New Year's Eve

It's New Year's Eve, the last day of the old year.

2012 ended with eating (including Florentines, thanks to Sue's recipe),

drinking and making merry with family and friends. The making merry was full of muddy walks and games.

I have made many changes in 2012. My work now takes up less of my time and has greater variety. I travelled to and lived for a little while in a different beautiful city. I started making art works and writing. I have continued to try to live more in the moment and cherish the moments of serenity, joy and even the pain that brings as it means I am learning to bear even the difficult feelings that are part of life. I have made new friends and seen more of old ones and shared in the things that are important to them. I spent time with my godson. I went on holiday with my precious brother. And, for the first time, we grew an apple and tomatoes.

Yesterday, as we walked through London, I saw this winter blossom growing in a graveyard. It will see us through the grey skies of winter and into the new days of 2013.

Happy Christmas

Here is something beautiful.

A Year Ago

A year ago, I was packing up my classroom resources, clearing my desk and trying not to panic as the farewells to colleagues and pupils came ever closer. I had decided to leave: to travel, to do some further training, to be explorative. And, by December, the leaving was upon me. I knew I would see colleagues again for they were also friends. But pupils, no. This was goodbye.

They blew me away. There was the cake in the shape of a book, made by a class with whom I had been reading Romeo and Juliet, and which featured a brilliantly adapted quotation.

There was my sixth form class, with whom I had shared the pain of First World War poetry on wintry Monday mornings, and who made the most of their knowledge of Othello to say goodbye.

As well as being a teacher, I was also a tutor. I had shown my tutor group round the school when they were still at primary school. Several years on, I had to tell them I was going. I knew it would be difficult and indeed it was, especially seeing the wry smile from the child who didn't live with mum and dad and whose smile revealed that this was what adults do: leave.

Writing this post recalls for me my sadness at leaving the young people I had taught: who had exhausted me, delighted me, made me laugh, made me cajole and made me cheer them on, over and over again. But I knew I needed to go: to blossom and explore. I don't regret it but I can remember the sadness.

Christmas twigs

I seem not to have many words at the moment. I think this might be because I have spent a lot of time with people over the last week - in the classroom; visiting friends who are expecting or who have small children; listening to a Quaker friend talk about her life for a profile I am writing. It feels as if there has been a huge amount of talking. So it was was lovely to quietly arrange some gold and black twigs in a vase and hang paper snowflakes on them.

Frost

Just a picture today:

Moons

This morning as my partner and I left for work in the dark there was the most beautiful sliver of a crescent moon. It was big and bright in the sky. I don't have a photo of it, but I was reminded of two lovely moons in Venice almost a year ago. I saw the crescent moon beneath the crane near the Accademia at the end of my first week there, and the full moon across the Giudecca canal just before I returned to London at the end of the month. Such still, cold and beautiful winter moons.

Glitter

Inspired by this post I decided to have a go at making one myself to cheer that dark hallway. And I'm not sure the results are calm but they're certainly bright:

Glimmer and gleam

On a winter afternoon our hallway, never very bright, is the first part of the flat to darken. But, sometimes, some light finds its way in, falling through the glass above the door, gleaming on the door frames, glimmering on pictures.

And light appears elsewhere too, glinting through the tree at the end of the garden.

These flickers of light are pale and cool. I'm so glad to have seen them.

Apple Cycle

The apple tree arrived in the post just over a year ago, a birthday and Christmas present from my partner. I love blossom - in hedges, in orchards, in city streets - and had been inspired by Fenton House's orchard and fruit and vegetable garden.

Our garden is tiny so I knew it could only be one tree: this espalier Egremont russet.

It had just a few leaves when it arrived in November, but by spring it was green and blossoming.

And then, though I wasn't supposed to let it in its first year, an apple grew. One day, in early November, I came home from work and my partner said to me in mock horror: there's been a disaster and he pointed out of the kitchen window at the tree. No apple! But all was well: it had become a windfall. Its time must have been ripe because it was sweet and crunchy and we were able to celebrate our first apple harvest.

Now the tree is almost bare again, just a few leaves clinging to its branches.

First Sunday of the Month

On the first Sunday of the month, before our Quaker Meeting for Worship, a small group of us gather upstairs for an hour of a guided meditation and sharing called Experiment with Light. We meet in a small room with windows looking out at the wood behind the Meeting House.

