I do like snow in my winter. Last year was just wet – even for those of us who don’t live on the Somerset levels.

I sloshed and squelched around the countryside with a dog who looked perpetually damp and miserable – no doubt because she was.

Those times when you are asked to imagine yourself in the ideal time and place for you, the NLP practitioner or whatever, almost always suggests a beach with an azure sea, lapping waves etc etc.

Not for me. My ‘lovely place’ is being inside with a roaring log fire, comfy sofas, nice red wine (even though that is not really my tipple) and snow coming down in large flakes outside.

This did happen the first two winters we were here in deepest Sussex and of course the reality is slightly (and not for the better) different from the fantasy.

So, in the first winter, we had a lovely snowfall and I shoved casseroles into the bottom oven of the aga, got the candles out and laid the fire and was very happy.

The next day dawned bright and clear and cold so we all went out and the dog rolled about and barked and chased and best beloved and I plodded along smiling and feeling very smug about the thought that we could come home to (another) casserole and fire.

And then in the night it snowed again, and the following day dawned bright and clear and cold and we all went out (see paragraph above for an account of day two.)

Day three, likewise.

We can’t get out by car because there are a couple of small hills around us and they have been changed into ice rinks by the 4x4s. We have walked to the village shop and the pub – but in those days we didn’t know anyone so we sat in a corner on our own.

Day four, see above again.

Day five and we could get out and I have never been so pleased to see the bright and giddy lights of Petersfield.

The next year though we had one of those great evenings that are just created out of circumstances. It snowed heavily.

Our neighbour was on his own (wife in London.) Another neighbour was also on his own (wife in Wiltshire – if you don’t need this much information, please skip.) Other neighbours were home but mourning the death of their beloved dog. Other friends in the main village and wouldn’t want to walk out to our hamlet.

But as we had developed the habit of all going to the pub on a Friday, and it was a Friday, I called around offering supper. I knew the next-door neighbour would come, but expected everyone else to decline for one good reason or another.

Imagine my surprise, dear reader, when everyone (except the wife in London) said, “ Great, what time?” (Wife in Wiltshire had a 4×4 and determination.)

I am not a woman to have an empty freezer, a larder bare of all but a few old lentils, a fridge with only beer and gherkins but even so, finding a good supper for nine was a challenge.

(For anyone who wants to know, we had a pie made of a variety of meats, and I found that nice china blackbird to poke its beak up through the pastry crust. Chips and other stuff.)

It was one of those magical times when friends tramp through the snow into a warm kitchen, put their dripping coats to dry, line their boots up near the door, open the wine, sit down to food, tend the fire, stay late and I loved it.

So, I know snow is not great for all sorts of people, I know I am a sucker for this sentimental snow imagery,  but I am still going to go to bed tonight with an (atheist) prayer for snow overnight.

Refugee Action asked that people should write to their MPs. Mine is Andrew Tyrie who is (not surprisingly, a Tory). I have had a great lunch with mates and a browse around the shops in Chichester today but I was awake at 5am and heard stuff on the World Service and was (again) in awe of how many Syrian refugees have been absorbed in neighbouring countries.

We ( the UK ) have take 50 people in the last 3 years…….

In a typical Reluctant Housewife manner, I will be selling preserves I have made, and a few chairs I have re-upholstered (with a good friend) for the Syrian Refugee Fund this year. Some small help ( though the Man says refugees could do with other things than carefully reupholstered chairs…..)

Dear Andrew Tyrie

Or probably more accurately Dear Andrew Tyrie’s assistant,

This is rather a long email and I am sure you get lots.
Me too – I ignore long emails.
You have other things to do.
You have a pretty sure idea of what I might be complaining about.
It is not your area of interest/business/concern
I might well be a Guardian reader and as so ( yes I am ) I won’t vote Tory and so you can easily ignore me in your constituency.

But, I am one of your constituents so you owe me a listening to ( not good grammar but you get the meaning).

