I try very hard NOT to be that whinging bitch that everyone wants to slap, but I've wanted to sit down, pout and scream "Why me? Why do I have to do this/feel this/endure this/sort this shit out while every other fucker in my life seem to get a break?" pretty well most of the time this year. Of course, my head says that every other fucker isn't getting all the breaks (I can think of a hell of a lot of my craft-sisters who have had much more shit to handle than me this year), but my worn-down heart and soul still wants to pull a temper-tantrum and make it ALL GO AWAY.
So, this year so far has seen me get two jobs, one of which I love, one of which I hated and nearly sent me to the nut-house. Both jobs have now ended, one of which I'm really sad about but hopefully it will resume soon, and the other is classed as "thank the fuck for that, minimum wage is not enough for me to spend ten hours twice a week being verbally abused". The Hubster got sick after working seventy hour weeks and eventually had to leave a job he originally loved. (The upside is, he's got a job closer to home, less hours, no phone calls 24/7 - but the pay is poor.) Money is, as ever, elusive. And then my beloved Grandfather died very suddenly.
I'm still constantly chasing my own arse never actually managing to quite catch up with all the jobs that need doing. I keep failing miserably at keeping all the Hekatean observances. I just about manage to keep PL in coffee, but I've still not started on the shadow work I KNOW has to be done before my head implodes.
And then in my mundane wife/mother/daughter role I am running like a friggin' idiot just to keep up with cooking, washing, cleaning, organising homework, listening to parents' issues, volunteering, and every other little thing that needs doing EVERY DAMN DAY like feeding the cats, cleaning out the litter tray, emptying bins.... oh, you know the sort of thing.
What I want to do is waft around purposefully, priestess-like, calmly and assuredly carrying out my solemn duties, or ecstatically dancing through the woods, disappearing into undergrowth only to reappear with baskets of foraged gifts. Or being a gleaming naked woman lit by candle-light, celebrating the turn of the season by shagging the Hubster senseless.
Yeah, and somewhere in all that lot I have to squeeze in a bit more than five hours sleep a night because I'm starting to look haggard.
Now I'm pretty impervious to gentle direction from the gods. They do have to slap me around a bit before I pay attention. (Honestly, I'm pretty certain they sometimes regard me as a particularly ungainly, slightly stupid puppy who they get exasperated with but are rather fond of, because she does TRY, bless her...) So I don't expect them to turn up in my dreams, which I very rarely remember anyway. But oh, oh, oh..... this dream hit me with a sucker punch that whacked it straight from short-term memory into the box that says "Never to be forgotten even if you damn well want to".
In this dream, I was sat on a park bench. Looking at litter and wishing I had a bag so I could pick some of it up. It wasn't a park I knew, but next to the bench was a huge rock, half buried in the ground, which was hollow and open on the side next to me. Someone had dug a flower bed that went under the cave of the rock, and in a semi-circle outside of it. Planted in it, in regimental concentric circles, were bright red salvias and black petunias. Either side of the rock were two lit torches. A woman with deep black hair and 'Hollywood Diva' style sunglasses that covered most of Her face pulled the torches out of the ground and came and sat next to me.
"Here," She said, "Hold these."
I held a flaming torch in each hand, and the sky went dark. The torches reflected in Her glasses.
"You can't ever be my Priestess," She said, without preamble.
I didn't say anything, but the feeling of not being good enough - YET AGAIN - became overwhelming. It became a struggle not to cry.
"You do know why, don't you?" She asked.
I didn't move.
"Because you need to be needed. It's in your blood, your genes, your soul. You're always like this. You WANT to be Mine, exclusively, but you simply can't. And so you make sure that you are needed. You DO the mundane, the essential but ultimately unnoticed work that you need to do. That others need you to do. You mop up the shit, you take out the bins, you scrub the floors. You bear children, and devote yourself to their well being. You can't have the focus you need to be My Priestess, My Torchbearer."
Part of me wanted to argue, frankly, because at that point I was holding Her bloody torches.
"You're not cut out for ceremony, for regimented practice and devotions I request of My Devotees. You never have been. You never will be. However hard you try, whatever else you do - in this you will always fail."
