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Tags: Winter

Traditions are not consciously created. A tradition is born and nurtured long before anyone sees it for what it is. It lies patiently in wait – for it has time – growing stronger and more difficult to remove. It has no fear of being discovered, for discovery is the final act of consummation. Tra

Jess hadn’t expected snow. Wasn’t that the point of the south-west? Wet, yes, but no snow, not like the Highlands or the Alps or somewhere. When they’d bought their idyll, their adorable little cottage with its roses round the door and windows peeping out beneath thatched eaves, when they’d

My grandmother took the bookies to the cleaners that last Christmas we were all together. They had it coming, she reasoned. She had placed the same bet every January 2nd for the previous seventeen years and never won a penny. The stakes that had begun at five shillings – cobbled together from c

If they knew we’d gone there, our grans would’ve tanned our hides for us. As they’d say. One of our mums had a brown leather bag she called ‘tan hide.’ Our mums were too busy, and too tired with work, to do more than yell at us. And our dads would’ve taken their belts to us. If they’d

The woods are lovely in this pink winter light, the setting sun glinting off snow and the bare branches like a Japanese painting. I needed to come back, to remember, to feel the ground beneath my feet. I padded downstairs, heard cooking sounds, clicked the door behind me, pushed open the garden g

The mermaid was gone from the icehouse and the Dowager declared the tenants had all been lying, or else their minds had been touched by the cold and too much whisky. Being their only gentle-born witness, I was summoned to the Bighouse to defend their tale. My father was angry; he couldn’t say so o

There’s a tree grows in a wood, an old willow tree. And of an evening when the world is quiet and still, if you are really listening, you will hear the tree speaking. And it tells this story. There was once a young woman who came walking through the wood. It was late on a midwinter’s afternoo

My father bought paperweights for her all the time. Every birthday, wedding anniversary and Christmas. When he died I continued to buy them for her. She became a collector. They sat in a teak display cabinet in the hallway, each one a strange planet in a human solar system revolving around her, its

Edge of town, near the sandy beach that stretches for miles. Here, in an area of wasteland frequented by alcoholics, wastrels, drug addicts, homeless people, rats and stray cats, stands an old door, propped up against bricks. A white door, almost-new door, what-is-it-doing here door. Not a door,

A well-aimed kick winds her; gasping, she bends double. Late afternoon, deep-dark February, and on the snaking branches of the common limes outside, snow sits tight, a vanilla crust ready to drop. She knows it won’t fall. There’s not a breath of winter wind. The air, it’s freezing. An