I am sure you get a lot of emails asking for you to ‘prevent the flood of immigrants’ into this country. I am a constituent who is asking you to take more – there is of course a difference between illegal immigrants and refugees (and I won’t go into a load of stuff about immigration and the nonsense about how we are overwhelmed by people who are scrounging off our benefits system – I am sure you know well enough that is such a red herring) – but currently, the Conservative Party and some parts of the media do not seem to make a distinction.
In Jordan 1 in 4 of the population is now a Syrian refugee. In Lebanon the ratio is 1 in 3. I am pretty sure you will have seen a piece in The Telegraph today but just in case….

“The number hosted by Lebanon as a ratio of its population would be equivalent to nearly 15 million in France, 32 million in Russia or 71 million in the United States.( interestingly the equivalent number in the uk is not cited)
Turkey hosts the second largest number, with 634,900. And where not so long ago Iraqis travelled across to the border into Syria for refuge, there are now a quarter of a million doing the reverse journey.
The Domiz refugee camp, 20 kms southeast of Dohuk city, in northern Iraq hosts Syrian-Kurds
In December, the UN appealed for around £4 million for victims of Syria’s war, while a total of £1.3 billion was pledged at the Kuwait Donor Conference in January.
Oxfam said only 12 percent of the money pledged under the UN appeal has been delivered.”

We have taken 50 people from this flood of anxious, terrified, endangered, lost, desperate, grieving, amazing, educated, thoughtful, kind, skilled people into this country. That is it 50 people compared to thousands upon thousands of people that have had to move to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan.

If you have got this far, please, please don’t tell me that we aren’working’ to help people stay in the region. There is a lot of help coming from the UK but nowhere near enough. ( I am tempted to launch into a rant about stopping bombing IS not least as we can not even find them – and spend the money on
helping refugees and therefore improving our standing with Islamic community.)

If you have got this far, thank you.

When I was in Paris, I had a soft spot for pigeons not least as we didn’t have an abundance of other birds around the place.

Now in Deepest Sussex, we do have lots of other birds and what is more, we have more than enough pigeons – many more than enough.

In Paris we had two who lived in the tree outside the kitchen window and we called them Fred and Marge.

When we got to Sussex, there were also two in the garden so, with a remarkable lack of inventiveness, we also called them Fred and Marge.

One was dispatched by a sparrow hawk – the same sparrow hawk who, living up to its name, ate a load of sparrows.

(It treats the sparrows living in the big back hedge as tapas and takes a little snack now and then.)

And the thing about sparrow hawks is that they clean their plate as it were, so when we found Fred or Marge, there was only a feather or two left.)

But now there are hundreds of bloody pigeons all over the place and they are a blundering nuisance.

They are dim, hefty, greedy and all over the shop.

One pair had the bright idea of building just by our bathroom window – right by it.

There is a climbing hydrangea and a Virginia Creeper there so plenty to rest on, and build around.

I don’t know if you have every seen a pigeon nest but it is not a thing of beauty.

Each pigeon of the pair would arrive with a twig in its mouth and say “ Mmm, ahh, mmm, oh go on then, let’s drop it here.”

Slowly an ungainly pile of twigs appeared.

And whilst you were having a shower, a beady and rather ugly eye would be watching you as it sat on the teetering pile of twigs.

Yes, yes we should have got rid of the nest quickly and discourage them but before we knew it, we were used to being watched cleaning our teeth and then there were two eggs.

Then there were two chicks (we called the squallies.)

I had imagined they would be bald and ugly but the pigeons (mother doing most of the caring, hey ho) were just smart enough to keep them hidden until they were presentably covered in down.

One day I noticed that there was only one squally and yes indeed, a body was found.

I am not sure whether it fell or was pushed and the other squally was surely not telling.

So, as I write, there is one squally, intermittently fed by the parent and now, as I dry off after a shower, it has got into the habit of stretching its wings ready for flight – and showing off to me.

