Further Humdrummery

and a little bit of video

Just Being

It’s remarkably difficult, just being. When you have, for the preceding half century, lived in a space inside your head which has, in turn, been fed by a machine which wants you to want more. To do something new. To move somewhere else.

This has been my reality for so long, breaking free is ridiculously hard.

The summer was so dry, and the autumn that followed gave us unusually low rainfall as well, that we have been able to drive on the tracks on the field, well past Christmas. For context, there have been years when that little luxury was gone by October. Last week, however, I pushed my luck, and Rhonda the Honda, an inch too far, and got stuck. Try as I might, I couldn’t extract her from the mud, and although she obliged, traitorously, when Neil came along, she was the very illustration of being in a rut.

Backwards, forwards, every attempt to free her simply dug the rut deeper.

That is what it is like trying to get up each morning, and just be.

Knot Now

Some years ago, in my haphazard list of things I really wanted to do here I said:

Another kit lurking in my sewing box is one for a macrame plant hanger.

I tell a lie, it’s not so much a kit as a giant ball of string and a few plastic rings. I may have lost the instructions.

When ever I feel disgruntled about the square and housing estatey non-cottage-ness of our current abode, I start dreaming up small Bohemian upgrades which might fool me (though not, I suspect, anyone else) into believing that home is indeed where the heart is, and any set of rooms can be the shambolic and indeed bucolic creation of my vision-board dreams.

Macrame plant hangers are always first. ‘I have that kit!’ I tell myself, enthusiastically. ‘If I could figure out how to do that and dangle a spider plant or two in front of the objectionable UPVC patio doors in the room (for there is only one, friends) then all of a sudden, I should feel all Cider with Rosie and my frown would turn upside down.’

I think I may be over-promising on behalf of the string thing, but hey, I’m prepared to give it a go, and it feels like one of the smaller items on the list.

Dear reader, I put this off for a further three years, almost to the day. These wistful longings to do or make something are the first casualties of my never-never land dissatisfaction. Condemned to stay as dreams, when reality is so close.

So the humble pot hanger took up its place of honour in module one, exercise one of my Course in Contentment, entitled ‘Just Blooming Well Do It’, and one evening, without demur, I simply did.

It may not look much, but it took years

Also This Week

Hard to follow, I know, but I have also made 6 x 1.5 lb. jars of marmalade, one of which has already gone to a grateful daughter. I shall get to putting the recipe her and making a printable one for the Resource Files, shortly.

I have revived the sourdough starter, and made on presentable though not perfect loaf, which has cheered me immensely, since I requested a great pile of sourdough equipment for my birthday, and thereafter stopped baking just to spite myself.

We have another named storm, ‘Chandra’, on her way through, and so the mud has truly descended and only a mad person would attempt to drive on the land, which means I have to reverse into our gateway daily, under the close inspection of the hoards of parents waiting for their children to come out of school. Why I am concerned about their judgement, I don’t know, since all around the evidence is stark that not a one of them knows how to park or is in any way acquainted with The Highway Code, but I get hot under the collar every day, nevertheless.

Hedging our Bets

Our landlords, The Crown Estate, have agreed this year to refence the perimeter of our field, and also to plant a great number of hedges and trees. This process began this week with the hedging going in, and despite the downpours, a valiant team of planters showed up for two days and elevated the layout of our humble acres. I can’t wait until fences and gates are in, because it will transform how we do things. It’s part of our reset, our redesign to make the land, the livestock, and the work we do there more appropriate to our advancing years, and busy schedule.

Another part of the plan is to sell our big pedigree sheep and, instead, keep a small mixed flock of fleece sheep. To this end, as I told you last time, we advertised the sheep for sale. No luck so far, although we have had a conversation via messenger with a fellow breeder, who seems to think it is an opportunity to bully us into selling them for less than they are worth. Why do people feel that a keyboard entitles them to be so very, very rude?

I’ve thought much more about the fearsome progress of The Machine, regrouping after the Middle Ages and coming back dressed as The Industrial Revolution, and taking a bit of step back in the early twentieth century, in a period of peace and prosperity, but then rearing its serpent head again with a new identity - The Internet. These thoughts are unfinished, and in any case I am sworn to concentrate on land work and hand crafts for a bit, so I won’t expand on them here.

And Finally

[which, if you are from the UK and Of A Certain Age, will remind you of Trevor MacDonald, and that funny bit which always came at the end of the news]

Around about six months ago, I started to record my progress on YouTube. I declared in the first video that I would be making weekly videos. This outrageously optimistic statement ensured without any doubt that this first installment would sit there on its own for a very long time!

Now I look at it though, it feels as if it was a precursor, a premonition almost of what was to come. I talk about resetting the holding, making it ready for us to simply work peacefully and enjoy as we age. Now here I am constructing the Course in Contentment, and these changes are exactly those we will need to make if we are going to learn to be content.

I’m not sure how I feel about video on Substack, but with my heart in my mouth, I’ve uploaded that video - unedited so I’m afraid with many inaccuracies and referring to itself solely as a YouTube venture - onto this platform, in the hope that some of you might take a look, and let me know if I should pick it back up again, and host it here.

Please be kind! Here it is.