Swan in the Evening

Trawling through old images, so as to reduce the weight on my computer, I see how I have over the years roamed for miles through the Borders, without even thinking about it, taking pictures in a haywire fashion, just capturing moments without much knowledge… drawn to the light on this, the silhouette of that… Now going anywhere has become quite strange, the time is filled with other things. But in me is a natural, lazy flaneur. Once when young, in Sussex, down south, I walked out of the house in a strop, in shoes with my first small heels, and walked to a place called Turners Hill, which I had decided to reach before turning round, which seemed logical. A taxi driver offered me a lift. Which I refused. I came back to find the police had been sent out to look for me. I should have gone down the road to my Granny’s, which is where I wanted to be in the first place. This has nothing to do with swans.

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.

Window3

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.

Window2

Well, I hope I have not done that before, chuntering along and throwing up an image and a paragraph that is nearly identical to one I set up not that long ago. The shame. So this is now Window2. It expresses the lack of interior design possessed by this household, we accumulate things and then think where to put them. This is my windowsill, sometime ago. There are now many additions including some robins and hares, and more photographs, and a fabric rose. And on this Halloween night, I add an image of my youngest grandson’s scary and very squinty pumpkin, with immaculately carved teeth.

Windows in a Borders House

This a a remote house just on the Cumbrian side of the Scottish Borders. If one finds a place in one’s life that goes deep into the psyche, then one is fortunate, and this is the place, this house and the surrounding landscape. Ah, Liddesdale….

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.

Moths

The names of moths: Convolvulus Hawk Moth and Sallow Kitten…Muslin Moth and Ghost Swift…the Sebaceous Hebrew Character Moth, the Vapourer Moth, the Gothic, the Brighton Wainscot….

These creatures seem to appear out of the edge of ones sight, shadowy, delicate, often evening-flying. But I saw hawk moths flying in broad daylight in Liddesdale, above a patch of ground looking down into the Liddel Burn and then up to the hill, an open patch in the wooded walk which had wild orchids and blue butterflies. Hill farming country, no chemicals, a hundred species of flowers in a mile long stretch of roadside.

I have looked through my Readers Digest Guide to Butterflies and Other Insects of Britain, but cannot trace this delicate creature. Can anyone tell me its name?

Liddesdale: The Doorway