New Term

sharpening my pencils (just give me a minute)

Right, everyone back to bed (Cornwall Aug 2025)

Can you hear that? It’s the sound of an empty house. I am alone (if you don’t count the dog) for the first time in months. Steve is away, two teens returned to school today and the eldest is out, cramming everything into his final week before uni starts again. I sat down to answer a few emails and an hour later I am still here, looking at tulip bulbs online and googling last night’s super bloody lunar eclipse full moon.

The Best Village Neighbours Whatsapp (unofficial title) buzzes with the relief of the new school term. We all share in the bliss of peace and joke about having a lie down before we give our careers a good shake and clean up our houses.

The usual caveats about how much I love my family, how there is nothing nicer than a house full of people etc etc always apply. I wouldn’t change a thing and yet, it’s good, very occasionally, to be reminded of what it’s like to be on my own and how I like my own company. As long as I am not being a dick, which I can be.

I have a big list of things to do this week, from a pile of work and autumn diary planning to some rigorous weeding and a trip to the tip while the sun shines. Maybe I will bake scones for the after school debrief. I never have enough time. What I would do for some actual time, I say to myself all the time. And now here I am, sitting in the armchair in the corner of the kitchen, relishing the silence and the fact I don’t have to get in the car again for a full four hours. Something of a record. Time slips through my fingers as my coffee cools and I watch a posse of sparrows shoot into the hedge, rustle around and burst out again. Like a group of teenagers in the corner shop.

I really should mop the kitchen floor. There are apples to peel for a crumble. I have two books to read in preparation for Bridport Literary Festival and research on a new project I am starting later this week.

Instead, I write to you and think what a nice thing this is to do.

***

The usual car shenanigans last week. The little car had a flat battery, so we charged it with the big car and thought no more about it until the big car died a couple of days later. Luckily outside the house and not on the coast road when all the warning lights started blinking and Jesse was preparing for a drop and roll out of the passenger door.

Those who have been with me here on Substack for a while, or who have read my book, will know I have a complicated relationship with my mechanic. He lives at the end of the village which makes him very handy and so I have excused his mercurial nature over the years. It can be amusing and besides, as Nora Ephron said, everything is copy.

Admittedly it wears thin in times of stress. Like last week when I was trying to work and resolve how to get a broken car through the village while he was messaging me enigmatic riddles. Maybe a more motor savvy person would have understood them, but I just wanted someone who wasn’t me to come and get the car and fix it for less than the thing was worth.

By the end of the day there was nothing for it but for the little car to tow the big car through the village which it valiantly did. I was at the helm, Steve was following behind and Raff was in the passenger seat, in charge of communications over mobile phone.

I was in a cold sweat at the thought we might meet a car coming in the opposite direction, that the brakes on the big car would fail thus hitting the little car or that we wouldn’t be able to get up the hill. Worse, what if we came down the other side of the hill too fast? It was a nail-biting fifteen minutes of snails pace with shouts from Steve of ‘take up the slack’ and ‘not that fast’ and ‘speed up’. Amazing then that we didn’t lose our shit with each other, damage either vehicle or encounter a single neighbour throughout. No doubt they took one look at our strange convoy and went back into their houses. They are used to our vehicle dramas.

At one point, seeing me with a white knuckled grip on the steering wheel and my face set in a strange grimace Raff said, ‘don’t worry Muv, think of it as a story for Substack.’

***

Thanks so much for all your wonderful comments on my last post. I love hearing about autumn plans which seem to include loft insulation, waste skips, borlotti beans, French frozen shortcrust pastry (yes please), a chimney sweep company called Home Sweep Home (ingenious), daily planners and sheepskin hot water bottle covers. One message about switching wardrobes and bedding and storing them in a cedar chest, triggered a memory of my grandmother changing her summer curtains for thicker, winter ones.

I am now working on a pantry checklist which I should have on your desks by Michaelmas and no excuses about the dog eating my pencils.