Escaping the rain

It quite boggles my mind that we're almost half-way through January by now. Like it or not, I'm back to the same old working week routines and the benefits gained by the no-schedule pace of life in the in between days are slowly but surely wearing off. Secretly, I am glad that the silly season is over for another year, but I could definitely have done with an extra week of semi-hibernation.

My blog schedule, of course, is as topsy-turvy as it always is, as I've only just arrived at December's penultimate day. To make things even more complicated, these photos were taken a day later as the weather on Thursday, which had started out with a handful of sunny spells, soon deteriorated, reverting to the usual menu of granite grey skies and lashings of rain. By the time we made it to our garage, the dregs of the daylight would have made for poor photos, so I wore it all again the next day.

The fit and flare dress with its pleated skirt was yet another Think Twice find from way back. I fell for its purplish blue colour and sprinkling of pink flowers, but didn't care for its original buttons. Luckily, my stash of vintage buttons came up with these pink square ones which turned out to be a perfect match.

I added a fuchsia textured cardigan for warmth, although the mercury would climb to 15°C on the year's final days. Matching tights and a pair of greyish blue Western style boots completed my outfit.

Now, let's have a look at my accessories which are, of course, an integral part of my outfit.

The starring role was played by the bubblegum pink textured belt with its white metal and pink gemstone trim. It has the 1980s written all over it but I can't for the life of me remember whether it was a Think Twice or a charity shop find. It isn't the first time I paired it with this particular dress.

The beads of my necklace, which are wearing woolly jumpers, added a bit of extra colour to my dress's profusion of pink flowers. My wooden brooch with its painted landscape was picked up in a charity shop in Middelburg while on holiday in Zeeland in November 2019.

While Jos was out doing the year's final supermarket run on Thursday morning, I thought I'd made myself useful and continue with the gargantuan kitchenalia cleaning job I'd started on Tuesday.  

I'm not sure if Bess was meant to help, but it is more likely that she was just supervising her staff. Whatever the case, although she might look very awake here, she was fast asleep by the time Jos came back with the shopping.

The shallow shelves on the top left and bottom right are by Tomado, a Dutch kitchenware company. Dating from the 1950s, they are collector's items in their own right.  

Their contents are a jumble of heirlooms and collectibles as diverse as a Tala measuring cup and egg wedger, a set of 1930s canisters decorated with swallows, a range of Melitta coffee filter holders, a Devon Blue ware jug and teapot, a Lurpak toast rack and some metal chocolate moulds.

More chocolate moulds, in Bakelite this time, adorn the mantelpiece (top right), where they share space with a wooden flour sieve, butter pats, potato masher and bread board.

The 1970s St. Michael's serving tray, early 1900s scales, weights and enamel bread bin on the bottom left are displayed on top of a doll's wardrobe made for me by my Dad in the early 1960s. I was just in time to rescue it from the skip. 

Proceeding to the glass-fronted cupboard which holds my collection of late 1960s Boch crockery. Although we set out to collect the iconic Rambouillet design -  the leaf patterned ones on the left of the top shelf - issued in 1966 for the pottery's 125th anniversary, we gathered some of their other designs along the way. They are in regular use and we tend the alternate the different patterns.

The cupboard itself was a € 8 charity shop find!  The contraption which lives on top of it is a 1950s Goblin Teasmade and was a flea market find back in April 2017. The slightly battered tray advertising Wright's Biscuits Ginger Nuts and featuring their mascot, Mischief, was a flea market find as well, predating my blog with many years. Having my blog has proved to be a useful tool for dating our finds but my memory often draws a blank for things we found before March 2016.

After lunch, the lure of the charity shops once again proved to be too strong, so we grabbed our coats and went off. Again, we visited two shops, starting with the one in Mechelen. 

Here, the bookshelves came up trumps with no less than six books, although in hindsight I suspect I have already read one of them before.

