The New Year never happened. Having caught some nasty, vicious
little virus that is doing the rounds; the sort that sends you scuttling
(rather guiltily) to an out-of-hours doctor at the local hospital because you
are feeling so ill, I didn’t get to celebrate New Year’s Eve or enjoy New Year’s
Day.
But I did live to write another blog. I am on the mend but
this evening cooking supper I suddenly thought how nice it would be to go away
for a week. I’m not yearning for golden beaches, swaying palms and warm seas;
maybe I am becoming a little weird in my old age (ok, weirder), because what I have
in mind is something along the lines of a five-star hotel in the Highlands,
with really good central heating, roaring fires, hot showers and deep luxurious
baths, serving hearty winter food, with huge breakfasts that I don’t have to
cook and a stock of carefully matured malt whiskey. I would like to throw in walks
in the snow on crisp bright days and a trip or two out with a local wildlife
expert to find red deer, red squirrels and maybe hares in their winter coats.
The reality is a little different. I spent this morning
grappling with frozen locks and water pipes. Getting into the duck run through
the electric fence was like breaking and entering. The gate, awash in a mire of
mud after the incessant rain on New Year’s Day had melded to the ground. It required
a hammer accompanied by the right amount of swearing to open their coup. As I
watched them spread out across the frozen soil I silently prayed that Defra
would lift the bird flu protection zone and they could return to their normal
field where the ground was reasonably firm and dry.
As I hauled fresh water and food a treacherous thought rose
to the surface. Why didn’t I just go to the local co-op and buy boxes of clean,
weighed and sorted unmuddied eggs. My feet wouldn’t hurt with the cold or my
back ache and I could be sitting inside in the warm nursing my evil little
virus with a hot cup of coffee.
But then I watched the ducks doing their early morning tour
of the improvised run inside the fruit cage, checking it carefully out while
they waited for me to return with food and had to smile. I smiled again as I
struggled into the polytunnel as the chickens advanced on me, pushing, shouldering
each other, getting under my feet, eager to get at their food. The polytunnel
should be full of winter salad in neat raised beds. It is strewn with straw and
covered in chicken shit (sorry) but in the middle, stands our makeshift two-pallet
coup and in the corner, are a cluster of warm eggs, dun coloured, brown,
speckled, large ones from the older girls, small ones from the birds I bought
in the autumn, that have now come into lay. I found myself talking to them.
Then it was the sheep. Our two breeding ewes have returned
from their holiday having met a handsome ram so I carried an extra apple in my
pocket for them. The sun had climbed into the thin, winter crystal blue of the
sky and sent a shimmer of light across the jewelled grass. Life was good.
This evening I reversed the process; fed, water and shut
the poultry up, switched on the electric fences and turned off the water. As I
stood in the middle of my allotment amongst sprouts standing sentinel in the
fading light, running a mental check list though my brain, I glanced up at the
bank of trees above me and there was the moon, a sliver of pure silver rising
through the bare branches of the ash trees. On its tail sat Venus climbing up
into deep blue of the night sky.
Who needs a five-star hotel with luxurious baths in the
Highlands?
