Happy New Year

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Hannah

Looking back on the year is a funny old thing isn’t it? Towards the end of this year something unpleasant happened. It wasn’t a massive thing but in typical Hannah fashion I’ve questioned and questioned myself. I shouldn’t have said this or that. I could have handled things better.Β I wish I could be more like Edith Piaf and sing no regrets but I’m more often like Aldous Huxley when he describes himself as being in a state of chronic remorse.

One of the carols we sang at the Carol Service on Christmas Eve was God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. The final verse goes:

Now to the Lord sing praises/All people in this place!/With Christian love and fellowship/Each other now embrace/And let this Christmas festival/All bitterness displace.

I think that’s brilliant. In reality I’m never going to be able to sing that I regret nothing because, as old fashioned as it sounds, I’m trying to become a better person. But what I do need to learn to do is draw a line under things. There are some situations that, with the best will in the world, I can’t do anything about and then it’s time to embrace (if possible) and move on in peace. So, here’s to 2013…a year for moving on.

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Lovely presents

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Hannah

How was your Christmas? Good I hope. The endless days of grey cloud and solid rain we’ve been experiencing here, for what feels like weeks, cleared on Christmas Day. My mum and dad and I climbed one of the big hills on the farm. At 381 metres above sea level we could see for miles in the bright winter air. Far below the lights of the homes in the valley glinted. The short hours of daylight this close to the solstice didn’t allow us long, so as we clambered down the other side of the hill the moon was rising behind us.

Here’s a lovely present we received for Christmas. It’s a clock made from beachcombings by Simon Mouncey. It’s such a jolly thing. With its face slightly at an angle it looks like it might tell a joke as much as the time.

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Happy Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Hannah

We’re not long back from the torch lit Carol Service in the village hall. Our village comes under the church in the next village along but we get our own service at this time of year. We all darted in beneath umbrellas. In spite of the leaky roof it was beautifully atmospheric. The vicar added a contemporary twist by bringing along glow sticks for everyone, much to the children’s delight!

Little Owl has left a mince pie, a carrot, and a glass of sherry for Father Christmas under the tree. She has also left her dummy under there too. We’ve told her that because she’s such a big girl now her dummy needs to be passed on to a new little baby and that Father Christmas will pass it on for her. We’ll let you know how that goes. She was asleep well before the end of Lucy and Tom’s Christmas so I don’t think it troubled her too much.

So all that is left for me to say is thank you all once again for your kindness and support over the last year. Have a wonderful Christmas. May it indeed be merry and bright.

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Christmas Party

Posted on December 22, 2012 by Hannah

Today was the village children’s Christmas party. We all arrived in plenty of time to put the heating on, check the toilets hadn’t frozen, and wash any mousey footprints off the crockery. In all this rain it wasn’t the cold we had to worry about but a leak that had developed in the roof.

I’ve written before about the difficulties of trying to improve the hall, which you can read here. What we’d love is a new hall but instead we can only get funding for projects on the existing hall. Hence we have a brand new heating system fitted on a building that has gaps in the walls big enough to see out of. I could imagine a scenario where all that is left of the original structure is the walls (once we’ve replaced the leaky roof) but this piecemeal approach doesn’t allow us to make the most of this valuable community resource. Before we understood about how funding for this kind of thing works we dreamed of a well-insulated hall run entirely on renewables. It would also have office space, which we could have rented out to local businesses or community groups making the hall’s funding more sustainable. Instead we have to fundraise like mad to pay to heat inside the hall and outside it!

Anyway, ranting aside, the party went very well. Our new Father Christmas was perfect. It was unfortunate he managed to sit exactly under the leak to give out the presents but that was soon remedied. We also only noticed too late that one 18 month little girl had found her way into the sack of presents and was busy unwrapping them all!

By the way, the curlew has nothing to do with this post except that I drew him this week and I thought you might like him.

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The Jessops hero

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Hannah

I’ve had quite an exciting morning. I was in Jessops ordering some photos to go with a Christmas present and there was a fidgety young man in a grey tracksuit wandering around looking at things. As I left the shop the fidgety young man came flying past me, swiftly followed by one of the shop assistants. Off up the street they raced. Could it be? Yes, the Jessops man was definitely gaining. Then, oh no! It looked like he’d tripped. The fidgety young man was gone in a flash. But no, the thief had dropped the IPad he’d stolen and the Jessops man had been bending to pick it up. What a hero! He got a fair few pats on the back by passers by.