While Jos was taking a coffee break at our second shop, the one in Duffel near the park, I browsed the rails of clothing, falling hard for this jumper with its rows of cheeky knitted owls. There's no label whatsoever, but the remains of a care label in a side seam indicates that it wasn't somebody's handiwork as I'd originally suspected. 

We're having a bit of a cold snap right now, so I've already worn it to work this week. Now that the worst of the hot flushes have subsided, I can wear jumpers again without having a sweat fest. 

Before joining Jos, I plucked this heart patterned cardigan from a rail of plain black ones - the clothing is colour coded in this shop - and did a double take when I saw its label. I guess nobody'd heard of Diane von Furstenberg here, as it wasn't even on the more expensive luxury label rail.

Back at home, we had one more task to tick off our list before calling it a day. For the last day or two, Bess's tree antics didn't confine themselves to merely dislodging the ornaments. No, she'd started chewing the fairy light and the faux fur branches with their dangerously prickly needles. She'd also managed to worm her way onto the lower branches of the tree. Therefore, there was nothing for it but to prematurely dismantle it. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. 

The sun had decided to grace us with her presence on Friday the 31st of December which, together with the forecasted 15°C, offered the perfect conditions for a walk.

Soon after our fruit & yoghurt breakfast, however, clouds had gathered once again, darkening the day as if with imminent rain. We dithered, and when we got a text from the shop we'd visited on Tuesday telling us the coffee machine we'd ordered was ready for collection, we decided to go and pick it up instead.

The sun came out again while we were having lunch, so without further hesitation, we donned our coats - in my case my old favourite cream, blue and fudge plaid one - and drove off.  

In spite of this only being in the next village to ours, we'd never been to the 15 hectares landscape park called Frijthout, which is only a stone's throw from the village's centre.

The word "park" is a bit of a misnomer here, as it's not really a park in the exact sense of the word. The emphasis clearly is on the landscape part of its name. The open space, where villagers used to be allowed to harvest logs, has been bought by the council and nature preservation as recent as 2007 and has been developed into a semi nature reserve.

The Koude Beek (transl. Cold Brook) runs through the area and when I saw a man walking his dog cross the brook by way of this rather primitive bridge, I was adamant to follow his example.

At that exact moment the sun, tired of her game of tag with the clouds, decided to honour the occasion by spotlighting my clumsy attempts at keeping my balance.

The weather gods kept taunting us and after a couple of attempts at clearing up the sun gave up altogether, transforming the landscape into a bleak midwinter one.

We wandered at will, getting the feel of the area, and vowing to return to see the changes forged by the seasons.

The dying sunshine threw eerie shadows making the pollarded willows look like unearthly creatures and the leafless trees mighty giants reaching for the sky.

We'll have to return too to walk across the boardwalk which bridges the marshland, but it was getting later and darkness would soon descend on the final day of the year.

We spent New Year's Eve just like any other Saturday night and didn't even toast the new year as we'd forgotten to buy bubbles. We just stayed up until the midnight fireworks had run their course, making sure that Bess didn't take fright. In the end, she didn't even prick up her ears, taking it all in her stride.

I'll be back with our New Year's Day shenanigans in a couple of days. Until then, do stay safe my friends and don't let the virus catch you unawares!

In between days

The high hopes we'd had for going on some outdoor adventures during the Christmas break were soon dashed by the weather forecast. Things were looking pretty dire for the week ahead but we kept hoping, quite possibly against hope, that they got it wrong. After all, it wouldn't be the first time, would it? One can only dream and I, for one, am a pro at living with my head in the clouds!

They didn't get it wrong on Monday the 27th of December, though. There was nothing for it but to grin and bear it and spend the day inside. 

As I still had a whole week of freedom ahead of me, I wasn't too bothered about the uncooperative weather gods. I don't get bored easily and there's always a list of chores to be ticked off if needs must. First on my list, however, was getting dressed, indulging in the luxury of time to do so.

