5A westbound

Coming home, hot and dusty on the bus. After a long day pottering and tending and watering, I'm desperate for a cup of tea and to wash my feet but it's one of those carefree drivers who takes his time down the winding shade dappled route back into town. 

As soon as you take your ticket, your eyes are upon me. I look away at something, nothing, anything, even that uninteresting new fence outside in neat suburbia. You come to sit in the place beside me. Your freshly ironed shirt brushes my gritty arm and you are smiling. But I know all of this is not to do with me.

I am carrying a bunch of sweet peas.

Bear pit

Through the portcullis gate that can still be drawn closed, I stand encircled by high damp stone walls and the quiet chill of a riddle. 

A girl runs into this circle singing joyfully. I am wondering if she has seen me. She runs anti clockwise around the wall reaching out with one stroking hand. I hear it's odd scrape. She climbs into a low narrow window - the kind you could shoot a surprise arrow from. She squeezes right into the recess like she has no joints, no skull, no length to her feet. Then she is gone, flown out of that thin slit of light. Her parents are calling her name.

Later, I look from high walls down into this dungeon. Imprisoned by stone, they will chain you, taunt you, make you dance. Missiles rain down from all directions. Screaming voices rise, eager for the kill. 

This piece was influenced by a visit to Sheffield Botanical Gardens where there is a Bear Pit which housed 2 bears until the 1870's. They were removed after a child fell into the pit and was killed. 

www.sbg.org.uk/bear.asp

Maverick

The cool touch of fog swept in. City sounds were dulled by it's creeping presence, lost in it's depths. The light faded and the pavement sheen became a dark unwelcoming mirror. 

Under this hidden sky, shoulders hunched, jaws clenched tight and mean with a poverty of words. Hands stayed clenched in deep frayed pockets, full of old dry crumbs and scribbled ancient lists worn smooth by the incessant worry of rough fingers with broken nails. Footsteps edged away into grey cobbled alleyways. A long and slow decline beckoned and dragged at sleeves.

 

I felt my heart's relentless little thunder. I struck a brittle match in the arc of my shielding hand. A wisp of wind blew it out and I walked towards a distant sound.

Dream shots

I stand at the back of a huge hall with a floor polished like a mirror. I watch a grand piano being wheeled silently towards me by just one man who only presses against it with a magic finger and no effort.

On Seaford Head looking out at the long beach white edged by the crazy dance of waves. On the golf course, a man drives his trolley ahead of him with a remote control. I think this must be a new acquisition as he walks with his shaky arm tensely pointing out at the golf trolley like a Dalek. A stiffly square white dog walks alongside the trolley and I find myself wondering if a Dalek would ever have a pet.

Walking up the hill home from the station, a man in a business suit carrying his shiny briefcase is racing down towards me with one of those rigid dog leads ahead of him, like he is being dragged along helplessly. But there is no dog.

Melting pot 3

• On my coffee table - 400 photographs - Ansel Adams, Notes from an exhibition - Patrick Gale
• On my music stand - Partita in d minor - J.S.Bach
• On my iPod - sonus@anima - Elvira Plenar and Karin Ernst
  
• From the allotment - sweet peas, rhubarb, sugar snaps, chard

Orkney No.629

Behind the protective sand hills, walking on flat, ragged, weather ravaged land. Gritty sand between my toes as my feet sink into their own footsteps. We go down to the bleached and swept shore. In the full push of the wind we take a trip in a blue wooden boat edged in bright red, with protective black eyes painted on it's bows. We are rowed by a giant of a man who peppers his monologues with words we understand, but he makes no sense to us - it's like he has his own private language that selects familiar words at random and mixes them with the rhythmic consonants of dolphins and strings of vowels from lullabies.

