Cauld Clash

Values.
It’s been a strange day. Not as unpleasant as it may read. Just true.
On the one hand ...a lot of laundry (and the hunt for lost bed linen ... a bit like The Hunt for Red October without Sean Connery, or a submarine) and a bit of baking (peanut butter cookies ... I am officially addicted and blame my friend for being a seemingly innocent ‘pusher’).
I took a photo out the window as the sleety showers merged into a seemingly endless ‘cauld clash’. I thought of Dorothy Wordsworth as I looked out and thought ‘if ever there was a day that epitomised ‘cauld clash’, this was absolutely it.

I was a brave soldier and when there was a brief respite I ventured out to find my landlord’s other house at Milburn and posted the keys through the letter box of yet another house looking sad, empty and cold, full of condensation at the windows. After a rather weird time, having not heard from him and still feeling responsible and sad about the old place, I had offered to post the keys by recorded delivery to his address down south. He eventually replied and suggested I put them through the letterbox of his other place at Milburn. As I did so today, I just felt sad and angry. Houses deserve to be loved, lived in and cared for whether they are aware of it or not. These places have lives and histories in their fabric.
I also thought that I’d hate to live in Milburn ... it would depress the hell out of me.
I walked briefly in the cauld clash at Blencarn (blip).
I resolved to check out Dorothy W’s reference and ...wait for it ... how weird is this ... she writes about it on this very day, the 6th February, 1802. ‘It snowed in the night & was, on Saturday, as Molly expressed it, a Cauld Clash.' (DW’s Journal - 6th February 1802).
Spookily spooky.

I spoke for a long time this morning with my sister about trust and values in relationships...and carpets.
Finally, as I sat down to a candlelit dinner of mussels for the two of us with our special glasses, listening to Nina Simone, with a feeling of the ebbing and letting go of life (I was thinking of Grace’s links to Nina, ages back ... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L5jI9I03q8E) ... I got a text link from my brother which just tipped the edge of all the complex relationships we have but also the fundamental, bottom line and values. I replied saying it (the link) just made me think of dad and of P. I don’t like getting political on here but it’s just too much and has had me in tears (along with the essential white wine for the mussels, you understand). The feeling of personal loss of people with strongly held values (and G, as well ... you’re in there too mate) ... and the degradation of all of what they stood for, and the feeling of suffocation). There is something so deeply symbolic about the feeling of suffocation that goes with the trauma of covid, the suffocation... the inability to breathe fresh, clean air, the anger and corruption and injustice ... and ... and ..
Unbelievably, inexpressibly angry, and missing the dead.
The centre cannot hold ... as we slouch towards whatever ...
Right ... that’s it for today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/opinion/boris-johnson-party-scandal.html