I'd had my eye on this jumper for a while, thinking it was time it got another outing. Although it's from Zara - by way of a charity shop - it has a definite Mid-Century look.

Trawling my blog, as I wanted to make sure I wore it differently, I noticed that funnily enough its last wears dated from December 2020 and December 2019 respectively. I'm such a creature of habit!

The skirt I went for this time was this recently charity shopped bouclé one, its colours harmonizing with those of the jumper. 

Same as in its two previous incarnations, I wore it belted on top of my skirt, although I did have the presence of mind of wearing a different belt each time. Funnily enough, I've only just noticed that I pinned the same brooch to it as I did two years ago, a small wooden plaque painted with a lady wearing a red and white polka dot frock. It was a flea market find, if my memory serves me right.

Both my beaded necklace, which is made of painted wood too, and my chunky short-sleeved cardigan, are recent charity shop finds. The boots are the ones I succumbed to after spotting them at a local shop back in November. They've been one of my most worn pairs so far this season.

After Jos dropped off his supermarket purchases that afternoon, I accompanied him back to the garage so that we could make use of its white painted brick wall for outfit photos. We found a spot where the natural light - or what little there was of it - streaming in through the skylights was even much better.

Having finished my previous read on Sunday evening, I selected Judith Lennox's The Dark-Eyed Girls from my reading pile. Set in the late 1960s and 1970s, it tells the story of three friends and their changing relationships over the years. An absorbing and very enjoyable read, which I've all but finished by now.

Waking up to a pink sunrise just after eight on Tuesday morning, we started getting our hopes up. 

Needless to say, it didn't last, as a blanket of clouds soon moved in and it started drizzling while we were getting ready.

The weather forecast having promised a mild 11°C, I plucked this Swedish made vintage frock from my wardrobe, in a metallic polyester mix called Asplene + Sildorex. The latter, I guess, is a relative of  Lurex, as the dark olive green dress with its off-white, pink and lilac print and dropped waist, has quite a bit of sparkle in it.

I took the lead from the pink in its print for my opaques, ring and dragonfly brooch as well as the flower corsage pinned to my cardigan, and wore an off-white beaded necklace.

One of my favourite pairs of boots, the green ones I charity shopped about two years ago, came out to play again.  The mustard cardigan with its pale pink buttons is by retro label Zoë Loveborn and was a charity shop find back in August.

We had an errand to run in a nearby town where, due to new shopping restrictions, we had to queue outside a telecom shop for at least half an hour. In spite of the supposedly mild temperature, there was an icy wind, so that I was half frozen by the time we were finally let into the shop. I won't mention the altercation we'd had in the meantime with an aggressive woman with a walker who was trying to jump the queue. Now, if only she'd asked nicely ... 

Before returning home, we nipped into an electricals shop as I needed a new hairdryer and we were looking for a replacement for our coffee machine which was on the blink.

Again, we made use of our garage's facilities to make outfit photos when returning our car after lunch. 

On the way back, it started bucketing down so that we were soaked by the time we eventually made it home, having to hang up our dripping wet coats in the shower.

The couch was calling for another afternoon of reading, but I decided to ignore this for now and start ticking off at least one of the chores on my list. 

I'm the first to admit that, apart from the odd cursory dusting, our kitchen shelves and their kitchenalia treasures hadn't seen a cleaning cloth for a while. I probably won't have to tell you that taking everything off the shelves, cleaning both the shelves and their contents and putting everything back approximately the way it was is quite a time-consuming task.

The fun thing is having a chance to look at everything as if with fresh eyes and indulge in the memories which are part and parcel of collecting. The Smiths crisps tin, for instance, takes me back to a delightful shop called Utter Clutter in Leominster, Herefordshire.

The packets of soaps and washing powders were picked up at various flea markets, while the 1930s ceramic coffee grinder was a present from my friend Inez.

