Checking my inbox today, I find it peppered with emails from clothing suppliers trying to persuade me to buy a new winter wardrobe. The thermometer having plummeted in the last few days, we’re all going to need our winter woollies by the time we come back from half term, so I take a look at what they’re offering.First on the list is a message from Marks and Spencer highlighting their new “coatigan” – a combination of a coat and a cardigan. It sounds just right for inbetweeny, Halloweeny weather.
I’ve never seen a coatigan, but I don’t need to. This portmanteau word conjures up a precise vision. I’m intrigued by the cross-breeding that fashion retailers believe is going on in our wardrobes. First came the skort (is it a skirt? Is it shorts?). Then last year the shoe-boot (no explanation necessary). This was swiftly followed by jeggings: the spawn of jeans and leggings. Whatever next?
If the trend continues, here are my predictions for your warmer winter wardrobe this season….
The Jumpover – as sleek as a jumpsuit but practical as an overall, this all-in-one outfit will keep the fashion-conscious woman clean but elegant while working around the house.
The Underall – not dissimilar to old-fashioned combinations, this underwear features the added benefit of practical overall-style pockets for storing essential tools.
The Shocking – a seamless, streamlined cross between high-heeled shoes and fishnet stockings for the girl who really wants to get noticed at the office Christmas party.
The Harf or Scat – a hat with scarf attached around the lower edge to avoid the annoying gap that lets the draught in between conventional hat and scarf sets.
But my favourite this winter will be Pyjippers – ending chilly ankles when I go down to make the tea first thing in the morning. I wonder if I can get them patented in time for Christmas?
(This post originally appeared in the November edition of the Hawkesbury Parish News.)
Hallowe’en in our village seems to have had an identity crisis this year, disguising itself as the season of goodwill. By the time we return from my small daughter’s first venture into trick-or-treating, we are overwhelmed by our neighbours’ generosity. Laura is positively radiant – and not just because of the fluorescent nail polish applied earlier by her best friend’s mum.
“I just LOVE trick-or-treating!” she breathes ecstatically as we trek round the village.
We bump into most of her schoolfriends en route, plus quite a few teenagers, all impressively attired. Not for our village the media stereotype of big kids in half-hearted costumes harassing old ladies. A group of teenage witches welcomes my little black cat to tag along with them at a couple of houses. Some big boys in ambitious costumes, one apparently a wild animal in a tardis-like cage, politely offer her a biscuit. The packet had just been cheerfully dispensed by a man whose greeting was “Sorry, I’ve run out of sweets and I’ve run out of money, but here, have these cookies instead”.
Many adults have gone to as much trouble as the children to get into a spooky mood. They’ve festooned their houses with paper bats and ghosts, they answer the door in costume and character. One kind couple has made up goody bags of assorted chews that includes a set of plastic vampire teeth. “I’ve always wanted one of those!” my daughter squeals with delight. She’ll need new teeth if she’s going to eat her way through tonight’s haul.
Another lady has set up a grisly pick-and-mix in her front porch, chocolate eyeballs and bloody jelly fingers dispensed from dishes proffered by severed hands.
“She’s so kind,” my daughter remarks, slipping her hand into mine as we walk on down the lane. “Someone really ought to give her special treat too.”
At the next stop, we’re invited in for some jokes, a chocolate biscuit and an interesting lesson on the Celtic origins of the Hallowe’en tradition. The adults are clearly having as much fun as the kids.
We head back towards home, looking out for lit pumpkins, the accepted indicator of a household that welcomes trick-or-treaters. We pass by the home of one of the oldest ladies in the village.
“She hasn’t got a pumpkin, but do you think we should call on her anyway? She’s a very kind lady and always smiles and waves to us.”
Laura’s clearly convinced that Hallowe’en is all about generosity of spirit. I shake my head. “No pumpkin, no visit,” I remind her.
But what pumpkins we have seen! Hours of carving must have gone into many of those on display. Their fine fretwork depicted cheery toothy grins with varying degrees of menace, witches on broomsticks, moon-lit landscapes, angry cats arch-backed with vertical fur. How many more ended up as soup following a slip of the knife in these artists’ quests for perfection?
