Christmas in England

Back in Puglia after an exhausting Christmas in the UK.  Stansted - Lincoln - London - Devon - London - Lincoln - Stansted.  After so long away in Malaysia duty and a degree of guilt called and by the time we put all our commitments together the schedule was complicated. 


For Christmas itself we were in Devon with Sue's sister Julie and her family and Jim and Audrey who we drove from London.  The Devon countryside was wet and wild, the woodland bare and the streams and rivers in flood.  For the first time I looked at the picturesque country cottages and imagined what a hard life it would have been to live in a small English village a hundred years ago, when money and food were often short and the weather harsh.

We saw Dad at the beginning and end of our trip and for the first time in many years he seemed accepting of his lot.  Homecarers come in four times a day, to get him out of bed, toilet him and put him back to bed.  Not much of a life one might think, revolving around "Bargain Hunt" and the evening soaps.  But he feels safe and he sees people.  Walking now seems to be a distant and untroubling memory.

He talked to Sue a couple of times about how he felt he was slowing down and that death might not be so far away.  His mood seemed less morbid than accepting.  I'm not worried that he didn't share these thoughts with me, we seem more easy with each other than we have for years and our understanding feels tacit.

One evening I went for a run to the local woodland lake listening to radio 4 on my Ipod.  As I reached the water's edge the guest on "Desert Island Discs" requested "In the Bleak Midwinter".  The choir started up as I looked out over the lake to the silver birches beyond against a background of luminous blue sky and throbbing stars and I felt myself letting go of something.