…and so I did. Which was all a bit of a palaver, because I had to rush out as the kids were eating breakfast, with the frost still thick on the ground (cats waterbowl frozen over). My little car wouldn’t start first time (gasp). And a friendly neighbour offered me some warm water to help de-ice the thing. And now I know why people don’t recommend using warm water to defrost cold cars. Because the ice melts, then forms again, but this time as a thick shiny sheet. Which you have to pick off with your fingernails. It was like driving through a magic landscape, though, and when I got to the woods they looked beautiful. And when I excitedly reached the old orchard – well, as is the way of these things, the treasure had diminished somewhat. The light was different? The day was different? I don’t know, but although I do quite like some of the images I came home with, I was slightly disappointed by the tree ones. There is always photoshop to reckon with, though. If time, space allows, I’ll see if I can catch it again. I tried slightly today, but I’m never sure whether these things work or not. See below and make up your own mind.

Was it worth my fingers hurting from the cold? I think so. There’s always other treasure, if not the ones you initially expect.

And the feeling of coming home to an enamel coffeepot on the stove, with proper coffee, in a warm kitchen. That was gorgeous.

In the hour that my Father was here I managed to get to the shops, and, without actually running, though it was close, purchase books, a gammon joint, some dishwasher salt and ground ginger. There were no red cabbages to be bought for love nor money, so I substituted a white one (why? it is the evil twin of the red variety) nor any double cream or puff pastry.

Which is why I sit here on Christmas Eve contemplating the fact that in a few minutes I will be trying to make my own flaky pastry. This is something I have not attempted since High School, and then it was a disaster, with turnings and rollings and then forgetting quite which way and ‘oh dear, I’ve dropped the butter’ and, inevitably, ending up with a grey mess of lumpen stuff.

Santa, incidentally, is in Tokyo.

I do not have the whole family over tomorrow, but I do on Boxing Day, in kind of dribs and drabs, because when I planned a sit-down meal I realised that the cottage is so small it really would be standing room only, and one cannot force that on one’s ex-husbands Mother. There would not be room to pass even a canape, and should that be attempted the kitten (Peppermint, professionally in the way) would probably jump on it in the manner of a demented surfer looking for the next wave.

So they are coming in dribs and drabs. And I am gamely going to continue with cooking a Turkey, regardless. They can nibble on bits of it or something. And I have made the spiced cranberry sauce, and the lemon and mint stuffing (mint from the garden). So there. And I have made the mincemeat, with all good things, including brandy. But I have the pastry yet to make.

I wonder where Sat-Nav Santa will be when I’ve finished?

(There will be pictures, at some point. I am determinted, or even determined to revivify this blog, Muse or no Muse, and now seemed as good a time as any to start).

I have busy tidying up the end of one job, and starting the other with proper energies. Ludlow Assembly Rooms, gorgeous though it is, has had to be relinquished. That isn’t because I don’t love art curating, but simply the paid hours in Ludlow are far too small to make the job worthwhile. And the school where I’m working truly does look after its children, and so it’s rewarding working there, properly rewarding, in the sense that you feel what you do makes a small difference.

Anyway my last weekend at Ludlow was spent organising the private view of Patrick Semple, and his work looks gorgeous. I loved it, anyway – his collaged pictures. It’s a combination of found objects and interesting things arranged so as to make one stop and take a philosophical breath, wondering on purpose and tradition. I truly could spend hours looking at them, on a visual and thoughtful basis. The man himself is nice, too.

What else? Well, despite the love of walking, I have learned to drive. And bought a car. This is not without regret, since ecologically it sucks, but three miles a day is too much for me to walk in all weathers easily, and the three miles is added to a train journey. I like this Hereford job, and it fits round my children (and my own work), so car seemed inevitable.