I'm not proud to admit I wanted to shove those torches into any orifice of Hers I could reach.
At that moment, the torches flared, and I was sat in a garden chair in the middle of my vegetable patch. Somehow, the driveway in front of me led straight into the entrance to 'my' woods, and behind me I could feel 'my' cemetery.
She was no longer visible, but Her voice vibrated from everywhere.
"You are My hidden one. You learn from the ground beneath your feet. You learn from the spirits I send to you. You make offerings to Me every time you serve this land, these people, these plants, these creatures. Death holds no fear for you, and never has. I marked you many lifetimes ago, yet still you learn this not. Frankly, child, I'm fed up of waiting."
Two disembodied hands in black gloves materialised in front of me, and took the torches, which extinguished with a guttering crackle, leaving me in complete darkness.
"I can wait no longer. Now you will see."
And I could. Everything looked a bit like the end of The Matrix, when Neo finally sees all the computer code in the illusions around him. But instead of green letters and numbers, it was red circles, spirals, helices, that gradually faded back into the dim shadows of plants.
Of course, before I could open my big gob and start with the questions, I woke up to two huge yellow eyes in front of my face and cat-food breath up my nose (how the hell that cat opens the door and gets upstairs every night eludes me.)
So. Stupid puppy dog that I am, I've apparently been putting all my efforts (my apparently bloody useless efforts) into duties that are not mine to do. And all the shit/crap/boring stuff? Is what I'm supposed to do. The not-fun-stuff. The stuff of service to lots of people that generally either don't notice or don't appreciate the stuff I do. And I'm guessing I'd better stop bloody moaning about it, and get on with dinner, the washing up, and hoovering the lounge floor that seems to have more cat fur on it than the cats. And work out what the fuck were all those red spirals, circles and helices about.
I am Hekate's friggin' housemaid.
I’ll skip over the mechanics of the day before our feast. Basically, it involved making Leek & Potato soup, chopping a variety of vegetables and playing with the Witchlets whilst all the while feeling the house is full - the presence of Nana, Uncle Roy and Aunty Midge is palpable. I keep hearing my Great-Aunt’s voice, laughing, and speaking to her “Brew” - the name she always used for my Uncle. I can’t hear their conversations, I’m just aware of the undercurrent of murmurs, the constant conversation between them. Snippets of laughter punctuate my day, and both the Witchlets turn their heads at times - do they hear them? I don’t ask; if the Witchlets want to tell me anything, they will do.
We’ve told the Witchlets that the Yule Fairy is coming tonight (the Yule Fairy started off life as a way of making sure OCD me got to do the decorations without the “help” of little hands, but she’s developed a life of her own and now has her own mythology - she’s the power behind the Santa’s throne these days) so they are busy wondering what she will bring them, and being “EVERSO GOOD” - and telling me that they are being EVERSO GOOD every five minutes or so. I distract them by teaching Witchlet Two to sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, and she’s soon running around singing “We Wish ‘oo a Mewwy Kissmas an’ a ‘Appy Noo Yeah” which is funny enough, but hearing her go on to sing “So bing us a piggy pudding,” has me in fits. The house is full of family. Eventually The Hubster returns from work. We’re complete, we’re whole. For the first time since I was a child, I get the anticipation and thrill I used to get when we spent Christmas at Nana’s house. She pats my shoulder. She’s pleased.
Hubby baths the Witchlets, then they race downstairs in warm pyjamas, smelling of sweet clean soap and damp hair. We snuggle under two fleece blankets; the blue one is Witchlet One’s, the white one is Witchlet Two’s and I must never forget that or risk being chastised in their high-pitched loud voices. I read them a story by Starhawk: The Rebirth of the Sun. “Circle round, and I’ll tell you a story about when the sun was born again…” It’s a lovely story, and for once they sit and listen quietly, not wriggling or battling with each other. We light (battery-powered) tealights in lanterns, and take them upstairs to keep vigil for the return of the sun.
