Walking, working, today.

In a field of golden stubble, a flock of Canada geese. They lift, then circle as we move through the field, wings whistling. The sea is unnaturally still. It flicks and folds on stones, the shallow breath of a sleeping sea.

Each year, at this time, I make a pilgrimage to the beach. The path is heather scented. No seals yet, but I think I hear their calls on the edge of the wind. Maybe it is only a memory, and echo, a trick of the sea.
I sit for a while and try to gather words.

This is one of my favorite places to work. There are ravens, chough, sunshine.
The sound of the water changed as I sat hunting words and time passed. The tide had turned. In the sheltered cove a silver seal floated. It is so quiet, so hushed that even from the cliffs you can hear the seals breath.
The dogs get tired from waiting. We walk home.

As I stand again to watch the water a peregrine flies past then circles, stoops over the water.
Beauty.

Happiness

Yesterday we walked, over the hill and far away to the rocks where the fox once was. In the heather there were frost flowers in shadow pools untouched by winter sun.
We sat, Robin and I, on the hill while the dogs spilled around us.
Today when I looked at the photos I took I laughed so much at Rosie doing her dangerous stunts with a small stick. She is beautiful.

Today I learned that a library in Torfaen near Pontypool want to use my dragon images to decorate their library, a new one that is opening soon, and I tried to settle to work, and move two tonnes of logs and find out how much I still have to do on The Cat and The Fiddle.

 

Step by stepping stones.

 Here am I little Jumping Joan,

When nobody's with me I'm all alone.

and

Little Thomas Tittlemouse

Lived in a little house.

He caught fishes

In other men's ditches.

Walked the dogs on the beach at Abermawr, through the woods and down to teh sea. On the way home Rosie did some posing.

One step closer.

One page closer to finishing. This one is Little Bo Peep, and through the book her story plays out over several pages.

 Baa Baa Black Sheep.

 Hark hark, the dogs do bark, and in the background Little Bo has lost her sheep.

 

 To market, to market, and in the background still looking for her sheep.

Boo Peep's flock consist of a Hebridean, a Welsh Half-breed, a Suffolk, a Wensleydale, a Jacob's sheep, a Gray Faced Dartmoor and a Black Welsh Mountain sheep. As usual, almost finished, but not quite.

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep.....

To market, to market to buy a fat pig.

Home again, home again, jiggerty jig.

To market, to market to buy a fat hog.

Home again, home again, jiggerty jog.

and

Tom, he was a piper's son.

He learned to play when he was young.

But the only tune that he could play,

Was Over the Hills and Far Away.

In the background someone is looking for her sheep.

Over the hills and far away

On the beach today, light. The moon in the blue morning sky. Scattered broken kelp from undersea forest stroms, like the tangle hair of mermaids. A balancing happy dog.
In my head, pigs, pipes and Little Bo Peep, blue cats, blue hens, blue eggs.

 

The story of lost things, shoes, fiddling sticks and hearts.

Took a long time, not helped by toothache and headache, but almost there. This page is a two for the price of one, Higgerty pickerty my black hen, she lays eggs for gentlemen, sometimes nine and sometimes ten, higgerty pickerty my black hen. Also Cock-a-doodle-doo, my dame has lost her shoe, the master's lost his fiddling stick and doesn't know what to do.

And she has an eye for the young fiddle player and he perhaps has an eye for her, a romance?

But given Rosie's appetite for strange food not much hope is held out for the fiddling stick.

 

Such a happy dog, Rosie. I do love the way she loons around with a stick in the sunshine on top of the hill.