and the empty grey countryside; my familiar image of crowded shops and noisy pubs against the wind through a bare thorn hedge at dusk.  The supermarket this morning was half busy and the staff (in their antlers) were friendly and helpful, but the sheer weight of food for a fortnight made the work hot and difficult.   And yet, the cold wind in the bare hedges on the way home, the neat empty fields, the distant fuzz of woodland; beautiful.  

Fading Light

A wonderfully gloomy day that never seemed properly sunlit. The light in the house was thick and soft, blurred edges and very soft shadows, rooms full of a gentle grey light. Electric light cut them ruthlessly; I read recently that electric light banishes darkness but candlelight illuminates it. The light began to go at 3.30pm, as if it had given up. Milder but a raw edge to the day despite higher temperatures.

A Quiet Day

A car window shot of two distinct trees on the way up the hill - blurred and grainy but I like the wintry mood; stately, indifferent, cold. A sense today of nature happening without us; the season's days against our countdown to Christmas/New Year.

Drove through the shoot on the way up to Wapley Hill this morning; beaters in old army fatigues and wellies hitting sticks together to drive the birds towards the guns, a clatter of birds escaping into the trees. A cold morning on the hill, the mud either cold and wet or still frozen. Beech leaves wet and brown on the ground, but those still on the trees were a beaten pale bronze/coppery colour in the thin sunshine. Beech bark like elephant hide, close up, muscular and rippling as I have noticed before.

And an afternoon making and baking; made some fresh mincemeat with leftover fruit and old suet, and refreshed two jars of vintage mincemeat I think I made two years ago; opened one and the sharp smell of brandy and preserved fruit oozed out into the cold kitchen. Then we made some pastry and the season's first batch of mince pies.

A short walk to see the frozen water in the toll road, now refrozen, the ground icy with a thick sheen of fragile ice, the water/ground/water trapped in hopeless layers. More water out on the Moor, glinting in the last of the light, old flood waters perhaps. A cold time, the grass stayed frozen all day, and the promise of another cold night.

Reflections, trees trapped in blurred ice; out of focus, indistinct, blue.

Moons and Rain

The forecast for tonight has been revised and the temperature will only fall to about minus one instead of the minus four predicted; we can take off another two or three degrees from that so it could have been six below tonight. Walking along the toll road before the light failed the ground has thawed and the track was sopping wet, saturated with thawed frosts and heavy recent rains. The ground felt bloated with water. The Lugg at Presteigne this morning was swollen and running fast, leaves tumbling past very quickly, branches caught against the three arches.

And two nights ago a new word - perigee - the point on the moon's orbit when it is nearest the earth, the opposite of apogee. A larger, fuller moon, a golden colour, a rare event which will happen again in fourteen years or so; but here the clouds were low and for the first time in a week or more we had no moon, instead a night of torrential rain.

Snow and Buried Dragon

Woke this morning to a light powdery fall of snow; opening the window at 3am, the top of the porch rooftiles were dusted with dry snow.   By 10am it was wetter but the air was cold and dank, long-stored air, air from underwater; it felt old, used, stale.  I had to grit the top of the lane, where it joins the B-road in a very steep incline, and the view across the valley was grey with frost and light snow, literally hoary.  

Christmas shopping in Ludlow; mistletoe and fir branches for sale in the market, the soft fall of taken fir trees; braces of pheasants hanging outside the butchers' shops, a Dickensian sight, these narrow bands of birds across the shop fronts, the incredible beauty of their feathers; plum-reds and deep blues, brown and chocolate, breasts mottled like freshly-shaved nutmeg.  I found a moment to say a prayer in the church, St Lawrence's, tall and Perpendicular, a high high roof.  A cold morning, grey and wet, misty trees and ice in the ditches.  

Yesterday we went to an exhibition of tree photographs in Bleddfa, a local arts centre. Excellent photographs of orchards and distances and gnarled trunks by Gareth Rees-Roberts.  I also wanted to take a picture of the church door; narrow and wooden, studded with nails against attack.  The church is one of a number surrounding the Radnor Forest which are dedicated to St Michael, celebrated here for his powers against dragons.  The last dragon in Wales is supposed to lie asleep - imprisoned? - under the bare hills of the Forest, and the ring of medieval churches keeps him caged.  A wash of myth and faith and politics and hope.  

