Ever since I arrived at me old friend’s burrow in the South Farthing, I had this ‘huggy’ idea on me mind. Daysey and her family say ‘It’s been a right dark and dreary winter, and no mistake, so we be looking at how we can cheer us up indoors, and a bit in the garden.”
I nodded as I sipped the hot tea she gave me, and eyed the large slice of Lemon Drizzle Cake, on a pretty plate. (I arrived in Longbottom too late for lunch, and a bit early for proper Afternoon Tea, though that came later.) It certainly had been a dark and dreary winter. Not much snow, mind, though that would at least have brightened everything up. No, it had been grey, grey and more grey. Did I mention rain?
“At least the evenings seem to be a bit longer,” I quipped back at her before taking up the cake.
“That’s the spirit,” Daysey laughed back. “We can’t deny there sometimes be bad weather or bad tidings, but we can still make the best of what we have.”
“Bad tidings?”
“Oh you know,” she took a peek out the back door to check on what her young son and daughter were doing in the garden. “They be planting some love-in-the-mist seeds,” she told me as she returned to take the comfy chair opposite me, and start on her own tea. “Flower jewels," they say. Make the garden all sparkling with colour for the birds and insects, and anything else that passes.”
“Oh, ‘Painted Jewels’ we used to call them, remember? They last all through the summer.”
We both smiled at our childhood memories of filling our own Ma’s spare baskets with ‘Flowers for the Elves’. We used to think the Elves would see the bright petals, and maybe leave us one of their magic honeyed cakes as a ‘Thank you’. She and I, we never saw any elves, though occasionally some honeyed bread would appear beside the baskets.
“Bad tidings,” she continued. “Now there is no denying some are likely true, but we don’t want them to bring us down. More cake, Mabs?”
She had seen I finished me first slice, and happily cut another.
“Some folk hereabouts, in the Tavern, or at the market, them do say the weather gets worse, and we shall have a bad summer, so we have to be careful with the food supplies, for us and the animals. “
“It’s the same in Michel Delving,” I replied carefully.
“And some say there be trouble coming from the East. They smell it in the air, and feel it in the land.”
“Like cow dung?” I asked.
She chuckled. “Maybe. Still a bit early to smell the cow dung on the land, but I sort o’ know what they mean.” She held me gaze for a moment, with a questioning look.
I nodded, and washed down the last of the cake with me tea. “Our farmer folk say the same. The air from the East smells wrong. Tainted a little, not a great stink, just like something beginning to go off? Can’t say I noticed it too much meself.”
She nodded strongly. “Something to do with the Longshanks, most likely?”
“Spreading the fertiliser too soon? But the land, it feels sort of slow, like someone who doesn’t want to get out of bed, even at midday?”
“That be it exactly! Like the land itself is grown tired. I wonder what it means?”
I shivered a little. The land, this land was our life. Our folk had wandered much of this Middle Earth in the past, until they came across the Shire. This be our home. We are its people.
“So, ‘huggy’,” said Daysey, putting down her tea cup with a clinking sound of something well made. “You were asking about huggy?”
I nodded, and settled myself back in the chair. “Yes Daysey. I heard about as soon as I got here. The folk at the stables were riding to Pincup in search of some ‘huggy’ cushions, and there be folk in the chandlers' shop getting ‘huggy’ candles, smelly ones.”
“Oh, Mrs Winterwood in Pincup makes some extraordinarily huggy cushions, for them who can afford it. I just make me own, or get them from Brightlea Brockdown. She makes grand cushions at a very fair price. As for candles, well we always had them of course, but now they come smelling like lavender or rose. “
“Not dung then?”
Daysey chuckled. “It’s to get rid of that sort of smell, dontcha know. But it needn't be costly. I exchanged two dozen goose eggs for the two cushions on the lad and lass’ bed. That’s how most of us work, we barter for the things, or mend old things we already have.”
“So the idea is to live like we always have, like Hobbits?”
“Of course, Mabs, but to do it deliberately, and to take joy from it.”
We both laughed. It sounded easy enough. Daysey poured us both more tea. “Tell me what your favourite things are at the moment. And really think about them, and how they make you feel.”
So I sat back and really thought. “You know I be blessed by Miss Octavia. She let me live in her own burrow, the one she had when she was young. On the edge of Little Delving it is, so I don't have to hurry from me Ma and Pa’s every day. It be small, only a bedroom, a kitchen, a sitting room and an outhouse. But its walls are wood paneled, and engraved and all. A fine lady’s burrow. Well she did live in it just after she was out of her Tweens, for reading and writing and painting.”
“I heard she’s taught you to read and write?”
“After a fashion,” I replied. “But I will get better. Maybe one day I can get a job in the Quick Post, if need be?”
“Miss Octavia will still want you as her housekeeper for some years yet.”
I nodded. “I hope so. She be one of my favourite things, well persons. But now I been thinking and I can tell you three. First, I have a really big, blue patterned mug. It can hold about four normal sized cups of tea. I start me morning off with that. “
Daysey grinned and nodded approval.
“Second, I have a thick, red woolen bedspread. It’s so soft and comfortable, though I have to be careful with washing it. Now I only been in that burrow since last autumn, but it’s been used a lot. I think I will sleep on top of the bed with just that over me in the summer. I go to sleep almost straight away, once under that bedspread.”
“That’s the way. Things you use every day, that you look forward to using.”
“And third, it’s sort of me living room, but me fire and comfy chair the most. “ I laughed this time. “I see what you mean, Daysay. Almost everything I have is huggy to me.”
“Anything that is useful or even just beautiful in your eyes, is huggy. Anything that’s not, then make more room and give it away, or barter it, or sell it.”
“So simple.”
“The best things usually are. “ Daysay rose to her feet. “Time I called the young ones in. Afternoon Tea is due. Now I hope you have room for more tea, and cream and jam scones?”
Of course I had room.
