Fox, chicken, grain.

February 2024

This month, trying to juggle caring with getting my childhood home ready for sale and dealing with the various tradespeople (who I had hoped would make the process easier but thus far have made it anything but) has felt like playing “fox, chicken, grain” on hard mode.

Illustration by Shafer Brown

The game, which is really a logic puzzle, goes like this:

You are transporting a fox, a chicken, and a bag of grain back to your home and you need to cross a river but:

• The boat you have will only hold you and one of the other three.

• If you leave the fox alone with the chicken, the fox will eat the chicken.

• If you leave the chicken alone with the grain, the chicken will eat the grain.

How do you get all three across the river?

I shall put the answer in a footnote¹ so that, if you happen to never have come across the puzzle before, you can have a go at working it out free of spoilers but also not be left wondering what the answer is if you can’t.

I say my version is hard mode because my “river” is 200 miles wide, my mother can’t be left alone for more than two hours at a time, my Dad cannot look after Mum alone for more than a couple of days maximum, and Mum cannot safely (from a medical perspective) be in the same space as the tradespeople. This has meant much too-ing and fro-ing and trying to schedule things sensibly. So I’m quite surprised that in the midst of it all I have managed to clear another room entirely and sort out several other issues, all of which move me another step along the ‘getting us all to Northumberland’ path.

Suffice to say that despite having actually achieved something and this month having the shortest number of days of any month it has felt as if it took a thousand years. Plus the many complications have jump-started my insomnia which … hasn’t helped anything at all. Consequently I have reached this leap day feeling extremely tired and quite frazzled around the edges, so this newsletter is going to be a little shorter than usual and possibly a little less polished than I would like. I beg forgiveness for any typos and grammatical errors that have snuck in under my insomniac radar.

Wrangling the Yarn

My crocheting has been sporadic this month since exhaustion doesn’t lend itself to crafting. This is especially true of the jumper that is my main WIP at the moment given I need to follow a pattern rather than just wing it (as I do with so many of my creations). However, despite a bit of frogging and a lot unprintable muttering when I realised that the pattern had a mistake in it, I now have more jumper than I did in January. This is pleasing even if it makes for a rather short update.

Adventures in Word Herding

Surprisingly I have managed to write a few blog posts and share them over on Wordpress, mostly at the start of the month granted but I’m not complaining. These are they:

• Blooms on St Brigid’s Day

• Commenters Behaving Badly

• The Small Things Spreading Joy in January

• Fascinating Footnotes

• 2024 in Books: February

I also haven’t yet missed sharing a microflash on twitter each Monday so there are four more to read over here, should you fancy having a look.

I also virtually attended a workshop run by Kerri Ni Dochartaigh about Writing Through Emergency in which being present, opening yourself to what is happening, and using the craft of writing to bear witness was discussed in some depth. It left me with a lot to think about and indirectly gave me the poem that I have ended up learning by heart.

Initially I tried to learn February by Margaret Atwood, as suggested by a friend, but it didn’t resonate with me in a way that meant I could commit it to memory. Instead my brain kept going back to a very short poem that, although not mentioned directly during Kerri’s course, is a masterclass in bearing witness and felt impossible not to commit to memory:

Poem by Marwan Makhoul

In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political,
I must listen to the birds
and in order to hear the birds
the warplanes must be silent

Filling the Well²

The daily walks and spreading joy photos continue to be a source of solace along with my ‘morning coffee break’ bird watching sessions and, as ever, the continual consumption of interesting books. However I’ve added another small thing to my day; re-learning to sketch during my afternoon tea break.

I drew a lot in my teens and doodled my way through university but after that putting pencil to paper to do anything other than write became sporadic at best. There have been times over the years when I’ve done things like Inktober in the hopes that would create a new habit but it didn’t work (I suspect because of the sharing aspect of the challenge). This time I absolutely do not have to show anyone anything and just trying to capture what is in front of me (either physically or from a photo) in a very limited time has been really good for making the inner voice that tells me I’m wasting my time shut up and go away.

I probably won’t share many (if any) more of my sketches but this little fox made me so happy I couldn’t resist letting you all see him.

The One Card Tarot Draw

What might we want to remember as we move through March, a month traditionally known for its winds, storms, and changeability?

Six of Chalices from the Prisma Visions deck

At the moment everywhere you look in the world there is something awful happening; the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, Russia’s continued invasion of the Ukraine, Ghana making it illegal to to identify as LGBTQIA+, the horror show that is American and anti-abortion laws, the latest effects of the climate emergency, not to mention the absolute shitshow that is the current UK Government.

Surrounded by such a volume of suffering, misery, pain and hate it is only too easy to slip into despair and despondency, to believe that there is too much happening for you to make a difference. Thoughts like those are insidious, hard to shift, and can trap you in inertia and disillusionment if you let them cling to you for too long.

So, during March, make sure you spend some time (no matter how little) doing something that lifts your spirits and washes those thoughts away, leaving you fresh and able once more to see the beauty of flowers and sunsets and the chinks of hope that are still there if you can find the energy to look for them.

Until next month, lovely readers, take care of yourselves and remember that refusing to give up hope is a radical act of defiance. In that spirit I shall end this newsletter with a blessing for the world as a whole:

May the winds of March sweep away the attitudes and delusions that prop up the pain and grief and horror the world is currently experiencing.

And, when the winds die down, may we feel hope in our hearts, see the shape of the solutions we so desperately need, and find clear space to begin building them.

1. The answer to the “Fox, chicken, grain” puzzle is:

1. Take the Chicken across the river, leaving the Fox with the Grain.

2. Return alone, leaving the Chicken.

3. Take the Fox across the river, leaving the Grain alone.

4. Return with the Chicken, leaving the Fox alone.

5. Take the Grain across the river, leaving the Chicken alone.

6. Return alone, leaving the Fox with the Grain.

7. Take the Chicken across river.

SUCCESS - you are now on the far bank with all three of them and nothing has been eaten.

2. If you didn’t have time to read last month’s newsletter the tl;dr is that this year I am focusing on replenishing my creative energy and have taken “Filling the Well” as my theme for the year. This means I’ll be including updates on how I’m doing that going forward.