Oak

Oak silhouette, Wapley Hill, December 10th 2008

With the leaves gone, patterns of old trees appear on the hill. The dominant pine plantations are shot through with beech rides - like the long one right across the hill, two and in some cases three trees on either side of an avenue - and small areas of beech and birch. Strange leftover shapes, tree-fields, left over from whatever was here before the Forestry Commission took over. But old single oak trees also appear, shy giants emerging from the deep hedges once the summer is over. One in particular I will walk to, a huge knobbly tree just inside the woods. Another I have photographed many times, at the boundary of the woods and the junction of three paths. Today it was silhouetted against the outside-light of the fields, and surrounded by shade and frozen leaves.

Frozen oak leaves, Wapley Hill, December 10th 2008

Field Sports

Looking towards the Black Mountain across the Arrow valley, December 10th 2008

A mild day and a cold night. A good walk this morning on the hill in cool bright sunshine, excellent views across the shallow valley of the river Arrow towards Canon Pyon and the gap in the hills that leads to Hereford. Brown fields, bare woods, the smoke of distant bonfires. We walked across one of the fields used by the shoot - but not today - and saw the stands of maize/sweetcorn left to protect the birds, blond stalks rattling in the thin breeze. The far woods across the field had the remains of a thorn field boundary, twisted gnarled thorn bushes the dark-cream colour of the fields. And beyond the woods we could hear the thunder of the racehorses being exercised.

Tonight I made a Christmas wreath out of redundant fence wire, junk twine and foraged pine cones - larch, Douglas fir and giant redwood from the Limebrook walk at the weekend. A very satisfying thing to do, the creation of something new, hand-made, free.

Landing Moment

I am fascinated by landings; the moments that happen on them, their endless inactivity. And tonight, switiching lights off and coming downstairs, I caught sight of a window in a house a hundred yards away, a window recently filled by a Christmas tree. Silver and gold lights flashing on and off in rapid succession, another room - or perhaps another landing - that would give me a headache. But then if it is a landing the lights happen in gentle succession and fill the unused room with ambient light, always changing. The window looks out into darkness and the lights seemed tiny, almost brave; in a town they would not.

A neighbour's horse has died; a bonfire this afternoon of straw and rubbish from the stable, thick grey smoke in the bare trees. Our neighbour, gruff and upset, stomping and muttering, managing the fire.

After the Frost

After the cold of the weekend, today was mild and foggy; grey and still.  The light in the house was thicker, softer, less defined.  Into Presteigne tonight and the Christmas lights have started appearing in houses, a glimmer of lights in bushes, trees, falls of tiny golden lights.  The houses on the bend near the bridge have a subtle display in bushes and a tree; none too subtle in the city but without street lights they are pinpricks in the darkness.  A raw night, the streets empty, the coloured lights reflected in street puddles.  

Frostworks

Some images from the car's windows this morning. Like etched glass, thickly engraved with abstract swirls suggestive of Victorian flowers or foliage, office windows, 1960s glass. In the time it has taken me to update the Journal, the light has faded completely from the valley - or rather the light is not quite gone but has no colour in it, so that the landscape is reduced to blacks and greys, whites and the faintest pink.

Photographs and Light

Rosehips touched by frost, the old toll road, December 7th 2008

A very cold day - minus six degrees Celsius at breakfast time. The temperature rose to touch freezing point and then as soon as it started getting dark it dropped to minus three again. Not a breath of wind so in the lane just now - with a very reluctant dog - the branches were silhouetted against the sky, a magical sight. Bootprints from yesterday frozen solid, like footprints on the moon. A soft darkening of the light, the sky a fierce cold blue again with the peaches and apricots of the horizon-light warmed by a cold pink, the sky slowly filling with a cool pink and blue. Fine weather tomorrow, hopefully, and a cold night tonight.

Yesterday I met a man on the neighbouring farm who talked about the hamlet not getting the sun in the winter, this awareness of darkness that we have noticed before. They have the sun for another fortnight than we do, and lose it mid-November. He talked about the sun 'rolling across the top of the hill before it disappears'. Even with the clear mid-morning light, it was still gloomy on the lane today and the extent of the shadow was marked out onto the Moor by frost.

