In The Bleak Midwinter

'Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone'

We skimmed stones across frozen ponds yesterday. They make a strange, alien, thrumming noise as they bounce over the ice. In another era, we would have strapped on our skates and cut a fine dash amongst the petrified willows. As it was, we contented ourselves with crunching through a little stream, leaving a wake of shattered panes and stirring mud. I have a brand new pair of aubergine Hunters, which makes me feel like a Christopher Robin poem. After a season of leaky wellies, there is a special pleasure now in being ankle-deep in water.

With everything frozen solid for days, paths which were impassibly muddy are now solid, if perilously rocky. Frosted grass crunches deliciously under foot. But my toes, tiddly pom, are frozen.

‘It’s not so much the toes, as the ears’ says Piglet to Pooh.

And like piglet’s, mine do seem to catch the wind a bit as Frosty Wind Makes Moan. So one way and another, I’m retreating indoors for Christmas.

The countryside has closed down for the winter. Next door’s sheep are barricaded inside their designer barn. We have to break the ice each morning to open the chooks’ coop, and defrost their drinking water. Robins are everywhere in the bare-branched trees, fluffed up against the cold like feathery round tree decorations. They are ridiculously tame, suddenly, and their pathetic ‘peeping’ cries plead with you to do something about all this, please. But I’m not sure what.

I do believe we are all designed to hibernate. Emerging from the duvet before the watery winter sun has hauled itself high into the sky each morning is an unnatural act. I want my burrow, my lair, my nice dark earthy hideaway to doze in snugly till spring comes knocking.

We have, thanks to our wood-elf, enough fuel to see us well into the New Year. We have a freezer full of food squirreled away against the Christmas period. We have crystal decanters glowing with sloe gin and raspberry vodka to keep out the cold, and dozens of Devil’s Wee to uncork. And we have our friends and neighbours, crunching up the path to deliver Christmas cards and invitations, stopping for a glass and a gossip.

I’ve done my bit. I’ve Harked at Herald Angels Singing and Come and Adored Him in the candle-lit depths of our village church, welcoming in the Light of the World as we squash into old oak pews in a welter of knitted scarves, gloves and dropped carol sheets. Now, in the Bleak Midwinter, I am battening down the hatches and staying firmly put. The world can get along without me for a few days.

With best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Joyful New Year from all at Garden Cottage.