Car is burgundy and small. I drive it badly, and probably shall continue to drive badly around the good roads of Herefordshire, pissing off its road-worthy citizens, for some time to come. I am doing my best, and it is not a fast automobile. Sixty miles per hour is as fast as I can go, and that is with a favourable wind. My children, however, are very proud of me, and remained so even when I reversed into eldest daughters best-friends-mothers-gatepost yesterday night (I did not hit her dog, or her new car, however).

The pictures are of my back garden, with its row of painted jampots holding tealights (I love that it is warm enough to stay out in the dark, in the evenings, wrapped in a blanket, with a small fire, and the lights twinkling and glimmering), and of the view from Offas Dyke footpath, just before Kington. There are advantages to driving, after all. It’s my favourite stretch of the path, with gorse, hills, trees, sheep, and quiet. I saw a rabbit hole, used and furred up where they bolt down it each night. Lots of lambs, and the hills swooping away to valleys without roads in them.

Sometimes, feelings creep up on one. Buried in busy-ness, I find myself tired and sometimes sad underneath. My own work has ground to a halt, slightly (which is a double shame because LAR has made me some useful contacts). But the other good thing about the teaching post is that I will not have to worry about drawing work to sell for prints all the time. I can make things with more leisure, more thought, more lazily, with time to edit and rework. And so I have ordered five metres of fine silk, and fished out my frame and dyes, and will make some banners, for despite the tiredness and the sadness I feel the old familiar feeling creeping up from my toes, a need to make, make, make. And so I shall, but bigger and less saleable, and with more of the old sense about it, of making to communicate, in some way, and making, if I can, something which could (like in the fairytale) be shaken out of a golden pear, all coloured silken yards of it, a banner and a story combined.

Why have I mentioned animal skeletons, then? Well, simply that I get to curate a show by Patrick Semple, who is really rather damn good, and I’m excited about his altarpiece, which was last exhibited in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, and which comes to Ludlow next month. And it’s going to be damn good, if what I know of his work holds true. More on him and his work next post, when the show is up. S’exciting.

I have done no work of my own. I’ve been too busy. And it is not soaring for me at the moment, which is just what it is. I will start to draw again one day, but when I don’t know.

Where did the picture of that vintage-fabric tote bag come from? Well, it’s one of the bits and pieces of stuff I’ve been making, and since I couldn’t copy over Bookbags logo, it seemed apposite. And to add some colour (I’ll photograph the fifties china set I picked up for a song next post), some more random things I’ve been doing, of the vanilla soap, glittery lemon soap and beading varieties:

But I did eventually remember to collect my children from Mother, and we’ve managed to squeeze in a brilliant couple of days in Bristol, just at the centre of things, before I go back to researching new artists and (more prosaically) trying to find a local supplier for foam board so I can mount information properly.

I’ll write about Bristol, and then take a look at the artists in the assembly rooms, and then, right at the very end, there’s a surprise find of a book review site which is really rather shiny bright and lovely.

Bristol was brilliant. We stayed in the Youth Hostel (see pictures above), as we do. Why? Because it’s cheap as anything (fifty pounds for a family room with en-suite, shower and breakfast included), right in the heart of the nice harbourside area, about a two minute walk from @bristol and pretty much next door to the Arnolfini and the Architecture centre. And of course there’s The Trumpet Bridge, which isn’t called the Trumpet Bridge, I’m sure, but the Millennium Bridge or something. But we call it the Trumpet Bridge just the same.

I do love Youth Hostels, but they do vary. Bristol seems well-staffed (I expect people love volunteering for it because it’s all urban gorgeousness), and although still slightly tatty, tatty in the sense of ‘perhaps you should have got the polyfilla out before you painted that’ rather than ‘oops, plaster’s coming off the wall’. I thought, at one point, how my life does seem to revolve around places that are a bit like that. Co-operative-like, and full of goodwill and volunteers, but still there’s something always peeling off somewhere, and clean is one thing but smartly polished another. And then I thought how much I prefer that kind of thing to the travel lodge culture, and the posh hotels, which have resentful unhappy staff who might, or might not, spit in your tea. So I’m probably quite lucky, really. And that’s a thought I had before I even GOT to the canteen at Spike Island, which is an entirely gorgeous story of cous-cous salads, leafy greens, falafel and roasted vegetables. More of that later, too.

