At the Turning of the Year

Twelfth Night, and its snowing again. This is the most beautiful winter I can remember. Cycling along the frozen rutted ground. I watch the low slung sun turn the silvery frost-spiked world all fierce bronze and dusky pink, a scene as improbably vulgar as a Christmas card painting, but magical. In the garden Jonathan, his face two red cheeks sandwiched between a startling turquoise bobble hat and many layers of leather and knitted collars, his glasses glinting with snowflakes, attacks the snow-capped evergreens flourishing amongst gaunt, bare fruit trees.

Twelfth night, and I am disentangling withered ivy and dusty holly from light fittings and picture frames. The Christmas tree, still as fresh and festive as ever, will nevertheless make its way to the bonfire tonight. And as I strip it of lights and tinsel, I am crying.

Because it’s over. Not Christmas, or the year, but everything.

We have to leave. The landlord is selling our cottage. He wants the money, and the land, to extend his own land which marches with, and is now muscling in on, our own.

We’ll find somewhere to go. The children must live somewhere and so, I suppose, must I. But not like this.

And the tears just don't seem able to stop. I had thought I was braver than this.

It was to be A Year, you see – the diary of one annual cycle of the Warwickshire countryside. I was looking forward to blogging about spring bulbs, apple blossom, the Horticultural Show, the Summer Fete and, eventually, the glorious climax of the Harvest Festival, where churches round here as stuffed fuller than at Christmas. I’d even got my name down for a half-allotment (a sort of ‘starter-allotment’ for the nervous amateur) and together we could have planted leeks and broccoli and sat in potting sheds amongst broken flowerpots watching them fail to flourish and contemplating other, more successful patches.

But I cheated. I didn't tell you that this place was not really mine, that I was just a tenant, living in a dream world, pretending this could be forever.

I have lived too long.

But at least I have lived. I used to wonder what paradise could be like, and whether I’d actually enjoy it much anyway. Now I know. Paradise is a garden, the garden of Garden Cottage. And I have enjoyed it very much indeed.