I have been keeping a daily journal and writing the blog as part of it, so this is my censored journal basically, though you may think: what the hell did she edit out if this is what she left in! Hopefully the tenses are not too confusing as a result of that. Microsoft Word is worried that my language will offend you, so I hope it won’t, but if you need a warning ‘Shit’ is the worst it gets. And if you are reading my blogs, you better get used to shit, because it sometimes feels like that’s all I talk… (About!)
Feel free to just peruse the pretty pictures as this is a long one! And as usual I’ll put the recipe first before all the other stuff.
After threatening my go-to lentil soup again for tea or maybe boiled eggs, tatties, carrots, and kale instead, Charlie suggested he make an egg, tattie, and cheese flan, and I agreed if we could add apples. My plan to get out of cooking worked! But then I felt guilty and thought I better help. I chopped and fried garlic, an onion, and five apples (could have done with more) while he made a shortcrust pastry base. He put this apple mix on the base once it was blind baked, and some herbs someone had brought for Christmas: basil, rosemary, and sage. Then he layered sliced boiled eggs, only two, probably should have been more, but the hens are only laying the occasional egg, and we are trying to use food sparingly. Then he added lots of sliced, boiled tatties (probably too many, as I’d cooked about six), and topped it with cheese and baked it. We had it with boiled carrots and kale. All ingredients except the pastry and cheese were grown here. I meant to cook lentils to have on the side but forgot, and I found the flan a little dry. We agreed that a sauce of some kind on the side would have improved it, but it was very tasty.
Had the second half of the pie the next night, with frozen peas (since Charlie made it into town for supplies) and I cooked lentils in the tattie stock from the night before, plus the left-over carrots and kale in their stock. We also had some stale bread, which Charlie fried into croutons on the side and Dad’s beetroot chutney. This meal alone, out of interest, had at least 20 different plants in it, which is the recommended weekly amount for a healthy gut (microbiome).
We have both had a mild cold, brought by Gwyn over Christmas, at the start of the year, but it disappeared again very quickly. There is so much snow, I have been worried about so much falling in front of the door at night so that it won’t open (both doors open out). The snow is falling on the solar panels as fast as it can be cleared off. Dad slipped on the roof and put his foot through the sky light on his annexe roof while clearing them.
I used the emergency separation compost toilet I set up in the spare room over Christmas since the room’s not being used now. It’s the one I made at art school and works a treat. I am using recycled paper cat litter, which we had, because we are out of dry soil and Charlie’s using the wood ash in the outside toilet, but there is barely enough. I get really miserable and constipated at the thought of gearing up with wellies and waterproofs first thing in the morning and wading through snow to get to the outside toilet. It’s about 15 meters away, and it’s great in the milder weather, but not just now. Charlie’s obviously tougher than me (and quicker)!
Have spent a lot of time reading The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister (from Goodie for Christmas) today and yesterday and posting beautiful snowy pictures online and responding to the Happy New Year comments. Have also worked a little on my two new songs in FACGCE tuning. All sorts of ideas for new blogs to write but feel I may just be procrastinating from the working on my novel that I’ve told myself I should get back to now that Christmas is over.
One idea was to write a blog about The Bog Wife, part response, part review, part an idea for a novel I could write which would be more the kind of story I want this one to be. Especially since the whole book has vaguely uncomfortable echoes of my family (if someone was to do a mean spoof of us) but is written in a rather cold, dead way I feel, which doesn’t so much evoke the intended gothic atmosphere for me, but just lacks a bit in some areas, so far at least. Though I will keep reading… ( I have read on and maybe more on this next time).
We haven’t seen snow like this since before the fire I don’t think, Since 2010 when lots of farm building roofs broke with the weight (except during covid there was a lot one winter I think…) I am worried about some of our flatter roofs. The steep ones will be fine. The watershed roof is unfinished, for example. Goodies static caravan is not designed to take such weight surely. I spent about an hour up a ladder using Dads extended snow shovel for clearing snow from solar panels to break up and push the snow off the middle part of the roof. Was worried about breaking his shovel. Went back to it later with a rake, which worked well, but I still only managed about a quarter.
