Confessions of a late starter

When I was young I would visit my Aunty Win and Uncle Wes a great deal. I loved them both.  Uncle Wes seemed a giant of a man with hands like shovels. Aunty Win used to knit until artheritis bent her hands so that she could not hold the weight of wool. She tried to teach me to knit and I would watch her threading a single strand into intricate patterns of arran, but though she was patient, try as she might to teach me, the secret of how to knit evaded me.

When I was young I struggled to learn to read. I could read, but slowly. Words would jump around and I failed to catch and hold them. I would borrow books from the library, pretend to read them and take them back. School could be tricky sometimes. I still remember being given The Grapes of Wrath to read when I was about 14. I was supposed to read it then talk about the book for 5 minutes in front of class. The book was dirty, the type so close together, pages thin as tissue so the type came thrugh from the other side. And I was 14. I did try, but found the dense labyrinth of type on the pages inpenetrable. So when it came to do my talk, instead of saying, I tried but I really couldn't read this book but couldn't I made up some nonsense about it being boring. What followed next could have put me off books for life.

I wasn't by any means a bad child at school. I was one of the invisible ones who kept their heads down and got on with work. So to be torn off a strip and shamed infront of the class to the point of tears was awful.

Anyway, one day I saw a knitting pattern for a fairisle jumper. I wanted the jumper and I taught myself to knit, not just with one colour but with many.

 

And I wanted stories. I think the first 'big book' I read was Call of the Wild. I found that if I held a postcard beneath the lines I was reading it would keep them still on the page. One line after the next until I was lost in a wild wilderness. I still do this when I am tired. And now I read and write though it has taken me years to say, when people ask me what I do, that I illustrate and write books.

So in some way this explanes how I got to be 48 before I read To Kill a Mocking Bird. I heard Meg Rossof talking about the book on Radio 4 and bought a copy, partly because I have always been intrigued as to why it is called To Kill a Mocking Bird. What a piece of perfection it is as a book. I still don't understand the title. I don't believe that the mocking bird is Tom Robinson. More likely it is Boo Radley. Or perhaps it is the incocent trust that children have in adults to do the right thing, always. Whatever, the observation, the telling of a tale, the characters within the book, 50 years after publication sing as true as ever. I wonder, were the book marked with an 'age banding' as publishers wanted to do recently, would it have survived for so long?

I still can't read Steinbeck. Maybe one day. And I do believe that it is a sin to kill a mocking bird.

Hunting, the moon, hares and mist.

Time to write, and so, after dropping Tom at school I thought it was a good day to commute to work. I drove to Whitesands Beach, 2 miles from home, and with notebook and pen and glasses that go dark in the sunshine, with a hare and the moon necklace and a moonstone ring as talisman I walked to search for words, hunting a story. The sun was shining fierce when I set off with hope in my heart, but soon the mist began to veil all. Over the hill and far away, and up and up and up.

Almost at the top of the hill, a small cluster of burial chambers is the only reminder of people who lived here so many years ago that even their bones are dust. Step after step, words began to gather. So when we reached the hill top high we found a place in the shadow of the wind, me and three dogs, and settled to write as the mist played with the landscape, and the wind sang a song in the grass and the gorse.

Part of the story caught we moved on and down, hunting, searching for more, past the wild ponies, the valley with golden reeds, and the orchids and out to the arm of rock that juts into the sea where sometimes there are porpoise. Here we rested again and chased words.

Moving on again, past bright, bone-white ponies with midnight dark foals we could see the beach and the high hill was now clear of the cool mist. In a warm place I gathered the last of the words and then home. Outside the door the postman had left a parcel, from Jennifer Warnes in the USA, a signed copy of Famous Blue Raincoat, remastered and with unreleased songs and notes, The Hunter, and an LP version of The Hunter. And on The Hunter, her version of The Whole of the Moon, which is such a gift in itself. So wonderful.

Now it is time to gather all the words and thoughts in before I have to walk back to the beach in the evening to collect the car. 

The sun is still shining, and the wind is rising. 

 

A moment ago

Taking out the flowers to the compost. They have faded now. They leave behind a trail of petals like Hansel's stones, all along the early morning garden path that is loud with sparrow song.

Walking in the early morning with Helen, who remarks that the sea looks like Cinderella's dress, the third and final one in the Ladybird book from our childhood. Shot silk, pale with deep folds. So still.

I say that the temperature is that of Baby Bear's porridge. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. In Swedish there is a special word for this.

  

We walk home through the warm ruins of Maes y Mynydd where the skylarks sing and buzzards mew. And still I do no writing. Except for this.

  

In the Tower of Song

This morning the Tower of Song looks like the above. I have my chicken on hand to guard my time and with luck and a fair wind will be spending the day painting, though I do expect to be disturbed by the mask maker's daughter and the wolf gondolier. Meanwhile, stamps.

In the office today.

One reason I love writing is that sense of capturing a story with an alphabet net. Another is that I can write outside my studio, usualy in beautiful places. Today's 'office' was the beach at Porthcelau. Perfect wves, beautiful light, perfect peace. No phone, just pen, paper, lost in the islands of a Venetian lagoon. No better way to spend a morning. Then home to paint.