not cold enough for snow
the second instalment of my winter diaries
With thanks to Jessica Au for the inspiration behind the title of this second instalment of my winter diaries.
The first instalment (and explanation of the fragmented structure) is here:
… it was impossible, ultimately, to compare one life to another, and we always ended up essentially in the same place where we had begun. … Another part of me wondered if it was okay either way, not to know, not be sure. That I could let life happen to me in a sense, and that perhaps this was the deeper truth all along, that we controlled nothing and no one, though really I didn’t know that either.1
29 June - 12 July
Though there is no snow on the mountain yet, it feels like winter is properly here.
Some mornings, I hear the grass crunch under my boots.
Our wine rack is full of reds - earthy and rich syrahs, pinots and cab savs.
The winter sheets are out of storage and on the bed. Nights are cosier.
Feijoa season is over, so it’s apples and pears in the porridge now. I got a ‘wonky’ bag of each from the local market - even ‘seconds’ of Tasmanian apples are unbelievably crisp, sweet and juicy in the bleakest midwinter.
I cook the apples and pears down to a pleasing mush in our oval cast-iron pot, a wedding gift from nearly sixteen years ago. When I stir the mixture, it turns brown from the generous pinches of cinnamon, nutmeg and splodges of vanilla extract. I scoop out the mush into a container for breakfasts and desserts over the coming week or so. There is a little left in the pot, together with cooking juices, which becomes the basis of an indulgent Sunday porridge made with organic oats, the seeds my GP told me to eat more of, a scrape of almond butter, and the strained whey from my homemade yoghurt. Fresh apple and walnuts on the top. Winter breakfast heaven.
All the while, a persistent fatigue I find hard to account for, that doesn’t disappear with sleep, that doesn’t abate with nourishing food and fresh air, gets into my bones.
I have chased things for all of my life. Achievements, lofty goals, fulfilment, recognition. Even just feelings I might have experienced once or twice, fleetingly, in a Toronto diner talking until 2am with a stranger or seeing the coastline of Tasmania come into view as we flew down, knowing we were going there to make it home again.
Might the chasing have to stop now? Or at least, the reasons for the chasing might need to change?
I try to ignore it - the fatigue - and carry on. Increase the weights at the gym, the kilometres on the weekly training run. This is something I will pay dearly for in the weeks to come.2
You will find it helpful to articulate your intentions.
A long-planned day off work in the middle of the week begins with a quietly anticipated breakfast from the Towpath cookbook which I read with great delight and nostalgia, remembering running past this cafe every Wednesday lunchtime with my work running group when I lived in London. I only actually went to eat there once, with a friend on a baking hot June afternoon, and we had lemon bars and iced teas. Having now devoured this wonderful cookbook - which is also a memoir of a year (2018) of the owners’ experiences of running the Towpath cafe, which ironically was the last year I lived in London - I wish I had paid more visits.
My breakfast was sage fried eggs, which I first heard about via Ellie Steafel (whose cookbook I have also ordered from the UK) and couldn’t stop thinking about. It was misty, damp and freezing outside as I ate them (inside, at my dining table), much how I’d imagine it would be to eat the dish at the Towpath cafe itself in early spring or late autumn. They close for winter, which I think is very wise.
The sage was picked from my own garden, crisped to perfection in glorious butter, seasoned with garlic, Aleppo pepper and lemon (also from my garden), the yolks of the eggs rich and runny, soaking into thick sourdough toast. Butter, oil, everything I’ve been avoiding for the past seven months, but oh… how ambrosial these ingredients are when you don’t use them all the time. It was everything I was hoping for, and more. Every mouthful was magic - buttery, life-giving, delicious magic. I made a black coffee to enjoy alongside in my Jonathan Partridge coffee bowl, a special object I bring out when I want to feel connected to my artistic self, when I want my hands to hold something another maker made with theirs.
Other favourite despatches from my winter kitchen during this period: a soup made with roasted red peppers and topped with yoghurt, black olives, lemon rind and rosemary from the garden (recipe is in Tessa Kiros’ wonderful 2005 cookbook Falling Cloudberries). An oven caponata made with a glut of green capsicum my brother-in-law left on our doorstep. A low-effort lemon, lentil and pearl barley soup I first made when I had a cold in April that is now a favourite lunch, again topped with yoghurt (sounds weird but try it!), harissa and coriander. Nourishing bowls of leftover brown rice and edamame beans, air-fried tofu, sweet potato, zucchini, sprouts, all dusted with whichever seasoning I fancied that day. Chocolate rye cookies, also from the Towpath cookbook, which were shared with Kylie the gardener when she came in for a cup of tea for a break from fruit tree pruning. “These taste like fudge!” she enthused. They were incredible, and disappeared very quickly.
Be judicious about who you listen to.
In previous years, the mountain would usually be covered with snow by now. Instead, even though it’s cold, there are roses still clinging on in the garden, their bright colours looking so out of place amidst the bare branches and grey skies. In the supermarket, there are gluts of zucchini going cheap, a vegetable I always associate with summer. My guess is they must be flown in from way further north, most likely Queensland.