One nice and not-often-reported on thing about Youth Hostels, is that the people in them Read. In the Bristol one there is the advantage of huge comfy sofas and books, but equally at breakfast everyone seemed to be reading. Mainly papers (of the Guardian and Times variety), some guidebooks, some more heavyweight looking stuff, and a biography of Richard Hammond, but still all reading. S’good. Another nice thing about the Bristol one is that the Breakfast (included) is nice. Lot of muesli-type things, a big bowl of natural yoghurt, cold meats, grapefruit, croissantish stuff, or the bacon/sausage/tomato thing. Coffee. Hot Chocolate. Orange juice. All relaxing and filling, and it’s improved since the last time, too.

But anyway, on the first day, we headed up to Clifton, to Look at the Bridge, and take in the view through the curious, Victorian and round Camera Obscura. I like Camera Obscura, or at least the three I’ve been to, and this one reminded me greatly of the one at Aberystwyth. Same kind of slightly Victorian, peeling round the edges, Scientifically Spectacular interest. And a hand-painted sign for the Attraction that surely must have been penned and painted in 1931. Underneath (yes, that’s underneath) the Camera Obscura, was the Giants Cave, which nicely proved that yes, there are still some parts of England that the Health and Safety Stazi have not yet reached.

With a cheery wave (handpainted notice recommended that under fours shouldn’t venture down there) the manatthedesk (biscuit tin of money, none of this fancy ‘till’ nonsense) told us to watch our heads as we issued down. And we did. Down, down into a never-ending tunnel of spiral stone steps, culminating in a sheer metal staircase, culminating in a small, uneventful… err, cave. With a hint of light at the right hand side. So, following the light, we issued out…pretty much straight into the gorge. Yes there were railings, Yes there was the kind of metal see-through planking so beloved of National Trust properties. But my Mother, quite seriously, would have wet herself. Well, she would have wet herself if she had been foolish enough to vanish orff willingly down numerous steps into the darkness of the rock. Which she wouldn’t have done. So, I suppose, there you go.

Right, so Bristol was fantabulously fantabulous. I can heartily recommend the SS Great Britain (I thought it was going to be very dull. How wrong I was), and the National Galleries touring ‘Love’ exhibition (much more interesting than it sounds, and at the Museum of Bristol, which also has a big Egypt exhibition, and the most amazing wooden/polished brass/pull chain Victorian Ladies Toilets – working ones, too). I can also recommend the Arnolfini, of course and…a find for me…Spike Island, which was a factory of some sort, and which, by some kind of magical transformation, is the home of many fine artists (it grew out of a Bristol Co-operative that I had heard of, from when I was in touch with such things), and, in the canteen, the most gorgeously cheap-but-nice food that you sometimes are lucky enough to find in towns. Salad, of the help-yourself variety, but nice salad, with nice bowls, not the gloop and ick stuff you get in Various Chains. Falafel. Hummous. Yoghurt. Joy. Oh, and a lovely lentil quiche with sweet pepper sauce, too, and all for about four pounds each. Wow. And if you’re thinking ‘you heathen, not to mention the shows’, well, they were on change-over, and I’m going back to see them, so I am faintly vindicated. And I want to get tickets for some of the Festival of Ideas things at the Arnolfini, if I can.

Oh, but joy, and lots of interesting people-watching to do, mainly of people lugging canvases around, but some women with babies, one holding a large pink parcel tied with Blue String. Also some Older (I think they were mature students) Women with Lots of Books, and a very quiet, eminently gorgeous artist at the next table, who I would have made moony eyes over, only I was intent on feeding myself, and trying to convince R that chilli cous-cous really is a good idea (she preferred the chips, because she is five, and she just did). Anyway, with New Job I will get to go to Views there, since I boldly announced myself at the desk, and so hopefully will get to know the place better, which’ll be something to look forward to.

