Country diary: Confined to the house, the magic of winter comes to me | Amy-Jane Beer

Welburn, North Yorkshire: I watch shadows playing out across the walls, tree trunks and scrambling roses finding their way insideI’m a hibernator. The season doesn’t get me down so much as simply insist that I sleep, but this year I’ve done even more than usual, having succumbed to a festive double whammy of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (aka that cough, you know the one).During convalescence, struggling to focus on reading or a screen, I found myself watching wall shadows for hours. In the bedroom, framed in the cross-hatches of our small-paned Georgian windows, I noticed strange, smouldering upright forms, which I eventually realised were the trunks of trees growing on the steep bank that rises opposite the house, their outlines fuzzied by a long focal length. At this time of year, the sun never makes it above them. Instead it scans them like a woody barcode, projecting daylong shadow plays which gradually traverse my walls, marking time. In the kitchen, the arboreal shadow-wraiths are joined by the more defined shades of ivy and scrambling roses growing just outside. And in my study they are illuminated by sudden flares of gold from gilded lettering on the spines of shelved books. Continue reading...