My manager, who is based up there, expresses joy at the arrival of strawberry season when we speak this week. Apparently, strawberries are a winter fruit in Queensland. Indeed, I have visited in past winters and I could have sworn I was in Spain at the height of summer. I remember walking into the train station in the centre of Brisbane last August, seeing a fruit stall piled with ripe mangoes and strawberries on the way to the platforms and being hit by a cloud of intoxicating sweetness. Winter there is not what winter is down here!
We are a vast country, with varied climates and eco systems, deserts and rainforests and everything in between. And yet, despite knowing this, I sense we are slowly watching the seasons as we remember them alter irrevocably. The small waves of grief that we are, as Richard Flanagan put it, now in “the strange autumn of things.”
I couldn’t give throat, I guess, to this sort of shriek, this, this rising terror I felt filling me.3
(isn’t ‘give throat’ an interesting expression?)
Zero degrees as I walk Janey in the dark early mornings. I’m wearing at least four layers to stave off the chill - thermal, t-shirt, hoodie, raincoat, plus beanie and gloves. Janey trots along happily but then goes into stalker mode the minute she catches sight of a rabbit, and I notice that every car that needs to leave at this ungodly hour is sitting in its driveway, the engine running, waiting for the ice to melt. I remember my Mum on school mornings in winter taking the just-boiled kettle outside and how the windscreen became clear like magic. In the UK, Tom and I always had scrapers and De-Icer spray in the glovebox. Memories of how we’d start the car ten minutes before we needed to leave, always panicking slightly that bad weather would mean delays on the road which would mean we’d miss our train, and how the ice came off the windscreen in thick shards like pieces of a broken mirror.
There are some hard conversations over this period. Things I don’t necessarily want to hear, but probably need to. And I know what I need to do but every time I think about it, the exhaustion creeps in again. Where is the version of me who is Captain Marvel-like in her ability to get up every time she’s knocked over? Where is that Phil? I know she’s in there somewhere.
Things I scrawl in my journal, with coffee as the sun rises, are revealing. How my square edges have been pushed into round holes. No wonder I’m not feeling Marvel-lous.
‘Perhaps we need a rest, to gather ourselves,’ Tom says. ‘Then we can be brave again.’
How do you know when a book is finished?
When I have nothing more to give it.
When it feels separate from me.
[so….my book is not finished yet]
Finally, as the week ends, two lovely things happen.
My friend Emma’s book is officially out in the world and friends who have pre-ordered copies gather at her place to collect them, eat cake and toast the author. Emma is a great cook and the first essay in the book is about a plum cake, so it is no surprise that her table is groaning with baked goods of every variety and all manner of deliciousness. I am offered a dainty mini raspberry and coconut cake, and one bite sends me straight back to my childhood, recalling a slice my mother or grandmother would have made, wrapped in clingfilm in my green lunchbox.
(the clingfilm is possibly still decomposing out there, somewhere.)
I have admired Emma’s work for a long time (in fact, we became friends when I wrote her a fan letter!) because she writes so movingly about love and friendship, nature, parenting, technology and faith, among many other topics. In fact, that’s the title of her book - Love &. Her essays are meditations on how we live, what we value (and undervalue), how the world is both broken and beautiful at the same time. I am 120 pages in (about a third of the way through) and have already cried twice.
I wonder what my children, looking back once fully grown, will remember of our strange, secluded walks. Moving through a world that’s mostly quiet and mostly still watching as the sky, letting out a yawn, spills colour everywhere to everything. Perhaps they’ll mistake memories for dreams.4
If you need a book to get you through winter - literally or metaphorically - I could not recommend it more. It’s published by an American literary press but available in Australia here. Emma is a beautiful writer and human being. I’m sure you will enjoy getting to know her.
Darling Janey and I take a walk under a pristine blue winter sky, the kind of sky Tasmania does so well this time of year, even if the air is tinged with ice. I arrive back to a wonderful email from my mentor, warm and encouraging, who has sent me a recording of her reading some of her favourite passages from my manuscript aloud. She said someone did this for her once and it really helped her hear the words anew, and realise the writing was better than she thought.
It has the desired effect and I sit there in tears as I listen to what sounds like a proper story, rather than the badly-written, cliche-ridden mess I’ve convinced myself it is.
Perhaps my Marvel moment is coming after all.
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au (Giramondo, 2022), excerpt on Granta: https://granta.com/cold-enough-for-snow/
Coming in the third instalment.
“Award-winning author Richard Flanagan talks about his new book”, ABC News interview, 29 September 2020. Available here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-29/award-winning-author-richard-flanagan-talks-about/12715360
Love & by Emma Wilkins (Solum Literary Press, 2026), p.130.
Loved reading this and have made a booklist for borrowing and buying. Thank you! I hope you are okay, health wise. I get shivers up my spine when I hear about people suffering terrible fatigue, especially the unshakeable kind. Thinking of you on this crispy, silvery morn. xx
This is so lovely. I have a Janey, too! She is, mind you, a ten-year-old Maine Coon cat. I will go looking for your friend's book, it sounds very nourishing. I loved the writing advice about reading our favourite paragraphs. Writing a book is so often a hard and lonely business; it is important to remember why we do it, and indeed that we *can* do it, but we can take time, and time away x