#One Week - Autumn '13 - Noted

Leaves, that's what I've really noted this autumn. My focus shifted south, down there, towards the ground. Walking to preschool, I avoid the clutter, the mulch and decay, the foul undisclosed. The garden is littered by a tide of yellow and broken twigs, a landfill of fungi.

What a mess. What a complete anarchic mess. Autumn is conkers bonkers.

And I still haven't bought a rake...

I noted the air one exceedingly blustery day, a gap in the garden fence, a missing tooth, a large branch collapsed on the road outside. Quite dramatic, the most exciting theatre before we'd woken up. The wind, caught and howling in the chimney.

I've noted Little A's ever growing love of language. 'B' for book and boy and boat. Curly 'C' for cat. Kicking 'K' for kite. I bought a Pocket Oxford Dictionary. She was fascinated by it's size, page after condensed page of nouns and verbs and adjectives... It all began with, 'can I borrow it,' to, 'can I have it?' Then, 'you can buy yourself a new one mummy!' Now she takes the tattered dictionary to bed with her, shifts a teddy out of the way, opens and places it besides her plumped pillow. Words to send her to sleep, for dreaming... I have given up sneaking in, snatching it for back-up with my bedtime read, I am going to have to buy myself a new copy.

I've noted how incredibly industrious I've been as the days shortened and the dew on the grass thickened and frosted. I've attempted NaNoWriMo over November, trying to make head way into the final third of my novel. It's going okay, although I've had a few inert days, juggling words while I organise Christmas (my mother and brother coming to stay), preparing for a holiday, and planning Little A's fourth birthday party - it isn't until the end of January but in these parts, halls for hire tend to book very quickly. The theme is lovely, whites and creams and blues. A winter wonderland party.

...and Christmas, I've never planned it this early before, my hosting cherry is on the line. Most of the presents and decorations are procured. I've even placed the order for the meat, a large lump of strip loin beef, Younger Dad's been itching to cook one this Christmas, the seal of approval from his in-laws. I'm secretly glad we're not having turkey, it tastes of, well, not very much at all...cardboard?

And I've noted that it's my birthday next week. I'm going to be forty three. 4.3. I've really enjoyed 42, as I said last year, it tasted very good, the richness of a chocolate fondant pudding. And what am I doing to celebrate? Well I mentioned it earlier, we are going on a week of winter sun to Lanzarote. From bleak weather to black beaches. This is my first holiday abroad since my honey moon, and Little A's very first adventure on an aeroplane.

I haven't decided if the laptop is staying at home yet. If I do bring it, it will be for the novel; I've harboured romantic notions of tapping away against a backdrop of volcanic wasteland.

All social media is barred.


This is the third and final day of the seasonal linky One Week. I wanted to say a big, big thank you to all those lovely bloggers who joined in, and those who commented, and tweeted, in support of this project.

One Week will return in winter, dates TBC. So get your cameras at the ready and imaginative hats on! For more details about One Week, take a gander here. You can join in for one, two ... or the full three days...

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#One Week - Autumn '13 - Hands

My hands; they are ageing. 

Poor, dear hands, never much cared for, left to mercy of wind and rain. What little respect given, when they have opened the world to me. The pleasure of touch. Brushed cotton, silk, sand through fingers. The sharp edges of danger. Sensation as warning. Hot and cold. Skin. Little A's perfect skin. Young and velveteen. 

My hands spun records, alert and nimble. Have turned page after page. Scribed imagination in words. Caressed my baby's face.

My hands create and love and comfort.

Without my hands I would have no...  

What have I given them in return? Nothing. Not a jot for their manual servitude. Mother said, 'moisturise your hands everyday.' I was twenty four. They were plump, ripe, so I didn't bother with creams. Not even in my thirties. Now I have a tube in the bathroom, a tube on the chest of drawers. I think the tube in my handbag is past expiry.

The creams, they smell of July over grown. Too flowery. Too condensed. I like neutral, plain. Honest vanilla for me. No wafts of jasmine please. Or lily.

Looking at them, they have lost youth's sheen. Dry mud flats. The pitted surface of fruit. Veins bumping under skin like roots breaking free. Wrinkles. Fine lines etched in wood, all markers of minutes and years. Knuckles. Flattened stumps, pummelled by stone and earth.

When Little A was birthed, and my body cancelled out, numb, it was my hands that touched the moment; retained the ability to impress, be impressed upon. My baby, my child, my girl. Her fingers on breast, the first object of love, finding existence through touch, through her hands.

Leopard spots. Gravy taints of decline. Junk mail landing on the doormat. Will I get them? When will they happen? Long, long ago, I asked a baby sitter what those things were on her hands. Leopard spots she said. Leopard spots.  

My Grandmother's hands, warm and soft. Before the end, unusable, frozen, curled like talons; raking away memory, making room for sempiternity. Those hands once made food, and party dresses, and touched with such tenderness...

...Hands, I would like to shake yours.


This is the second day of the seasonal linky One Week. From Monday till Wednesday, I'll be posting a photograph(s) and a few words that diarises and distills my experience of autumn '13. Take a peep at the details here. You can join in for one, two ... or the full three days. And don't forget to add #oneweek on Twitter, and comment on each others posts...

Badge Code ...

<a href="http://older-mum.blogspot.co.uk/p/one-week.html" title="One Week"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8436/7807711152_5f912c7903_m.jpg" width="225" height="169" alt="one week" /></a>

#One Week - Autumn '13 - Champagne

A walk over the ploughed flats of Norfolk. Brown and grey. 

Cracked clods of earth underfoot, thick and heavy from harvest. 

The dog bounds off the leash, after sticks, after birds.

And here we all are, to bid farewell.

A goodbye in the wind.

Granny says, 'she said the air was like champagne up here.'

I adore that description. Champagne.

Bubbles through the yellow leaves. Fizz through the sloes.

And onwards, a thoughtful walk, on dirt track, 

under canopied boughs, and mossy floor.

Here we are, journeys end, her resting place. Only us.

A pond at low ebb, ferns and reeds bent over.

One bench.

She loved to walk her dogs here. In the champagne.

I liked her. A lot.

Straight and sturdy (if you discount the broken hip).

Honest to the bone.

A fierce wit.

Out comes the jar and spoon. Sacred dust.

Like course granules. Chalk white.

Powder in the grass. Particles of a life well lived.

Ashes and atoms.

In the air.

Away and beyond.

Little A says, 'Bye bye Great Granny.'

Little A says, 'Great Granny has turned into a star.'

Life and death in one burst.

Flesh and bone between her fingers.

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A foot note: This was Little A's Great Granny on Younger Dad's side of the family. She passed away over a year ago, her ashes scattered this September.

This is the first day of the seasonal linky One Week. Over the next three days (Monday till Wednesday) I'll be posting a photograph(s) and a few words that diarises and distills my experience of autumn '13. Take a peep at the details here. You can join in for one, two ... or the full three days. And don't forget to add #oneweek on Twitter, and comment on each others posts...

Badge Code ...

<a href="http://older-mum.blogspot.co.uk/p/one-week.html" title="One Week"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8436/7807711152_5f912c7903_m.jpg" width="225" height="169" alt="one week" /></a>