After managing to get back to my novel, I decided that it was pointless. That it was adding nothing to the world. It was a soap opera and didn’t even have a decent storyline. I feel I can’t paint just now because I need to stay in writing mode for the course starting up again, and I have little enough time (plus I’m majorly snowed out of my studio anyway). I started reading the paper manuscript of one of Dads unpublished adult novels titled ‘The Stickman’ (written long before Julia Donaldsons picture book of the same title). I wanted to see how he’d incorporated things from his life into a fictional story (which is what I’m trying to do). I read some of the notes and the first few chapters, and it’s so rich, complex, and well written that again, I feel it’s not worth me carrying on with mine. When I read it before, years ago, I remember possibly cringing a little at the details I recognised. Now I am aware of what he’s changed for the story and what the changed bits are based on, but it’s not making me cringe. It makes me feel pretty sad that the writing and experiences are those of a young man in his thirties and that he will never live or experience any of that again, which I guess could be said of any of us at any given moment. Also, sad to read because they are painful experiences which I remember well. Worrying at the fragility of loose paper sheets in a plastic box stored in a mouldy caravan with too much weight of snow on the roof. Though, this and other manuscripts survived the fire only because they had been in another old caravan, under a turf roof, which the fire didn’t reach. There are digital versions of some of them, I can’t remember if there is of this one. This is why Ben and I are trying to turn as many of these as possible into books as Stickman Press (and this is the book that inspired the publishing name).
I wish I had a project I was excited about to get me through these snow days. The snow and the low temperatures are forecasted to go on for at least two weeks. Which is a tough thought. I keep thinking about writing a story (short, probably because they are so much easier) about an apocalyptic snow world. But that is pretty much Doris Lessing’s ‘The Making of the Representative for Planet Eight’, though of course if I tried hard enough, I might be able to come up with a completely different idea. That book had a profound effect on me, and I always think of it during harsh winters. (Having added the bit about Stickman Press above, I’ve just remembered I have some illustrations to do for our next project which I could be getting on with.)
The roads are being ploughed everyday but have several centimetres of compacted snow which is really slippy, and I thought looked to remain that way for a long time as temperatures are not set to rise in the next few weeks. Was feeling flat and shut down. Oppressed maybe by the weight of snow all around us. Days blurring into each other. Twelfth night came and went. We toasted Christmas out with some wine. The Christmas decorations are down now which always leaves the house feeling bare. Charlie has all his painting stuff in the living room again. He works down there while listening to an audio book. I read or write this upstairs, there is nowhere to sit downstairs because of the cats anyway.
I am worried I am losing my creative drive. Or is it just winter? Now is the time of the Cailleach. We are oppressed by her icy breath. Maybe I should write a story about her? That would require some research. My namesake Bride (pronounced Breej in Scottish gaelic), goddess of fertility/creativity only begins to stir again towards the end of January, beginning of February. This is naturally a fallow time. Spent ages looking for the book I bought last year, about Bride, but failed to find it, so instead I have been reading about the Cailleach online to see if this inspires a story…hasn’t so far. The Cailleach can be viewed as the shadow side of Bride. This feels particularly relevant to me this year as I reach half a century this month and my birthday is just before Imbolc when Bride is said to stir, but is also still in the realms of the Cailleach. My crone time is coming…
The following paragraph is just for my own reference – I did think again about short stories. I have a few I could add to, to make a small book of short stories, maybe. The Mother Cocoon, Flenser, What Colour are the Birch Leaves in Autumn, The Mountain. When thinking about a winter story, I looked up a story I started, with a working title of the Peapod Bus, which had gone nowhere, just realised that’s the second story I’ve written with a weird bus in it, the other is Flenser. Anyway, it had frozen snow/ice scenery in it. It could be finished, and they could be interspersed with the poetry, which works alongside these sorts of stories. I should write a synopsis for it and see if that inspires me to do it. It could contain Deadwood, Dying Back, Warts, Transitions, Corporeal Spirits, Animal Glee, A Visitation etc…
The cats (who are predominantly outdoor cats) are barely going out. Every comfy seat is permanently occupied by a cat. Mobile, our oldest cat, part wildcat, age 18, has started shitting under a small table in the carpeted section of the room occasionally and sometimes in the litter tray. Today, just to mix it up, she peed under the table and then shat in the litter tray after she had just been put outside for this purpose. She then rolled around, delighted with herself on the couch by the fire.