With this awareness of light I have come to realise that photography is important to my work; that I am a writer who uses photography in his work. I would no more go for a walk without a camera than I would without my boots; I am more likely to take camera than notebook. 'Documenting' is an important part of my work, establishing records and trails; in some ways the work is the trail. And this often means photographs. But it meant this morning that I could record the frost here, and especially the patterns of ice on a car - like opaque glass, engraved with leaves and stems.

Winter Landscape Notes - Dusk

Evening light from the house last night, 5th December; the light very different tonight, simultaneously harder and softer, more colourfeul and more harsh. And it should be colder tonight.

Smoke rising vertically and then falling apart softly; the horizon ringed with a peach/apricot light, whites and peaches; the sky overhead a steel blue, a diamond blue; the words for gems and fruit describing cold and distance. Leaves on the grass patterned with frost all day. Bare black branches absolutely motionless against the sky, every detail silhouetted, almost expectant. The cluck-cluck-cluck of pheasants, their racketty, whirring flight; a good day to see pheasants. The last of the gunfire down the valley, the lines of shooters/hunters/gunmen(!) in browns and tweeds walking slowly across the Moor; sometimes the guns are the familiar crump-crump, sometimes a bigger sound, like a brick dropped onto corrugated iron. The peach-light intensifies as the light leaves the valley and the woods turn to a brown/purple fuzz, just the silhouetted branches visible against the sky. The promise of cold.

The Feast of St Nicholas

Oak tree, Byton, just off the Moor; December 6th 2008

Today is the feast-day of St Nicholas, and so should really be the start of my Christmas preparations. I have marked the day by finding some cards to send and thinking about my Christmas cakes. And a good walk to Limebrook Priory, about four miles away near Lingen. A muddy, leg-tearing walk on a fine day, although there is still ice on the ditches. I had to walk through the shoot; toffs with guns and muddy dogs shooting the fields on the Byton side of the valley. The Priory was dissolved in 1539 and there are now just some lumps in the field and two overgrown walls, but it is a peaceful spot and I had walk-snacks sitting by the lime brook, watching the birds and listening to the water.

I am lucky in that wherever I live I soon find favourite spaces for walks, places uniquely 'mine', a way perhaps of marking where I live and how I live. Limebrook is one of my places; so is Wapley Hill; and so is the beech ring marking Offa's Dyke. Places I have discovered and share with everybody and nobody. Points on a mental map, a peculier landscape.

A Strange Sweeping

I have mentioned that this cottage as aligned on the four cardinal points of the compass and so has walls facing north, south, east and west.  But in the winter months the daylight does not penetrate the house at all; it gets no nearer than about 200 yards away.  Previous owners have installed partly-glazed doors to make the most of the midsummer light when the evening sun can reach the hearth-wall in the heart of the house, and the result is a corridor of glass doors.  Today I must be sitting differently, for with recent leaf-loss and hedge trimming I can see headlights sweeping the shadows of the beech branches onto the front of the house.  The cars are probably a mile away as the crow flies.  I have not noticed this before.

Bare Branches, Snow Clouds

A working afternoon. Spending two or three hours in the office at the desk or computer I am aware of the changes in light. This room has a south window and a westerly one, facing the Welsh hills, and the light changes both ways, fading from the one and thickening as the sun sets in the other. I have some medieval Christmas music playing downstairs, filling the darkening house with soft voices.

A sharp wind this afternoon, good enough for me to hope for a drying wind. I took a moment out from hanging the washing to look at the branches of the beech tree, now almost completely bare, and the fuzz of trees beyond the Moor cottages, on the Moor itself; alder, I think they are. Out briefly this morning to Leominster I saw the lying water on the Moor, old floodwaters or risings from the ground; the water lay in snake lines between rushes and reedbeds, and was glinting in the light.

The wind is driving a bank of cloud from the Welsh hills. It is cold enough to snow this afternoon so I will keep an eye on that cloud; a lilac wall topped with a beer's froth of white where the sun is catching it. A wall that is rising quite quickly; we can usually see how the weather is advancing from Wales by the landmarks it obliterates. The cloud is spreading northwards as well.

We had planned to go to the Presteigne Christmas Fair this afternoon. The streets will be closed and stalls, fire-eaters, trees, hot food and Santa are promised. But we cannot go; without the car I am delightfully marooned apart from walking. So I will light the fire and some candles and be there in spirit.

