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A house, warmly lit up from light within, stands against a dark but starry sky.
Crowditch

And So To 2025

by Lydia January 10, 2025

Christmas has now passed and January has come rushing at us thick and fast, but it was a marvellous first Christmas in our new home. There were day visits northward to visit family in Caithness, and there was a long-weekend visit from family from England and Spain. But Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day we spent at home (or in the local area), just us. All in all, it was pretty much perfect.

The family visit, hosting a houseful, was utter chaos, but exactly what we wanted when we bought the house. There were three families under one roof (totalling four cousins), with grandparents staying in a nearby hotel. The layout downstairs worked really well, with the large kitchen and the sitting room and our snug leading off it (one day, there will also be a dining room leading from the kitchen – but at the moment, that is full of boxes). I’ve always been a firm believer that the kitchen is the heart of the home, and it felt like it, even as it is right now with make-shift worktops and a mish-mash of furniture. Euan finished off the bar for the sitting room (a slim strip of oak on tall black legs), and we used it in the kitchen for extra worktop-height space. We moved the smaller table (what was once, many moons and two or three houses ago, my desk) into the sitting room for the kids, and it has been so handy there that we haven’t bothered rearranging everything back again yet.

There were some things we couldn’t predict until we tried out having so many people in the house. Having an airbed in the guest room (in addition to the double bed) for our niece didn’t work too well, so after the first night we pushed the two settees together in the sitting room and she and Auri had a lot of fun sleeping there (there was absolutely nothing wrong with Auri’s bed, but sharing the settee with her cousin was understandably deemed much more fun).

The day after the family left, there was a significant snowfall, followed in the early-ish hours by a deluge of rain, resulting in a leak in the sitting room. We’d only fixed the previous one in early autumn, but I think the recent storms must have loosened another tile. Apart from that, though, the house survived the season unscathed, a host to happy memories being made.

On New Year’s Day, there was a display of the Merry Dancers and the sky was alive with stars. We took some photos outside from the back garden, some a tad blurry because of the night setting, our home a warm beacon of light.

Our home. The first day of a new year, the sky alive with stars.

January 10, 2025
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Crowditch

A First Christmas Eve

by Lydia December 24, 2024

We and our house are still finding out about each other, getting used to our new relationship. But one thing I have been certain about for some time is that this house wants to be a family home. It has been a while since she has been that, and I am certain she appreciates it. Whatever has happened inside these walls, at some point children have been happy here. I have heard their footsteps, running in the hallway in the old part of the house, on more than one occasion. There have been one or two other things, too. Most of all, though, there is the feeling that this house wants to be loved for who she is, to be a part of a family. When I recently picked up a rocking horse for the girls from an auction, it immediately looked so right in their bedroom, as if it had always been there. I can’t explain it, just that it felt appreciated.

I was speaking about this yesterday to my family who live at Stempster, in Caithness. Their house also has history, and a back catalogue of characters (they have managed to do some research into the house and its previous inhabitants – something I am hoping to do for our own house when time allows). We were discussing how houses desperately want to be homes – they want to be lived in, properly.

Euan had just returned to the sitting room from being in the hallway, and reported that the door handle to my Mum and Dad’s bedroom had been turning on its own (we were all accounted for). “It’s the time of year,” said my sister, cheerfully, “these things happen at Christmas.”

At Christmas, a couple of years ago, when our young niece Ailsa was staying there, everyone at Stempster heard as clear as day a baby crying. My brother and his wife went to check on Ailsa, only to find her fast asleep. There have been other happenings.

It isn’t a surprise that many cultures have a tradition of winter tales, of telling stories together round the fire, often with a eerie theme. Perhaps there is a thinning at this time of year, making the past feel closer. I’m not even sure it is as clear as the past being relived, I think it is more that a house amplifies what you expect to find, and what you share with it.

When I was younger, I used to love the tales of animals being able to speak on the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve. I am sure that those tales contributed to my lifelong love of and fascination with folklore. I wonder if the same could be true of buildings. On the stroke of midnight, what might our new home share with us? What histories, what thoughts, what hopes? I hope that she knows that we’re doing our best to put her right, and that we look forward to sharing many happy years with her.

A  toddler with her back to the camera, stares at a Christmas Tree in the window in front of her, pointing at it in wonder.
Elfi gazing at the smaller Christmas Tree, in the snug window.

