of winter and make-believe
When Lucy stumbles into the magical land of Narnia, she finds it in a state of perpetual, bitter cold – a curse has made it always winter but never Christmas. How I envied her! My tropical childhood Christmases were always spent dreaming of a real winter.
Around the beginning of December, my mum would arm us with coloured paper, scissors and glue. We would make a royal mess of the dining table, and then we would decorate the living room with our handiwork: stately paper windows looking out on snowy landscapes, to help us pretend. One year, we snipped and glued together a darling little hearth. Every night that month we sat by those brown paper logs and orange crepe flames with our bits of make-do fruitcake, and I was magically transported to wintertime.
When we moved into the Bunker last year I was tickled to find a real live non-paper hearth in our garden.
And today, fed up with real winter and missing the tropics, I brought it inside. Like the old days.
Well, well, look what welled up out of the well: your will. THIS IS YOU. Have added your blog to my blogroll at annedegraaf@wordpress.com. You go girl!