PONDERING THE POSSIBLE
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This morning the air brings a vanilla scent – essence of cake not ice-cream which seems strange given the iced snow that covers one side of the pavement. Somewhere above the clouds the moon is waxing to fullness, and I realise I don’t know what vanilla looks like before it becomes darkened pods. Gentle trickles of water and the fact the cold doesn’t reach my bones as soon as I am outside tell me the temperature is rising.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a sign on a wall. I say it is the Ponderosa sign with a cardboard cutout of Dolly Parton on top of the wall. I won the cutout in a competition some years ago and enjoyed taking it on a little tour! The picture seems apt given that the following snippet from an interview with Dolly Parton has floated in and out of my mind over the past couple of weeks while we have not had access to a shower: “In the winter time, we just had a pan of water and we’d wash down as far as possible, and we’d wash up as far as possible,” she says of her childhood days in rural Locust Ridge, Tennessee, a mountain community in the northern valley of the Great Smoky Mountains. “Then, when somebody cleared the room, we’d wash ‘possible.’ That’s the way it was.”
I definitely lingered in the shower when we booked into a hotel for a couple of nights and let myself revel in the absolute joy of being in the moment under plentiful running hot water. It brought to mind the feeling of having the first bath or shower after a week’s residential trip. Always welcome, but the one that topped the lot came about after a camping trip with a group where all washing had to be done at the basins in the shared toilet block which never seemed to be empty, and because of the rain, always had a full range of muddy footprints of different sizes on the floor. When the children went out for the day on a trip with another group of staff I decided I would seize the moment to treat myself. I found one of the six old brown washing-up bowls that we had used to transport the trangias after we had put washing-up liquid on the outside, boiled a kettle and gave myself a ‘foot spa’. I washed the bowl thoroughly afterwards and returned it. What I didn’t know was that a visiting cook would choose those large washing-up bowls as the perfect thing for making that evening’s butterscotch dessert in.
My exercise this week came in the form of arriving home and needing to shovel the snow off the driveway. This was the first snow that I have cleared here that I haven’t watched fall. It was a satisfying job because it had compacted and therefore came off in slices that I could shovel up and sling into a large pile. I do like this kind of physical movement, and it reminded me of when we first moved in here and the whole back garden needed clearing and digging over. The poor mrytle having just recovered from the last heavy snow now has another broken branch and looks to be entering the spring in a strange shape this year. Which reminds me... I need to pick up the pace with my walking exercise. I have missed seeing the graphs, and numbers on my fitness apps track my progress. I think they think I have hibernated. Here’s to regenerating my morning motivation to start the day well, and to preparing for my Snowdon climb later this year. It’s been quite some years since I last walked up, and I think I need to get cracking on the preparation so that it becomes possible to enjoy the whole experience. I am holding onto the fact that every walk I take is part of the journey to improved fitness, and being in a better physical shape. Steps I take now will make future steps easier.
We were late putting the Christmas tree away and finally managed it this weekend. Just when I was deciding whether to make the journey to the under the house storage to put it away or put the kettle on, there was a loud rumble as the snow on the back roof slumped to the ground. My momentary laziness saved me from having all that fall on my head! My knees also saved me from a sore nose when I decided it would be a good idea to take a photo of my face print in the snow. (I saw someone do this online and it looked pretty impressive in the same way those pin frames used to so I decided this would be a new kind of photo for me.) I put some cardboard down to kneel on and then used my hands to steady myself before getting ready to go full in. My hands did not even dent the snow because it was like ice! I am glad I found this out before putting my face in. I guess I will need to wait for fluffy snow for this kind of photo opportunity.
This week I choose to share ‘Car’ by Sarah Connor. I am lucky to have known Sarah as a poet and blogger and am grateful for the sparkle she put in the world.
Car
This car is full of ghosts – echoes of us,
trailing muddy boots, wet swimming costumes, snatched coffees.
Oh, we’ve lived here. Spilt water, secrets, fizzy drinks.
Shouted – at the radio, at the sat nav,
at each other. Told our stories of successes and betrayals.
We’ve slept here, heads lolling
on the long road north.
We’ll clean it out before we sell it:
gather up old receipts for faded clothes,
stray Lego bricks and crumbs and seashells
that we gathered and forgot about.
Perhaps the future owner will still feel us
there – a waft of woodsmoke, or of chlorine,
or ice-cream’s vanilla kiss. Perhaps
a giggle or a grumble from the back –
or perhaps the radio will play
an old Ed Sheeran song,
and we’ll be there, singing along –
some of us out of key, or out of time –
still driving down these country roads.
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