In a few days it will be gone, and so will that nest. (There is only so much pigeon voyeurism a woman can take.)

Recently we had the village harvest supper.

There is a sentence which would strike horror into the previous me.

I would worry (nay, fear) that what would come next was a bucolic lyric about charming village eccentrics and the heart-warming stories of a countryside thanking their god for a good harvest.

I will try, dear reader, to spare you the worst but feel free to go away and pour yourself something strong and read a Will Self novel.

Anyway, the harvest supper is linked (inexorably) to the church and is held in the village hall – well, I can hear you say, how interesting.

The village hall is in an area which has a lot of young families and working people – but no, the harvest supper is full of people even older than us, and a darn sight richer in most cases. I am pretty sure that few if any, of the immediate locals come.

There are a few young people there but they are dragged along by their parents and are more Bedales than local primary.

Still, and all, we have a good time.

Mostly because we have a great band – the village postman, his wife the postmistress, his sister, the Congregational pastor (or whatever they are called in the Congregational Church) and a bass player from the heady bohemian lights of Petersfield.

They are great, and the best beloved and I have a good dance.

Last year, feeling brave, we were the first up and left our friends behind at the table.

One of them was tapped on the shoulder by a village ‘elder’ who said sotto voce, “Just who are those people?”

Does anyone much get through life without a list?

I am pretty sure that there is a school of thought somewhere which says that if you don’t make lists in writing and instead work at remembering what to get when you are out, what you planned for supper and those basic domestic things you need to do this week, your brain gets a whole lot of exercise and you don’t get dementia.

But for me, without a list life would be like a poor Impressionist painting, not too bad from a distance but close up, those essential little blobs of paint would be missing.

In the old days when I had more than a housewife’s life, I would have rather interesting lists with a mix of stuff ranging from emailing a film director I wanted to come and speak at an event, to fixing up to go mushrooming in Nunhead cemetery.

Now it is all so much more boring – boring to me even, leave alone anyone else.

My skinny bliss has both a busier life and a good theory on lists.

She says, always start a list of things to do with something you have already done or can knock off very quickly. Then you can tick it off and feel good.

She also says this is the way to galvanise you into action to get the other, more intransigent things done.

Well maybe it works for her, but I end up with things being taken off one list and put onto another until I run out of notebook.

Sometime, I have left it so long and moved the task so often, I can’t remember what it was about. I found one the other day which said ‘note on bombing.’

Only as writing that have I remembered what it means.

I do quite like starting lists which don’t involve me in doing anything.

I am starting one at the moment which is a list of things that annoy me.

You, dear reader, can have a sneak preview of what in due course will become a very long list:

People not putting their supermarket trolleys back properly. It takes two seconds to push your trolley back into the line and save some poor being, out in the rain, from having to organize them all. And don’t get me going on people who just abandon them in the nearest parking space.

(As you can see, my reluctant housewife soul is coming to the fore here. )

Cushions on beds – what on earth are they for? They have to be taken off and slung on a chair somewhere. (Now, I have to admit, that behind me in our spare bedroom at two cushions on the bed but only because I made them and was rather pleased with myself at the time of their creation, and cannot bring myself to get rid of them – there is no practical or even aesthetic reason for them.)

Bombing ISIS or IS or ISL or whatever name they go by this week. Yes, I know they are a bunch of vicious, bullying bigots who have captured or been given a lot of weapons and are making life extremely miserable for a lot of people.

But they are not a traditional army, they don’t have HQs with a neon sign saying ‘Here, bomb this bit.’

They are scattered among a population in a vast area and the first British planes that went to bomb them couldn’t find them. We were told the pilots came back with a lot of ‘valuable intelligence’ but presumably that was intelligence of where ISIS weren’t.

Instead, let’s spend the equivalent money it costs us to bomb them on making life better for the Syrian refugees, the Sudanese, the Iraqis  – and get them to like us rather than being bombed by a drone ‘managed’ by a boy in Nevada.

