Chasing grace.

Fragments of December...

Dec 14, 2025

Hello dear ones, as always I send you a thousand thanks for being here, for your time, your comments, your love. Each of you are a special and appreciated breath of fresh air. Especially during the chaos of December days! A virtual hug to each of you just in case, like me, you are in dire need!

I both love and loathe this dark month…

The Christmas spirit necessary for preparations of the beautifully wrapped, lovingly prepared and joyful kind has escaped, or perhaps has yet to make its presence visible ‘chez nous’. Either way there is an absence felt within these four thick, stone walls. I have found the ‘START’ button but hesitate…

There is so much I want to happen for the world to feel whole again, not mine alone or my loved ones, the entire lost planet. Humans seem to want so much that is not conducive to contentment. Until it is and they don’t, I want to hide in my little patch of woodland, light a bonfire to warm my fingers, perhaps I will take a flask of something hot, perhaps it will be laced with vin de noix to celebrate the day… but that is all, truly, deeply, that is all; give me a pile of sweet scented decay, bare branches from which winter birds sing, curling woodsmoke and soft moss to rest a while, I will be as happy as was Milly in snowflakes…

But I won’t hide, of course I won’t… no matter that the feeling pervades each year as December gallops along closer and closer to that day we all get in such an almighty tizzy about — I can’t help wondering, what would happen if I did though…

The state of play today? I have nothing done! There are less than ~~twenty~~ fifteen days to go!

So why am I sitting here with a smile peering into stove even though the ghost of every Christmas past is sniggering beside me, even though I am still wondering how and when and where all this jollity will manifest itself, even though this world is still a broken place?Even though the clock is ticking and writing about it certainly isn’t going to put the damn capon on the table — if indeed I can find one that hasn’t been wrapped in plastic soaking up toxins on a bed of polystyrene for a week because I forgot to order one chez le boucher and now it’s too late — trussed and perfectly cooked with chestnut stuffing and pigs-in-blankets with me smiling my perfect Christmas Goddess smile on the day?

I will tell you why, it has to do with the words of Mary Oliver — ‘paying attention to this one wild and precious life’, none of which can be tamed, all of which is the ‘beginning of devotion’.

DECEMBER 1 — In the half light of morning, as mist-waves roll across far hills into the valley then rise again, a glorious game of hide’n seek ensues with a slowly waking sun. I am following a herd of cattle on our narrow lane behind Monsieur M. He is leading them without any sense of urgency — why would he hurry when, he too, is captivated by the colours of the morning? He is lost in the solitude of his work, stick in hand, oblivious to time passing as he concentrates on arriving, with all his charges, at an open gate to a field at the end of the lane, simple, undemanding, watchful. I concentrate on cow bottoms swaying in front of me, somehow this is calming, Despite time galloping this coloured morning is not for ignoring, neither is it for hurrying. So I don’t.

DECEMBER 2 — Three walnut trees, felled last year, a necessity to save the barn roof, now lay in six 2 metre planks drying in the barn they threatened to destroy. I try to feel that their short life was not wasted, that a certain poetic, justice of grace is taking place.

DECEMBER 3 — A raven is calling from the ancient vine terraces in the woodland to my left as I walk this morning. I hear him seldomly, see him less. The presence of his rustic guttural call is welcome.

Spiritually, the raven embodies transformation, wisdom, and guidance through the unknown. Often described as a shadow guide, the raven invites us to step into liminal spaces, the moments of change where we must let go of the old to embrace what lies ahead.

I am in need of all of the above!

DECEMBER 4 — I am awash with gratitude. Whatever collision occurred out there in the vast universe our blue planet spins within to create the moon is a gift on this clear, frosty night. The scent of wintry dampness, sharp and irony greet me while I watch the last Cold Supermoon of the year rise into a bright Indian ink sky from my bedroom window. This night it will be 357,218 km (221,965 miles) from the centre of our earth, a distance I, wrapped in the blanket of my tiny life on a hill minuscule by comparison, find hard to rearrange into anything imaginable so I simply stare skywards in awe while I wonder at the humanness of naming stars when there are so many countless trillions and most of us know the names of barely a handful. I resolve to file many more to memory.

