Adjusting 2

Still adjusting to varifocals - curate’s egg, jury’s out.
Still adjusting to new job - five weeks feeling a bit like five years and a bit depressing to be in the headlines and part of the political football being kicked around, seeing the facts get mashed to make sound bites and story because complexity simply cannot be tucked tidily into a nutshell.

A walk round Brotherswater first thing before a haircut and shopping to make supper and taking it over to Maulds for my friend and her husband (a roasted aubergine starter thing and a beetroot, shallot and goats cheese tarte tatin...and my friend had made a lovely birthday cake).

As I drove down the valley first thing the weather deteriorated and I started to regret my decision but I got togged up and set off anyway. My glasses got on my nerves and the rain wasn’t helping. Eventually I stopped trying so hard to adjust. I stopped trying to see the world ‘perfectly’. I stopped thinking there should be a way that I ‘should’ be seeing. I stopped trying to see it in any way other than how it was. I took my glasses off and packed them snugly away in their case. I looked out at a slightly blurry world and stopped being grumpy. Veils of persistent light rain were pulsing through the valley like multiple repeats of a Twickenham streaker making everything go pale and pasty against the still strong autumn colours of the dead bracken. It was all rather beautiful and, as a hunched couple walked past braced against the inclement conditions, I was probably a tad too cheerful in my hearty happy Hail fellow walker greetings. They moved swiftly on and I had the rest of the walk to myself. I tucked myself into the mossy crook of a tree to have my thermos of coffee. A Dipper nipped by and a flock of fieldfares (or at least that’s what I think they were ... I didn’t have my glasses on) waved through Mexican style.

I’m glad I went out when I did, the weather deteriorated and as I was heading back in the early hours of the morning it was pretty wild. The van and I were buffeted back home along the black wet lanes that felt like the high seas with occasional wild Christmas lights waving like distant smugglers signalling from deep stormy coves as villages slept on.