December 24, 2024
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Books on bookcases.
Crowditch

Book Christmas

by Lydia September 3, 2023

Yesterday, I spent twelve hours taking apart my old, rickety bookcases, dusting and cleaning the books, and putting them all on their shiny, new bookcases. This morning, walking into the sitting room was a bit like getting up the day after you’ve decorated the house for Christmas.

September 3, 2023
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A close-up of a sleeping baby.
CrowditchThoughts

Elfi

by Lydia January 11, 2023

In the beginning, there were Japanese microseasons. The first post on this site was made when, depending on your translation and reference source, “dew glistens white on grass”. Now, “springs thaw” and soon, “pheasants start to call”.

The site had been a thought in development for several years by the time it first went live. We had chosen the name Elosa for our shared home before we moved in, way back in August 2017, being as it was a shared representation of our names at the time: a half-initialism, a half-acronym. Euan, Lydia and Osa. It’s what we call our current home, and it will be what we call our next home.

In the years that followed, our family changed shape. Osa became Ghost Osa, remaining an ever-present entity in our family. Scapa and Araucaria, or Auri for short, came along. By pure accident, as I realised later, their names moulded Elosa into a true acronym, based on all of our initials.

Now, we are Elosae. Elowen arrived on the 8th of December, thoughtfully letting me attend her sister’s Nativity two nights previously before kickstarting proceedings with my waters breaking at midnight. A day and some later, there she was: bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and bigger than her sister had been when she arrived (nearly four years ago, now) by more than a third again. Our little Elowen, or Elfi for short.

Auri adores Elfi, which is fortunate. So far, she has resented none of the changes made to accommodate her new sibling, and delights in showing her off to anyone and everyone, certain in that way that pre-schoolers are that everyone will be as interested and besotted as she is.

When the tree and the Christmas decorations were taken down last Friday, we moved my desk into the sitting room. Not simply an aesthetic choice, though I love my hand-crafted, bespoke desk: during my maternity leave, I will be spending the majority of my waking hours in this room with Elfi, so having my desk and all its accompanying paraphernalia to hand for any snatched spare moments (as this one is, right now) was a practical choice, too.

As I type, Elfi is asleep in her crib next to me. She is already filling the Moses Basket more than Auri did a few months in. It’s strange to see her in clothes than Auri wore when she was so much further along.

Now, as I type here, I can glance down at my sleeping baby. Wander across the sitting room – suddenly spacious after the good madness of Christmas – and finish off my cup of tea in a kitchen slightly smoky from the treacle-burnt ham fresh out of the oven.

Notebook, 7th January 2023

When Auri was born, she was definitely a Bowditch. So many people commented on how much she looked like Euan or members of his family. On my side, she most closely looked like two of my sisters, Holly and Diff, though I see me in her when she smiles her mischievous smile, full of devilment. Straight out of the family photograph album.

Elfi, on the other hand, was born the spitting image of me when I was a baby, complete with dark hair, so she is definitely a Crow. Out of all my siblings, I am the one who has always taken most after my mother, and members of my family have said how much Elfi looks like my Granddad George (my mum’s dad), so she is also very much a Temperton.

Looking at photos of Auri in the same basket, though, Auri and Elfi share so much in how they look. It’s so strange, noticing all these differences and similarities as they each forge their own way, announcing and stamping their own individuality on the world and all who sail in her.

It seems strange that Elfi, a day short of five weeks, is already living through her eighth microseason. Bears have started hibernating. Deers have shed antlers. Parsley has flourished.

So much, so soon, life comes rushing at us.

At the beginning of this year, I stopped reading and browsing news. I have had breaks before and it improved, well, everything. This time, I hardly even feel guilty about not being engaged, not being aware or informed. Family and friends will let me know if there is anything I need to know. And, if they don’t, I’m sure it will work out. My energies – and their energies, too – are better spent elsewhere.

That – alongside re-evaluating my relationship with my somewhat needy mobile – has meant I’ve already been reading more. Currently, one of the books I am reading is Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words, the authorised biography by Boel Westin. Reading about her family, you can see the blueprint for what Jansson might become was scribbled from the start, from the earliest of days – but nobody would suspect she would forge, announce and stamp herself on the world as she did.