The Tala jelly moulds came from an antique centre in Newcastle Emlyn in Carmarthenshire, Wales, a favourite wet weather option when holidaying in nearby Pembrokeshire.

There are tins galore, including the ice cream wafers one from the Dutch Verkade brand, which was a charity shop find.  There's lots of enamelware too. The orange utensils rack and some of the ladles and strainers came from a vintage shop. 

What were the odds of finding the Grimwades Quick Cooker pudding bowl, previously only seen in the kitchens of National Trust properties, on a local flea market here in Belgium?

The framed ad for the famous Belgian Lu biscuits is a reproduction found in the decoration aisles of a garden centre.

There was still no improvement in the weather on Wednesday, which was dark and rainy, and generally miserable, even if the mercury had climbed to 13°C by then.

With no obligations penned into our diaries for the day, we decided to do a round of the charity shops. 

In spite of the mild temperature, I wasn't to be fooled again, so I wore my green with a bit of red tweed skirt and green fur collared vintage jacket. My scarf of many colours has featured here countless times before, but it has been a while since I wore the pink and white speckled knit beret.

While searching through my flea market boxes for something which I've probably sold on a long time ago, I came across this vintage lilac Diolen pussy-bow blouse. And no, I haven't got the faintest idea why I decided to part with it, but it must have been in a moment of madness. With its pattern of purple and orange flowers, I thought it was just perfect with the skirt.

I tamed the bow with a flower infused vintage scarf clip and added a tan belt at my waist. A green cardigan added extra warmth layered over the rather flimsy blouse. To tie in with the purple bits in the blouse's pattern, I wore a pair of purple opaques.

As usual, we visited two shops that day, starting with the Oxfam one in Wilrijk. Although pickings weren't plentiful, finding this tailor made vintage skirt suit more than made up for this. Both Angelica and me are doing the honours of modelling it for you.

There was also a vintage coffee tin, from the Belgian coffee brand Rombouts, which was founded in Antwerp in 1896. It dates from the late 1950s, and this one has some iconic Bruges scenes on it, with the belfry on one side and the city hall on the other..

Our shopping trip ended at our most local charity shop. Here, I was in luck again, as I found a vintage C&A jumper in a lilac and silver cable knit with an asymmetrical collar. 

A mustard yellow knit beret and a chevron striped Summer skirt by Belgian retro label Who's That Girl were my final finds.

I'll be back with the rest of the in between days later this week.

With the Omicron virus rampaging out there, please do take care to stay safe!

It's oh so quiet

It was with more than just a sigh of relief that I got into the car when Jos picked me up on my final working day before the holidays.

However glad I was to leave behind the daily grind, my main source of stress and worry were the hordes of Christmas zombies which had been invading Antwerp that week. The city's main shopping thoroughfare, a wide pedestrianized street called the Meir, is just around the corner from my office. Although the street itself isn't within view from my 5th floor perch, I have been watching the toing and froing of the manic, multiple shopping bag carrying crowds in the lead up to Christmas for 26 years running.

In all those years, I have never known it to be this busy. The main contributors to this unprecedented number of shoppers were our neighbours from across the border.  As everything in the Netherlands is closed due to a lockdown, there's been a true Dutch invasion here, resulting in traffic chaos and streets rammed chock-a-block with throngs of people through which I had to wind my way to our pick-up point while Jos was desperately trying to find a parking spot.

Apart from the 23rd of December being my last office day of the year, there was another piece of good news to brighten my day. That morning, I got a phonecall from Jos letting me know that the invite for my booster jab had finally arrived in our mailbox. As it was scheduled for the 4th of January, the deed will be done by the time you are reading this!

Having finished all the food shopping earlier that week, thankfully there was no need to join the last minute queues on Christmas Eve. If the weather gods hadn't insisted on throwing another spanner in the works, we would have gone for a walk. Alas, it was once again up to me to provide a daily dose of sunshine. Not that I wasn't happy to oblige!

