Jo Green is a former allotmenteer, forager, amateur herbalist, pickler and jam maker who squeezed her allotment greenery into her tiny garden

After December 21, the sun after a short pause (the solstice is Latin for Sun stand-still) will be swinging back over to our neck of the woods. The nights will be shorter and mornings brighter which means it’s time for me to fish out the black-out curtains for one light sensitive family member.

The curtains I bought didn’t really do the job so I asked my mum if she had any black-out material I could add to the fabric.

Mum disappeared to her remnant box and returned victorious with this original Second World War Blitz black out curtain! I was amazed and then I was more amazed as she told me it had a hole in it as it was hanging in her house when as a child in Morley, Surrey, their home was bombed – luckily the bomb hit the bottom of their long garden and sunk quite deep into the mud before EXPLODING! The next day mum and her siblings were evacuated to the countryside.

Most magazines are scouting for signs of spring but I revel in this deep winter time. The aftermaths of storms bring gifts of fossils and sea glass on the beaches and pine cones and kindling in the woods. The black-out curtain picture makes me think of the clear night sky with an incongruous thimble sun and a pin-box moon but mostly it’s empty, an empty ‘tabula rasa’ free from all the business and expectations of the New Year!