It is such a responsibility, growing young women: so hard to get right the balance between encouraging, inspiring, providing opportunity and advocating a little too much for a certain path. Auri is so sharp, so observant, blowing out of the water with her analytic curiosity all those phrases we use which don’t really make sense, and making me look at everything afresh and reconsider all that has become engrained over the last four decades. Elfi is at that early and delightfully honest stage, all snuffles and contented murmuring, and then scrunched up faces and immediate vocalisations of discontent if she is not entirely happy. I am learning and re-learning so much from both of them. And, as long as that is the case, perhaps that is what will ensure I, too, grow with the seasons.


This post isn’t what I thought it would be. There were other Things To Say, perhaps announcements to make. If I’d had the chance to sit down and write it in one sitting, blindly type in a furious fit of literary passion, perhaps it would have stayed the way I originally envisaged it. But that would also mean that I would have lost something, that I wouldn’t have let time and reflection reshape what I thought had to be written and guide me in a different direction.

This feels important, this observation and diverted path bringing a sense of relief. It emphasises the strength in not-knowing and growing.

After all, as the beloved Too-ticky once said, “All things are so very uncertain, and that’s exactly what makes me feel reassured.”

Merry, Merry New Year, one and all. May 2023 treat you and yours kindly.

January 11, 2023
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A decorated Christmas Tree with warm lights stands in a corner of a room. To the right is a table with a small Araucaria heterophylla and a hand-made snowman made from a glass jar and cotton wool, with a green knitted scarf and a paper top hat.
Crowditch

Croymas Has Begun!

by Lydia December 5, 2022

Scapa has just returned from her walk and, noticing I had a blanket ready to put over my knees on the settee once I’d settled down with my cup of tea, pointedly stood there staring at it and me until I ended up opening it out and lifting it up so she could curl up under the blanket herself. No room for me.

There was a thick frost on the ground this morning, and it still hasn’t entirely shifted as we step into the afternoon. We are due snow this week – Wednesday, apparently – which is all very exciting. Auri, who at nearly four entirely equates snow with Christmas-time for obvious reasons, can’t wait and keeps describing the snowball fights we’re going to have. There are a series of seasonal milestones that are all wonderfully jumbled up in her head right now: Pip being born; Tonton Neeps, Tatie Aurélie and Baby Cousin Ailsa arriving; Christmas; snow. There are probably more. I was trying to explain the concept of ‘Christmas-time’ as opposed to ‘Christmas Day’ to her this morning, when she asked why we already had our tree up if it wasn’t Christmas yet.

We bought our tree and decorated it on Friday. Auri chose it, and a grand job she did, too. Fortunately, Scapa has never been too interested in Christmas Trees other than sniffing them and paying attention to certain ornaments; unfortunately, she has no idea what her tail does at any given time, so there have been a handful of ornaments brought down already due to pre-walk excitement.

So, Croymas has certainly started! And it is a particularly special one this year. Crowmas will officially begin on the 23rd December, when we drive up to Stempster for a few nights. All in all, we have an exciting month ahead of us.

December 5, 2022
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A pile of books is heaped underneath an upright electric piano. To the left, more bookcases, packed with books, can be seen stretching out of shot behind a rocking chair.
Crowditch

Book-Sneaking

by Lydia December 2, 2022

Today is Christmas Decorating Day – a little earlier than usual this year for imminent going-into-labour reasons.

Yesterday, I spent half a day Furniture Juggling. That annual task, where you try to figure out what needs moving where to fit in the Christmas Tree for the next few weeks. It’s even harder this year, given Auri’s room is being commandeered as a guest room for the festive season, and we have an extra member of the family (and all that means, trappings-wise) joining us.

Nevertheless, I successfully managed it, with only a handful of wooden bird carvings and Euan’s massive wooden pestle and mortar he brought back from Central America (Costa Rica, perhaps? Or was it Guatemala?) going in the loft for a while.

Of course, the real challenge is finding places for the books I’ve usurped from their usual place on one of the side-tables. I think I’ve managed to surreptitiously squirrel them away in appropriate places, hoping to avoid more amused comments from Euan about precisely how many books I accumulate…

A pile of books is heaped underneath an upright electric piano. To the left, more bookcases, packed with books, can be seen stretching out of shot behind a rocking chair.
December 2, 2022
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Elosa

Take one Southern and one Northern. Throw in two determined (very) young women and their four-legged guardian and partner in crime. Immerse in the Highlands.

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