The pattern of flowers and seashells on my navy blue vintage dress set the tone for my accessories - notably my belt and necklace - as well as my cardigan and opaques, for which I picked a bright shade of butterscotch yellow.

The dress itself came from Think Twice, while the cardigan, necklace and belt were charity shopped. Both my opaques and boots were bought on the high street.

My vintage seed-beaded brooch, which Beate once said might be Bohemian, was a flea market find several years ago.

With any outside activities out of the question, we decided to give in to the siren call of the charity shops. We were kind of hoping they would be oases of quiet, which much to our delight they were. Neither was there any sign of the dreaded Dutch licence plates in the parking lot. Phew!

We'd just walked into our first shop of the day when we spotted a vintage sandwich toaster for our kitchenalia collection. It's the one on the left and it was made in France. The one on its right is English, made by Nutbrown, who have been producing traditional kitchen wares since 1932. It was found at a local flea market and has been in our collection for many years.

On to the clothing department!

On the left, a funkily patterned long-sleeved top by French label La Fée Maraboutée (a delightful name, which translates as The Good Fairy!). 

The chocolate brown jumper on the right is missing most of its label. It has plaid cuffs and a detachable plaid collar, which I suspect were added by a previous owner.

Nothing faux about this fur scarf, it is definitely the real thing. At € 1,25, I wasn't going to leave the poor thing behind, although I did have to wrestle it from a disappointing looking shop dummy.

My final find here were the wide-legged Summer weight trousers by Belgian high street label JBC. I've added a close-up so that you can see the green stamens in the flowers which are all but invisible in the photo on the bottom right.

No crowds or Dutch licence plates in the second shop either :-)

Here, my usual rummage in the nightwear department in search of elusive vintage slips unearthed the vintage Summer dress on the top left.

From the same shop are these two orange toned cardigans which have joined my burgeoning collection.

The tangerine short sleeved one with its shawl collar and decorative cable stitch on the shoulders is by the Belgian Terre Bleue label, while the burnt orange one with its patterned front and solid back and sleeves, is by Esprit.

Although Saturday was Christmas Day, it didn't really feel much like Christmas at all. In fact, it started like any other Saturday by having fruit & yoghurt for breakfast and doing a load of washing.

The weather was grey, with a bit of mizzly rain thrown in throughout the day and highs of just 6°C, which ruled out our customary Christmas walk.

I hadn't planned my outfit in advance but when I clapped eyes on the sage green crochet skirt in the first shop we visited on Friday, I had a feeling this was going to be part of it. Not only did it look sufficiently festive, it was comfortable enough for sprawling on the couch with my book and accommodating our Christmas dinner at the end of the day.

My blouse started life as a mini dress bought from a high street shop many years ago. When I found myself no longer wearing it, I gave it to my friend Inneke, who returned it to me last Summer. As I still loved its lacy zig-zag pattern, I attacked it with my scissors and turned it into a blouse.

I picked up the purple in the zig-zags with my belt, pinned a vintage Bambi brooch to the blouse and added a green multi-strand necklace I'd rediscovered when doing my necklace cull the other week.

I was determined to finish my book, a memoir which, although enjoyable, was a bit of a distressing  read.

Born in Idaho to a father opposed to public education, Tara Westover never attended school. She spent her days working in her father's junkyard or helping her mother, a self-taught herbalist and midwife. She was seventeen when she first set foot in a classroom. She went on to be awarded a scholarship to Cambridge, where she earned a PhD in history in 2014.

We slept late-ish on Boxing Day, or rather I did, as it was almost 9 am by the time I got up, after which we breakfasted on rolls and soft boiled eggs.

The weather forecast promised sunshine in the morning, followed by yet more rain in the afternoon, so we wasted no time in getting dressed and going for a head-clearing walk.

But let me show you what I was wearing first! 

Scored for the princely sum of € 2 in one of Think Twice's famous sales, I still don't know what initially made me dither when I spotted this pussy-bow frock on the rails. When it looked as if a young girl would be beating me to it, I breathed an inward sigh of relief when her friend declared it too granny-ish.

