Where to Start....

Dear Nigel,

March 2018:
Sometimes life just comes, grabbing you by the scruff of the neck, leaving you dangling helplessly in the air, your feet still moving but the ground beneath them somehow missing. Sometimes life is simply like that and it is alright to just hibernate for a while and sit out the winter. But time always turns again. Rhubarb and snowdrops thrust their heads above ground and you are ripped from slumber and stand there naked and shivering in the late Winter sun, wondering where on earth to start again.

The bright sun here is melting the recent arctic weather; deeper here, I suppose, than most. Last Saturday a friend (another Nigel) dug me out of a deep snow drift with his tractor, only yards from the cottage. Like most folk around here we were prepared for a bad winter, with a well-stocked freezer and plenty of logs in the woodshed; and I was just thankful that we were all home and together while the schools closed and the farmers waited for a break in the weather to start clearing the roads. Nigel took time out from carrying bales of hay to his cows to dig us out and I am very grateful to him for his kindness.

I start by making some soup. It is always my fallback mechanism; my comfort food of choice, my invitation to the dance. I make a 'Thai Coconut, Sweet Potato and Lemongrass Soup' to remind me of my wayward daughter, Hannah, who is "living the dream", as they say, and travelling around Thailand at present. The soup is dense and thick, something to wallow in and provide that 'readybrek' glow we once knew as small children, when the cold never seemed to touch us and coats were something you threw discarded in a heap as soon as an adult was out of sight.

Thai Coconut, Sweet Potato and Lemongrass Soup

Ingredients:
2 onions
3 cloves of garlic
2 carrots
2 red chillies
1" piece of root ginger
1kg sweet potatoes
3tblsp olive oil
3 stalks of lemongrass
2tsp salt
1/2tsp black pepper
2 limes (juiced)
1.5 litres vegetable stock
1 x 400ml tin of coconut milk

Method:
Heat the oil in a large soup pan.
Chop the onions and carrots and add. Cover and cook gently for 10 mins, stirring occasionally.
Bruise the lemongrass with the back of a knife.
Add to the pan with the garlic (chopped), ginger (grated) and chillies (chopped).
Cook for 5 mins.
Add the sweet potatoes (peeled and chopped into 2cm cubes).
Stir well. Add the salt and pepper and lime juice.
Add the stock and coconut milk and turn up the heat.
Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 mins.
Remove the lemongrass stalks and blend until smooth.

I take food round to Nigel's to thank him for digging me out and his wife, Melanie, invites me in for tea. She shows me photos on her laptop of the new bells which have been recast or replaced and hung in the steeple of the village church. A new floor had to be made and there are engravings on the bells and on the cradles they sit in marking local bequeaths. The heritage lottery came up trumps although the giant thermometer marking the progress of funds says there is still further to go. I smile each time we drive past it in the churchyard because someone with a wicked sense of humour has drawn the thermometer, with its two bells, to look a little obscene. It would appeal to the sense of humour of some of the old farmers around here, I think.

So the church is looking for bell ringers and soon there will be a peel of six echoing down the Manifold Valley once more. I wonder when that was last heard. There are many older folk here who have lived here all their lives who would surely remember.

Apparently, we are in demand now for outings of visiting bell ringing groups. They go on pub crawls, of a type, filling out their eye spy books and ticking off all the churches rung at, one by one. I had no idea that campanology was such a competitive sport.

April 2018:
Sunshine comes in fits and bursts between the cold spells, the winds and the mist on the moor. It is time to cut the grass for the first time, and look at the poor old Buddleia bush that didn't survive the heavy snows. Every year there are a few casualties to the winter months, a few replacements and holes to fill.
As in life.

My travel-hungry daughter is set to come home in a couple of weeks, if only for a while. It is over a year and a half since I waved her off to China and I wonder how her travels will have changed her. One thing is certain, she has learnt how to eat. After all these years of being a picky eater and living on pasta and pizza she has had no choice. I remember her ringing to tell me there was no bread to be had in China. But, once she had got over the initial shock, she adapted and thrived.

Suddenly, all my chicks are coming home at once. Chris and Bea, who have been living in Frankfurt for several years, have decided to return home to be near family as they bring their firstborn into the world next month. Moving day looks set to be a family affair with all hands on deck - like an episode of 'The Waltons'. It will be wonderful to have them living nearby and to watch my first Grandchild grow: the next generation entering the world to replace the last.

Minds don't really age unless we want them to. Children help us look at the world with new eyes and regard the familiar as a puzzle to solve. They see things that we have become blind to. Colours intensify. A child sees each and every thing with inquisitiveness - a reaction we can no longer find. How wonderful to be allowed to open the door and enter the secret garden once more where all is discovery and things are not lost, only sleeping. Only a child can bring those things to life. Only a child can see the magic that was never lost, only hidden beneath the brambles and the mossy undergrowth. I am looking forward to being Super Granny - curlers and wrinkly stockings aside, this Granny intends to be getting down and dirty in the sandpit at every opportunity.

Love Martha x