Sunday 17 December 2017

'Tis the Season...


Lanterns in our hallway, with Norwegian glass nisser (elves) by Hadeland Glassverk


Well, this year's approach to Christmas has already been pretty special - because we're here in Farnham, and that makes everything nicer.

Farnham does a great job of decorating the town with Christmas lights, and all the shops and restaurants are suitably twinkly and festive. 


The cobbled Lion & Lamb Yard, with Christmas tree at the top



Locals admiring the Lion & Lamb Yard decorations


Festive window in Neal's Yard boutique, Lion & Lamb Yard


Trees on Castle Street



This gigantic, inflatable Santa was beckoning to me from a Georgian mansion on Castle Street




West Street's Christmas lights
(West Street is the street immediately parallel to ours 

- this is a 2-minute walk from our apartment)


For daytime enjoyment there are houses and cottages with jolly wreaths festooning front doors, and windows displaying poinsettias. It's not quite the full-throttle adornment of Norway, but certainly an improvement on Epsom.














However we were greatly underwhelmed by Farnham's annual Christmas Market which was, in a word, awful. It was less a Christmas market than a winter version of the autumn food fair, which was a wasted trip for us. All of the stalls, without exception, were meat-based. ALL of them. I don't remember the last time we went to a fair, or market, or festival where there weren't at least a few vegan and vegetarian stalls. 

This situation wasn't helped by the diabolically bad weather.  You had to feel for the stallholders, some of whom had their marquees blown away and goods actually lifted and smashed to the ground by strong wind gusts, not to mention the driving rain, and a temperature of about 3ºC. 

Farnham Council can't be held to account for the weather, but we had been looking forward to stalls with handmade or unusual gifts. These were few and far between. Unless you were looking for the flesh of slaughtered animals to devour on the spot, or to take home and consume later, you were out of luck.

Never fear; Surrey and Hampshire offer ample alternatives to get revellers in the festive spirit!


Winchester could certainly show Farnham a thing or two. We had fond memories of the Christmas Market and ice skating rink set in the surrounds of the Cathedral, which we visited back in 2008. So we decided to go there en route to a Christmas party at the house of a former work colleague of mine, in Waterlooville.

A gloriously sunny, crisp winter day really brought out the crowds. Winchester is such a beautiful city, particularly the historic area surrounding the city walls - charming stone houses, cosy pubs and cafés, monuments. It's only a 45-minute drive from Farnham so no doubt we'll be regular visitors. 


Crowds visiting the Christmas Market in front of Winchester Cathedral


Winchester has a plethora of dining establishments in beautiful Georgian buildings






Priory Gate, Winchester


Timbered infilled gabled building near Priory Gate, Winchester


Glühwein at Winchester Cathedral Christmas Market


Ah, the smell of roasting Italian chestnuts!





We recently visited one of our nearby National Trust properties - Hinton Ampner in Hampshire - for a bracing 'ancient tree trail' walk, and a quick tour of the lower rooms of the house (the upper rooms being closed off to the public for conservation). The ground floor reception rooms had been decorated in glorious Victorian style.

It was another sparkling winter day - the perfect conditions for being out in the fresh air, rugged up with hats, gloves and scarves.

Entry to the house at HInton Ampner

We really needed our woolies on this day - the wind was glacial

The staircase inside the house at Hinton Ampner

Inside the entry hall at Hinton Ampner

Kevin in Hinton Ampner's gardens - decorated for Christmas

All Saints Church at Hinton Ampner


We've also done our first real entertaining since we moved back to the UK 3.5 years ago. Some of you will be surprised by that, knowing how we do like to turn on a bit of a 'do' at home. However in Epsom we just didn't have a social circle in the local area, or the space to entertain more than two people at a time. We'd had visiting friends and family from Australia for whom we obviously prepared meals, and friends from up near Luton who would come for weekends, but really we hadn't hosted any dinner parties or celebrations the whole time we lived there.


So it was with great anticipation that we hosted Christmas drinks last Friday night. Most of you will know when I say 'we', I'm mainly referring to myself, because I do all the planning, inviting, shopping, cooking and decorating for these things. Kevin usually floats in about 30 minutes before the guests are due to arrive, clears the recycling bins ready for the evening's empties, pours ice into tubs and generally makes a nuisance of himself by picking at the food I've painstakingly and symmetrically placed on platters, and by disturbing my beautiful decorative arrangements. On this occasion I met him at the front door as he arrived home, and issued a stern 'Don't touch ANYTHING!'

