Just. NOTES // Moving forward

Catching an early evening train from Kings Cross to Yorkshire, sun streams through the window over an open moving horizon and I realise I am finally starting to feel settled again.

I love getting the train to Yorkshire with the boys, something we have been doing as a team of three since my youngest was about three. Seven years or thereabouts, enough time for us to have a well practised routine or getting to Kings Cross, treating ourselves to pre-train pastries and then settling into a pre-booked window seat where they listen to music, play games, or colour in (albeit digital these days) and I will also put some tunes on or do some work.

The steady cross-track rhythm and forward motion of the train is soothing and provides the ideal environment for writing – well in an empty carriage like this anyway. We’re right next to First Class, the seats are remarkably clean and cushioned, the cross-country view is dappled in sunlight, and I realise that I feel happy and settled for the first time in many months – heading for a regular break to see family rather than running away from some conflict or another. I have brought peace to my life.

Train journeys also bring unrivalled access to swathes of greenbelt and farmland that otherwise often go unseen, the seasons measured by the colour and texture of the fields from freshly manured deep brown to blue green wheat to yellow rapeseed. The sun fans out its rays from east to west and there is ample horizon from which to view how they touch the land. All-encompassing and hopeful. Summer is finally here.

I started the day with an early morning writing session, determined to make good headway on the book I am working on. I indulge myself and bring my laptop back to bed but the hour goes so fast. It’s soon time to get up, pack for Yorkshire, prep some snacks for the boys even though they are with their dad (the maternal instinct ever present) and head to my eldest son’s football match. He may not be playing, such is the lot of the goalkeeper, but his team may make the final of the cup they have been playing for this season and I want to be there to support him and them.

It’s also a good excuse to practise my driving, which takes me through the bus lane, one way circus of Ilford and weirdly past the house of a recently deceased aunty and uncle who had kept their location hidden from my dad who was disowned for marrying my mum. A house I had to caretake under the scrutiny of solicitors for the first year of the pandemic after no will was left and any property, savings, and possessions went into probate. A strange and painful time; a tale of race, caste, and misdirected duty. It would be stranger perhaps if it had never happened, they still lived there, and I drove past them every Sunday. I wonder.

I forgot to change my sat nav from bicycle to car and ended up going a unknown route on a narrow one way track through a small tunnel and then towards Valentines Park. It was only when it ushered me directly across the park that I realised what I had done. Pulling over and switching to the correct vehicle gave me a few minutes to admire the park and I resolved to cycle there with the boys soon. I haven’t been for years but I remember beautiful gardens around the mansion within and a cafe (I look it up later and find it is called the Gardeners Cottage Cafe).

The team didn’t win and so I’m home within the hour, giving me a chunk of time to carry on with replenishing my herb garden and pots. Energised by the sun, I go into hyper-organised mode, tipping out old compost (saved to make new compost when I get a suitable container for my heap), setting aside unwanted weeds as refuse, and saving bulbs of narcissus, grape hyacinth, and tulip. Some are just dying down at the top of pots and I marvel at vegetative propagation in action as tiny corms and bulb clone themselves under the earth ready for an even more floriferous display next year. Some are buried so deep I wonder when I planted them.

I also find crocks of old pots at the bottom of each vessel, some I remember putting there when I moved in to my old house over 15 years ago. I have one pot left with a rosemary I planted them, soon after I arrived. It is still blooming, hanging on in there with Mediterranean resilience against the droughts that have come and gone. I took most of the pots when we split, having tended them for so long, each year a slightly different display: tulips ‘Belle Epoque’, agapanthus, spring bulbs, and hardy perennials.

My ex texts me and asks if I have ‘the blue spade’. I do but it’s at school, taken there during a moving raised beds and soil drive ready for the greenhouse base to be built. He sends me a picture of a flowerbed he is trying to establish with a caption about how much concrete there is. He hasn’t gardened for years, despite my attempts for us to do it together. I’m not sure what I think. Ordinarily this might have triggered some resentment but I can’t be bothered. I’m glad that the boys will have flowers and plants in their other home and that he might benefit from that which I know. Perhaps he misses the garden that I made for us. Either way the bees and the butterflies will not care a hoot who has made dinner for them.

I manage to replenish my pots with new peat-free compost and arrange yesterday’s haul of herbs within and I feel immense relief. I established my last herb garden in large wooden barrels while writing and testing the recipes for my book The Heritage Herbal, sourcing heritage specimens from renowned suppliers such as Jekka’s Herb Farm. I managed to bring some herbs with but spotted a lost cloud of sweet cicely and a majestic angelica when I popped my head over the fence last week. I felt momentarily sad and dare I say it possessive but herbs are by their nature meant to be shared and I will fill the gaps, for do we ever own our plants anyway?

The sun through the train window is now directly in my eyes and I welcome its low golden light in. Yorkshire beckons and another version of garden and home. John Martyn sings Over the Hill into my headphones. All is well.