Magic is happening, not just to me, not just to the witch. My dear gods, this is happening to all of us. I’m happy and floating, but staying busy in my role as mother, as organiser, as the pivot on which this whole thing hangs.
It takes a while before the Witchlets are calm enough to sleep. They run giggling backwards and forward to each other’s room, jumping into bed with each other, so we have to keep going upstairs and separating them or they will never settle. Eventually they sleep. The Yule Fairy/Mother Witch creeps upstairs and pulls out two wrapped presents to put under the tree. The Yule Fairy is wise; the presents are ones that will keep the Witchlets occupied while I cook in the morning.
Finally, I set the table. Ironed table cloth, new table runner, new place mats. The Yule Log is placed at the end of the table, and I finish decorating it with ivy and fir from the garden. No cutlery, because Witchlet Two delights in licking cutlery - all cutlery, I mean EVERYBODY’S cutlery - so that will be added JUST before we eat.
I’m last to bed. I sit in the silence, basking in the warmth that is the love of my ancestors. For once, I am not a failure. I’ve not disappointed anyone. Not even myself. It feels good.
The morning dawns, and I’m up first. I’m joined within a few minutes by a bouncy three-year old girl with a grin on her face, and my two men - the five year old, and the big one I married, surface next. We go downstairs, turn all the festive lights on, and then they notice the table - “Pretty!” yells Witchlet Two, scrambling up on to a chair to get a better look at the Yule Log. Hands all over it. “Sticky!” she yells, sniffing the fir resin on her hand from the cut end of the log. (That’s my baby witch, getting your hands dirty now, getting your nose, your hands, your excitement into the magic, YEAH BABY!) Finally they notice their presents, and out of a whirlwind of flying paper and ribbons comes the contented mumbles and giggles of Witchlet One with a Mario DS game, and Witchlet Two with a teapot shaped toy café . Hubby prepares to do the obligatory last minute male present shopping, and I descend on the kitchen, brew a pot of tea for me and the ancestors, light candles for The Old Man, Hekate, and the so far absent Old Hag (it’s 13 fucking degrees fucking centigrade out there; this time last year it was minus fucking four. Is she taking a year off? The slacker.) and start cooking.
I have to make bread. The bane of my fucking life, the one thing I fucking can’t fucking do - I think I’ve made about four decent loaves in my life, and too many rocks, door stops, teeth crackers, or squidgy soggy messes. Years ago I gave up and bought a bread maker. Six months of reasonable bread, then it broke. My parents bought me another one when we moved to this house, and I dropped it the first time I got it out of the box, shattering the plastic. If the universe wants me to bake bread with my own hands, I shall bake bread with my own hands. Eventually. (It’s on my to-do list for 2012.) But for now, I cheat - well, a little bit - and make soda bread. Nana chuckles; I think she’s let me off this time.
Soda Bread
Ingredients
170g/6oz wholemeal flour
170g/6oz plain flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
290ml/½ pint buttermilk (I didn’t use buttermilk, I used natural yoghurt instead)
Preparation method
Preheat the oven to 400F/200C/Gas 6.
Tip the flours, salt and bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing bowl and stir.
Make a well in the centre and pour in the buttermilk/yoghurt, mixing quickly with a large fork to form a soft dough. (Depending upon the absorbency of the flour, you may need to add a little milk if the dough seems too stiff but it should not be too wet or sticky.)
Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead briefly.
Form into a round and flatten the dough slightly before placing on a lightly floured baking sheet.
Cut a cross on the top and bake for about 30 minutes or until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on a wire rack.
While that was baking, I prepared the duck. I followed a really nice recipe from the delectable Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall (where are your curls Hugh? Grow back the curls!)
Hugh's roast duck recipe
By
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall from River Cottage Autumn
Few things are more heartening than a roast. Hugh's duck recipe even takes care of gravy - gorgeous.
Hugh: "There's a bit of a knack to roasting a duck but it needn't be too anxiety provoking. Better, I think, to embrace the more old-fashioned English notion of a roast duck, with the skin nicely seasoned and crisp and the meat cooked right through. Like pork, duck meat is flavoursome enough to be appetising even when a little overcooked, and the natural covering of fat that you get with a good farmed duck keeps it lubricated. The crispy skin, of course, is priceless."
