-
Tide
I am swept away on a tide that I can’t quite name, but that is full of work and screens and worry and floundering. I look back to the shore where things glint tantalisingly, things like books and days off and trees and the warm solstice breeze and fat raindrops and calm heartbeats. But this swell pulls me and I can’t escape it, until it spits me out, bedraggled, who knows when.
But the tide has energy. It has future. It has determination and as the waves swell, I swell with them, something building and bursting and I ride that hope and put my all into it. Frothing, tired, exhilarated, full of possibility. Full of the anticipation of the drop. The wave break. The gut wrenching fall. Maybe it will come, maybe my wave will make it to shore. I don’t know.
But as I ride the wave, in the background, behind the relentless grey cloud, solstice approaches. The hint of light at 11pm calling come outside, come and dance in the eternal dusk. The 3am grey lightening, that heady earth smell, the stretch of the trees to the midsummer. The thrum of the building energy, calling to me from the shoreline. I watch, from my wave. I wait on tenterhooks.
-
Heatwave and brains
We are basking in glorious heat finally. 30c today and I am warmed through like a happy lizard. The one time of year where a 160-year-old thick stone walled northern cottage comes into its own, ice cold inside still, no heat penetrating these walls. I cool off in the gloom of the kitchen, feet cold on bare tiles, then out of the door back to the thick heat that wraps itself around me like a blanket of sunny joy.
Great tits and blue tits flit through the garden, branch to branch, endless caterpillar search for nest boxes of hungry hatchlings. Newly fledged babies hide in the fir tree, learning about ‘balance’ and ‘shuffling along branch’ in between caterpillar meals brought by busy parents. Under the birch and willow, shade is dappled and life is good.
This week has been one of those weeks of pushing myself through scary things and attempting to detach myself from my catastrophising, rejection-sensitive brain thoughts . ‘Scary things’ being things that probably aren’t scary for many other people, like making a survey live (I have definitely messed it up, it will ruin all the data, people will hate me, they’ll all fill the survey in with how awful it is), and getting second revisions on a paper (the reviewers think I am awful, I am not good enough to be an academic, why did I ever feel I could do this, everyone else is better than me, I’ll fail my phd and just live under a rock).
It’s interesting looking at the random awfulness my brain comes up with once I’ve disentangled the RSD thoughts from actual thoughts, but it’s not so fun in the before stages where all of it is real and painful. But I get through it, mostly, and this week is one of those.
In between the general academic anxiety, I’ve been marvelling at the sky and really feeling like wow, we’re on a planet! A whole planet, in space! And this is what the sky looks like on that planet! I fully recommend, if you want to feel intrepid and very small and lucky and overwhelmed by awe. Way better than watching the news.
In ‘news’ news, actually, I’ve been getting all of my news updates from BBC Newsround. Instead of war and death and awfulness, there is a baby aardvark, some footballers winning a thing and being happy, and lots and lots about space. Fantastic.
I also read 1984 for the first time ever, and then immediately read Julia afterwards (the retelling from Julia’s point of view). I’m not sure which was the more miserable, I definitely didn’t enjoy either, but in that good kind of way where you hate everything and everyone in the book but still know it’s really great.
This week’s project is trying to make myself like espresso tonics. The important things in life.
-
Almost
It’s almost, almost high spring. The warmth of May taking a dip to freezing for the last week, giving one last battle to stretch our hope of summer just that little longer. We will get there. Next Friday is 24C…. It’s coming…
The land is glorious, psychedelic green, my human eyes just melting in joy with the endless shades. The trees are alive with that spring bustle, birds and breeze and the hum of big fat bumbles. It’s ‘not quite dark’ at 10pm, the run up to solstice, constant expansion, riding the wave crest in a rush to summer. This is the beginning of my favourite time of year. My season. It’s a long time coming here in the UK, and fleeting when it stays, but that building energy, the drum underfoot of life, the sweep of vibrancy across the land – delicious. I want to relish every second of it.
