Saturday 30 April 2022

Beltane: Day 5


It's Day 5 of our Beltane celebrations! Getting ready for a busy weekend! But first... today...

Beltane Earrings



Today's seasonal earrings were hawthorn leaves and blossoms.

Creative Writing Session






We had a lovely Springtime writing session at Castlerea Home care home today, where I do a weekly volunteering session. We were brainstorming the best bits of the season, and then writing short poems/stories inspired by these ideas.

Violet Liqueur



And finally for today... I had a cheeky Beltane drink with a friend this evening. We had a very seasonal Aber Falls Violet Liqueur!

Thursday 28 April 2022

Beltane: Day 4


Last day of our holiday, so we were busy travelling and getting settled back in at home today (plus, I had to attend a work meeting this evening). We did fit in a little bit of seasonal celebration though.

Lunch in Bakewell




We couldn't go to Bakewell without visiting the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop, could we? We had a lovely lunch here before we headed back. I had a Derbyshire Rarebit and, of course, a Bakewell pudding (not a tart, which isn't native to Bakewell at all).

May Day



And this evening it was time for a bit of seasonal viewing for Beltane... we're watching May Day (the 2013 drama series with Sophie Okonedo and Aiden Gillen) over the next couple of days.

Wednesday 27 April 2022

Beltane: Day 3


It's the third day of our Beltane celebrations, and we're still in Bakewell so more Peak District adventures for us today. We'll be heading home tomorrow, so today was our final excursion of the holiday.

Beltane Earrings



Today's seasonal earrings were a cute little pair of daisy chains (another surprise gift from Rob).

Monsal Trail





We've been for a walk along the Monsal Trail today. The Monsal Trail is a section of a former Midland Railway line that runs from Chee Dale to Bakewell and is now a walking and cycling route.) We didn't do the whole trail, but we did Bakewell Station to just after Monsal Head viaduct and then back again. My favourite part (apart from the views from the viaduct) was walking through the Headstone Tunnel. I wish we could have gone as far as the other tunnels, but we couldn't handle a 17-mile walk today!

Tuesday 26 April 2022

Beltane: Day 2


It's the second day of our Beltane celebrations - and it's been a bit of a tiring one!

Beltane Earrings



Today's seasonal earrings were a Green Man and stag antlers combo. The stag antlers were a lovely surprise gift from Rob this week.

Hob Hurst's House




We went to Hob Hurst's House today, an English Heritage site just outside Bakewell. Hob Hurst's House has EVERYTHING I want from a landmark. It's a Bronze Age barrow, discovered by the 'Barrow Knight' (a Victorian antiquarian), supposedly inhabited by a folkloric creature, AND it's one of the first monuments to be taken into state care under the Ancient Monuments Protection Act! Amazing place.

Beeley Moor



After visiting the Bronze Age barrow, we continued our walk over Beeley Moor. It was... a little more strenuous than we were expecting. But the views were amazing!

Cocktails!



We celebrated our successful (but exhausting) excursion with cocktails. I like to call these 'Travel Cocktails', but I couldn't possibly share the recipe!

Monday 25 April 2022

Beltane: Day 1


It's time for our third event in our Year of Celebrating the Seasons. Beltane (or May Day) is an exciting one, as it sits on the opposite side of the Wheel of the Year to Samhain (or Halloween), which is my favourite seasonal celebration. We're going to be celebrating all week, and I'm determined to make this a week of Halloween-in-Spring.

Beltane Earrings



My first pair of Beltane earrings this year were these cute little bluebells.

Magpie Mine




We went to Magpie Mine in Sheldon, near Bakewell, this afternoon for a picnic and a wander. It's a disused lead mine, renovated and looked after by the Peak District Mines Historical Society.

Lathkill Dale




We also had a little wander in Lathkill Dale today. We definitely want to come back and explore properly another time. It's lovely!

The Reddening



Beltane feels like the perfect time for folk horror. I'm not 100% sure it's completely seasonal, but I'm reading The Reddening by Adam Nevill this week.

