The air was fresh and clear as it can only be as morning awakes. How different from the night before when all had been grim and frightening

I it walked up the stony hill again, dragging my suitcase. All was quiet on the country road, no traffic, nothing. What would I do?

Be brave, walk down again round that eerie corner? The place must be there somewhere. In trepidation but with resolve I walked down the stony track again, rounded the corner and there was – the house on my brochure on the opposite side of the track, all lit and welcoming.

I got a big welcome when I entered. They thought I must have got lost. Supper had been kept for me. The two course leaders were South African Jeni Couzin and Fife-born Adrian Mitchell.

Jeni was starting the ball rolling even although it was late. Loosening us up, she called it. Tarot cards were laid out. We had to pick one and let its message sink in, deep spiritual thoughts.

I was tired by this time, confused. I picked a card, an archway. It reminded me of the archway into the garden at home so that was fairly easy, although not very deep or spiritual.

I could feel that evening, the tension between the two leaders; Jeni so spiritual, Adrian so practical. I could feel his disapproval of Jeni’s opening tactics. I wondered if this course was heading for disaster.

In actuality they resolved their differences and agreed time about to do their own thing, which actually worked very well. But that first night I had my doubts.

Different

I slept that night in a dormitory with six other women. I was allocated a top bunk. A lady from Wales was below me.

For some reason I was never to discover, she took away the ladder. Five o’clock in the morning, the alarm I had brought with me unfortunately went off. I must stop it before it woke the others!

No ladder, no light! I made a resounding thump when I hit the floor. Everyone woke. Not the top of the popularity poll, I dressed and crept out into the most glorious morning.

The sun was just up and sparkling on the river, the trees were freshly green, the birds were singing as if spring would never come to an end.

The air was fresh and clear as it can only be as morning awakes. How different from the night before when all had been grim and frightening. I revelled in that morning walk.

Adrian took us a few walks after that around this sometimes bare and desolate spot. We were taken to the grave of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes’ first wife.

It was difficult to be sad in the spring sunshine. We all had to write about what we found on these walks, what they made us think of.

Everyone wrote differently. Jeni had us enter into ourselves, looking for truth. More difficult, especially for the men.

They were apt to come up with something funny and facetious, not that they couldn’t have done what was wanted but they had no intention of giving themselves away.

It seemed that women had not nearly the same level of inhibition as men in this respect. All in all, it was an interesting course and, for a short while, took my mind off other things.

And so ended the first year of widowhood.

There is this vast silence ... nothing more ...

You should be here

In the kitchen – now!

With the offspring gone to bed, Sitting in the high Windsor

That is so much a part of you.

You should be here

On this fire-out summer evening, Drinking a last draught from banded mug, Discussing this and that, Wondering if the peas are ready to combine, Asking if the yellow canary

In the window, the trailing fern, need water Or how many of the

Speckled courgettes, glossy from the garden, I mean to freeze for winter; Inconsequential things

That made our days ...

But there is this vast Uncontrollable silence ...

Nothing more.

After the first year of being on my own, things were beginning to improve a little. Slowly my confidence was returning. Life had to go on.

In the meantime the farm would continue. The decision that there was to be no selling out was carried through.

The two oldest boys, Richard and Michael, had made up their minds that they would like to be farmers, manage and work the place between them.

Ronnie was still on his world travels. Mahri was married and living in Germany with her soldier husband.

Lindsay had left school and was up in Aberdeen working in the oil industry for a core analysis firm, and Kathleen was in her last year at school, just dying to leave like the rest of them had been.

I was keen to go fully into writing, perhaps prose as well as poetry if I could find more time. There was one book in particular I wanted to write.

I had started it a year or two back at the insistence of a teacher friend. She thought it a good story to tell.

I had related to her one day the traumatic time in my life when, for three years, we had emigrated to the wild prairies of Alberta.

The three oldest boys, then all under school age, had gone with us. Mahri and Grant had been born there.

Difficult

I found it much more difficult to write such a book than to write poetry; the sheer length of it, for a start. Besides, I got very little encouragement from the literary world I was mixed up in.

“Almost impossible,” I had been told over and over again, “to get this sort of book published.

“Unless you are famous in some field or other, no one wants to know about your adventures.”

I certainly wasn’t famous but then neither had Gerald Durell been when he wrote My Family and Other Animals or James Herriot when his vet books first came out.

Progress, however, was slow. I was easily put off and life kept taking over.

I had resolved that I wouldn’t take on any permanent farming jobs, like the book-keeping, as so many farmers’ wives did and got stuck with.

I was not much use at that type of thing anyway and it is time-consuming.

This was where Michael’s business training came in handy. He said he would take on that job with Richard’s assistance.

I helped out as usual with taking phone calls, entertaining salesmen, running messages in the busy times, and mediating when there came the inevitable disagreement between the brothers.

More on Tuesday.