Loading the dishwasher. Men just don’t seem to get the point, and it is a really, really simple point, that leaving your dirty dishes on the surface above the dishwasher is not a hint to the kitchen fairies but a annoyance to the person who needs that space to prepare supper. Enough said, after all no man likes a nagging wife.

I am awfully glad that the Scottish are still with us – though I have to say, if I was any one of them, I would have been very tempted to vote yes in the referendum.

Well, my heart would have said yes even if my head was saying no.

One morning, half asleep with Radio 4 on (of course) my dearest thought he heard that the last minute blast by political leaders to persuade the Scots to vote no included giving them expensive cars.

(Extensive powers was what was actually on offer.)

If I were Scottish I think I might well have opted for a nice new car rather than staying with us and the delights of UKIP.

If you haven’t voted in more than one Tory for eons and have a system which does not charge students, and has free prescriptions, what would make you believe David Cameron was really interested in you – he just didn’t want to have to break it to Brenda that he had lost her the union.

It didn’t take a degree in political science to know that the vote was going to be close and Gordon Brown ( ike a bear in a Scottish cave) had been growling about it for months.

But at least the vote means that us English will not be ruled entirely by ( the walking, talking bad caricature) Jacob Rees Mogg and the like.

So, thank you Scotland and I will be up in Edinburgh shortly and will smile at every person I meet in the hope that they don’t think we are all right-wing idiots.

Arriving in Brussels was lifestyle changing.

First, if you can bear it, a bit of background.

My politics are left leaning – though there was more of an energetically significant tilt in my earlier years.

Of course me and my friends read The Guardian, opposed the Iraq war, a couple of them went on holiday to undiscovered bits of the Balkans, that sort of thing.

Nick worked at the Ministry of Defence.

They (my friends) said ‘He does what?’ and ‘Are you sure?’

But age brings a softening of approach so I let him into my life – at first he was rather bemused and bemusing but always good at turning up with, and opening bottles of wine, which made him (rather warily) accepted.

Anyway to cut a long story short after about a year of muddling along in separate places but with generally together-ish sort of lives, he got the chance to go to Brussels and asked if I wanted to go along.

So there, I found myself.

He was now Chief Executive of the a new ‘Agency’  and I was, to use the Belgian official description of someone living with, and largely off, someone else, his concubine.

I was also effectively Mrs Chief Executive – not a role I was used and, having watched the diplomatic and military wives, a role I realise I was not very good at.

I can honestly say I did not visit the sick, befriend his staff, go to children’s parties, hold coffee mornings or any of the stuff I should have done.

But I did have to do the dinner party and cocktail party circuit. (I am pretty sure that at first Nick feared that I would have secreted about my little black dress, a small CND placard and would slip away to the ladies room only to come back and brandish it.)

Did you know that you have to have placements at dinner party – a seating arrangement which means the most important man sits next to the hostess and his wife (or in my case concubine) next to the host? No nor me.

The form is that the host makes a short speech at the start of supper and the most important person – never actively designated but as everyone knows their place and he is sat next to the hostess, it is understood – makes a short thank you speech at the end of the meal. All new to me.

After all, dinner in my life meant your mates, food, wine and, oddly enough for Peckham, we tended not to go in much for placements and speeches.

Nick was more used to this kind of thing but sometimes despite his tutelage and practise, we got it wrong.

We went to this dinner party and it was the early days so when we arrived late I apologised profusely to the hostess and she said not to worry as the cooker was playing up so things were delayed.

I looked at her, so perfectly calm and serene, and said I thought she was taking that very well  – I would have been in the kitchen, red faced and panicking and wondering if sandwiches would do.

She smiled and said the staff were simply marvellous and all would be fine.

Staff!? Staff!? Blimey.