Beltane Candle




We lit our Beltane candle (from Chalice Creations) tonight. This season's scents are ylang ylang, jasmine, geranium and frankincense.

Monday 4 April 2022

My Year in Books 2022: March

After a bit of a strange month for reading in February, I think I've managed a bit better this time. There are three books on my March list, so that's a definite improvement. Like last month, I did read some other books for work and review this month, but the books in this post are the one I read for fun.

In case you're interested, here are my other review posts from 2022 so far: January, February

Daffodil: Biography of a Flower by Helen O'Neill (2016)


I bought this book to read during our Vernal Equinox celebrations. I knew I was going to be thinking about daffodils a lot in the run-up to the equinox (as it turned out, I underestimated how much) so I thought this might be an interesting book to read. And I was right! It was the perfect choice of seasonal reading, and a really fascinating study of a flower that, perhaps, we sometimes take for granted. O’Neill’s book includes some history of daffodils, but this is sometimes vague by necessity. It seems that there is still a lot that isn’t known about the daffodil, including whether or not it is actually native to Britain. There’s also some botanical information here, and I will say that it helps to do a little bit of light background reading if you’re not familiar with how daffodils actually grow and reproduce. Where the book really comes into its own is when it looks at how the story of the daffodil intersects with more human stories, like the background of the more famous daffodil hybridizers or the ways in which gardening tastes and habits have changed. Some stories are intriguing; other episodes in the daffodil story are still shrouded in obscurity or lost to time. Ultimately though, after reading the book, I was left with the feeling that daffodils matter, that their story is a significant and revealing of something bigger than just a pretty spring flower. And, surely, that’s what a good biography should do.

Asta's Book by Barbara Vine (1993)


The next book I read this month was a reread. And a frequent one at that! Given the difficulties I found last month with reading, I thought it would be a good idea to go back to something I know I’ll love. Asta’s Book is one of my favourite novels of all time. When I first read it in the late 90s, I just fell in love with it and couldn’t put it down. And this time – the umpteenth time I’ve read it – I finished it in a single (albeit rather long) sitting. Asta’s Book is a multi-narrative, multi-generational, domestic mystery novel. The ‘book’ of the title is a diary kept by a Danish woman – Asta Westerby – between 1905 and 1967. After Asta’s death, her daughter Swanny discovers the diaries and has them published to great acclaim; after Swanny’s death, the guardianship of the diaries falls to Asta’s granddaughter Ann. There are two mysteries here: the first is the mystery of Asta’s daughter’s birth, a question that plagued Swanny in her later years, and the second is an unsolved murder from the early twentieth century. Ann believes the answers to both lie in Asta’s diaries. This summary really doesn’t do justice to the depth and intricacy of Vine’s storytelling, or the way in which narratives weave around one another before the final answers leap out with startling clarity. If I could, I would erase all my memories of this book, so I could read it again for the first time.

All Her Fault by Andrea Mara (2021)


This one was an impulse purchase at the supermarket. I read Andrea Mara’s One Click a while ago, and I liked the writing, even though the ending was a little far-fetched. Mara’s books are domestic thrillers, and I have a strange relationship with that genre. It frustrates me intensely (no matter how ‘mind-blowing’ a twist is promised, it’s almost always that the husband did it), and I’ve read a lot of books in this genre that I really haven’t enjoyed. And yet – I keep coming back, and I’m not even fighting it anymore. Fortunately, Mara really is a good writer, and I found All Her Fault just as readable and enjoyable (in fact, probably more so) than One Click. The story revolves around a kidnapping. Middle-class Marissa seems to have everything sorted, but when she arrives at a friend’s house to collect her son from a playdate, her world falls apart. Not only is her son not there, but it turns out the text arranging the playdate wasn’t sent by her friend. Marissa’s son has been kidnapped, and the race is on to find out where he is. The book shifts between multiple perspectives: Marissa, Jenny (the friend who was supposed to be holding the playdate) and a couple of others that I won’t reveal for fear of spoilers. It’s a fun read, and with hindsight Mara plants a lot of clues to the big reveal along the way. But you might not put them together correctly until the end!

