It is the season of offspring birthdays. The depths of miserable winter. What was I thinking, sprogging in such an uncongenial season?
We celebrated Son J’s special day on his actual birthday, 11 days ago – a Tuesday when restaurant lunch times are quieter and we could all find a few hours to meet up and celebrate in the time-honoured low-key Jillings way. The upmarket restaurant had reserved us their very best corner table with what would have been fabulous views if it had not been for the wind and rain outside. Both offspring enjoyed copious amounts of alcoholic beverages (copious by their parents’ standards and probably not their own) and every dish we chose was magnificent – but the highlight was reducing the waiting staff (and myself) to tears of laughter as large numbers of monkey-nuts were discovered half-way through our visit, spreading liberally around our table and found to be emanating from the trouser pockets of the birthday boy himself. As the waiters gamely deployed their dustpan and brush, we tried valiantly to hold it together and bemoan the fact that the crows of South London would be devastated to go without their daily treat. I like to think we spread a little joy wherever we go, even if it’s mostly for the birds.
And now, on an equally wet but marginally less windy day, it is the day on which we find ourselves bereft of twenty-something year olds and begin a chapter of parenting offspring in their thirties. So, do we whisk `Daughter J off to a swanky place and ply her with champagne for her thirtieth birthday? Well, no. Not today. Because we all have other things to do.
The birthday girl has apparently managed to get herself up to the wilds of Nottinghamshire where she will be celebrating with her old school-friends who are all making the transition to their fourth decades this year. Her brother is no doubt somewhere preparing to sing at someone else’s birthday or wedding party – an occupational requirement as the singer in a function band. Her father spent the morning on the river in a variety of oar-propelled craft and is now drying out whilst glued to the rugby on TV (probably asleep – I’ve heard no shouts, criticisms or encouraging whoops for a while now).
And I, the little darling’s mother, found myself just a few hours into the daughterly birthday morn, bogging around in a scrubby wood surrounded by damp strangers and being encouraged to ‘forest bathe’ by one chap in a leaf-bedecked hat and his companion steam-punk in shorts.

I am tempted to leave it there and allow your imaginations to do the rest. But it was ‘such fun’ (to quote Miranda – see previous post), I feel I owe it to posterity to write a little more about one of the oddest mornings for some time.
Picture the scene: Still dark-o’clock. Mr J the earlier riser in Jillings Towers, peers around the bedroom door to check I have responded to my bleating alarm and is mildly shocked to see that I am out of bed, at least partially clothed. He beats a sensibly hasty retreat to the rowing club as I pile on a few more layers of ‘active thermal wear’ and a pair of old woollen tights which may be of similar vintage to the offspring.
There is an interlude in which porridge apparently makes itself and is consumed and the online quick crossword partially fills its squares. At some point, the railways app is consulted and my layered-up limbs swing into slightly discombobulated action as my dormant brain registers how little time is left before I have to leave. Autopilot – and a trail of clues set out yesterday evening – has got me thus far. Now I must focus on the job in hand – a Winter Wassail at which Pielarks (the Folk Choir to which I have belonged for six years now) has been invited to perform. In the rain. In Barnes. To which there are only two trains an hour so I must not miss the recommended one.

A few more layers later I am rejoicing in the knowledge that I have successfully packed a coffee flask and my A5 folder of songs into one of several unbleached linen bags I insist on keeping for just such an occasion (even if they do fill up valuable cupboard space) and there are still fully ten minutes to go before I need to make my dash to the train station. A sudden thought assails (not wassails – wait for it!) my unaccustomed morning being. We have been advised there is no need to dress up because of the anticipated inclement weather (see previous accounts of dressing up with this choir), but to my admittedly addled mind this is the gig to which we are probably best suited (perhaps along with May Day) and it seems a shame not to parade around in our full skirts and bonnets just because of a bit of mud. So I rush to the dressing up box (the bottom of the wardrobe two flights up) and drag out my usual striped costume apron and a manky old knitted poncho and ram them inside my linen bag for later deployment. Five minutes left…*
I am then miraculously on the train. There is one other (unfamiliar) person in my carriage so I settle myself to a gentle snooze. Within moments it all kicks off on the WhatsApp and I realise I am on the same train as several fellow singers who are gathering a few carriages behind me. I daren’t risk a platform dash to join them, guilty though I somehow feel for my isolation. My carriage-mate gets off at the next stop and I have the whole place to myself – quite handy, I weirdly feel, for rehearsing out loud the new song we are supposed to have learned. Until I realise that the guard is in the little cabin right behind me. Better to drift back off to sleep after all. I put my folder back in the bag.
We are at Barnes. I pretend to be awake and make polite conversation on the walk to the recreation ground where the Wassailing is to begin. I catch sight of the Wassail master and decide to don my poncho and apron OVER my modern-day waterproof coat to get into the mood. The drizzle which has held off until now, begins to make its presence felt, but we are plied with mulled cider and spiced apple-juice before singing our first wassail to rapturous applause (I may have been dreaming the rapture) and led away to the woods to take part in this most mysterious and mystical ceremony.
We don’t get far. There is a level crossing to navigate and our first five minutes is spent wondering when the flashing red light will actually usher past an actual train.