Psychological warfare Goodie calls it. Behaviour like her late mother Phaedra before her, but to be honest, it’s probably just dementia. I keep a newspaper under the little table because it’s becoming so regular. The cat shit never gets put in the bin. By the way, I find the thought of doing that very disgusting. Anything compostable goes on the land, though I dont put it in the kitchen compost but way over under the trees, buried if possible (I do understand this is not really possible in the city though). Charlie found a cat shit on the flat porch roof under a few days’ worth of snow when he was clearing the solar panels and shifting some of the weight of snow. I stood in one buried under snow on the path close by. Actually, I think that was a dog shit…(like you care which it was!) The paths through the snow are littered with them. I clear some every day. The cats seem to run outside for only a few seconds to shit as close to the house as they can (as in sometimes on it!), then run back in, yowling to get back by the fire. I’m letting them sleep inside overnight too, all four of them, sometimes alternating Sox and Mobile so they don’t kill each other, though they are all so desperate for warmth they are managing to be fairly peaceable.
There is a suspicious smell of shit coming from under the house in the porch, too. From the gap the feral ginger kitten comes through. Have I mentioned him? He seems to live here now. We have been feeding him since before Christmas because he is so small. He is clearly unhandled and too scared to get near enough to get a hold of. But he comes for food twice a day, and I’ve left fluffy beds around the porch for him, though I never see him in them.
The porch stinks of pee worse than ever, as they all up the campaign to mark their territory because of the newcomer possibly (this was happening before the snow). Dad also has a newish kitten next door because he thinks the others are all too geriatric to keep the rodent population down. Certainly, when you look around our living room, it looks like an old cats home. They are all between 16 and 18. Then there’s John Barleycorn, another stray of indeterminate age who came to live here a couple of years ago and was an outside cat until Dad or Robin took him in, I’m not sure who he lives with exactly, you can’t pin him down. I’ve never actually caught him spraying in the porch, though he’s always in there, but Robins caught him at it in his house.
They have all been neutered too, but it makes no difference. The girls, particularly Sox, are the worst for spraying. The cat shit and piss are more oppressive than the snow. Can’t wait to gut that porch come the spring and scrub it. I’m going to have to put something horrible and waterproof over the wooden floor because it’s beginning to rot. It all needs reorganised so the tools and overalls we keep out there are all up above cat spraying level.
Collecting carrots and tatties from their winter store every other day. Tried to find the kale in the garden. Dug the snow away to find one plant all eaten. Pheasants, I assume, before the snow completely covered it. It was fenced off, but the snow has flattened the fence. So I dug out the ragged jack kale in the boxes closer to the house instead and got a few small leaves.
Charlie and Dad dug Dad’s car out at the top of the road, ours is more buried, as the first part of an attempt to get into town. I helped them dig a bit more to get it onto the road, just to see if they could. Then, they re-parked it for another day.
Emptying the kitchen compost and my night-time pee pot seems a bigger job than usual. I have avoided going up the garden to the compost bins, which are completely buried in snow. I waded up there, the snow coming up beyond my knees, but well kitted up in ski trousers over wellies. I managed to avoid a cat shit buried in the snow this time.