DECEMBER 5 — I gather all the shattered pieces of a certain heart to send temporarily stitched together inside the ghost that is now my son when he leaves on a trip to Montpelier. There he will face the — still beloved — cause. I hold my hand over my own heart in case it forgets to beat while he is gone. He returns, his heart now in one piece, in place again, though he tells me it pinches, that he thinks it always will.

DECEMBER 6 — An extraordinary, isolating fog obliterates the valley and all that usually sits within its sweeping slopes. The barn roof is half-swallowed, the hill a mere souvenir of longing in my heart. Also, I no longer see the renovation work to the neighbours barn conversion one hundred metres away which, when finally revealed — many hours later into the afternoon — leaves a feeling of utter incredulity when I notice that the newly laid lats, laid to take rigid, equally sized terracotta tiles are uneven. I am uncertain if mentioning this would be impolite or helpful.

DECEMBER 7 — Clouds return, soft, grey, damp. Without even a word they spell moody. They speak of truth.

DECEMBER 8 — Both of the two Elm trees at the back of the house still holding tightly to their leaves yesterday, helped by a frisky wind in the night, have given in to the seasons demands. Every fading leaf now forms two neat lines on either side of the lane. I don’t notice until I drive through them and they all scatter. In the fog behind me they look like glitter trapped in a half-oval glass.

DECEMBER 9 — Twelve great-tits, three blue-tits and a dove — which quickly becomes two — gather in a small oak tree on common land below and to the side of my kitchen window. They have discovered the extra helpings of seeds and nuts I leave for them every morning and return in a cacophony of high spirited song several times a day. I think it possible the joy I find in these feathered songs to be limitless.

DECEMBER 10 — I am surprised to hear Enya’s Orinoco Flow on my car radio, a song I have not listened to since spending almost a whole day on a train from Hua Hin to Penang in 1989, a journey scheduled to take just twelve hours. I do not recall those hours immediately, only as I am slowed to a frustrating crawl behind two articulated vehicles — moving at the speed of a sick snail — does the idleness of that interminable journey emerge; how I listened, with my precious walkman clutched tightly in clammy hands, headphones covering hot ears, to the same three cassette-tapes over and over again while willing the train to keep up with the music. How from somewhere in the belly of the train young humans with smiling faces arrived at much appreciated regular intervals with Evian water in plastic bottles so cold I didn’t know whether to drink it or wear it. How the landscape crept past in a ceaseless green patchwork of rice fields and ditches. How all along the train tracks children also appeared from the lines and squares of green barefooted, in rags for clothes yet still they ran with the train, their beautiful brown smiling eyes turned up to us with smiles while their hands begged for anything, everything that could be spared. It was a journey I had thought unforgettable, yet forgotten it was, until now.

DECEMBER 11 — The weather has become so mild there are catkins almost in bloom. Again, as last year, and all the years before in December, I want to be where snowflakes fall.

DECEMBER 12 — There is a moment in the year when it seems that all the pigeons that live within one hundred miles of the hill gather for what must be their AGM, they make no secret of this meeting, I hear their wings before I see them. Both sound and sight are winged grace.

DECEMBER 13/14 — Just before — and after — midnight from my bedroom window while trying to name more than the few common stars I know by heart — a ritual that has become an almost obsession — the colours of the day already folded into night many hours since, I expect only to see yesterdays sky repeated. Before even I locate the first of three I have memorised, I am stunned to statuesque silence by a celestial display of light… Shooting stars, dozens of them! All star names remembered earlier are instantly forgotten while I stand, bone frozen, motionless for uncountable bedazzled minutes of cosmic theatre.

Still — and possibly forever — chasing grace, I send you love