The smells on the wind are of summer, of dark earth saturated by heavy spring rains, of the sweetness of full leaves and hotter days to come. Night falls softly, heavily, air thick and dark, stars bright and the scent of flowers waiting in the dusk. The wave is building, the tumble and rush of spring is at that tipping point. Let’s fall into it joyously. Bare feet, sun-warmed skin, days that never quite set. Time for exploration, adventures, movement, expansion. Soul season. Sumer is icumen in!
-
British Summer Time
Having spent the morning raging against the powers that be for liberating an extra hour from me, I am slightly mollified by the fact that it is actually almost lunch time, a pleasant surprise and a slight bonus of the interference with the way time works that sends me into week-long jetlag every single year. Honestly, I hate when the clocks change, especially when an hour is missing and somehow I’m already behind even more than usual. But the lure of an early lunch is potentially making up for it. Slightly.
Of course, this first day of BST is full of torrential rain, gales, and that UK slate-grey sky. I’m inside, with a hat, and a blanket, and a coffee, and the heater angled so that the blanket makes a little warm bubble in which I’m luxuriating. There is relaxing Sunday music on the speaker that I can’t really hear over the hammering raindrops on the roof. A true early spring Sunday.
Bonuses of the season are starting to abound, though. My collection of acorns found in various pockets throughout the winter and planted into a herd of cottage cheese pots have started to grow. A tiny forest of oak trees, filled with potential. Bee seeds found in the bottom of the seed box and optimistically sprinkled into some mud have actually sprouted. Forced hyacinths, of which only one came out at Yule, have decided that spring is definitely a better option and are resplendent on the garden table, flinging heady scent into the air and glowing with colour. Tiny blossoms frill and flit on the cherry tree. Bees bumble and hum in the willow. And with the shifting of the entirety of time itself, it may even stretch to being slightly light on the horizon come 9pm. All good things.
We went to see ‘Ryan Gosling in space’ this week, and I went in entirely blind, not knowing that the film was also a book and having seen zero trailers. Safe to say we had a great time and now can’t stop saying “amaze amaze amaze” and thumbs-downing everything. We got those seats that recline, had a coffee, and felt very boujie. Would recommend.
Last week was one of those weeks where the outlook calendar is full of different coloured blocks and weaving in between them all is like playing Tetris. But I still managed to get outside and do a pokemon go route each day, which I’ve been trying to do for about 3 months straight at this point. Consistency isn’t my strong point. However, it is now done, and the bonus being one more level up, so am feeling a bit happy about that. Almost 10 years in to this game and I think am just playing out of spite at this point, but got to take the wins! Also the relentless university grind continues, but I managed to add a few thousand words to another few thousand words, have many meetings, and interspersed all that with breakfasts and noodles with friends and a look round a refurbished building, so all in all a good week.
This week’s calendar is deliciously and suspiciously empty. I am intending to fill it with spring things in between the relentless word count grinding. For now though, it is hour-early lunch time and some cold leftover noodles await. Happy spring!
-
The rush
Oh my goodness the sun. Actual warmth. Birdsong and flowers and sky stretching relentless blue. Casting off the winter coat with trepidation. And then the absolute joy of realising that feeling, that it is warm enough to continue ambling on with that coat slung over your arm, even sleeves rolled up with pale forearms drinking in the rays. The dizzy lightheadedness as blood fizzes and pops with something weird, something unexplainable, but then you put your finger on it, it’s happiness, and the pure simple joy of being alive in the spring. Breathing deep lungfuls of air that tastes like possibility. Smelling hints of those longer days, light into the night, deliciously close now. The deep buzz of a bumblebee and you realise how you missed the insect cacophony through the winter, that one joyous moment satisfying a yearning you didn’t even realise. Colour bursts from dormant bulbs and your eyes relax and settle into the season, instead of straining for a hint of anything other than grey. You feel light. The best months are coming.
-
Reawakening
Birdsong sweetly finds its way into my dreams, on a breeze through the window left ajar through the night. Half closed eyes and that hint of spring in my nostrils. Flowers opening. Bees sleepily visiting, waking from long winter hibernations, a lone buzz on a cool sunny morning. Stepping outside, feet bare on freezing flags, but squinting against the sun and feeling hope on the wind.