As soon as we step into the boat, water seeps in through the floor and our bare feet are stroked by the tiny waves of a captured tide as the boat gulps forward. With no time having taken place, we are drifting beside a huge sea wall looking down into the shallows. I see lots of little treasures and I dip my hands in the water to collect some - a piece of metal smoothed into a disc like a thin coin, Top shells like tiny jewelled mosaic hats, a piece of blue glass rubbed dull and speckled on one side but still clear like a bright eye on the other, a crumpled plastic label with a rubber rope thread intertwined with black crisp popping seaweed. In peeled and crackled lettering I can just about read that it says - Orkney No.629.

300 miles north

I need a journey. I need a day on the road. I need to leave in the grey quiet of dawn and head north and then west around a monstrosity of a motorway whose roar I dread. I need to follow the black tarmac road away from this cramped corner of England, and let the flight of the soaring red kites guide me through the chalky cutting to a place with a bigger sky.

Reflections from windows will play across my face like a strange disconnected film with a monotonous and mind numbing soundtrack. I will drink a cup of tea leaning against an awkward tree watching people in suits eat burgers for breakfast with that strange thrust of chin away from body that seems so birdlike. I will walk on a patch of bleached picnic area while the back of my thin shirt dries in the glow of a yellow morning.

For a day, I will be part of this never ending procession of wheels and motion, but I will also feel my own separateness from it. 

I will have a stack of canvasses behind my seat, a bulging rucksack of paints that I can't wait to get my hands on. There will be quite a pile of walking gear, a few novels that I probably won't finish, my sketchbooks that will be calling me already from the depths of my bag, a bottle of favourite wine, easy clothes, some well loved cds.........

Later, sitting in a cool valley road, on a long wall edged in purple slate, swinging my legs, looking out at gnarled mossy trees, I will eat a sandwich of bread slightly warm from being in the car, bread that welcomes the slices of tomatoes and cheese, a handful of grapes and I will be tempted to rest a while, put my feet up and doze. But I know I will want to be THERE, 300 miles north. I want to be drinking a beer, gazing at my feet in a stony river.

14 gardens all in a row

Jasmine and honeysuckle fragrance a breeze that wildly flings itself about. Haphazard lines of people snake in and out of back doorways, onto square grid lines of pavement and street corners, through and around every garden. Snakes and ladders board. The backs of the white terraced houses somehow loom taller from each narrow strip of tended ground and each narrow path. I love the uneven line of roofs against the scurrying sky, and shining black lines of gutters and drainpipes that remind me of London's tube map.

Walk this way and in this order with a long line of folks right behind you. Not quite my style, but I am curious and this is only happening for one afternoon a year.

Waiting by the sweet peas for a line of elderly people unsteady on their legs to pass, I couldn't help but hear the man in front of me describing a recent Auschwitz trip to his friend. It made my pulse race, about how he said that the train - that train truck, we all know the sort he meant, clear in our collective memory - didn't bother him really. Then they went straight back to talking about the roses just as if his trip had been to a conventional destination. I turned away as I heard them catch up on more jarringly resonant travel notes and admired a clump of hollyhocks about to burst and sway into flower. They were growing right out of a crack in the paving.

A courgette plant, polished by the rain, sat in splendour above a mulch of grey blue slate chippings. The yellow mouths of it's flowers sang out against that background. Wonderful foxgloves taller than me, speckled and heavy, hung in a corner. A delphinium almost knocked your eye out with it's fantastic blue, and apricot roses hanging high on a thin branch were planning a route into next door. Ferns shivered in the cool corners of shade in hidden little places to sit and disappear for a moment next to the lawn roller. A curly fern had a scent like basil.

 

No surprise that there were no birds here, no flick and flit of small wings above all these people, only a telegraph pole outrage from a distant exiled blackbird. In the spaces, if a moment of solitude blessed you, you could just hear the swishing voice of ornamental grasses, the prickly drag of rosemary against your leg.

