The following is an unedited and rather hurriedly written preview of a long considered story that has never been written. Enjoy. This one is written for my fine friend Marie who is quietly persistent at teasing some stories out of my far from talented mind. If you keep it up, I promise to continue thinking about writing properly, or convince you I have nae talent and that I should give up!

‘I won’t take any pleasure from this years snowfall. I don’t take much pleasure in anything these days, least of all that silent world that lies outside these damp walls.

It’s been two years, one month and 3 days since I last smiled at the once welcome sight of winters glories. Two years, one month and 2 days of wanting to forget, failing to remember and quietly giving in.

So, just like every winter, I’ll sit here in the cold front room, I will stare fixedly at any distraction and I will pray for a quick thaw. A fast return to green grass, grey skies and that strain of bland denial that helps the months drag by. The months and the years that now lie between me and then.

While I wait, I have to avert my eyes from that frozen, monochrome world. I know what’s out there; I know it’s waiting patient and proud, keen to demonstrate its newfound beauty, to show off its brief, stark parade of bowed branches and pristine fields of untouched white. So eager to lead me out into the snow, out through the garden, out through that gate and on into that dead white world where he still lies. Waiting? Wishing he was here? Wishing I was there? I guess I’ll never know.

This time of year always held a special appeal to him. The embers of childhood still burned deep inside that chest and it was he that pushed for a move out here, out into the open, empty countryside. His idea was to get away from it all, to have the cramped woods and tiny worlds of childhood play writ large at our doorstep. He said it would help, said nature was all the therapy he needed.

For a while it did. I would wake in the mornings and find him gone. His boots removed from their rightful place and dragged out like a faithful dog along the treads and paths he had worn in with his sense of adventure. In the summer I would be awoken by the sounds of cutlery and crockery. Soothed gently awake by the mingling aromas of fresh coffee, orange juice and the ever-burnt toast that would filter through the house. Our home.

On a clear night, in winter or in spring, he would sit out there on the moss ridden front lawn and watch the stars. Never failing to point out Orion’s belt to me with a voice that somehow retained just enough wonder to make it worthwhile indulging him once again.

His was the world around us: the paths and burns, the birds and the trees, the endless shifting of textures and colours of the timid Scottish seasons. Mine was the quiet, warm rooms of this house. Waiting for him in that domestic idyll. While he explored I would tidy around the fraying edges of his chaotic collection of ephemera and nonsense. Magazines that he would never read, letters he would never open, branches and pine cones brought home for another round of show and tell. I never minded, mine was a quiet life of waiting and patience, of knowing when I was second best to all that lay outside these doors.

Don’t get me wrong; there was always affection between us. Between my world of domesticity and his untrammelled wandering through the patterns of Mother Nature. I never though I was in competition, never thought I might lose him to her. I was not a jealous corner of our settled love triangle yet for that acquiescence, what did I get? I became the jilted widow, hiding from the shame of abandonment, of being the bloodied loser in a fight I never knew I was in.

So I won’t take any pleasure from this years snowfall. Not this year, not next year, not ever again. I will wait and I will hide and I will let this life slide right through me until the day my pride gives way and she comes for me too.

I often wonder how I will go. Will I be taken from inside, a tumour or a needling, whittling virus that strips me down to nothing? Will I go like he did? Will I let the world search for me in these cold empty rooms that I used to love? Or will I wander from his familiar paths and let them find me full of frame but empty of mind. Lying out there in that field where he lay, just so she knows that I know what she did.

For a moment I look out. I see the garden, a shapeless tableau of negative and nothing. I see the road and the impassable snow drifts that slide across that single lane. I see the gate. It lies wide open even now. It leads my eye on and up that rolling savage hill, dragging my thoughts with it back to that final desperate search when I walked the ways he never went. Searching in that empty washed out world for something other than my greatest fear.’

For ODC – Lost

I hayed yesterday, which is to say I cut the euphemistically-termed "lawn." We don’t have lawns out here. We have wild grasses growing amid moss patches and weeds. The general rule of thumb for mowing is that when the hawkweed pings along the bottom of the car when you’re backing out, it’s time to shorten it. Or conversely, when the spitbug slobber soaks your pantlegs, their apartments need to be demolished. The longer you can put off this unpleasant task, the better. An experienced mower knows that the best time to cut is right before a hot spell. Set the blade as low as it will go, knock the tops off those rocks and then sit back on the porch with a glass of something cold, and enjoy watching it scald to brown.

So I hayed, and I don’t rake. No one does. It lays in windrows until removed (or not) by Nature. I had lots of hay-pretending-to-be-lawn for the haystack seen in this photo. The needle was no problem until the inevitable happened and I was brought face-to-face with the purpose of the assignment at the expense of a few tractor-starting words. Fortunately, I have a stockpile of super-magnets, those neodymium things which should bear warning labels for the nasty pinches they can deliver. I found my needle in a haystack. Can you?

As always, I ask that you please refrain from posting graphics in your comments. Thanks.