I'm writing a novel (in Februaries, for four years now, but that is only really 16 weeks!!) See here and here for how this crazy idea came about..

The novel is about an artist, Jon, and the way he sees the world. I've written about 50,000 words and have been editing the first draft. Difficult task editing. I think I have said before that as a painter, if I make a change as I work I can see straight away how that change influences everything else in the composition, but as a writer I am having difficulty in seeing the whole.

Since I started the story i have discovered that I have a degenerative eye condition  and the recent month of writing about sight and seeing, and thinking about the difficulty of seeing the whole has been rather a bittersweet experience as my own sight deteriorates.

It's quite a blow.

I was sitting quietly chatting to a friend on the phone when a picture leapt from its frame....

and landed on the floor - without knocking anything from the shelf!!

Unfortunately that will never be true (but it makes a better headline, doesn't it!)

Since Eric came to live in our village he has gone out almost every day and while walking his dog he has picked up litter from our long beach line. It is just amazing how much difference one person can make!
 
We do an annual beach clean and usually collect 25 - 30 bin bags. This year in the cold the wind and the rain, 9 of us collected 9 bags, and some of them were half full.

Three cheers for all the Erics of the world.

Click on Coronation Wood (under the banner picture) for an update on another community project. This morning the weather was kinder as we planted primroses...


PS I forgot to creat the link to our favourite Radio 3 programme Private Passions with choreographer Robert Cohan (with whom, I might add, my friend has danced! Yay Maggie!!) You can hear it here for another 22 days.

Are you involved in any local projects?

(Or have you danced with anyone famous?)

I'm loving the comments you have posted on Gretchen Rubin's quiz results. (25th and 26th)  Could it be that the real value of doing her intriguing quiz is not in the results per se, but in noticing our hopes for a particular result and our reaction to the given result which probably tell us at least as much about ourselves as the quiz does. How fascinating!

I liked Rubin's book The Happiness Project. She said she realised she wanted to be happy, but she never gave any thought to it, or paid much attention to what made her happy or how she could be happier. 

There is plenty to read and think about on her generous blog. www.gretchenrubin.com

We almost had to cancel our annual beach clean for Lack of Litter!!
More tomorrow about this remarkable fact!

It's Friday - Kondo report day. (Oops, it's 10pm Friday and will probably be Saturday when you read this!)  I will write about Marie Kondo's wisdom, as I see it.

I have underlined quite a few bits in her book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying - mostly about her philosophy, about the why of tidying, rather than the how-to.

She talks of paring down to the volume that you can properly handle.

I'm finding paring down to the volume that I can properly handle is good advice not just for my belongings, but for my work and my garden, for my projects and commitments. I'm doing a bit of rethinking...

Human beings can only truly cherish a limited number of things at one time she says, and I've found this to be a useful secondary question (the first one of course being 'Does this spark joy?') - 'Is this something I want to cherish?' Keeping in mind that cherish means looking after and maybe a little time and effort.

As I am still going through papers I am finding I want to cherish very very few of them!

Out they go! Making lovely empty space in my head and in my studio for new ideas and paintings.

What effect is Kondoing having on your thinking and your life?

...(and I don't mean cutesie-tootsie as in bunnies and kitty-cats wearing clothes!).

One of my drawing students produced a stunningly good and powerful piece of work when I asked her to do something whimsical and Julia sent me a wonderful spontaneous looking piece called Sending Valentines on a Snowy Day which she described as a bit of whimsy.

I bought this book , which I've mentioned before, called My Heart Wanders by Pia Jane Bijerk a few years ago because it was so different from the goal oriented kinds of books I was more used to. (I've no affilliation with Amazon by the way - I just thought you might like to read the blurb!)

It made me think that being whimsical - which I think of as being light of heart - is another way of being that I could try out for size now and then.
 
Playful rather than purposeful, delicate rather than bold, shades of grey (no not that book!) rather than primary colours, subtle, random, accepting ambiguity, tentative, open to different interpretations, the poetry not the prose. 

I want to wander Paris with my camera....or maybe Venice (now there's a tempting thought!)


Did you try Gretchen Rubin's quiz? (see yesterday's post) Are any of you Rebels? Or Upholders?

