Phone Photos
A joyful week of making things
The whole of Gloucestershire is decorated in glitter and garnet. The winter light filtering through old man’s beard, the frosted grass in the early morning sparkle as if the world has been sprayed with aerosol glitter, and every red-berry tree and bush glistens with rubies.
The trouble is I have no photographic evidence of this.
You are used to these posts coming to you illustrated with proper photos from my proper camera, but this week has been one of frantically doing, leaving no time for careful documenting.
Instead the best I can offer are some half-hearted, not-at-all-comprehensive photos taken with my phone. The richness of the experience will have to come through my writing instead, which is a lot to ask of it.
‘Winter berry’ sounds like a naff scented candle, or a lipstick. In fact, the hedgerows and woodlands of Gloucestershire are in the midsts of making a compelling argument in favour of trees and shrubs with berries as a highlight of the British gardening year.
Though not in the way that one of my neighbours nearby to the Barn has used them, as a hedge so tightly clipped that the berries look like they have been poked into the suffocating foliage with a finger.
As the trees shed their leaves, huge spheres of mistletoe are revealed hanging among their branches. The apple trees have shed their leaves but not their glistening, ruby fruit. Unbroken chains of old man’s beard hang like chains of perfect snowflakes. Why do we import baubles from China? Why do we rig every city and town in glaring, energy-gobbling lights? Perfect winter decorations are everywhere around us, if we’d only think to look.
All of that said, I cannot reliably identify a single red-berried bush or tree save for holly. Forget thee not that I am still very early on in my rural education.
My week has been taken up with two tasks: foraging and miniature house building.
I am determined to make my own Christmas garland for the enormous mantelpiece at the Barn. And then, perhaps, ten more for each of the exposed beams in the kitchen and living room.
I consulted with my incredibly talented sister-in-law, Emily of Mallow and Moss, and watched numerous YouTube tutorials, but when it came right down to it I could not succeed in making it look like a garland following their instructions.
In the end, I had some limited success by using only ivy, holly, and wire. I was endeavouring to use the more eco-friendly string but I lack the skill.
I have never enjoyed a process of trial and error more.
Using the Woodland Trust’s brilliant ‘Find a Wood Near You’ feature, I found a wood near me and threw my expensive, replacement secateurs in a tote bag (why aren’t all secateurs made to contain a GPS tracker? Heaven knows where the last pair went). I found some beautiful, berry-covered twigs and a few bits of fir (? or pine? I can’t tell the difference), and foraged the rest of the ivy and holly from the hedgerow immediately outside my back door.
Something about walking through woodland bring backs to me those I have lost.
The symbolism of the robin, of course. “Robins appear when loved ones are near” as the saying goes. They especially make me think of David. This time last year I kept seeing robins in London, which is unusual for me. Each felt like a visiting. I bought a few little robin Christmas decorations (and doves, for Ukraine) to include as a way to keep him close.
But the woodland was full of birds of all kinds. So tiny and so fast, they moved between branches in my peripheral vision like a memory. Occasionally one would fly out across my path at elbow height, disappearing in an instant. Insisting on being seen, but only for a moment.
Some of the paths were so churned up with mud as to be almost impassable. Slipping and sliding around, I once or twice put my palm fully flat upon a tree trunk. I swear I felt an almost imperceptible charge through my arm, into my chest. Of course I am too cynical to believe in energy flow and magic and such things, but I have experienced the same when digging my fingers into soil. There is a connection there, like plugging in a charger.
Between frustrating sessions trying to string together a garland, I was making a dolls house.
Yesterday was my youngest niece’s Christening, as well as her 1st birthday party. She did so well. Not even a squeak of fuss. She gazed intently into the eyes of the vicar as her head was anointed with holy water, even reaching a hand up to touch her face. She was completely unfazed by the swirl of attention she received from clucking godparents, aunts and cousins. She was unbothered by the presentation of cake and the singing of ‘happy birthday’.
I decided a week ago to make her a dolls house as a combo christening/birthday present. Something that we can play with together, and fill with lovely, tiny things over the course of our lives.
Little did I know.
Several pairs of leggings have been ruined with wood glue, and I was up until 3am two nights in a row trying to get the damn thing finished in time (it was not finished to a proper standard, alas). Trying to hang the doors straight by screwing the world’s tiniest screws in the world’s smallest hinges caused me to raise such thunderous profanity in the wee hours that I was sure I would wake up half of Battersea.
Still, I finally found a use for the silly-expensive wrapping papers I have bought from Choosing Keeping over the years. A piece of ribbon made a stair runner. A roll of sticky-back vinyl from B&Q made ok-but-not-properly-to-scale flooring.
In all it was fiddly and maddening and SUCH fun. And I have already had a text this morning that my niece waddled straight over to it when she woke up this morning.
When my mother died, my dolls house was half finished.
It, too, was a Georgian townhouse kit. We had decided on the wallpapers together, flicking through catalogues and visiting dolls house fairs. We had been to the dolls house shop on Eel Brook Common, where children were barely allowed to look at - and certainly not allowed to touch - any of the beautiful, exquisite things. We had wired it for working lights, and I thought it was the most beautiful and most perfect thing I had ever seen or done.
But the building and decorating was never finished and the front panels never mounted on their maddening, tiny hinges. She was so ill for so long, I don’t remember when building the house with me became too much. I only know that it disappeared. Someone decided to get rid of the half-built house.
Like with everything, I only have the most vague, half-memories of these things. If I were to ever write a memoir I would have to title it ‘I Remember Nothing’. But I have a sense of it. The joy and warmth and fun of it. And what a blessing that is.
Neither the house nor the garland ended up being quite what I had hoped. As ever, I began with a great, burning ambition to achieve perfection. And, as ever, that perfect result was always unattainable.
Of course my garland cannot rival a faux-fir from Balsam Hill. Not least because real foliage is (I now realise) subject to gravity. Much like breasts, the natural version will droop, while the fake version will remain eternally, fraudulently perky.
The dolls house, too, is both unfinished and obviously - shoddily - hand-made. There is still much snagging to do. Sanding, touching up. But seeing all three of my niece play around it yesterday afternoon was wonderful. And the effort was appreciated.
Quite aside from the final products, the process of making was glorious. It was frustrating and difficult, and fun and energising, creative and instructive. I am itching to get absorbed into a new project already, even at the cost of another pair of leggings.
Beautiful. I loved reading this, and the frosty winter photographs and then I see pic of the very elegant dolls house and then I discover you've actually made it yourself with your very own hands - that's just wonderful. You have very creative hands.
When you go to a wood, just hold your palm against a tree. And stand there. Sigh. They so ground you.
I absolutely love your writing, it’s lyrical and so very enjoyable.
I also LOVE dolls houses. I’ve decided to make myself another (made one for my daughter when she was 6 or so, she was very underwhelmed)… but I had a wonderful time doing it up for her half sisters young daughter during lockdown, and I’m now going to make another. For me. Shall it be Georgian? Victorian? Modern? Dunno yet. I shall address the decision after Christmas, I have one or two other things to do first, like garlands, but we have rather splendid faux fir ones, which I dress up they, are 25 years old and haven’t been out the attic since I dislocated my shoulder in 2020, hoping the mices haven’t eaten them. I have some hydrangea heads to decorate them with.
I’ve also got two paintings to do. And some plants to plant n
I think your dolls house is lovely! Brilliant job!