We did other stuff too, but travelogues get boring when written by amateurs, and besides, I’ve a lot to get through, this post. In fact, I might split it, and do a separate account of Ludlow Artists, and The Bookbag. In fact, I will.

Well, it’s been half-term, and I’ve been enjoying my children. One trip to London (I could almost see the doors opening in my eldest daughter’s mind), friends round for a party, more friends round for tea, and gingerbread men to be baked (and eaten). This week, technically, was back-to-work, but as all artists-with-children realise, it’s difficult to get down to things when you spend a good hour looking for that masking tape, only to realise it’s been used in a vibrant (and imaginative, yes) game of ‘Tutankhamen’ – in other words, Mummify That Barbie. I’m torn between pride (best thing you can do to Barbie, really) and sticky exasperation. Youngest daughter has decided that her favourite reading matter is Pink magazine. Alas, it has little to do with Gay Rights, less to do with an ironic take on the punk rock movement, and is full of twirly (pink) ballerinas and smiling (pink) bears. I am tempted to start, singlehandedly, an Ironic Mommas Underground movement, and design a Pink magazine full of O’Keefe drawings, analysis of the contents of lipgloss (slimy fat, pigment made from beetles) and How to Mummify Your Barbie tips, but it might not sell.

And I have gotten some work done. The weather was gorgeous for photographs. Ice, sunshine, and the ice half-melted, half frozen. I have enough on my plate with the hedge pictures, and coast pictures, to not want to take on more, but I’ll hang on to these in the back of my head and see if I can do something with them properly another day. I even, at one point, braved the cold and took out my sketchbook, which is where the small watercolour comes from.

First to the hedges. This is really two blog posts rolled together expertly for your blithe delectations. I went for a walk on a very unsalubrious morning a couple of weeks ago, and the hedges had just been chopped by big machinery – their natural patterns throttled and twisted from the very force of it, but still apparent beneath the massacre. Half of it was black fairy-tale, half of it the promise of Spring beneath structured branch. I took a series of photographs, now pinned to my workspace board, and I’m drawing hard, hoping to finish off with a series of proper pictures based on this idea. Two I have finished:

and two of the photograps from which the series will be based.

Then, whilst running with that at the back of my head, I took myself off from the Herefordshire countryside to the sea. I love the sea, but it’s a treat – a place I don’t know like the back of my hand – a place which when I dream about feels like flying, rather than the comfort of the usual, but it has an odd comfort to it, all of it’s own – that knowledge that we are very small, and forces beyond us move us along in ways that aren’t really controllable, though we try. But we’re pushed from behind in the crook of our back, regardless.

So. All those ‘big’ things, and yet they’re echoed in the small visual things, too. I think the carefully engineered windmills are beautiful, fragile things – the patterns in the sea are so big, so vast that they make me want to weep, and the pebbles, buried in the sand, or patterned by spray are small paradigms of this vast and gorgeous loveliness. And then some lichen, reminding me of Herefordshire, and found by a particularly stolid and porridgey bit of cement step.

All is now as sane as it will get for some time, and I have Mainly been Drawing Mermaids in my absence. One has turned out (rather unfairly) as a kind of Joan Crawford brazen hussy of a dyed blonde despite her watercolor (she is going to return to natural brown tomorrow, and it will suit her much better). The other is a sadder pencil drawing, which I think is nicer, but probably will not sell. Joan will undoubtedly sell. And soon I shall draw a less brazen Joan which will work even better and might contribute to my quest for Nice New Boots.

One trip to Ludlow, in the rain, but the castle always looks nice (it was Closed). How can a castle be Closed? It was very walkaroundable, and the views, although damp, were still romanticky and quite sad.

To cheer me up, as I walked us home in the rain, my youngest daughter (five) told her first ever joke:

Rosie: I have a joke for you.

What do you get if you cross a cat and a rabbit?