These were huge homes so different from mine, homes with the luxury of space indoors and out. They had summerhouses and workshops and sheds, some so huge I could have lived in them. They had garages stacked with the interesting wood of projects put aside for today and tidied up a bit. I could have set up a studio instantly in any of them and I pictured myself sitting in front of open doors looking out at gardens in the rain with no one else there.

Midsummer shots

In the damp grey morning, 2 women are awkwardly practising cartwheels on the lawns next to the promenade. Looks like it has been a while since they last tried but they are full of enthusiasm. The wind snatches at their bright clothes and they giggle and shriek, applaud each others attempts, collapse onto the ground.

Always a little regret on this optimistic day, at not having made the most of long warm evenings with deep blue skies lingering after nightfall, of the unfulfilled wish to be out somewhere remote wrapped in a blanket, sitting watching the shadows of a fire until sleep calls me to my little tent, of waking in the pale haze of a gathering dawn chorus and a sheen of shivering dew.

In a quiet and patient train, waiting for the green light on the viaduct, nearly midnight. Looking out at the blinking lights of a town fast becoming a city.  A cat is sitting on the corner of a monochrome deserted street. A tired orange eye of moon slips down from a dark cloud blanket.

15 days

New ventures, a tingle of excitement, feeling like the inside of my face is smiling, a gulp of fear that seems to shrink my breath, ideas running inside me, projects full of life, a sense that I have good company beside me when I walk on the beach alone in the first thin light of a grey morning.

I have returned to my writing. I had forgotten the alchemy that such creativity can bring. I had ignored its pull while putting good bread on the table, caring for house and home and those close to me. I had lost hold of one of the threads that helps weave more contentment. 

15 days since I began this blog, since I took curious unsure steps in a new direction. It has begun to take on a life of it's own. My journal bubbles like a pot of soup on the back burner, my project sketchbook has opened it's generous wide arms in welcoming me to have fun on the page. I seem to be freer in my other creative work as well. Bright orange sparks from one part of the embers ignite other flames.

Vista

Travelling on a train in a wild and remote part of Western Scotland. I sit in the front seat of the front carriage, being pushed from the back by a snuffling and tired engine. I look out of a gritty panoramic window at purple mountains and streams that burst raging from rock.

The train heaves itself up to the top of a hill and waits, like it is trying to catch it's breath. Before us is a huge vista of green and brown fields stretching away into the blue distance. Birdsong flits past and around, swoops down and twists away, like ribbons of sound. I am stunned by the beauty of all I can see all around and how it seems to be running towards me like a tide against the still background of a dark blue sea that holds the shadowy silhouettes of distant islands in it misty grasp.

Like a roller coaster ride, the train is suddenly plunging down towards a village, rattling like a hysterical cage on loose legs as it swings into the bends and spills towards the finishing line of a red light and a neatly swept station platform with a newly painted white kerb. I hold on tight. I scream.

Kitchen table

This is where it all happens, where notebooks are filled with streams of words, where ideas are read aloud, where tea is drunk with friends in long weekend afternoons. This is where I lean to sketch out drawings, where I let the ink splutter out it's scribblings, where I build and rework, where I sit back in quiet moments to gaze out at the tree lined street.

I lose myself here, lose track of time, and if words are pouring out of my pen I might even lose track of what day it is if I am deep in the luxury of time off from the day job. This is my den, my solitude place, my nest, but also the place I share with friends when I serve dinner and cool wine in the candlelight.

This wood is worn dull by the movement of my arm across miles of pages every year, a place with dark remnants of ink in the deeper grain, and that strange tattoo of etched calligraphy that spelt out my furious argument to someone years ago. Now it has faded to a moody stem of ivy, looking like it has come straight from a book of fairy stories. 

It is a place to stand a vase of fragrant flowers, a photo of my favourite beach. This is the heart of my home. 

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Tuning up. You flashed past me, camouflaged against the shimmer of leaf shadows. You swept up into the dark green shade of tall sycamores behind me. I felt the stare of your beady eye. 