Ingredients
1 large, fresh duck, free range and preferably organic, with neck and giblets
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the giblet stock/gravy:
The neck and giblets, and wing tips
1 small onion
1 celery stick
1 carrot
A little oil
1 bay leaf
1 small glass of red wine
½ teaspoon redcurrant jelly (optional)
METHOD
How to make Hugh's roast duck
1. Preheat the oven to 220°C/Gas Mark 7. If the duck is tied up, untruss it - i.e. cut the strings and gently pull the legs apart, away from the body. This will help the heat to get at them.
2. Cut off the wing tips (the last bony segment) - there's no meat on them and they will boost the flavour of the giblet stock. Make this first: roughly chop up the neck, heart, gizzard and wing tips, plus the onion, carrot and celery. Fry these over a fair heat in a little oil until the meat is nicely browned and the vegetables slightly caramelised. Transfer to a saucepan with the bay leaf, cover with water (about 600ml) and bring to a simmer. Leave at a gentle simmer for about 1¾ hours - i.e. the time it takes to cook the duck.
3. Now tackle the duck. Remove any obvious spare fat from inside the cavity. You can, if you like, turn the duck breast-side down on a board and press hard on the middle of the backbone until you hear a crack, it means that when you turn the bird breast-side up again it sits flatter in the pan, which helps it to cook more evenly.
4. Now, using a needle, (FUCK THE NEEDLE! I sterilised the end of my fox tooth pin and used that!) prick the skin all over the fatty parts at the breast and where the breast joins the leg. Don't prick deeper than is necessary just to pierce the skin. You want the fat to run, but not the juices from the meat. Season the skin lightly with salt and pepper.
5. Put the bird in a roasting tin. Place into oven for about 20 minutes, so the fat starts to run. Then turn the oven down to 180°C/Gas Mark 4, baste the bird and return to the oven.
6. Baste the duck every 20 minutes or so. Check the bird for doneness after about 1½ hours' total cooking time. Poke a skewer into the thickest part of the leg, close to the breast. When the juices runs clear, the bird is done. Tip the bird to pour any fat or juices out of the cavity into the roasting tin and transfer it to a warmed plate or carving tray.
7. Now fix the gravy. Carefully pour off the fat from the roasting tin into a heatproof bowl or dish, leaving the brown juices in the tin. Deglaze the tin with the red wine, scraping to release any tasty browned morsels. Strain the giblet stock and the deglazed pan juices, into a clean pan and boil hard to reduce them to a rich, syrupy gravy. Taste for seasoning, and add a little redcurrant jelly for sweetness, if you like.
8. To carve the bird for 4 people, slice between the legs and breast, then prise off the whole legs, carefully pulling the thighbone away from the body of the bird. Cut each leg in half at the joint between the thigh and the drumstick. Slice each whole breast from the carcass, with the crispy skin attached, then cut each breast into 5 or 6 thick slices. Offer each guest a few slices of breast, with either a thigh or a drumstick. Serve on warmed plates, with the gravy and some roast vegetables.
Hubby came home in the middle of this with a couple of bags of stocking fillers. He popped open the bubbly, made me, Nana and Aunty Midge a glass of Bucks Fizz each and poured Uncle Roy a Whiskey Mac (oh, they were so effusive in their praise of him - hang on, he’s just fixed you a bloody drink, who’s cooking the FUCKING DINNER?)
Eventually, food was served. A plate was left for the ancestors, with the best bits of the duck, the best Yorkshire Pud, and a candle was lit. We lit the candles on the Yule log and settled down to our wonderful Holy Supper (oh ok, Holy Lunch!). We laughed, we ate our soup, then hubby and I had our paté on toasted soda bread while the Witchlets finished mopping up their soup with hunks of bread they delightedly pulled off the loaf themselves. We ate our roast dinner, and then pulled crackers to the delight of wiggly Witchlets, and finally - and by this time, Witchlet One could barely contain himself - THE YULE LOG.
