DECEMBER: "The air felt crisp against my face as I wandered into the fruit tree-filled garden of my guest house in Bethlehem..."

 "The air felt crisp against my face as I wandered into the fruit tree-filled garden of my guest house in Bethlehem. I took a seat on a swinging bench that was nestled under a canopy of vine leaves, pulling my woollen scarf tight around my neck to shield me from the cold as I listened to the soaring vocals of the early evening adhaan (the Muslim call to prayer) echoing across the sky."

from "Zaitoun" by Yasmin Khan.

Over the frosty wall 

Remembering Simon and Garfunkel singing "7 o'clock News/Silent Night" now. Once you've heard it, it's difficult to forget. Not the sweetest version of the carol I've heard - but it's the one that comes back to me every Advent - and haunts me. This year, there is, of course, even more poignancy to the recording. We've read about gut-wrenching war-crimes ordered by belligerent leaders - those who should put into context the horrors committed against their own people not so very long ago. We wonder at the limited progress made in international empathy. I walk in the countryside around my home and the early morning peace is almost tangible. Three deer - they often come in threes - are running and skipping in the field across the burn. The grass is still white in places. The dogs are catching scents which drive them nuts! The air is clean and good. My Caithness air is clean and good. I live on the edge of a wind farm which makes electricity to power, amongst other things, our Christmas lights, our ovens to cook our turkeys and our fridges to chill the wine. And yet my air is clean and good - so good that the trees drip with lichen. I hope you're breathing clean air this Christmas too. And I hope for peace - an end to cruelty and injustice. 

Wintry windfarm

It strikes me, after a protracted cold spell, that Winter can be cruel enough without human intervention. To begin December, we had a week of bitterly cold weather. On some days the temperature never went above freezing. On the first of the month it was -5 for the school run and -3 at bedtime. Shortly before going to bed, I let the dogs out and was startled by a screech owl. It was caught, on the trail camera, gliding through the little wood. Around me the sky was lit up by the Northern Lights - again! Oh yes, Winter can be beautiful - but it can be a killer. The birds needed water through the cold spell but the time frame was limited. One morning I broke through the ice in the birdbath, which is standing at floor-level outside the French windows, and I put in water. A little later I took out a large jug of water to top up the birdbath. Expecting it to be liquid after such a short time, I poured the water in. Big mistake! As the first lot of water had frozen solid quickly, the second jugful bounced out of the birdbath all over me! When I tried to give the birds  water in other containers, they took so long getting used to the fact it was safe to drink from them that the water had frozen over before they could slake their thirst. 

This is the month for listening to carols from morning until evening. They're there in the background through December - from medieval to Rutter.

December sunset

Howard Blake's score for the 1982 film, "The Snowman", is something I just have to listen to each year at this time too. It has delightful appeal, connecting me with all the winter landscapes I have known - from the frozen lanes of my Axholme childhood, through the slushy paths of Yorkshire villages, the windy hillsides of Orkney to the snow bolstered fields around my present home in Caithness - by way of the New Year walks from our village on the south bank of the River Humber in the 2000s.

Fun with frost

The river which flows through our valley now is called the Forss - sometimes Forss Water. As Lucy Boston writes in The Children of Green Knowe, "the river is a very lively inhabitant in these parts". In wintertime, it sometimes sneaks over its banks and makes silver ribbons of the surrounding marshy fields. It had partially frozen in the last very cold spell a week ago now. We have seen fish leaping from it, otters testing the air as they lift their glossy heads above it and deer meeting beside it. Meadowsweet and yellow iris are sleeping in its valley as a large fox darts up the hillside. 

The kissing bough

It never fails to dampen my spirits when I spot the little corpses of birds in the garden. Some fly into windows, others die of extreme cold. I'm told that their bodies will feed other creatures so it's not so bad - I'm afraid that doesn't help!! Often they are the tiny birds. Happily, though, I can report that we still have our goldcrests - even after the solid freezing of last week. One cheeky little chap bounced along the stone wall as the dogs were being walked - didn't really seem afraid at all. From the tinies to the impressive owls, on Saturday Ginny and Clemency were taken by surprise when a short eared owl (known as Cattie-Face in Orkney) flew up from just over the wall and glided across the field and away from them. Seen, on the same walk, was a sparrowhawk. I'm thinking back to springtime and summer when the sparrowhawk's tour of the garden was heralded by much twittering and movement. "Sparrowhawk! Fly! Fly for your lives!" I know they have to eat but it was always so sad to see him carry off a fluffy blue tit. 

Being watched!

We know the deer are all around us for much of the year but it's in wintertime we see them most often without the need for trail cameras. They will spot us walking, and watch us, before gracefully running off towards their grazing. Recently, the three we've seen most are two athletic jumpers and one who would rather not jump unless it's absolutely necessary! 
We see hares often and the more I see them, the more I think they're not altogether unlike the deer. Not sure if it's the ability to remain totally still or the fluid way they move across my vision - or something else I'm completely missing. One very large hare is staying quite close to the house at present. Their habits are fascinating. No one is absolutely sure why they display peculiar behaviour at different times of the year. The boxing which goes on in March is now thought to be males and their less enthusiastic potential mates. When I was little, people used to say it was two males fighting over one female. When we lived in the bungalow on Belshaw Lane, before Mr. Harrison built the other bungalows between us and Granny and Grandad, I would watch the hares chasing and playing in pairs and often in threes. Hedges had been removed from the fields and so little dust storms were regular events but it didn't deter the hare population. There is something magical about hares. They seem to know things.

After the cold we had wind and rain. The rivers have remained quite full throughout December to date. As I look across the river from partway down our hill, I notice the opposite hillside wet with rain and streaked with tiny rivulets - all heading into the Forss. There is little colour other than green and brown. On the surface of it, one could be forgiven thinking all plant life has given up - but look at the shrubs and the trees - you'll easily see their new growth - fresh fleshy buds developing along their seemingly dry branches.

Winter sunrise

Since we moved from the east coast of Caithness to the north west, we've had two Christmasses - this is the third. Weatherwise, the first was moderate. Last year and this year, however, we have it all. Tonight (19th) we had thunder and lightning in the middle of high winds, hail and snow. The colour is in the sunrise and the sunset. The expectation of Spring is illuminated by it. This Christmas my wish is for peace like our snow-covered hills, for joy like our roadside daffodils, for comfort like the feather-lined nest in the old mail- box and hope like the leap of the roe deer as it moves to better grazing. This is my wish for every living thing on our beautiful planet.

"...we wandered through the markets of Bethlehem. After paying our respects at the Church of the Nativity, we made our way to one of Bethlehem's more infamous sites, the Separation Wall, to admire some of British graffiti artist Banksy's stencils. Images and slogans cover vast sections of the concrete and steel wall and we followed its winding route through to Aida refugee camp, one of the oldest camps in the OPT, home to Palestinian refugees from Jerusalem and the villages west of Hebron, who were forcibly displaced when the state of Israel was created in 1948." 

           from "Zaitoun" by Yasmin Khan, published by Bloomsbury, 2018

Happy Christmas 2023!