Better than Snow

Better than snow.

I was due a snow day. 

I had planned it very carefully. 

Tuesday night snow was forecast. 

There should have been several centimeters, all nicely frozen and turning the whole world into an ice rink. 

Wednesday was my day for teaching in a school which is dependent on buses and cars to transport its pupils in, and hence vulnerable to bad weather. 

Not only that, but I am one session ahead there, so if snow had closed the school, I would not even have had to catch up on work.

Yes sireee, Wednesday morning, I was planning to be returning to my warm bed with a mug of steaming coffee.

Imagine my desolation when, in my town, snow failed.  I looked out of my window and found myself hating the colour green.

 And not only did I have to go to school, but to add insult to injury, my exercise class too!

This Thursday, I am at home, so I didn’t care about the weather forecast.

Except when I looked out, there was a magical hoar frost, outlining every leaf and twig with white crystals.

I pulled on my boots and went for a walk. 

The zing of cold air and the gleaming transformation of the frosted countryside lifted my spirits.

By the pond, I spotted bullfinches and a rare water rail.

I could even get over missing my snow day.  Almost.

Winter’s Tales

I have this Winter fantasy of hibernation.  To sleep with the depth and twelve-hour commitment of a teenager in a soft, warm bed, lulled by the pattering of sleet on the window pane.

I do believe that once as a school girl, I spent an entire half term of relentless rain reading in bed. If only I could have known at the time what a rare and unparalleled privilege that was.

Ever since then there has always been Something To Do.

And my powers of slumber have also weakened. Given an eight-hour sleep opportunity I find myself only half submerged in shallow dreams.

So if I can’t doze the long winter nights away, I shall have to while them away with stories, as was once the tradition before TV.  Already this winter, I have read so many, including, inappropriately, The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson.

And this weekend, I shall take it a step further.  Together with my writers’ group, BeauSandVer Writers, we are gathering at nightfall and reading aloud eight tales in an hour at our wonderful local Oxfam Bookshop.  

Organising this event has been enough to wake even me up!

Please come along if you’re in the St Albans area.

Needlework for Intellectual Women

Newnham Iris Cafe

Last week, I was privileged to accompany my old friend Annabel O Docherty as she delivered her replica suffragist banner to Newnham College.  A welcoming committee of Henrietta, Lucilla, Laura and Harriet were there to receive it.

The original banner, once carried by our fore-mothers in suffragist marches a hundred years ago is now fragile and hangs in a hushed and climate-controlled case in the foyer of Newnham. Since it can no longer come out to play, Newnham commissioned a replica. 

However, it was women from BOTH the original Cambridge Women’s Colleges who stitched and carried the banner.  Like me, Annabel is an alumna of Girton College where the original banner is much missed and she had already used her considerable skills as a theatrical-costume-maker to create a stunning replica for them too (click through for story).

The approach that Annabel used in producing the replica banners demonstrates the benefits that women now gain from a Cambridge education, thanks to the pioneering efforts of those early students who fought not only for the vote, but also for degrees for women. 

Annabel had the research skills to re-discover lost stencilling methods, to identify, source and dye exactly the right fabrics and to piece together the technique for replicating the huge, ornate tassels which helped the suffragists to hold the banner steady on a windy day.

And in case you are wondering, her stitches were perhaps even more precise than those of a hundred years ago.

Girton Library

Newnham website: https://www.newn.cam.ac.uk/newnham-news/suffragists-banner-flies-again/?fbclid=IwAR1wOBg4l4Q5pz4Fl_O2e2W0AXIgd-GrE3QSfQKaRbC5H79i0_0k8HH_ZQQ

Girton website: https://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/news/1908-cambridge-alumnae-suffrage-banner-on-display-at-girton-college/?fbclid=IwAR2ViF7odlDCGl6r7I93LPXp211zD9FDB0TXyg0wV7S3hLJRAwcOT8UQ-AY

BBC News Cambridge Online: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-46862175?fbclid=IwAR0vSHbaPxvwJE-0R82f8rCertP0oMCwZghabddoxicOzUiFPOhebsnKtxg

BBC Radio Cambridgeshire (my bit is at the 1:40 mark, so scroll along the play bar) : https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06w10t7?fbclid=IwAR3gitxas481ydFEoaui7dg_qoRAnz-rH361UcoVrp7dk2KT23EfDBYryJ4 

Life after Christmas

I am now more than a week into 2019 and only finally today admitting that Christmas is over.

It is understandable – Christmas paraphernalia is lingering:

Drying in the porch, there are still the baubles we hung on the tree outside.

The last slab of Christmas cake is still crouching in the larder with an air of permanence.

So why is it today that Christmas is over?

It is because until yesterday, there was still one child at home, Pascoe.

And I realise too that I am timing the start of Christmas from Wednesday 19^th December when Pascoe arrived just in time for carols at the Swains.  Carenza and Perran followed soon after.

For me then, Christmas is defined by family – a chance to recreate both that first Holy Family, and also our own family, us and our three children.

We went for country walks, played charades, cooked together and even did a jigsaw. We watched telly in a row on the sofa. We drove in the overcrowded car to visit Grandma in Northumberland.

But now be we will be back to Skyping Pascoe in Edinburgh and the odd snatched meal with the twins in London.  And unlike the nativity scene that I have packed away in its box, our family will keep changing.

It may well be that, as partners and other families become interlinked with ours, we can no longer rely on Christmas for our annual family reunion.

But I’m thankful for the time we have just had. And grateful that I have children who, just by being there, were able to make it feel like Christmas, even when it wasn’t any more.