This spring is pulling me forward, one step in front of the other, quickening from the doldrums of last year. I broke connection with the land and space around me over those months. Retreat, stillness, languishing in some unknown torpor. I stayed in and didn’t walk the land. Rhythms of water and moorland beat unheard. I slowed, silenced, stayed away. I drew into myself, and didn’t know why. But now this spring unfurls me, and I feel like stretching to the sky.
It was observation, watching, waiting for the future to pull me forward. Time weaver, tired from straddling the past and present, the raging ocean, the dark whirlpool of memory. But after the storm there is calm. In the moment we may not know why. But last year I finally trusted the process. My world shrank and helpless, I let it. In that surrender there is healing.
I blink in the bright light, and true, 12 months mostly indoors will do that. I feel a pull to the land once more, walking my old paths, following the old ways back to something that is me but newer. With the rising sun comes a relentless possibility, and small smile to the sky, that first ray of light after a long winter. I feel the awakening in my cells, in my soul. I breathe in and fill my lungs with that fresh, timid air of the first days of the changing season.
The darkness was needed, the months away from the land, the breaking of a connection so it can grow anew. Isolation, time away, space to process and trust and surrender to the turn of the earth. But there was no nourishment, no soul-searching, no rest. I ran myself down, working too hard, losing myself in scrolling, spending agonising hours inside my mind in spirals and twists and turns. It taught me what I didn’t want. And in turn, all the truth remains. The storm retreats. Everything is shiny and new, ready and waiting.
I raise my arms and welcome in the spring.
-
Imbolc, momentum and the clearing of the grey
It’s Imbolc and the 784 days of January are finally over. The flu has finally departed, aided by copious amounts of sleep, paracetamol and wonderful care packages from lovely friends. The endless blanket of grey cloud, damp, miserable and all-pervading has started to shift, with the wan sun peeking through and hope on the horizon.
Sleep, my goodness I have slept. But in winter, this hibernation, I tried not to fight it this year and am averaging a good 10 hours per night. I need it. Healing darkness, slow recovery, and expanding out into the January gloom. And as I slept, the world quietly moves on under my feet. The first sunny day for weeks and we finally ventured outside to the moors, faces turned to sunlight and surprise at bulbs breaking the surface. Whilst we’re still and resting, the world still turns.
The Hellebore is tentatively out, a few small flowers blooming amongst the stiff brown twigs of winter. Goldfinches pick through the mass of teasels. Teeny shoots of green poke up in random flowerpots. I can’t remember what grows in any of them and spring always brings a nice surprise! I can’t wait for that huge, heady, energetic rush of late spring. But for now, I sense that tipping point approaching. It’s still a season for rest. But seeds can be planted, physical or metaphorical. There is movement on the horizon, finally. And soon, summer!
There’s a sense of a shift as we potter about our daily lives. We’ve taken electricals to the local repair café to be fixed, we’ve painted and moved furniture and I’ve even started some university work I’ve been stuck on for 3 months. A bit of momentum building, maybe, after a year adrift. I’m not sure if 2025 was like that for everyone, speeding by so quickly it hardly registered as a full year. I think that pandemic processing is catching up. Things aren’t quite right yet, but there is hope they will be again.
The clouds reveal a glimpse of blue sky above. Spring is in the air!
-
Edges
There is a storm, raging wildly in the south. But here, we are tucked out of the way, sheltered by Pennines and just waiting on the fringes of the swirling cloud of the weather maps. Fat, soft, wet snow is falling quietly, not sticking enough to dull the sound of the main road, but enough to make a solid snowball, scooped from the ground in the dark before the temperature rises.
The breeze is calm, and those flakes heavy around the streetlights. I spot one or two people, who, like me, are framed in yellow window light, wrapped in a blanket, watching, just watching. Snow brings something magical, something primal, if only for a few hours. I watch the flakes fall and fall and fall.