Our own pumpkin, less elaborately carved, gave me a fright the night before. Having nurtured it to a vast size in the garden all summer, we placed it proudly on the front wall in readiness at dusk, only to find it had vanished by the time night fell. I was devastated. How could someone stoop so low as to steal a pumpkin the night before Hallowe’en? What sort of person does that? Someone warming up to pinch our Christmas tree a few weeks later?
My outraged SOS on Facebook triggered a sympathetic search. By mid-morning a kind neighbour has discovered it on his front drive. It’s too far for it to have rolled, so how on earth did it get there? Why did the pumpkin cross the road? I can’t help but wonder. Well, I suppose this ancient festival has had the last laugh. For all the outpouring of generosity in our village, Hallowe’en has still kept a trick up its flowing black sleeve.
After a weekend away, we return late Sunday afternoon to find the dust in our house under the spotlight of dazzling autumn sunshine. Not all the dust is due to slovenliness. Lighting our woodburning stoves the last few chilly evenings has distributed a flurry of fine, powdery ash throughout the cottage, as if we’ve just acquired as a lodger a small but slightly active volcano.
Still relaxed from our mini-break at the (very clean and tidy) house of friends, I decide to take the house by storm – and my family too. I raid the broom cupboard and distribute cleaning materials and tools to my startled husband and daughter.
Not much later, the house looks fit for visitors. Gosh, I wouldn’t mind living here, I think to myself, surveying the shiny kitchen surfaces and toy-free carpet with satisfaction. Not that I expect the effect to last long.
His vacuuming duty completed, my husband resumes the raid he had started a few days before on our various sheds and outhouses. He is turning them out with the energy and enthusiasm of one about to move house. Not that he, or we, are about to move house, but for a moment I think we should consider it.
If we were to put the house on the market, I’d soon get round to doing the rest of the chores I’ve been putting off for so long – rationalising the pile of knitting patterns that’s threatening to fall on the head of anyone who climbs the stairs; editing the growing heap of odds and ends dumped on Laura’s dressing table (now, where can she have acquired that habit, I wonder?)
Planning to move to a much smaller house would be especially helpful, as it would force me to be more ruthless. Maybe I should make it a flat.
A few dozen skips and trips to the “Sort-It” recycling centre later, I’d hire a furniture van, fill it with our minimised possessions, drive round the block, come back and move in. The new uncluttered look would feature all that we love best, and we’d have no end of space. It would be a very satisfactory arrangement. Nice neighbours, an excellent local primary school, lively village community, established garden, village pubs, shop, post office and hairdressers, all in a lovely Cotswold setting. I couldn’t hope to find a better home.
It’s a hangover from childhood that I find it so difficult to sleep in the daytime. The youngest of three children, I had the earliest bedtime in the family. Lying in bed on a summer’s evening with sunlight streaming in through the curtains, I felt about as likely to fly as to go to sleep.
Even now, I don’t like going to bed in the summer – though every time my soft memory-foam pillow yields beneath my head, I wonder why I still resist. But as the evenings draw in, I change my tune. As darkness falls earlier in the evening, I begin to feel a primeval urge to hibernate. And as I light the woodburning stove in the sitting room this evening, it occurs to me that bed would be a much better alternative to winter heating. We could just bundle up in the blankets and sleep till Spring. The accompanying lengthy fast would also ensure that our summer clothes would fit the following year. However, with a small daughter’s busy social calendar to accommodate, I’m hardly likely to pull this plan off. It’s hard enough getting her to school on time on winter mornings as it is.
However, all is not lost: I’m now onto a new excuse for winter lethargy. I’ve discovered that some of the world’s finest writers do (or did) their best work in bed. Former Children’s Laureate Michael Morpurgo has even built a special bed specifically for his writing. (Ink stains on the sheets led to his day-time eviction from the marital bed.) His literary hero, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island (as if anyone who’s ever been in the Beaufort needs to be told that), wrote books in his tropical bed in Samoa. Marcel Proust never left his bedroom when writing one of the last century’s most celebrated (and longest) novels (though as his was a sick-bed, this is an example I’m less keen to emulate). A cheerier role model can be found in Mark Twain. No wonder he always seemed so chirpy. Edith Wharton, Collette, James Joyce – the list goes on.
So this winter, I think I’ll be saving on my heating bills – and who knows, my new alternative approach might just fuel a masterpiece.
(This post was originally published in Hawkesbury Parish News, October 2010.)