Later, as one of our phrases dipped down, I wasn't surprised to hear your luscious song erupt into glory and I was laughing out loud at the perfect fluidity of your song. In the depths of a dark jazz club, this would have been the moment to introduce you to the crowd, encourage them to applaud your solo, but we were in a garden on a Sunday afternoon, playing music against the backdrop of  beautiful woodland that dipped into the shadows of the Downs. We were in your garden, creating sounds and you came to jam with us - spectacularly. 

In a week, I was back with a different companion and you swooped past the pond announcing the gig full blast as soon as we arrived. We were hoping you would be there. I had thought of nothing else all week. We let your sounds plunge into the spaces we created, responded to your calls, let your themes ignite new ideas, listened out for your liquid obligato rising over the patterns and loops we played. In the beautiful still evening as we left, I wanted to stay and play on with you through the crescendo chorus of the dusk.

After another week, I returned for the final show, wondering if it was too much to wish for your company. But as I set up in the damp quiet of a stormy afternoon, and waited for my duo partner, I saw your stop-and-go scuttling across the lawn. You made a dive under the shrubbery. Did you see me grinning at you? Did you hear my heart miss a beat at the thought of making music with you again? 

During a long improvisation full of ideas that I wished we had recorded, you came into the branches right above me. A dense confetti of sounds fell all around me. I was anointed by the metallic rain that came pouring from your full and quivering throat. On and on you sang and I thought I heard a little hint of something we had played earlier, but I was dizzy in the sound of you and the weight of all conscious thought dropped away.

Packing away my instrument, I was daydreaming about a house full of light and music and the song of a blackbird. The house backed onto woodland. It was my house.

Melting pot 2

• On my coffee table - Why birds sing - David Rothenberg, The crowd and other works - Cleo Mussi, a pile of old sketchbooks
  
• On my music stand - Duos for 2 violins - Bela Bartok
• On my iPod - Viaticum - e.s.t.
• From the allotment - garlic

e.s.t. - listening in the dark

Listening in the dark, I first heard your music on French radio. The announcers questioned your quirky titles. They played around, trying out different pronunciations and accentuation. Their throaty accents made English words sound terribly posh and their French was too fast and full of giggles for me to fully understand. Then they played another track. They were making jokes but they were seriously into sharing your work.

It was late, but I had heard something that exploded my interest wide awake. The inside of my head was resounding with your music and the spaces in between. This was a new sound, a new energy, a new playfulness, a new ensemble exploring wonderful voices. It seemed to have a clear and bright optimism shining through it, even though it also delved to explore dark places. I loved the titles that seemed to play with words and how it sounded like you were having a ball and an adventure.

Later - albums, iPod, telling friends, many repeat plays, trying out musical ideas like you used them, listening to what people were saying about you, finding myself playing the piano more than usual. Then I saw you play live. 

What struck me most was the way that music came to life and drew people in, all of it - the clarity, the energy, the silences, the drones, the grooves, the shimmering whispers, the echoes, the train track machine sounds, the forging ahead, the hint of Gamelan gongs, the prepared piano sounds, the vulnerable breaking voice of the bass in it's high register, the splutter and flutter of drum flicks, the unknown paths we went exploring that night and that wonderful lift you generated with a flood of lyrical threads.

Tonight, as the tributes pour in, I am listening to you in the dark again. You helped me remember to be playful in my music. Thank you, Esbjorn Svensson for being such an inspiration.

Esbjorn Svensson, pianist in the band e.s.t., died at the weekend.

How to find a lost page?

Somewhere in the darkness between closed pages, you lie sleeping. In a row on one of the bookshelves. Lined up. But I can't find you. I have a dry thumb edge from turning pages and pages I had forgotten about. I have sat far too long re-reading, looking through old sketches and ramblings ,getting sidetracked down interesting twisting lanes of thought and strange blind alleys in my search for you.