We straggle across a damp field, along a slippery wooden walk-way, and venture into the wood. Here we are invited to consider mindful words relating to nature. I am mindful more of where to place my feet without slipping and of how to avoid saying any of my chosen words out loud. The trains roar either side of us on their relentless timetable, whisking early fans to Twickers for their pub visits before the afternoon’s match. There is definitely a blackbird singing somewhere though.
We are asked if we know about forest-bathing. I suddenly have an urgent message to look at on my phone which I wrest from the depths of my poncho/waterproof combo as I sidle into the undergrowth. Forest-bathing? Aren’t we wet enough already?
Rejoining the revellers, a very muddy path leads us to the apple-tree plantation. We gather round a sapling to listen to explanations of the Wassail tradition. The trains continue to speed past just a few metres away, but it’s an interesting talk and at least the rain has not got any heavier. The Wassail master successfully treads a fine line between earnestness and humour. I am particularly impressed with his ease at moving to a different sapling for the apple-tree anointing once someone has pointed out that he has so far been addressing a cherry tree. A couple of pieces of toast

appear from a knap-sack (or an Aldi carrier bag for all I know) and two children obligingly hang them on the sapling’s branches. A man appears with a carton of apple juice and squirts it at the tree. We sing another Wassail. And another. Singing is easier than forest-bathing, I feel, although in this drizzly case perhaps dangerously closer than I’d like.
Our return trudge through the wood is made more arduous by the increased weight of my clothing. Thick woollen ponchos are like sponges it seems, although fortunately the many layers underneath keep me completely warm throughout the entire escapade – well done me!

We stop in a clearing. Glove puppets and stuffed toy animals are handed out. They don’t seem to have a snow leopard or a tiger (the only worth-while stuffed toys in my opinion), so I step aside and take a moment to message Daughter J a ridiculously dishevelled woodland selfie for her birthday edification.
On returning to the fray, there is a rather good story being told which involves the various animals and I have a moment of regret at my churlish refusal of fox/rabbit/owl/bear as they each participate joyfully in the telling of the tale. I think the fox is so good he should have his own TV show (ah – yes, ok, it’s been done before, BOOM BOOM!). Never mind – we swiftly move on to teaching the dripping crowd a Wassailing round. A successful endeavour, as it happens. So elated are we at our accomplishment, and perhaps excited at the prospect of soup and ukelele music to come, that we launch into an impromptu couple of numbers whilst waiting for the level crossing to oblige once more and let us get at that soup!
Ukelele band, soup and then a Morris Dancing display top off the most peculiar start to a weekend I think I may ever have had. Back on the train – my companion and I are kindly offered a seat by a younger passenger. We graciously decline, but I am prompted to glance down at myself and realise just how bedraggled I now look. And undoubtedly about 104 years old, weighed down as I am by that wretched poncho.
It’s all rather nicely convivial in fact. A bunch of soggy tree-huggers and a bevy of hopeful rugger-buggers – merrily co-existing on the Southwestern Railway. (Is there a song in there, I wonder?)
Home and dry (literally and figuratively), the morning’s experience makes such rich blog-post material that it leapfrogs the half-written tosh sitting in my lap-top and banishes the promised afternoon on the sofa. All good – but I have a nagging fear that it all went so well that this time next year we will once again be bathing in apple juice and troubling the saplings on the common.
There might need to be a birthday celebration booked instead.
*In case you are not already familiar with my body-clock, the train time was 8.52am and my alarm was set for 7am. I know this is not particularly early for some, but it is for me!