However Kevin does correct the imbalance somewhat throughout the event, refreshing drinks and handing around food, and he's pretty good at clean-up too, as long as the single malt whisky hasn't been cracked open before the guests depart. 



Our living room at Crownwood Gate - waiting for guests to arrive


Canapés, crudités, sloe gin and other goodies awaiting hungry guests



I'd had a bit of a surreal moment in the car driving home from work the evening before, when suddenly Chris Rea's Driving Home for Christmas came on the radio. It gets well and truly dark here by about 3.30pm these days, and so for the first time I had a real appreciation of these lines as thousands of vehicles' tail lights stretched ahead of me on the M25:


Top to toe in tail-backs
Oh, I've got red lights on the run...

Hearing this song was particularly noteworthy because just that morning the news had been full of a story about Chris having suffered a stroke onstage during a performance, the night before. Fingers crossed for a speedy and full recovery. I have loved that man's gravelly voice since I first saw him on Countdown in 1978, performing Fool If You Think It's Over.


Our entry hall, featuring Christmas lights and my Norwegian grandmother's
hand-woven rag rugs, now more than 50 years old and still looking fab


That little star-shaped Santa Claus is a treasured possession 
- it was hand-painted by my Mum a few years before she passed away


It was also nice to festively decorate the house for the first time in many years. As we are always in Norway for Christmas, there's little point in bothering with our own place - I usually just have a couple of token lights and candles. It was a joy to bring out the special Norwegian / Scandinavian pieces, and I indulged in some very expensive genuine lichen/moss from Finland to nestle around candles, as well as the purchase of a very handsome hammered copper champagne trug, from Tesco, you will be surprised to know (for those of you unfamiliar with UK supermarkets, Tesco is one of the biggest chains but also at the more budget end).



Tasmanian premium sparkling rosé, Austrian veltliner, Welsh sparkling water
Italian & Chilean red wine, English ale...

all set for a convivial evening at home with friends & neighbours!


It really started feeling like Christmas after that first social event for the season, which has been followed in rapid succession by numerous work and other gatherings. We've even had to decline some invitations due to lack of space in our social calendar!

Unusually, Britain has had pre-Christmas snow over most of the country, and this of course has accelerated the festive mood. I drove to work last Monday with sleet and snow falling the whole way to Tadworth, and it continued to fall all day. Fearing the state of the roads I decided to head back to Farnham at lunchtime and worked from home the rest of the day and all of the following one as well.

Sadly the snow was gone within a day or so but it's always a thrill, despite the inconvenience it causes to daily life in this country.



View from the office at about 7.30am;
by lunchtime there was a solid blanket of snow


Thus the countdown begins for another Norwegian Christmas. This year we return to Tingvoll, after spending last year in far north (arctic) Norway. We are so glad the family made the decision to hold last Christmas up in Finnmark. The reason was that we expected it would probably be my aunt's final Christmas, and indeed it was - sadly, she passed away in October.

Marion and Erik finished building their new house in the summer, and we look forward to seeing it although we will miss their old home just a few minutes' walk away, where we have spent so many wonderful holidays in all seasons over the past 20 years or so. And of course we will very much be missing my aunt Rigmor (Marion's mother).



Some of you - for whom I have actual postal addresses - will have received Christmas cards from us by now. For the rest of you, best wishes for a wonderfully happy Christmas.

Until next time,
- Maree xo

Thursday 23 November 2017

Musings on Autumn


Autumn splendour in Farnham Park



Lord, it is time. The summer was too long.
Lay your shadow on the sundials now,
and through the meadow let the winds throng.

Ask the last fruits to ripen on the vine;
give them two more summer days
to bring about perfection and to raise
the final sweetness in the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will establish none,
whoever lives alone now will live on long alone,
will awaken, read, and write long letters,
and wander up and down the barren paths
the parks expose when the leaves are blown.

                           - Rainer Maria Rilke (1902)
                                                                    (translated from the original German)




Vibrant autumn foliage on a house in New Alresford, Hampshire


The UK has not had a spectacular autumn this year.

A long period of mild, muggy, quasi-summer weather that lasted well into October means it didn't feel remotely like autumn here in the south east of England until a few weeks ago. We only got our first frost at the beginning of November, and in fact there have only been three or four since then, and very mild.

