What was I saying about living closer to the seasons in the countryside? I wasn't expecting there to be such a thick frost this morning, since I didn't even have to de-ice my windscreen last night leaving the restaurant, and that was at gone ten. Although the sun shone brightly all morning, it didn't make an appreciable impact on the ice, which stayed crustily on lawn and gravel, and rimed the outlines of the grasses, leaves and seed heads the way frost is supposed to according to the photographs in the glossy gardening magazines. The thermometer eventually crept up to four degrees, but it felt cold. I suppose four degrees is cold.
The Systems Administrator disappeared to London for lunch, leaving me to wait for a parcel that Citylink tried to deliver yesterday while we were both out. The contents of the parcel are for me, and my waiting in a quid pro quo for the time a couple of weeks ago when the positions were reversed. I could have stomped about the frozen gravel in the front garden cutting down aster stems and chopping icy strands off the ivy hedge, but it gradually dawned on me that I didn't want to. It just felt too cold.
Instead I ordered our Chelsea tickets. The website said that all day tickets for the Tuesday were down to limited availability, but let me buy two. Phew. I know that Chelsea sold out this year, but I didn't expect there to be a problem buying tickets before Christmas, when the show isn't until May. After an internal struggle I opted to have them posted to us, which will produce spasms of anxiety from late March until they arrive, in case the post office has lost them, but will avoid queuing to collect them on the morning provided they do arrive. I will probably have smaller spasms of anxiety between now and late March in case I should have opted to pick them up at the venue, but I didn't know how slow the queue would be, and had visions of the day getting off to a bad start as we hung around outside the show for ages while other happy visitors streamed past us, and our chance to visit the small gardens early as we always do slipped away. Permitting oneself to worry at all about either of these problems is extremely un-mindful.
Then I returned to the Christmas card list. Nowadays sending cards is fraught with alternatives and the possibility of bad choices, almost as worrying as buying Chelsea tickets. Should I send a card to the great and gracious lady gardener? I like her. I would be quite happy to have her think that I am thinking of her fondly, albeit briefly, at Christmas. I have enough cards and I shall be driving past her house en route to a music society meeting. But then maybe she will feel that I have created a reciprocal obligation, and she will not be driving past my house, and might feel she had to spend fifty pence on a stamp. I know that some of my friends have agreed not to send each other cards, so perhaps I shouldn't burden a relative stranger with the need to send me one. But she might like to get a card, and feel it didn't matter if she didn't send me one, or deliver it to the plant centre and save a stamp, or not grudge a stamp in the circumstances. I have no idea.
I write the cards by dint of going through the address book systematically so that I don't forget anybody. The first name in the book was the chap that the Systems Administrator is lunching with today. I asked whether if I gave the SA the card to take it would reach our friend's home, or whether it would remain in either the SA's pocket or the friend's pocket, not to be found again until after Christmas when it would be squashed as well as out of date. The SA agreed that all of these outcomes were highly likely and that I had better post it.
Going all the way through your address book makes you think about the state of your friendships, which is probably reason enough for the custom of annual cards to persist. Entries in our address book are always written in pencil. People move, they divorce, they die, so that the book becomes steadily messier and more illegible, and it is depressing to see the crossed out names of one's late friends and relatives when trying to look up a phone number. Better to be able to erase out of date entries. Every so often the book gets so tatty we start a new one, but shove the old one in a drawer. It was nice to have to dig out the old book, to look up the addresses of old school friends of the SA whom we saw at the party back in the summer, and while I was at it I copied their details over to the new book, now that we are back in contact.
I saw that in the case of one friend who separated from her partner last year I had crossed their joint address out very neatly and written her new one in underneath. Was I hoping that the break might not be final? They are seeing each other again, cautiously, so my sense that it might not be over yet was not misplaced. I found the addresses of a couple of acquaintances, a friend of a friend and a former work associate, where intermittent contact has not quite kindled into friendship. The question whether or not to send them a piece of coloured cardboard is really about whether to try again, or decide it hasn't worked. Somebody who moved out of the marital home, met somebody else very quickly, moved in with her without divulging his new address, and communicated the fact of their engagement by group text. A card to his office doesn't seem appropriate. Compared to that, chasing down the addresses of my young cousin, who I vaguely think is in the process of moving house, and our oldest nephew, who has never been a card sender but since we went to his wedding I feel he and his new wife should be on our card list, is merely an administrative problem.
I dropped the neighbours' cards around on foot, since it was such a beautiful afternoon that I fancied the walk, and I would like not to be the last to send them for once. One of them was at home, and invited me in for a chat, where we rejoiced over the demise of the quarry plans. He and his late wife were very suspicious of us commuting London people when we first moved in, but two decades later relations have mellowed.
I have had to set the heaters in the greenhouse and conservatory again tonight, the second time this year. Ten days to go until the shortest day, following which the saying goes that when the days begin to lengthen, then the cold begins to strengthen.
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