Two Christmas Gifts
Discounts on subscriptions, and on my writing course, until Christmas Day
I’ve been away from home for a few days, and last night I drove home from Dublin through the freezing fog on mostly deserted roads, with the thermometer reading -7°C. Any Canadians or Norwegians reading this may scoff, but here in the Emerald Isle this counts as Proper Cold. This morning it shows: all the land around me is blanketed in mist and thick frost. The beauty is astonishing. I wandered around my land this morning taking these photos, but even a machine as clever as a camera can’t capture the intricate and mysterious beauty of nature in this mood. Even the greatest human artist can never come close to what crystals of frost can do on a black branch in a northern Christmas. Here’s the lane outside my front door:
It’s always quiet around here, but the fog and frost brings an entirely different quality of silence to the land. Something descends and smothers the place. The stillness itself has a quality. Rooks sit high on the white branches, and even they say nothing - which is unusual for rooks. Normally they have even more opinions than I do.
The pond is frozen solid, the polytunnels are plated in crystals, the spiderwebs strung between the branches are like rope woven from thick silk. The orchard is white under a white sky. My writing cabin is freezing. It’s an occupational hazard.
A new essay will be with my paid subscribers by the end of this week, once I’ve warmed up my writing shed. For now, I am just writing because it’s near Christmas, and people buy presents for each other at this time of year, and though I’m not a natural salesman it’s time to bite the bullet. If you’re looking for an unusual gift for someone this year, I’m offering discounts on my online writing course, and on subscriptions to this Substack, until Christmas Day.
Here are all the gory details:
1. 10% off my online ‘Rewild Your Words’ writing course
For writers accomplished, aspiring or just playful, this online course, consisting of video lessons with me and writing tasks for you to complete, is designed to inject some of the energy of the wilderness and the wet into your perhaps over-civilised wordhoard. It’s a course I designed myself, and I’ve taught it in person in many places over the years. My video version can be accessed any time, and revisited as much and as often as you like. Many people have taken it since I launched it two or three years back, and the feedback has been good.
Until Christmas Day, this course will cost €135, rather than the usual €150.
Find out more and sign up here.
2. 10% off annual subscriptions to the Abbey of Misrule
What can I say about my ongoing work here? Probably nothing you haven’t already heard. If you’re new here, I recently wrote a summary of all my essays so far, and an explanation of what this project is about. If it grabs you, and you would like to take out an annual subscription - or buy one as a gift for someone else - annual subs are going to be cheaper until advent is over. You can even gift one anonymously, if reading me is a guilty pleasure.
Until Christmas Day, annual subscriptions to the Abbey will cost €45, rather than the normal €50.
That’s all from me for now. Many blessings to you all as winter closes in.
Your home wears the colors of Christ Pantocrator!
What beautiful pictures.