The colours, too, have been more subdued in my opinion. But now I am enjoying the final hurrah of this, my favourite season, now with the predominantly coppers and golds of acer, hawthorn and beech.

Ooh, spooky, misty days... it is glorious.


A misty morning in the grounds of Farnham Castle


Dewy cobwebs on Castle Street


The Bishop's Palace at Farnham Castle, shrouded in morning mist


Farnham Park



What is it about this season that appeals to me so much? Others lament the end of summer, and see only decay. Indeed, that's what the turning of the leaves is - it's chlorophyll breaking down into colourless compounds, yellow pigments being revealed, and other chemical changes revealing oranges and reds.

For myself, I see an amber gentleness. Autumn is an approaching slumber. There's a sense of settling calm as the natural world stops frenetically reproducing, blooming and maturing. 

Also - quite importantly for those of us who delight in a country amble - it really is the *best* season for walking. Not too hot, not too cold, plenty of variation in the foliage. Drizzles. Fogs. Golden light. The promise of a pub with an open fire afterwards, something warming to eat, preferably washed down with a soft Italian red.




Kevin drinking in the golden autumn splendour
alongside the Basingstoke Canal in Odiham

Our walk on a recent weekend - a circular path that started and finished at
The Mill House pub, and meandered along the Basingstoke Canal and through woodland,
including past Odiham Castle



Odiham Castle - walls still standing after 800 years


Another view of Odiham Castle


Holly berries - I suppose Christmas must not be far away!


One of the canal bridges at North Warnborough (Odiham) in Hampshire

Whitewashed house in Hampshire

The water in this part of the Basingstoke Canal is so incredibly clear because it is fed by chalk springs.
 These ducks, swimming in formation, appeared to be enjoying the spectacle
of the underwater forest beneath them


The Mill House


Our reward at the end of a damp 3-mile jaunt -
one of our favourite local pubs, The Mill House in North Warnborough (Odiham), Hampshire


A welcoming nook in The Mill House


One of the main reasons I enjoy living in a cool climate is the stark variation between the seasons. I've never understood people who want every day to be the same - sun and heat all the time. To live somewhere equatorial would kill me, and even Sydney is frustrating with its barely-sweater-worthy winters (and I grew up in the south-western suburbs back in the days when frost was a regular occurrence). 

I love those tangible signs of time passing as we cycle through the seasons. Autumn gently prods us towards winter... again, nothing to lament in my opinion. Nature will wrap its icy blanket around us,  giving us time to rest.  

I don't dread the short days. I look forward to bracing air, long shadows, candlelight. Already I am eagerly digging out my winter clothes - gloves, hats, scarves. Clothes with structure. Clothes with texture. So much more interesting than summer fashion.


The lime and beech avenue, Farnham Park


Full moon setting on a frosty morning - the view from my workplace 

Autumn walking is muddy! Wellies mandatory

Kevin admiring the view back towards Farnham
- on one of our afternoon walks in the farmland behind our street.
Note the balls of mistletoe in the trees

Street lights already on at about 3:45pm
- Upper Church Lane in Farnham



Autumn's also the perfect time for baking
- these are vegan banana and blueberry muffins


Long shadows and soft autumn sunshine
- one of the paths through farmland, just behind our street

Over the past couple of months we've been busy rediscovering the Farnham area. Truly we are spoilt for choice in terms of pubs, restaurants and shopping. Nearly all of them offer some kind of loyalty program or early dining specials, meaning it's affordable for us to eat out once a week despite living in an expensive area with a modest household income. We also have three different cinema chains within 10-20 minutes' drive - they're commercial cinemas, so no arthouse films and they lack the elegance and luxury of some of the better cinemas in Australia, but all the same I'm happy to have a choice of venues.

I do not miss Epsom at all.

The photo below speaks volumes about where we now live. I snapped this on Sunday morning, just in front of the University for the Creative Arts which is on our street. Oh, yes - it's a better class of hard-drinking student here in Farnham. None of your empty cider bottles or Fosters cans. No, the inebriates of Farnham leave behind half-empty bottles of Waitrose-branded rosé!


Morning-after evidence of Saturday evening's revelry - Farnham style


The author in her element



I'm trying to temper my natural tendency towards pessimism, which tells me that autumn will be over in the blink of an eye - and instead just enjoy the moment while it lasts.

And, of course, there is winter - and another Christmas in Norway - to eagerly await. Life is good.

Until next time,
- Maree xo