I’ve never been so full in my entire life. I retired to the sofa with a sleepy Witchlet Two, and we both fell asleep. I dreamt of the house being full, not just of Nana and Aunty Midge and Uncle Roy, but lots of family - somehow I knew they were family - all stood around, laughing, talking, gesticulating, drinking and eating. Somewhere in the background, by the back door, a woman stood, not talking to anyone, just watching. I know she’s the one we don’t talk about. I know she’s my great-grandmother, the one who we were told had abandoned my Nana - although she hadn’t, she was sectioned, and then - from what I’ve managed to find out - committed suicide. She makes me uneasy at first, but then I just realise that she’s not sure how she will be received. I pour her a glass of port, and leave it on the side. She’ll know it’s for her.
Witchlet One bursts into tears, and wakes me up. He doesn’t want the day to end, and he wants me to get up and play, which I do, after gently easing Witchlet Two down onto the sofa from my lap. The dream is still clear as day, so much so that I glance at the back door, looking for her. She’s not there, of course.
We decide that we are all far too exhausted to Wassail the apple tree today. We shall leave that for another day, when we can give it our full (and unexhausted) attention.
Before I go to bed, I leave out a glass of port for Great Grandmother. I think I have to reconcile her with Nana. I’m overwhelmed, so I’m shelving the prospect for a while.
It’s extremely hard keeping track of your dreams when you have two young Witchlets who consider five in the morning a suitable time to get up and jump on your bed. Time to write down my dream? No chance. Time to even go over it in my head? You’ve got to be joking. Believe me, the gods tell me things, The Old Man has a good old time and Hekate teaches me in my dreams. This I know. It’s very, very frustrating to just lose it all because I am accosted by my offspring each and every morning. I know it’s still in there, somewhere, but I have no idea how to access it. Still, I am ultimately grateful when I do manage to retain a glimpse of the hidden nocturnal world. I woke up at three o’clock (yes, in the wee small hours) yesterday with full recollection of a very short dream. In it, my mobile had rung with the tune “Let it Snow”, and when I answered it, Mother Elder said “I’m coming. If you want to save your pelargoniums, dahlias and begonia, do it now.” And then I woke up.
Well, something as direct as that definitely has to be acted on. So, in the five hours of kid-free time I had yesterday, I decanted the dahlias from their containers, absolutely chuffed to find that they had produced HUGE hand-like tubers in one year:
(I grew ‘em from seed this year - go me!) So I brushed them off to go into the greenhouse (also known as the four-tier plastic covered shelving unit, but greenhouse sounds like I REALLY know what I’m doing), along with the one surviving begonia (eight corms bought this year; a real extravagance. Four didn’t do anything at all, two rotted off, and one more got attacked by vine weevils) and two gorgeous orange-red pelargoniums, pruned back and re-potted. The last, and biggest of the pelargoniums is still in full flower, so I’ve brought it indoors and told it that it’s on holiday.
Just imagine you’re in the Med, my dear, I said, and stuck it on the dining room table with a fervent prayer that the pot is too big and heavy for the Witchlets to knock off.
Just as I was about to finish up for the day, the postman arrived with my pot of the necrofuckingtastic plum rum sauce from Ms Graveyard Dirt. Just for good measure, she stuck in a plum pit and some wheat seeds (getting a package from Ms Dirty is always a delight; the wheat seeds came in the most adorable little envelope), so off I went back to the garden to plant both pit and wheat. I’ve had quite a bit of luck with growing trees from seed - numerous apple trees from seeds, a nectarine, holly, rowan and even a walnut (although that was Witchlet One really - he stuck it half in to a pot of compost and I was shocked to find that it germinated!) - so we’ll see how the plum pit goes. Give it ten years, I might be weighed under by 24lbs of plums!!
And while I was lugging various pots about the garden, I discovered a pot of spring onions I sowed back in May and forgot about. What a bonus!
So, Mother Elder, thanks for the warning. Bring on your frost and your snow; cover my garden in your carpet of frozen white. I am ready for you now, I offer my garden up to your care for the winter. Take that which is your right, and I will gladly take the garden back from you in the spring.