I should have remembered the form was that once we had all sat down Jean-Paul ( the host) would make his speech but I chose the moment he coughed a gentle alert to silence, to reach across the table, pick up the pretty menu card (oh yes, they have them too, unlike Peckham) and say loudly to serene hostess Marie-Francoise, ‘ These are pretty. Are they IKEA?’

Later, Nick regaled the dinner party with how hopeless I am at sailing and generally unsuited to this fantastic way of spending time.

I was sat next to an irritating bore so was not in the best of moods as Nick rattled on, engaging the rest of the party with my inadequacies.

After a bit, I told the collective dinner party that our first sailing holiday would have been greatly improved if he had not spent the whole time telling me how great a sailor his wife was, the places he and his wife had sailed to etc etc.

There was a stunned silence. ‘Have we in our midst a concubine?! And a stroppy one at that! Quel embarrassment.’

Nick was the most important man in the room so he knew he had to make the speech of thanks but he always forgets the French do cheese before dessert. He does not approve of that – being of a certain age, class and British.

So, when cheese is nearly over, I can see him thinking of warm witticisms and thanks and I try and warn him through surreptitious eye contact but of course he is still glaring at me because I ruined his sailing stuff and ignores me.

And so, he makes his pretty speech to a shifting, shuffling group of dinner guests and Jean-Paul smiles wanly and say, ‘ Eh bien et maintenant dessert.’

Our village shop closed as about 11.30am on a Sunday so you have plenty of time to get there and pick up the nice farm shop bacon for sarnies and the paper.

This week, because I didn’t think the man or dog needed bacon, I just dropped in for a paper. I saw only the tabloids and was not that keen on the Sunday Express.

But luckily Peter, the nice man who runs our shop, said how glad he was to see me because there was a pile of Observers left. Needless to say, the Telegraphs had all gone.

Anyway, whilst we were chatting, he told me of a ‘stash’ of sloes up on the Downs.

I want to say this was of no interest to me at all but I have to admit, as the Sussex housewife I am rapidly becoming, I galloped up there with (Waitrose of course) plastic bags stuffed in my pockets.

Now I don’t like gin or sweet things so why I felt the urge to pick sloes for sloe gin is really beyond me. But I did, and now they are in the freezer. ( Apparently, and don’t get too excited here, but traditionally you have to prick each small fruit to release the juice before you put them in the gin with what seems to me, to be a lot of sugar. But, hey, how exciting, I hear that you can burst the fruit by freezing them.)

And as for elderberries, I am on a mission. Last year there was a tree on the lane which was full to bursting with elderberries. I knew you could make some undrinkable wine from the flowers, but found that you could make a vinegar from the berries.

This year, the hedging has been done so the tree is cut down and out of action for a year or two. But my vinegar last year was a huge success – think how much more ‘on trend’ to say to your supper guests, ‘Yes, I always think that duck breast is great with a salad of mild radiccio and this dressing – no, no not raspberry vinegar, which would be good of course, but elderberry vinegar  – don’t you think it’s just gorgeous?’

Last year I made a shed load of preserves and jams and pickles and sold them all to my friends at a mass lunch when I menaced them and made them pay up in aid of Syrian refugees.

So, although I have sworn not to do all that again, the elderberries were needed. I friend has found a weighed-down tree so now the freezer has elderberries to cope with as well as sloes.

And, naturally, blackberries for jam.

Let no one tell you all this preserve stuff is nothing but a faff and a long-winded faff at that.

Let me tell you, I am ashamed how gratified I was when my crab-apple jelly made it to a restaurant in Scotland where they asked for more. (The tree is not well this year, so I cannot supply.)

Today I met a friend in London – I went and bought shoes in Covent Garden, put my nose in a gallery or two, had Mexican food and a conversation about Sierra Leone, the state of the NHS, the improbability of a European-wide immigration policy, renewable energy and the appalling nature of the big energy companies, how appalling it is that Israel is annexing 1000 acres of Palestinian land.

Lovely.

But this weekend, it will be elderberry vinegar making.

