To everything, a season

High tides have shaped our walks recently, pinning us to the dunes and the smelly seaweed line.  Choppy grey seas will bring the whelk shells in over the rocks, though, and we will harvest them in the fullness of time.  There has been a great change – the wind, the downpours, the cold, the lighting of the fire. In a week exactly I shall begin the third year of my gorgeous life. The beginning of a new era, my new year.  The end of the summer brings the new year, and we had a lovely honey cake to mark it. So much better than starting again in the depths of winter, where what you see and smell is actually only the appearance of death. That September day six almost identical spaniels were born; when I concentrate hard I smell them still on Little Brown Dog.  A dim memory, replaced by my boys, big Newman and Barnaby, and the world of the ever-heartening  stove, (so warm against my back when the wind blows the cat-flap through the night), and the magic jellies and the daily doings which delight me so.  Reaching out to remember, my eyes begin to cross and I can only settle gratefully into my present happiness, wherever it comes from and wherever it goes.