Beechring

Looking northwards along the Dyke from the beech ring

Five minutes out of the day to spend on Offa's Dyke, the earthwork that passes as close to us as the hills about five miles away. Bright sun and soft cloud, a piercing wind. Snow frozen in the ditches, dead grasses, leaves immobile on the ground, almost embedded. The wind was sharp and relentless, roaring in the bare trees.

Fields of giant, smooth lumps, like motionless whales, a slow surge; thin sunlight on ice in tractor ruts. The very wind seemed frozen. Long views into Wales, hills streaked with old snow. Shaved fields and copses, the neatness of commerce and its needs, defining place, sculpting landscape. A military line of old Scots pines marks the Dyke here, patches of gorse - big enough to make miniature gorsewoods - a bedraggled birch; but the place where the road crosses the Dyke is marked by a ring of giant beech trees, muscular and taut, like stationary green marbled flesh. I kept thinking of the word 'guarded' meaning both protected and wary. A splash of ancient thorn bushes, naked of leaves but draped - festooned - with red berries, voluptuous and seductive on this raw midday. Surrounded by neat fields and tame woods, the Dyke crossing was a wild space scoured and protected by the wind, cold and pagan, the essence of untamed winter.

Cold Walking

Three larches, the old bracken field, Wapley Hill, 3rd December 2008

A fine cold day here, bright and sharp. This house is in a frost pocket so although the valley lost its frost as the sun came up over the hill, this whole side of the valley didn't; the temperature didn't rise above -3C all day.

A good walk this morning on Wapley Hill. The northern side of the hill - i.e. the side above the house - seemed to get the worst of recent weather, with powdery snow there this morning and a very heavy frost a day or so ago, with frozen snow/water/frost making 'shadows' behind individual stems a quarter-inch long. The ground hard and the mud frozen solid, but where the sun had penetrated the ground was muddy. A sharp distinction between frozen and muddy, white ground and thawed ground, apart from the stone road which was snowy under the tall trees, icy where it had melted and refrozen, and then almost dry at the bottom of the hill.

Another cold night for us and snow forecast for much of the country, it seems. Decidedly wintry!

Advent

There is a pleasing austerity to this time of year, a bleakness, that I find energising.  I love the cold and relish low temperatures, and will check the outdoor thermometer for lower and lower temperatures.  As I wrote in the Spring Journal, I have no faith in cold as old people have no faith in heat.  I love the thought of the cold wind whistling through bare thorn hedges, the light fading early, the sky darkening.  As we left Presteigne the lamps were being lit; golden rooms making the grey evening darker and more lonely.

This physical austerity is linked to the intellectual austerity of Advent, the willing denial in expectation of riches.  And I feel this the more strongly in contrast with the shopping glitz of Christmas; hot shiny shops in opposition to dusk in grey cold hedges.  

A Snow Day, A Lazy Day

A day of cold winds and heavy, wet snow; fat flakes in with the rain this morning, falling slush, lethargic and disinterested.  A dusting of snow on the higher ground between here and Knighton and I could see snow on the Radnor hills - the sheep-hills of the Radnor Forest - at the end of the valley. 

A bitty day and I didn't get out until dusk at about 4pm; the roadsides pounded mud-slush, caked and stiff, the familiar dark cream colour of the summer dusts.  The Christmas lights have been switched on in Presteigne; elegant strings of old-fashioned coloured lights across the streets and small lights around the shop windows, intensifying the darkness not dispelling it. We looked at scarves, and old books, and condolence cards; went to the library, saw friends briefly in their house, a hullabaloo of children and preparations for tea.  Home the longer way through the dark country lanes, ice on the puddles,broken ice lying in the road, frozen mud.  A cold day in Presteigne, a stiff wind, and we didn't stay out long.  

The First Morning

The last of autumn; larch trees on Wapley Hill, November 29th 2008

A fine sunset last night for the end of November; cold and darkening at 4.30pm, the sky silver blue with slashes of pink. 

The season begins in silence and cold; minus five degrees celsius at 8am this morning in the courtyard. A quiet, motionless morning, not a breath of wind, the landscape all pale silvers and greys and white fields of frost.

On the way to Ludlow the fields were starting to steam, the frost being gently burned off by the sun, and the landscape seemed fluid, shifting, the trees black and still. By the time we drove back the frost had gone, although the air was cold all day.

With the frosting gone the fields' neatness could be seen; swathes of corduroy browns and chocolates, neat hedges, bare trees.