Some days are just like that.

Yesterday I meant to paint. I meant to put away distractions and paint and paint. The trouble is I have such fine distractions.

I meant to just walk to the high hill top but the air outside in the early morning was scented like air I remembered from holidays when I was a child. Vivid memories sparked by the smell of the air. As I walked up the hill with the dogs, thinking " I must get home and work" I saw buzzards circling high, gangs of assorted corvidae, jackdaw and rook and raven. I thought, maybe just over the hill, a little further. The air was soft silk on my skin, and still that seductive memory-air.

And over the hill there were wheatears flashing white arse, dusty blue feathered with cream underbellies. Beautiful. And linnets and grasshopper warblers and stonechat. Skylarks too. Across the sea bright white gannets, and where there are gannets there are usually porpoise, so, seduced by the morning I walked down to the sea.

And the sea was the deep blue colour of a peacock's eye and the cliffs were gold with lichen and sunlight. The bluebells are rising and I must go back, at least once a week or I will miss their flowering when they blush the cliffs blue. Among them the meadowsweet is just pushing through and wild honeysuckle tangles in the bracken. There were ponies.

Out on the water a fisherman lifted pots and seagulls flew rings around him, bound by greed or need, to the man. A seal watched him. Maybe a selkie. I watched them both.

Home past the City of Badgers where again the bluebells are rising beneath the small twisted blackthorn and down the green lane where tiny blossoms paint the floor like hailstones. Beneath Elmo's tree lie the small feathers of a songbird. At night it is the owl's tree. The feathers mark a successful hunting.

I took the film camera with me and filmed a few of the moments on my walk. The film is raw and uneditted and there are ponies.

Home to work and A Clash of Kings lies in a pool of sunlight on the bed in my studio, whispering to me and before I know it I am once more lost in its pages. And Jane Johnson tells me that there are two more Robin Hobb manuscripts, Rainwilds books, coming my way for new covers. ( Jane edits Robin Hobb and George Martin as well as writing her own books)

In the evening as I walked the dogs a red moon rose over the land. Deep red on rising, eerie, beautiful, it sang fear into the primitive heart of my soul. Not least unnerving was that despite the brightness of the copper disc there were no moon shadows. As she rose into the sky she paled to a deep moongold. 

I did do some work. Today I will try and do better. I am hoping to film Tom rowing this evening. He is off to the Scilly Isles soon for the World Gig Rowing Championships. One day I will go too to see all these beautiful gigs all gathered together in one place.