Happy Christmas from the Scottish Borders

Window 4

The November moon through a narrow window looking out on the back garden, the moonlight shining through the branches of the tenuous silver birch, its trunk is eroded at the base. I am alone in the house, for reasons beyond my control. This morning there was snow on the ground. I woke from an uneasy dream, all scraping skimpy carrots, in a place aligned with classical corridors as in a museum; then the disappearance of a way back to where I had been, all traces covered and possessions gone, and a strange smattering of tourists to whom I was invisible, come to traipse through the corridors. What happened to the carrots, and the overseeing cooks who criticised my efforts? Anyway, this is a moon that I came across quite by chance when drawing the curtains. And then in the morning a shawl of rainbow cloud in the cold sky.

Musical Bears Page 4 et al

I am in a quandary. I wrote a text for this book, Musical Bears, and am fond of the characters and the ideas; I spent a long time on the paintings and like the detail. However, three things have happened. Firstly, the last half of the book is all wrong, and whilst more or less scribbling on the back of an envelope, the real ending presented itself, and fits in so much better with the meaning of the story, and yes, it does have a meaning. This new ending also fits in so much better with the landscape of the book, which is basically The Scottish Borders, as per usual. The paintings are too large, which is a bit of a problem with my small scanner, as it is difficult to reduce them down to fit a reasonable book size. One would have thought one would have thought of this. And thirdly, recently I have become very fond of working with coloured pencils, of all kinds, with bits of watercolour and gouache here and there. There is something about the linear in illustration that appeals, and I really can’t work with pen and ink any more – besides, they stopped producing my favourite pen (I found some coconut hobnobs for my husband, which he really liked, but I think they more or less withdrew them that week – such is life – I suppose coconut hobnobs are not everyone’s plate of biscuit). I found this scribble, the one above the finished painting, and it quite appeals to me now. Coloured pencils are spontaneous kinds of things, you can scrat, and rub, and rub out, and mix them all up, and there are masses of materials in the Tardis. Whilst struggling to make a living in London, one watercolour brush that did not work properly was worthy of a letter to the manufacturers (who did respond, which nowadays they would not). Mind you, one could have foregone a few Carlsberg Specials. Ah, those weren’t the days. Maybe I can give away the original Musical Bear paintings, and start again. How indulgent, to be able to think like this. We shall see. I’m not tearing anything up, anyway.

Window1

Amber Weather Warnings in the Borders. The starlings that come down like wolves on the food have vanished, apart from two that are now outnumbered by the sparrows. Jackdaws are back, shy birds that haunt the haunts of humans. I am back in the small studio, the Tardis, painting a kind of poster, listening to Lieder, haunted myself.

Light in Liddesdale

When I was a child in Sussex in the south of England, I used to look at Edinburgh, Newcastle, Carlisle on the map of Britain in my brightly coloured child’s atlas (and I still remember that big map tacked on the dame school wall, with all that pink) and want to go to these places. We ended up in Liddesdale, on the border between Scotland and England, the Border was half a mile down the road. This is the view from the garth, captured when I went for a visit some time ago. I was thinking that it is not just the feeling towards places that affects one, it is something about the places themselves that enter your psyche and change it somehow. Maybe just the one place. If one has the luck to find it. Even if one has to leave.

Pathway

This rain puddled path leads straight down to River Tweed. The image is strangely sombre, without a range of hues, maybe I don’t know how this happened, but there it is. The leafless tree shows it is wintery. It is a long time since I went walking by the river. A big field just behind this field is now full of caravans, there are different people walking through the town, some of them don’t acknowledge a good morning, or only at the last moment, so one knows they are strangers. Or rather, visitors. When I was young I was drawn to cities, but now I just like to be able to walk out of a small town and be alone.

Sky Over River Tweed

A photograph from long ago. But I have stashed my camera in my studio, and have been taking pictures of the wild flower pots. I like the randomness of putting in seeds, and then all sorts of stuff appears, from tiny white flower to tall sunflowers. The corn cockle seeds which I stored from last year in a drawer of my materials cabinet have begun to blossom. The year is turning, after long days of heat when the sun felt fiercer than it used to feel. Hundreds of insects, everywhere. I remember what Einstein said about bees.

My Barn Owl

A man with a notebook knocked on the door of this house in Liddesdale and asked me if I had seen any barn owls. I replied that I saw them all the time. He asked me if I was sure I would recognise a barn owl. I replied that yes, I was sure. They haunted the place, they had hideous little chicks in the Spoot House (now turned into a bungalow) which turned into these ravishing, haunting birds. I moved away from Liddesdale to Berwick upon Tweed, and in a small auction sale I saw this owl, and decided that I would buy him, and set myself a price. I guessed someone would go up to £20, and maybe then stop, and I got him for, I think, £25. I had him in the window of my studio, and one side of his feathers faded. So now he sits on the top of the pretty painted wood cabinet with its many small drawers, in which I store gouache and pencils. The owls in Liddesdale disappeared, for years, and then came back. That is the only place I have heard a cuckoo, well two cuckoos, calling to each other across the valley, since I was a very small child in Sussex.

The Hirsel 4

Trawling through photographs of the woodland round the Hirsel lake, and culling them for their dreariness, I came across this strange image, which is an accidental effect that created itself through my camera and the sunlight. Gradually, in spite of the long pain-filled shadows thrown by the pandemic, life is beginning to filter back. I spent time in the Tardis, my studio, today. Two projects to finish, hopefully by the end of the year. When I had to earn my living, a useless paintbrush was such a disaster I wrote to the makers, who to their credit did send me another; and we had an all-purpose table that the cat would walk across, leaving paw marks on my paintings of roses…. now I have cupboards of materials, there is a gorgeousness about them. The heat has been succeeded by thunderstorms, and torrential rain that bounces so hard off the plastic roof of the conservatory/junk room that it does not come through the leaks at all. One set of relatives is baking in Florence, and another set is revelling in the wide sandy beaches of Devon. We hunker down in the Scottish Borders, enjoying our surroundings, in spite of the building site next door, with their drills sounding like they are running a dentist practise for ogres.

The Hirsel 3

A Monet field, without the long-skirted ladies.

Venturing out today, beyond the tight boundaries that we seem to have imposed on ourselves. Liberating to talk to family a long time not seen. Some are enjoying themselves, many are suffering, these are strange times. There is a generosity about the Hirsel: no plethora of signs, a gaggle of very small children trying to work out whether they are up to venturing into the dark loos, very beautiful large blocks of variegated stone leant against walls, with no explanatory labels as to why.

Little by little, back into the world. Back into these small musings. When I have taken the photographs needed for a project, strictly informational, maybe I will start roaming again. I have started to notice small things. Corn cockles. A daddy longlegs crawling across a mirror. The cobweb on a small metal bell hung outside the shed.