Too granny-ish indeed! Isn't that print, which manages to combine stripes, chevrons and diamonds in pinks and purples with the odd splash of burnt orange, just glorious?

At a mere 6°C, it needed a bit of layering so, apart from the camisole and slip I was wearing underneath, I wore a chunky, plum-coloured long-line cardigan on top. At my waist, a large-buckled belt in the same colour, while the pussy-bow was kept in check with one of my cameo brooches. The latter was joined by a vintage celluloid brooch in the same shade of pink as my beret.

You can just catch a glimpse of my fur collared and hemmed Princess coat, which got one of its first outings this season.

We didn't want to go too far as the sun had already been playing hide-and-seek with the clouds while we were getting ready. The park in nearby Boom was declared the perfect destination.

Fortunately, the sun had stopped playing games by the time we'd parked our car, and was obliging enough to keep us company for the duration of our walk, which started with a good old crunch through a deep pile carpet of russet leaves.

Instead of parking in our usual spot, we left our car at the other end of the park, from where it was only a short walk to its crowning glory: a modernist water and sculpture garden laid out in the early 1930s.

Hidden from view in the Summer months, we spotted the Braem Tower (above, bottom right) on the busy main road beyond the park. A high rise apartment building designed by the architect Renaat Braem - he of the Braem Pavillion in the sculpture park - in 1972, it has recently been declared uninhabitable due to problems with stability and fire safety. 

The giant colouring pencils on the bottom left are fencing in a school playground.

As we approached the water garden, the tower of the Art-Deco building across the road was looking enchantingly spooky in the blinding glare of the midday sun which was frolicking with the skeleton trees.

The building is Jos's old school, and was built between 1926 and 1930.

Pigeons were roosting near the top of the tower, and I pitied the bronze men - like all the sculptures here cleaned and restored as recently as 2020 - who seem to be their favourite target. The sculpture is called Solidarity and is by the Belgian artist George Minne (1866 – 1941).

The tapered end of the park is dominated by three sculptures by Ernest Wijnants (1878-1964). These winged creatures are called Victory, Advancement and Reflection.

If at first it looked as if the weather forecast for rain in the afternoon was wrong, it soon started clouding over once we got home, followed by the promised rain.

The rest of the day was spent mooching around and eating Christmas leftovers for dinner, As one does on Boxing Day.

I'll be back with more non-adventures of the in-between week in a couple of days. I hope to see you all again then, and in the meantime, please do stay safe!

Not everything is black or white

In just a handful of hours, it will be time to say goodbye to this funny old year. I expect it to fizzle out rather than go out with a bang but, well, let's face it: there's not much cause for celebration, is there?

The hopes we might have had at the start of this year have fallen by the wayside, all but crushed into oblivion by the force of an invisible enemy. 

As the days go by, it's not just hard to remember what the Before Times* were like, sometimes it's almost impossible to get one's head around the fact that such times ever existed. 

And yet, I've picked myself up again, and again, and continued living through the wasteland of days, which have knitted themselves into weeks and then months, until they completed the tapestry of another year.

* Thank you Sheila for this very apt term!

Christmas was still in the future when we set out on a wintry walk on Friday the 17th of December, and so was negotiating the manic Christmas shoppers which would frazzle my nerve ends in the week to come.

The solid greyness of the day had been joined by a lingering fog, and a fine drizzle was coating my glasses as we ventured into the park after that morning's charity shopping.

Too miserable for a walk, our aim was to look for a suitable spot to take some outfit photos.

Crossing the park's overflowing brook, we squelched through the sodden mulch towards a gnarly multi-stemmed tree which seemed perfect for the job. It even had a handy hook to hang up my cork handbag. 