It is the second Experiment with Light group I have belonged to and in both groups I have felt such honesty, trust, support and care.

After the meditation has finished we have a few further minutes of quiet before people start to share, if they wish, what arose for them. I always feel so blessed to be able to sit quietly in this beautiful, simple room, with the light falling through the diamond-paned windows onto the white walls and dark bookshelves, and the sight of the trees outside.

A Pause

Yesterday was a flying about kind of day, hurrying from one place to another, waving arms frantically at buses that didn't stop, shoving brownies into the oven and hoping they would cook more quickly than the recipe said. But then I arrived early for a tutorial. I walked towards open space, where the low early-afternoon sun was buttering the sky golden behind the trees. I looked at the frost on the grass and leaves and paused.

Colour, then calm

After a bewilderment of colour at the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at Tate Britain, I gazed at the reflections and glimmers of light on the river

and lapped up the pale roses flowering amongst the fallen leaves in front of the gallery.

Mad Dash

Each Wednesday evening I tutor a GCSE student a short bus ride away. After I have finished tutoring, I catch the bus up the road, hop out at the fish and chip shop, hand over my £1.50, leap out of the shop and onto the next bus, wrapping the chip bag in my scarf and hustling it up against my coat. I urge the bus on as it makes its stately progress; as it arrives at my stop I jump out and start running, head down against the cold, the chip bundle clasped tightly, like a rugby player charging across the pitch. Along the road I go, gasping at the icy air and exertion, while inside my partner stirs the eggs in the measuring jug, warms the butter for the omelettes, steams the spinach leaves. Finally, we unwrap the chips, douse them in vinegar and scatter the salt over them. They have a certain glamour, these chips.

A Reminder

As it gets darker and darker, sometimes we need a reminder of the Italian Riviera in May.

That the skies will be blue again, even on winter days, that the trees will come into leaf and the light will dapple the ground.

Roses and Narcissi

The sharp, sweet scent of the narcissi;

The shabby pink of the roses.
A deep breath at their beauty.

Birds

There are two birds in our flat who look over us. One sits quietly in the bedroom, not unnoticed but very small and still. The other glares garishly by the bathroom mirror.

 

The little bird I found in Cambridge, years ago. Every now and again I pick her up, her cool body held in my palm. The flashy bird comes from London. She makes the calming white of the bathroom glow with her crimson feathers.

I hope the robin returns to the garden this winter. I thought I saw a flash of orange last week.

Walking to Quakers

This morning I felt full of joy as I walked to my Quaker Meeting.
The sky was a bright blue, there was dew still on the grass, the colours of the leaves were glowing in the sunlight.
How wonderful to live in London and yet to be able to walk through fields and woods like these.
How full of riches this city is.
How lucky I am.

Lights

Bustling out of Bond Street:
The crowds, the noise and
fake snow.

The lights on the stores
Across the streets
In the trees.

Music streaming from the shops,
The hurly burly of buyers
flowing and weaving.

Sparkling and glowing.

Ways

Paths, steps, lanes, canals:

"The path, winding like silver, trickles on
...the path that looks
As if it led on to some legendary
Or fancied place where men have wished to go
And stay..."

Edward Thomas, The Path

Resolution

I have resurrected my resolution to relax. After a long and hectic day, I felt like there was only one suitable response:

scones in the bath.

A desire for pink

on a day of new discoveries and friends.

A decision and a dream

In October 2011 I made a decision. I was feeling exhausted, crushed and jaded by my job, which had always been far more than a job in time and energy. So I resigned. And I thought to myself: where do I want to be in January when I don't have to return to work? I knew the answer at once. I wanted to be here:

and to wake up with these views from my window:

and to sip a hasty espresso before studing each morning here:

before taking the afternoon to gaze at the wonder of it all:

and then to return each evening to this:

before finally nodding off to sleep with this haunting my dreams:

And I know how very, very lucky I was that this dream was able to come true. I came back replenished by the beauty and serenity of Venice in January, feeling like I was alive and blossoming again.

I want to say thank you to Alice and the commenters on ...the sight of morning... whose posts and comments I have been reading for a long time now. You make the world a better place.