The Days Between

I hope you have all had a good holiday and a merry Christmas however you may have spent the time. Ours has been low key with family visits and plenty of good food. Certainly no Instagram worthy matching outfits or festive PJs, no fancy table settings or exquisitely folded napkins, just us and good things to eat. On Christmas Day itself we woke to only three of us in the house and later we fetched my Mum to join us for lunch. In the days leading up to the main event I anticipated it being a chore to be driving over to get Mum and then having to drive her home again having missed out on having a glass of wine with my lunch, but as the day dawned I realised it was a privilege. With my Mum now in her ninetieth year I know I won’t have many more Christmases to spend with her and we don’t know which one will be our last, so we enjoyed our time in her company, listening to the same old stories and laughing along with her. I roasted a goose, breaking with tradition. A goose always was the traditional Christmas bird back in Victorian times. Turkey was not indigenous in Britain, and it was considered an expensive option, until Dickens raised its popularity when Scrooge presented the Cratchits with a turkey on Christmas Day.

With a large family to feed when my four children were younger, we would always have a turkey but in recent years when often there has just been the two of us here for Christmas we frequently opt for fish, as I don’t eat any type of bird. But this year the vote was for goose and so that is what we had, and I was happy to eat a plate piled with lots of different vegetables. Mum proclaimed several times “this is different”. We waited with bated breath to see if that might be a good or a bad thing, but she cleared her plate and then had second helpings before telling us once again it was different. I think she enjoyed it and had a good day, which is what it is all about really. Appreciating what we have and being thankful to spend our time with those for whom we love and care. We didn’t need photos of our perfect Christmas for Instagram, we simply enjoyed the moment.

Before we donned our silly hats!

I have often struggled with the days between Christmas and New Year, feeling restless and slightly flat as though I should be doing something useful during this liminal time that feels neither one thing nor another. There is the temptation to review and reflect on the year just gone and set goals and ambitions for the year ahead. But this year I am having none of that. I am trying to embrace those gentle between days and resisting the feeling that life should be returning to ‘business as usual’. I’m not making plans, other than some daydreaming of places I would like to visit, but instead I’m trying to savour each day. There have been unhurried hours in the kitchen with the simmering of bones and chopping of veg as I engage in the annual ritual of creating a broth for soup and inspired by TV cooking shows I have baked focaccia to create an ‘ultimate’ left over sandwich.

There is a comfort in knowing we can feed ourselves on leftovers with no need to head back out to the shops. We have plenty to sustain us. There is a Swedish word lagom which doesn’t have an exact equivalent in English but loosely translates as meaning ‘not too much, not too little but just enough’ which seems perfect to describe this feeling of the acceptance of everything being enough during this between time. Although I confess, I did pop out for some salad ingredients as I was craving something fresh to offset the overload of carbs.

As well as comforting food, there have been new books to read, a host of old films to watch and although it has been a wild, windy, stormy week here in the UK there have been some lovely long blustery walks avoiding the rain showers.

The December full moon, the Cold Moon, which is the first that falls after the winter solstice, fell on Boxing Day this year and accompanied a long walk across the fields and today I’m starting to write this after a five mile stroll around our local National Trust estate with one of my sons, having made the most of the morning sunshine. We took a flask of hot chocolate and the last of the mince pies for an impromptu winter picnic. There’s more rain forecast this afternoon, so now it’s an ideal time to stay cosy inside reading, knitting and writing. Especially writing, as I’m also devoting time to Beth Kempton’s free Winter Writing Sanctuary which begins during this time between Christmas and New Year. This is one of my first efforts at writing haiku

A chilling wind fuels

the branches’ frenzied dancing.

The rain starts to fall

But despite trying to embrace these slow lazy days I can still feel an underlying restlessness. There is an urge to create beyond being innovative with leftovers and making last minute crochet Christmas decorations and I’m looking forward to getting back into the studio with my paints and canvases with a renewed enthusiasm, no doubt fuelled by resting in these days between. Which is lucky really as I have a solo exhibition coming up in February. I’m not panicking… yet!

But before that there will be another celebration this evening spent sharing food and laughter with good friends to see in the new year, a year that I hope will be filled with lots more friendship, food and laughter… and of course plenty of creativity for all of us. That is the extent of my planning.

Whether you are spending a cosy evening in front of the telly, having an early night or staying up to toast the arrival of 2024 I wish you a very happy and healthy new year and thank you with enormous gratitude for the support you have given me here in my first six months writing on Substack. There wouldn’t be much point without you. Thank you and Happy New Year!