I'll show you the details of the rest of my outfit in a minute, but for now a look at my outerwear will have to do. I wore a plaid wool jacket in delicious shades of chocolate, cinnamon and cream. It's got the softest furry collar ever and I found it in a vintage shop opposite my hairdresser's in November 2019. Due to its rather boxy shape, I always wear it belted, this time opting for a burgundy leather one. Both the green beret and the pink boa were charity shopped and need no further introduction as they've both appeared here countless times.

Apart from the odd, tenacious hangers-on, most of the leaves had joined the thick layer carpeting the ground, leaving the trees gaunt and bare. 

Pink winged Spindle berries (Euonymus europaeus) decked the shrub like festive bunting. I wonder if it flowered early this year, as legend has it that this signified an outbreak of the plague was on its way.

As a final hurrah, Goldenrod (Solidago) regaled us with clouds of fluffy snow-white seed heads.

I was wearing last Summer's roses on my jumper, blowsy pink ones cavorting among a profusion of fresh green foliage. 

The jumper is King Louie and was yet another charity shop find, as were the pink tie-neck cardigan and the cerise belt I'd added to accent my waist. Both my necklace and my brooch, on which a flapper lady is echoing my choice of headgear, were flea market finds. Only my skirt, in a super soft forest green faux suede, was bought brand new from Mango a couple of years ago.

The drizzle had petered out by the time our photo session had finished, so we decided to walk towards the hump-backed bridge where the brook meets the pond. 

Here, we were accosted by the customary gaggle of ducks and geese clamouring for a handout. Alas, we'd come ill-prepared and empty handed. The geese in particular were not amused and loudly honked their discontent. At the back of the pond, a flock of gulls was pretending they belonged in this landlocked part of the world.

We'd come ill-prepared indeed. 

As we ventured deeper into the park, negotiating muddy and waterlogged paths, it dawned on us that there was no turning back and that our photo session had turned into a walk. But not only was I wearing the most unsuitable footwear in the form of my bottle green wedge heeled ankle boots, we hadn't had the forethought of bringing our walking sticks, which were in the boot of our car!

Beyond the pond, the world's edges were blurred by a bank of fog, cocooning the park and us, the sole explorers of the magical world it contained.

The bridge and the grassy field bordering the pond were glowing with the feathery, fiery foliage of Taxodium distichum, the bald cypress,  It was as if a flock of fairies had simultaneously cast a magic spell and conjured up this unexpected splash of colour in a world otherwise leached of it. 

Rags of fog were caught in the branches of the trees, which looked forlorn and ghostly grey, their bleakness a sharp contrast to the odd one out which had stubbornly kept hold of its Autumn finery and was vainly preening itself in the mirror-like pond.

And yet, there were signs of a future Spring, with clumps of gently nodding Snowdrops and the fresh green foliage of some Hellebores which, as a rehearsal for their fat juicy buds, had caught a perfectly formed, coppery Oak leaf in their midst.

Not everything is black or white

Some things are lonely grey

Like windows looking out on rain at dusk

Or the bitter pain in winter skies

when all the birds are gone…’

~H. Joanne Hardee, from “Some Things Are Grey”

This atmospheric poem captured the mood of the day and those which would follow perfectly.

From the park, we climbed to the towpath which runs paralell to it, the river a colourless ribbon running towards the horizon.

We spotted a white heron, but it had spotted us too and took flight, the blur caught by my camera a cross between ghost and angel.

Back in the park, we passed the bench we often use for picnics. Judging from the knee-deep carpet of fiery leaves and the haphazard heaps left on its seat, the last ones to have had their sandwiches here were those spell-casting fairies before they fled for the imaginary monsters in the undergrowth.

Perhaps they were still hiding in the wreckage of the water feature taken over by nature and neglect?

And so, we have come to the end of our walk, and the end of yet another year. 

Pandemic or not, there are still things to be thankful for. If the year got off on the wrong foot by having to say goodbye to Phoebe in February, welcoming Bess in March has more than made up for this.

Happy New Year!