I can almost see you on that page. But which month or year did you emerge from my pen? Which style of notebook holds you safe? The pocket sized square that fits in my jeans? Coat pocket A6 that tapped against my leg as I walked? Cast over my shoulder A5 or larger, in a low slung bag? Sensible black cover or wacky design? Handmade accordion book that I held captive for a week while a stack of books flattened it's lively seams into shape?

I am looking for you, but the more I look the more I find and there is still no trace of you. You have become an obsession. Always on my mind. I re-write you. Sketch you again. Sit and remember. Dream you up in the quietest parts of the night. But I still want to see that first snatch of you in front of me, to rekindle that moment when I first saw you on the page, ink still wet.

How to find a lost page?

Virginia

I sat beside towering delphiniums as they flirted with the breeze, lost count of the apples slowly brightening in the orchard, walked the full circuit of the majestic vegetable plot and gazed out across endless swaying meadows of tall grasses towards distant hills on a perfect English Summer's afternoon.

I stood in your bedroom in a flood of blackbird song that ran in from the garden, wondered what it would be like to wake full of dreams in such a room. Ached to go inside the sealed world of your garden studio, look at what was on your desk and sit in a corner there, imagining you sitting up late, wrapped in a blanket to write in the flicker-eyed glow of candlelight.

But ensnaring my thoughts, was your last walk to the dark snaking river.

Beautifully lost

I was walking in the shade of Elms. Probably not in a straight line. An elderly woman came up to me, seemingly from nowhere. "Are you one of the gardeners here?" she asked shyly, yet at the same time looking me up and down intently as she raised her dark flip up shades. It seemed like an eternity until I replied. My head was reeling with too many thoughts and possible responses and a lingering trace, still, of soporific heavy perfume.

But I knew exactly why she had asked me. I was standing there in my best, yet slightly tatty allotment clothes. All in navy by chance today, looking a bit like a uniform, with one spectacularly grubby knee from yesterday's weeding, and a stain on my shirt that I have long given up on trying to remove, especially as it now reminds me of the outline of Newfoundland - upside down of course from where I see it when I am wearing it. 

I had just meandered through the wonderful Rose Garden and had ignored the overwhelming desire to just lie down and blissfully sink into perfumed slumber. Instead, I had strolled on the grass as close to the bushes as I could and followed the scent trails to seek out the most perfumed varieties. I wanted to crush my nose into the soft cups of petals, push the fraying heads in my mouth, then go back for more and more. Always, it seems, the wilder looking ones, or the less perfect shapes, the less showy ones appeal to more senses at one time. I felt drunk on the rich fragrances as they mixed high in my head somewhere and I know I circled all the bushes in slow motion, but I'm not sure how many times. I was transported and beautifully lost. As I walked away, I felt a flowing ribbon unfurling behind me, like a wisp of river, but one you couldn't see.

When my words formed, I told her, hearing a strange regret in my voice - "Sadly, I'm not." So, why was I surprised when she added - "See, I'm looking for the Rose Garden."

Black sea

I just walked home. Late. Empty streets flashed fluorescent in colours that bounced into my eyes from wet pavements. Five minutes earlier, I was looking out at a black sea under a stormy sky - a rich black sea holding marker buoys that seemed to be suspended out there like star constellations on a blackboard diagram - a sea containing what I would normally see above me in a night sky. Monochrome.

As the light faded tonight, the only hint of the sea was the jagged sound of it's irregular breath. And as the tide fell relieved onto the smaller shingle and sand, the sound too faded. If you glanced at the right moment, you would sea a lip of white edged wave, just a glimpse before the darkness swallowed the seams and all was dark again. I liked the silent spaces in between the waves best. Gazing out at a shrinking panorama, it reminded me of a flicker book, or a spluttering early movies, when people always seemed to walk too fast and in sandstorms. 