Sunday 20 March 2022

Vernal Equinox: Day 7


The big day is here! It's the Vernal Equinox, and officially the beginning of spring! (And so that means it's the final day of our first proper Ostara celebration.)

Spring Forest Bathing




I went for a Spring Forest Bathing session with Natalie Rossiter Wellbeing this morning. I had some quiet time with the blackthorn blossom, tasted silver birch sap and saw my first bumblebees and bunny rabbits of the year. We ended the session with tea made from foraged nettles, blackberry leaves and silver birch tips.

Ostara Earrings



My final pair of Ostara earrings this year... more funky chickens!

Marzipan Eggs



A special little Ostara treat for me and Rob... Niederegger marzipan eggs! (Ignore that the box says Frohe Ostern, I reckon they're obviously made for the Vernal Equinox.)

Ostara Dinner



To round off our Vernal Equinox celebrations, Rob served the (now) traditional Ostara Dinner of spring vegetable paella.

Ostara Gifts



And finally, we swapped our (now) traditional Ostara gifts tonight, adding to our seasonal whisky tasting sets that we'll be enjoying at Christmas.

And so the wheel of the year turns... We'll be celebrating again at Beltane.

My Year in Books 2022: February

This post is a bit of a tricky one. As you might have noticed, I'm posting it pretty late into March (normally I'd have posted this at the end of February). And you might also notice that there's only one book on my list. I really don't know what happened in February, but I struggled a lot with reading for pleasure this month. I did read a few other books for review and work purposes, but I just couldn't get into anything else. I'll be honest and say that it took me over a month just to finish the one novel here. I've put it on the February list, because even though I finished it in March, I read the first half of it last month, and because I really didn't want one of my monthly blog posts to be empty. I hope I get my mojo back soon.

You can read my January blog post here.

All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes (2022)


This one was one of the books in my February Abominable Books box. The other book that was included was one I’ve been looking forward to for a while, so more on that anon I expect. I decided to read Wilkes’s book first, as it’s set on an Antarctic expedition. When I first got the book, I made a joke that I was being haunted by Antarctica this year (various things I’ve done have had an unexpected connection to Antarctica). You can imagine how surprised I was that the Endurance was found shortly after I made that joke! Anyway, All the White Spaces is set just after the First World War, when an expedition sets sail for the South Pole. On board – as a stowaway – is Jo Morgan, who becomes Jonathan for the journey (at first as a disguise, but gradually Morgan realizes that Jonathan is who he always, in some way, was). As I said, I got this book in my Abominable Books horror subscription box, so I wasn’t expecting the expedition to go well! But I have somewhat mixed feelings about the book. On the one hand, I was absolutely gripped throughout by Wilkes’s writing. It’s prose that you can really lose yourself in. However, on the other, the storyline didn’t really do much for me. Although this is marketed as ‘there’s something bad out there in the polar winter’, the ‘monster’ of the piece doesn’t really have much impact, and the book is perhaps a little over-long.

Vernal Equinox: Day 6


Another day of celebrating the start of spring. It's the big day tomorrow, but we had a very enjoyable day today continuing my plan to make the week as daffodil-tastic as possible.

Grasmere






And where better to see daffodils (or rather 'Daffodils') than at the Wordsworth Museum and Dove Cottage! The museum has a special exhibition on to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Dorothy Wordsworth's birth, as well as the opportunity to see 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' in Wordsworth's own hand, as the manuscript is currently on loan from the British Library. We had a lovely day at the museum and Dove Cottage in Grasmere today. It was perfect weather for a nice stroll around the gardens and woods at Dove Cottage too.

Thirlmere




We ended our little trip to the Lakes with a little walk around Thirlmere. We didn't spot any red squirrels, but the scenery was spectacular.

Dorothy Wordsworth Book and Bookmark



A lovely gift from Rob from the Wordsworth Museum... a book about Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth by Marian Veevers, and a woven bookmark covered in daffodils!