I’m torn between getting off on the toughness of the situation and wanting to portray it to the world in the most dramatic terms, (check us out, we are such hardy, brave, intrepid off-griders) and actually enjoying some aspects of it. When life is reduced to eating, feeding beasts, pissing, shitting and clearing out the said piss and shit, keeping warm and sleeping, etc, there is a certain peaceful, satisfying simplicity about it. We are spending next to no money right now, which is pleasing too. I would never say I am bored exactly, I’m reading a lot, playing a little guitar, I am writing a little, though only this sort of thing, and watching films with Charlie in the evening. And taking a lot of snow pictures, incessantly posting them online, and then answering comments in response to them. In this way, days pass lightning fast. The daylight part especially.
Charlie is also creatively stuck and hasn’t managed to think of a new subject to paint, though only for the last four days. I suggested we do a combined painting, the idea we got excited about last year. We only did one before shelving the idea for a while. He wasn’t particularly into it. Said it didn’t fit his vibe. I was really only suggesting it out of procrastination because when writing gets hard, I’ll do anything to avoid it, just like painting. Last night, I picked up his left-handed classical guitar, which I had recently got off the wall and dusted down. It hadn’t been touched since it went up there nearly 9 years ago, when I got it to replace the one he lost in the fire. But he didn’t like it and hasn’t touched it since. I tuned it to the same open tuning I’ve been playing about with on mine and tempted him into picking it up to show me something I was struggling with. I said I really needed a humble but skilled guitarist who had no great ambitions or desire to write or sing songs of their own to play for me. A guitarist, in other words, just like him. He laughed and agreed we’d had a great thing going before the fire, but he feels he has lost too much skill, which he will never get back. I disagree, but he can’t be forced. We had a little jam, and he immediately started arranging the bones of the song I’d begun to write (the second one in this tuning) and adding lovely little arpeggios to it. We said we’d maybe try that again, but the next day, it didn’t happen. I bought him an electric bass for his birthday in May last year aswell (which he also used to play, because he’d said he’d been composing bass lines in his head to my tunes), but that’s not worked either. It’s a terrible waste of talent, I feel. Another casualty of the fire, but there’s time yet…
There was a little thawing yesterday since I started writing this several days before, and the boys made it to town for supplies. There was talk of trying to get Robin home today, who’s been snowed in down at the coast since Hogmany, but the roads are slippier today from last nights freeze. It has remained frozen all day.
So, in the early evening the night before last, the wood store roof collapsed under the weight of snow. It was large and only slightly sloping. It had a lot of building wood and firewood inside, which it landed on. It’s not a shed Charlie and I use but Dad said he and Robin had been aware that the upright supports had been looking dogey for a while, and it’s a job that should have been done before winter. But as usual, there are always too many jobs to do. Dad had been in there 5 mins beforehand. He reckoned it wouldn’t have killed him, but might have given him quite a knock on the head! Great, that made me feel better. Made for a little more background anxiety in the evening than the snow was already causing.
Decided to clear lots of roofs yesterday and today, but I ran out of energy for Goodie’s caravan roof after Charlie and I had unearthed the last of our firewood from under a snow heaped tarp and carried it inside and then cleared snow off our porch roof, where even the heavy-duty galvanised steel guttering was bending out of shape with the weight of snow and ice in it.
We replaced the plastic kind a few winters ago because the ice snapped it, and some of the plastic brackets on dads snapped last year, Ben replaced them, and they’ve broken again this year. Dads talking about Scandinavian style guttering.
It snowed heavily again last night and froze overnight. The effect of the new snow frozen to the trees is gorgeous, and it stayed frozen all day despite the sunshine. Took so many more photos. Almost don’t mind that there is more snow and that its much colder when it looks as beautiful as this, plus frozen shit is easier to clear up! Cleared more snow off various roofs and enjoyed the pink and golden light on the crystalline trees and the blue blue sky. It’s almost a joke how pretty it all is.
Rachel Bride Ashton 