Last week a fresh fall of snow on the tops of the fells transformed the dales landscape from subtle autumn brown, green and yellow of bracken, heather and grass, to bright white. When the sun shone the effect was breathtakingly magical. 

Dark lines of dry stone walls stretched through the white, marking patterns of field boundaries or extending a slender finger high into the tops. Undulating ridges and erosion valleys on the sides of the fell were revealed by shadows in the low sun; and stone outcrops of gills and scars made grey-black thick streaks and smudges as if drawn by charcoal on pure white paper.

There wasn’t much snow in the valley where my house is, only a dusting, but enough to whiten the lawn. I looked out early in the morning as the sun was coming up, marvelling at the view of the hills, when I saw something extraordinary.

A cock pheasant was running up and down on the lawn fluffing out his colourful feathers. He’d been backwards and forwards on the same patch so many times that he’d kicked off the snow exposing the grass beneath. I watched for a little while, and then as the dawn turned into morning he went on his way.

I don’t know anything about the behaviour of pheasants. Perhaps it was marking out a territory with an instinctive theatre of display. An encoded memory from its native home in the mountains and steppes of Asia. Last Spring there was a family of pheasants in the garden, which was very charming until they got bigger and ate all my carefully planted and tended vegetables. I suspect there will be another pheasant family in the coming year. I’ll need to build a proper fortress of netting around my leeks, peas and beans to keep them out.

In other news, the person who took over my job at work had to go to occupational therapy because they couldn’t cope with the workload. I suppose I should feel some schadenfreude, but actually what I feel is some annoyance that I was ignored in my annual review every year. I suppose I didn’t make enough fuss. I do feel sorry for them and I hope that management finally gets things sorted out. Humph.

Another thing is that I’ve bought myself a new handmade address book from Etsy so that I can put addresses in as I write Christmas cards. My old address book got left behind when I escaped my marriage, so this is part of settling down and rebuilding. It takes a while to put everything back together again and I’m trying to get my Christmas cards out early enough to get some replies.

In one of those waves of coincidences, no sooner had I got the address book than I received an email from the partner of my teenage years asking for my new address in the Yorkshire Dales. At the time, all those decades ago, the relationship was very intense, but didn’t survive the move away from home to college. They are settled now in the United States with six grandchildren. It was very nice to hear from them as it keeps some links back to my younger days and they knew my parents well.

Perhaps it’s part of the coincidence, or perhaps it’s because it’s the time of year when old flames are sending out Christmas cards, but the BBC radio programme ‘Woman’s Hour’ was also talking about ‘Friendships with exes’. Which made me think of a Moodscope question. Do you keep in touch with former partners and lovers? Are they on your Christmas card list? Is it a good, bad or indifferent idea if they are?

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member

Link to the episode of Woman’s Hour: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002n0zy