No sandstorms tonight, only the threat of downpour. The sky loomed close. The clouds seemed to weigh heavy and tense, flattening down on the sunset sky, but no rain fell as the world turned black and white.

Midstream

Sitting on a huge warm rock, out in the river, the sparkling icy water is just touching the tips of my toes. A gentle breath of breeze drifts spray across my face. I am lost in the sounds here. It is so wonderfully loud that there is no space to think or daydream. Can only experience this moment, now.

Still tumbling from it's mountain descent, this maelstrom cascades past me, races towards a space for more gentle swaying, for the slower swirls of dark edged river, shadowy depths then lazy wide curves that reach out to meet with the tide.

I wonder if I became invisible there, or turned into rock or tree? Water sprite, bee, dragonfly? Dandelion clock or tiny speck of grit? I look high across the valley to another mountain, to the bustling lines of another crystalline waterfall crashing in the distance, to another relentlessly journeying force, to another place to sit midstream. 

Lunch and a lone sweet pea

Twisted the last five winter onions from dry powdery earth. They are pristine and elegant. Don't know how they grew so beautifully on such chalky gritty soil. Can't believe all my soil enhancing seems to have vanished from sight. I will hang these immaculate bulbs in the kitchen and look at them often. Will miss them when they are eaten. 

10 sugar snaps sit fat in my hand. The first of the crop. I am tempted to eat them on the way home. I can't take my eyes off the cool bag of lettuce beside me with rich red and greens of Royal Oak and darker spikes of rocket. I have never eaten salad at 9.30 am but it feels like it might happen any minute. The first batch of courgettes are starting to produce tiny fruits. They will be making dinner in a week's time, or possibly that wonderful soup I need to find the recipe for. A cushion of herbs goes into the bag and a luxurious lone sweet pea, way ahead of it's peers.

Grit under my nails

She shocked me as she snuffled her iced coffee up the straw, rested her pristine manicured hand on my forearm and confided - "Well we do get bored of the sight of each other sometimes but basically, we just sit back and watch the roses grow. We have such a wonderful chap who comes to do it for us twice a week. We just rake in the rents from those 11 properties, make sure we put them up by 5% every year and watch the bank balance grow. Voila!! I think we've got it made." 

I didn't know how to respond. I could hear her telling me something about how good it is to just sit back in life and let other people do the donkey work, when I felt my thoughts running away elsewhere. The image made me smile. I was sitting on the step in front of my allotment shed. I'd dug and trimmed and weeded all morning. I was drinking a perfect cup of tea before going back home and looking down at the basket of vegetables and herbs I had just picked. As I took off my boots, I caught sight of the line of grit under my nails, and I knew what satisfaction was.

Melting pot 1

• On my coffee table - Fear and trembling - Amelie Nothomb, Writing down the bones - Natalie Goldberg, Alloted time - Robin Shelton
• On my music stand - Milonga en Re - Astor Piazzolla
• On my iPod - Perception - Gwilym Simcock

Like a runaway tattoo

Walking on a pink gravel track alongside the overflowing tarn, watching puddles cloud beneath our feet, we headed for the crooked trees. We hissed and shushed our cagouled way to a distant ferocious calligraphy of dark branches. I felt cold jewels of rain creep inside my cuffs. We carried sketchbooks and ink and I watched the edges of my pristine pages stain and curl, worried about the bottle of ink in my trouser pocket - imagined one leg gradually turning matt black, softly edged in blue, like a runaway tattoo.

Under old oaks, we searched for twigs to use as dip pens. We leaned on old stones eyed with lichen and I watched as those twigs seemed to begin their own drawings across the page. The ink ran away with the raindrops and they flooded with pleasure. And somehow, my pages captured the gnarled trees, the tiny carpets of lichen, the stony earth that still smelled of cattle, the shroud of mist that held us all in a strangely muted world, the snap and scratch of twig, and the little percussion of it's catching and spluttering recorded in the Morse code of ink.