Me: I don’t know

Rosie: A woolly jumping.

Me: Hahaha. Very good darling.

Rosie: I made it up. Did it work? Was it funny?

Me: Not really, no. But it was nice anyway.

Rosie: It’s meant to be what if you cross a pig…err…and a sheep…and a trampoline. And you get a woolly jumper. So I changed it, it’s jumping (jumps up and down). Do you see? Jumping.

The pictures are of mermaids. Why not. It is January, after all. We had chocolate eclairs for tea to celebrate the joke.

Well, it was an inauspicious morning to go out for a walk – drizzle, and the children just strapped onto the school bus. But good things seem to be happening at the moment, and I’m very glad that I plodded up the muddy hill. A storm was blowing in from the East, and all to the left was a golden light, and to the right, clouds racing and movement in the bare trees. I took several pictures, but these seemed to me the best ones, and their colours seemed to pervade the rest of the day – golden, faded, illuminating the world differently to the normal grey January day-after-day, like the quince and the blossom in the hedge outside a huge Edwardian house which I pass nearly every morning.
I’ve started a watercolour. I’ve been trying for some time to get rid of the ink lines – they’re too harsh for me at present, and too defined. Fine for doodling, but I want to play with colour a bit more – do some work reminiscent of the long bluey-greeny silk banners I made one Summer a long time ago – all swirly colour and dip dyed. I’m pleased with it – at the stage where I’m a bit unsure of touching it for a bit, in case I Spoil It Completely. Which has happened before to pictures half-way through.

All swooshy, muted colours – 1930′s faded wallpaper colours – gold the colour of the sky this morning, blue the colour of the clouds. Let’s see if I can pull this one off, then.

I’ve been reading about Whistler, and his deliberate choice of muted palettes. I’ve never-ever been one for Muted Palettes. I like bright rich blues, and reds, and gorgeous silky greens. I like Kandinsky and Chagall and Frida Kahlo, with their peacock colours. But I also like Whistler, and his Nocturnes, Harmonies and Symphonies. With their muted, faded palettes, but gorgeous still.

Today was a muted day. There was not heavy frost, nor bright sunshine, but I went out and took the camera anyway (partly to see the overflowing river-water on the fields, partly to grab some special time with my eldest daughter). And I think I came back with some treasure. The photographs aren’t as immediately pretty as the frosty ones, but they’re interesting, and I’m fascinated by the colours in the seed-head one. So there we go. A muted hedgerow, but still interesting.

I spent much of yesterday in Ludlow, in the rain. We went first to DeGrey’s Tearoom, the children and I, and then to the castle. The tearoom is what you would think a DeGrey’s tearoom should be like. It has waitresses with little aprons (it must employ half the teenage girls in Ludlow on a Holiday basis), and real china. The tea is leaf tea, and comes with a little pot of water. And the cakes (you get a choice of ‘Cream Tea’ or ‘Afternoon Tea’) come on a little three-tiered stand, with aplomb. The building is Tudor, and the whole experience like going back to the 1930′s. The sandwiches (I chose salmon and cucumber) come beautifully arranged, as if they had been dressed by an old-fashioned couturier. It is a rather gold-plated experience, but one we cope with it by the children sharing the sandwiches and scones, and my not having a choice of fancy cake (yes, they are called ‘Fancy Cakes’). And it’s worth it, just for the sheer fun of the small ceremonial of it all.

Ludlow castle, if you ever get the chance, is well worth a look around. It’s not too large to be scarily imposing, and there’s plenty of room for children to run around. There are many tall winding staircases to spooky towers, and an ice-house under the moat which doubles as a skeleton-rattling dungeon. The views are suitably viewish, although the experience does lack the terrifying thrill I’ve experienced in some Cadw properties, which seem to specialise in surprising twists like unmarked 200ft drops to the waiting sea. I can only deduce that the Welsh do not believe in Fencing Children In. Or they are conducting some experiment to do with natural selection.