sEAsons…time for changes

And it snowed.

But how beautiful was the view from my daughter’s new house on the day after Boxing day; it was like someone had been out overnight and sprinkled a sifting of icing sugar over the moors.  

At the point when I took these pictures just after lunch it was bitterly cold with a biting wind and icy pathways and the temperature was only just reaching minus one.  Packing the car to come home took quite some time but eventually we were on our way, sad to leave.

So how was your Christmas – did Santa bring you everything you had wished for?

I had a few surprises, nice ones of course.  With my new Country Living subscription from OH came a free box of Hotel Chocolates with a festive theme.  These will be on hand when I can settle down to reading my two new books also from OH –

Nigel Slater’s The Christmas Chronicles  – beautiful photographs and his style a sheer joy to read and

‘Winter’ an anthology for the changing seasons edited by Melissa Harrison.  It is one of a series full of delightful prose and poetry.

I cannot decide which book I should read first or which chocolate I should eat first.

Little L was delighted with her singing Ice Cream Cart from Santa and kept us fully supplied with ice cream cones topped with cherry or chocolate sauce and sprinkles.  What a shame it was only pretend – though our calorie intake, had they been real, would have been enormous.  

I must say I am tempted to put this on my list for next year!

We are home again now and today has been a gentle day of doing a bit of this and that.

I like to get the house back in order, but slowly, nothing too hurried or frantic.

I cleared out the fridge of anything past it’s usability (which thankfully was not very much), put in a load of linens and towels to wash (and they have been out on the line in the sun), and cleared up a few messy areas.

After all the mad days of Christmas preparations it was nice to be able to sit and relax and when I do this my mind wanders off to thinking of what I might do in the coming year.

I already know in my mind that 2018 will be a year of changes.  I am not, at this point in time,  altogether sure what they will be but I know I feel like a change in many aspects of my life.

Recently I have been reading a book I can recommend called ‘Small move, big change’ by Caroline I. Arnold.  It claims to transform your life – well maybe it will and maybe it won’t but I like the content and the way she uses something called micro resolutions to do this.  

As I was reading certain chapters I could really identify with the examples she was giving as if she had a secret access to my own life in places and throwing a spotlight on it.  It did make me smile at times as I realised that when you see things written down it allows you to identify with some of the mad things we do and then wonder why we acquire bad habits that keep us stuck or from where we want to be.  And those very habits we have spent a lifetime nurturing can be working against us and are so hard to break.

I have been reading another book with similar ideas about making changes.  It  caught my eye in the library as I glanced along the shelves and I borrowed it mainly out of curiosity because of the strange title – Hell Week by Erik Bertrand Larssen.  I am a fan of all things Scandinavian so knowing that this author is Norwegian only increased that curiosity.

Keeping this summary short the title is a bit of a clue to the content and I can tell you that adopting this method of changing your habits in only one week is the complete opposite of the methods used in the previous book and certainly not for the faint-hearted or wimps like me!  For instance I know that I will not be getting up at 5am everyday to take part in Hell Week – but I would pledge to aim for a more civilised 6.30am – but this might be totally missing the point of this book as it is meant to be gruelling like the special services survival training it is based on.

Like any book it can instigate thoughts and there is always something you can take from a book that you didn’t have or know before.  That is the power and wonder of the written word.

As it seems that I have been drawn towards these books on making changes, and I am in the mood for change, then I will set out on a new journey and see where it takes me.  

I am quite excited.