In this endless grey rain we’ll be heading off to the village hall this evening for carols, mince pies, and mulled wine. The lack of snow means it won’t be quite as magical as last year but we’ll love it anyway. Little Owl will be all wrapped up in her pyjamas ready for bed as soon as we get home. Big Dreamer and I will belt out The Holly and the Ivy with all the gusto we can manage. You can’t beat a good sing-a-long.

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Learning to drive

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Hannah

When I learnt to drive my instructor told me that the key thing about being a good driver was to promote the flow of traffic. Everyone wants to get where they need to go and the best way to do this was to be co-operative. In practice driving isn’t always like that and neither is life. Sometimes we all have days that feel full of petty meannesses and small-mindedness. Sometimes it’s hard to understand why people can’t be more open-hearted to each other, giving each other the benefit of the doubt, and always trying to believe the best.

In many ways our move to Scotland was about getting away from those sorts of mindsets, pursuing a simpler and more joyful way of living. Not to say that we thought Scotland was some sort of Eden (although maybe Alex Slamond would like us think that!) but living on the farm has been a brilliant way of keeping it all in perspective. In amongst this ever evolving landscape I am a small and fragile creature. My fears and dreams are held in equal weight with the Sparrowhawk who dives on our bird feeder and the pregnant ewe sheltering from the snow in the fields. There is no room for petty meanness here. We are all equally humbled by the might of the elements at work on the earth.

It’s not just the landscape. Little Owl keeps things real for me too. The other evening I was sat by the stove grappling with some dry academic text for my dissertation. Little Owl picked up one of the books from my pile and started making her own notes. She sucked the end of her pencil, turning the pages carefully before nodding and scribbling something determinedly on her paper. Here are her notes on Marie-Laure Ryan’s book Narrative Across Media. Not a bad summation I should say.

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Penguins vs Father Christmas

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Hannah

This has not long arrived from Big Dreamer’s mum. Isn’t it brilliant? I’m not sure I’ll be able to bear to cut into it. Oh alright then…I will!

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The three piggy kings

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Hannah

Yesterday was Little Owl’s Christmas play. It was based on a bit of a complex premis…Fairyland does the nativity. Little Red Riding was Mary, Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk was Joseph, and the Three Little Pigs were the Three Kings. The costumes were not easy. Little Owl needed to be dressed up as a pig, dressed up as a king. Fortunately my marvellous mother-in-law had a few tricks up her sleeve. This is Little Owl’s crown and she wore it the whole time. Putting aside the fact that Jesus was a jew and mightn’t have been all that happy being visited by a pig, it all went off very well. At one point the kings had to journey to the back of the church and we could still hear Little Owl’s voice singing away forcefully. To finish up we all joined in a jolly rendition of we wish you a Merry Christmas and I felt quite tearful, as only a parent of a small child can after having sat through total chaos…very sweet chaos at that. Hats off to the nursery nurses. I don’t know how they do it.

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Rapped knuckles

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Hannah

The valley was so still this morning. The sky was pale pink with the rising sun and a white mist hung low over the icy fields. John Berger talks about the key aspect of community being recognition. I love that idea and the more I think about it the more profound it always seems to get. Recognition is more than picking a face out of a crowd. We talk about recognizing a person’s achievements. Recognition is also about valuing someone. There are so many people and places to recognise in my community. I bet there are in yours too.

Something I will never be recognised for is business acumen. Today I was very kindly taken in hand by one of the galleries I work with and given a quick rap of the knuckles for not valuing my work more highly and therefore not charging enough. At the heart of it is confidence. I feel embarrassed taking money for my work. But sometimes all you need is someone to believe in you and these ladies do. Not in an airy-fairy “your work’s lovely” way but in a down-to-earth “your work sells” kind of way. So, you have about 15 minutes to visit my shop before I make some serious alterations. The squirrel is tutting at me by the way because, as we all know, squirrels are excellent at business.

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ECA Christmas Fair

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Hannah

Here is my stall at the Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) Christmas fair on Friday. It was a really jolly couple of hours and I felt very festive afterwards. I’ve also put in a picture of the Sculpture Court in which the fair was being held. The old part of the college was purpose built and designed to get the best possible light. The Sculpture Court is two storeys high in the centre of the old part of the college and is a spectacular space. It’s filled to bursting with one of the best cast collections around. Not long ago the college received funding to renovate the collection so they’re looking particularly great at the moment. You can read more about the collection here.

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