-
Permagrey
Each morning the curtains open to a sky painted in a flat monotone, devoid of colour. Grey saturates the days, saturates my breath, my soul. Deep in December, the UK permagrey drains me slowly, steadily, a drip, drip, drip leaching energy, joy, enthusiasm. Day after day after day. They say we moan about the weather here, and it’s true, and honestly, it’s warranted. By the time January and February roll around, the 4 months of successional grey are taking their toll. A glimpse of blue sky sends people into a frenzy. In December, it’s just the beginning, and I’m already desaturated, melting into the pale miasma, where everything is still and dark and boring, and I am boring too.
I read cosy blogs and magazines about hunkering down. Layers of blankets and flickering candles. Dark at 2pm and mugs of hot chocolate. I read about how we should embrace these winter months, how we should be nesting and cosy and warm and full of winter cheer. I watch videos of how to love winter, how to be aesthetic, how to get out in the daylight and make the most of it. I buy candles and arrange them nicely and light them and appreciate their little glow against the all consuming darkness. I wrap up warm and go for a walk and look upwards and see skies usually hidden by summer leaves and then get a coffee and wrap my hands around it and think, oh, this is okay.
But still my soul yearns for summer. For a glimpse of light past early afternoon. For some warmth in the sun. For green leaves and bare feet. For the hum of insects in the background. The endless grey brings cold, damp tendrils into my bones and sets a chill that lasts to April. It’s a long wait. Winter is stasis, longing, muted, gaping. No matter how much I know that this darkness sows seeds to grow come spring, I am not at home in these months. I’m miserable, cold, glaring wishfully at the thin pale sun that only just manages to creep along the top of the garden fence at the height of the day, before falling off below the horizon once more.
I sleep and sleep and sleep. Limbs heavy and weary. Pulled to a sort of half-hibernation, stocked up on crumble and custard, trying to wait it out. Nothing seems so tempting as falling asleep for the next 4 months, awakening with the first scent of hyacinths and fat buzz of bumbles as they emerge looking for food. I could embrace that life quite easily, I think, as I glare balefully at the grey cloud that stretches to the horizon and beyond. Again.
There is beauty in the bare skeletons of the trees, to be sure. The wonder as Jack Frost paints glittering fractals across car roofs. That crisp, deep, inky blackness of a clear winter sky, stars pricked out in diamonds, eons in our eyesight. But I’m a summer child, born in that heady June rush of energy, the longest days and wide expanses of summertime. I need it like oxygen.
I tried to convince myself to be cosy. I tried to embrace the dark nights, the crisp walks, the candles. But forcing didn’t work. It’s okay to grumble at leaden skies. It’s okay to grump around and shiver and narrow my eyes at the weather forecast (spoiler: it’s going to be grey). It’s ok to dedicate an entire blog post to how much you hate winter. Come solstice, I’ll be raising two fingers to the dark half of the year and waiting impatiently for the lengthening days.
Bring on the summer. Eventually….
-
And we are all waiting
The dusk air is dead still. That silence where the leaves wait in absolute inertia, where the air is so thick you can feel yourself moving through it. Even the usual valley noises sound flat, deadened, muted. I am waiting. We are all waiting. The anticipation is almost oppressive. There is not even a hint of breeze. The branches of birch and willow hang dead weight in the fading light. There is a magick in the air that I can’t name, can’t define, but I can almost taste it.
I move slowly, lightly, tiptoe on the few fallen leaves that hint of autumn hiding just around the corner. I breathe quietly, eyes adjusting as darkness sweeps a blanket over the land. A bat flits silently above and I can almost see the trail it leaves in the air. I breathe the stillness deep into my lungs, the taste of night, damp, woody, dark, filling. The sweetness of summer tinged with the bark-notes of early autumn, tangy over my tongue. And still we wait.
I close the door, softly, softly. Inky blackness closes over the window panes, interspersed with familiar lights twinkling from the opposite valley side. Even inside, there is stillness. The fridge hums, low and constant. Outside, the air wraps itself around the stone walls, around flowers glowing in the darkness, around moths, around feathered night hunters perched in high branches, awaiting any small movement in the grasses below. We still. For what, I am unsure. But under my feet, deep in that place where knowing is absolute yet touch is impossible, I feel the silent arrival of something new. A new season, a fading of high summer, smudging together, passing a pin-point and tipping ever forwards. The dawn brings a new breath.