Tag Archives: winter

I live in the middle of nowhere.  There is nothing for miles.  (And by ‘nothing’ I mean hills, fields, farms, streams, clouds and sheep).  There are no other houses, no shops, very little traffic.  I drive to work and rarely meet anyone coming the other way.  I drive home and stare into the setting sun.  At night the house creaks like an old ship.  In the mornings, in the summer, there is no better place to live.  In the winter, when everything freezes up, the track to the house becomes an ice slide, we can’t get out, and nothing can get up here. We’re marooned.  And if the water supply shuts off and the boiler breaks down, we might as well be living in a tent. So I watch nature’s clock for the tell tale signs of spring: the snowdrops, the daffodils, the first green buds on the hawthorn.  And when everything explodes into blossom, it is symphonic and sublime, and then the cold brutality of the dark months is at last seen off and life never feels so good.