We are of course very grateful to anyone who thinks of bringing their books to a charity bookshop.

Did you hear the ‘but’ coming.

The thing is that emptying those damp cardboard boxes from your garage or attic into our shop is not really such a great gift.

If your books are brown and falling apart no one wants to buy them so I will spend my time filling large, heavy, yellow sacks to be sent to be recycled.

To be blunt, we don’t care whether they are fine examples of English literature – if they are in rubbish condition we can’t sell them, so away they go.

When I first started as a volunteer, I was very reluctant to throw good books away. I had learned early on to  regard book ‘burning’ as a very bad business indeed. One day, one day, they would be stars on Antiques Roadshow and before that they would inspire a child into being an author, or I could remember reading them and loving that story and anyway they are books …. so on and so on.

Now, I am sorry to admit, they just get yellow-sacked and I have to say I relish the tidiness of the storerooms when they are clear of yellow sacks and crappy books.

And even in good condition, I am afraid there are some we just don’t want.

If I never see another Jeremy Clarkson book it will be too soon.

(Personally, I think the man should be gagged and forcibly removed to an uninhabited island with no vehicles.  I do realise there are people out there, living freely in society, who find him refreshingly funny and direct. But for anyone who does not fall into that category and are therefore not an idiot, could you stop buying Clarkson books for males in the family who you don’t have any other earthly idea what to buy for Christmas. Buy a Victorian stuffed owl, a train ticket to Bournemouth, a pair of socks from the 99p Shop, anything but a Clarkson book because it will, surely as eggs is eggs, it will end up in a innocent and hapless charity bookshop.)

Likewise, Michael Palin – no, no , he is a nice chap I gather, but there are a lot of his books in the charity circuit and they just don’t sell. Sorry Mr Palin but we don’t need any more Pole to Poles or New Europeans.

Dated cookery books. No thanks. No one wants to have 365 Microwave Recipes or 100 Ways with Pasta (1980) . Or cookery books based on out of fashion diets ( and there are a lot of fads in diets, we see them all). Mrs Beeton unless a really early edition and not, please, held together by sellotape.

Delete as applicable for gardening books.

(These rules do not apply to classics of the genre but they are rarer. Keith Floyd, yes please. Fanny Craddock for humour value…..and vintage for novelty value though who these days who poaches chicken and puts into gelatine?)

And finally, or at least for now. We have to work very hard to smile nicely when someone pulls up, opens their boot and says breezily, ‘I have brought you a load of books. I’d like the bags/boxes/crates back.’

I say,’Thanks so much, that is brilliant. It is just near closing time, so could you possibly collect your bags/crates/boxes in a day or two.’

They say,’Oh no, sorry, I need them now. They have just come out of our garage and we have a lot more to clear so we will be back with more!’

When we bought the house there was an Aga in the kitchen.

I had never wanted one, knew they were not the best on fuel efficiency and thought they were for women (and men, of course) with pseudo farmhouse kitchens and a chocolate labrador trained to lie artfully in front of it.

But I was informed by all and sundry that I would fall in love with it, and I freely admit I have.

For the first few months I didn’t realise that the two hot plates on the top were at different temperatures and that if you cook on the top you lose such a lot of heat from the ovens.

If I had been told that, it would have confirmed to me that they were a pretentious waste of time and energy.

But I did work out the Aga was a marvellous way of drying clothes.

Living in Brussels, I did a lot of cooking for large numbers and came back here with three large roasting tins.

One is still used for cooking but the other two hold knickers and socks respectively so they can ‘sauté’ gently on the top of the Aga.

Now I have learned to cook with it, I look forward to putting the Aga back on after a summer with a pretty crappy electric cooker.

It exudes warmth and comfort and the promise of a casserole – of course it is still not very energy efficient but splendidly nice when the wind is howling and the rain drumming on the roof.

(We avoided the chocolate labrador trap but fell into one set by a black and white mutt who tries her best to look like an Aga accessory.)