..question things apparently!

Have you tried Gretchen Rubin's Tendencies Quiz? It's quite intruiging. It led me to believe that I am changing from being predominantly an Obliger to being predominantly a Questioner which I feel rings true for me at this 'doing my own thing' point in time!


I loved the poem Still Point by Max Reif which Cath sent in a recent comment (you can read it here).

It reminded me of this post.

I hope you like it too.

I rushed out to try and capture this partial rainbow and while I was out, around six o'clock this evening i could hear the wonderful chorus of a raft of eider ducks. We hear them all the time here in winter and spring. If you have four minutes to spare there is a really nice film by a wildlife sound recordist here.

On the beach just there in the second photograph, I used to tell the children 'Listen! The ducks are saying Oooh Heather's here, Oooh there's Andrew and Oooooh Ross has come too!'

I do love living here.

What sounds could you hear at 6pm? City sounds? Traffic? Wildlife? Weather sounds? (There was snow on the hills this morning..silent and beautiful.)

....for all the lovely comments yesterday (and the gold stars!). You made my day.

 
Tomorrow (23 March) will be the five year anniversary of starting this blog.

Who knew I had so much to say? (I certainly didn't..)

Who knew anyone except my sister and my best friend would read it?

It has been a joy and I thank you all so much for reading, for commenting and for becoming blog-friends.
 
I still have plenty to say! I want to tell you about Gretchen Rubin's quiz, Angela's ballet exercise inspiration, what I think is Marie Kondo's wisest remark, about the programme I heard on Radio 3 today about the choreographer Robert Cohen, to show you the seeds that have germinated....but I'll save it for tomorrow now. It's been a long day, but a lovely one.


Here is my first post.

I wonder if I'm still trying for a star on my page?
 
That early conditioning again!
 
Damn. What can you do?

..to be doing my own thing!

I can't tell you the surge of energy and excitement I'm feeling since I decided to just do my own thing.

The studio will be blitzed (Kondo method!) as I prepare to make it look fabulous for opening on Saturdays and Sundays from Easter till October - these will be my fixed working days. If visitors come - wonderful - if not, I have work to do.

I am painting a sign to put up, will ask people to spread the word, hope that some of the (admittedly few) tourists who use our single track road will stop by and ..see how it goes! The coffee pot will be on and I'll welcome anyone who is interested in what I do to have a leisurely browse through my paintings and collages.

Among the papers in the studio i found a pile of cuttings and cards and decided it was high time I refreshed my pinboards. Some of the things have been up there for years and years and....it's not that I  stopped seeing them as can happen, it's that I really liked the items and the composition, but it's good to stir things up every ten years, don't you think!!

Have you refreshed your pinboards lately?

Are you?

I'm starting on the studio which I'm treating as a separate enterprise from the house, and I'm doing it by the book. That's Marie Kondo's book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying. Love it. First clothes. As the studio is at the back door there are waterproofs and outdoor jackets and boots and shoes there, but that didn't take long. Then books - only about a dozen art book here, all keepers. Easy peasy. Then PAPERS!!!! Years and years worth of papers. A whole plan chest full, and 8 box files (this is before I start on the art....)

Do they spark joy? That is the question!

There will need to be more than one pass here - but I've got rid of a huge bagful already.

How is your Kondo process going?
 
I am reminding myself that this is a six month project...

Today was International Day Of  Happiness. Well, why ever not? Three cheers for this initiative!

What made you happy today?

I was happy starting to declutter my studio, and I was happy planting some of the 180 primroses I grew from seed into Coronation Wood. I would have been happy to see the eclipse, but it was very cloudy here. Jessica at Rusty Duck got a unique image, by unique means.

I also enjoyed watching this which celebrates the resilience of the human spirit.  And this enchanting Japanese trailer for The Tale of Princess Kaguya (not the American version!)

I hope you are happy tomorrow too!

What kind of relationship do you have with your computer?

!!? *****<> :) :( ???? ! !!!!!!!!! :)  :)  :)

Need I say more?

Obviously the love outweighs the hate or I wouldn't be posting this.... :)



On the subject of doing your own thing in life, you may find this article interesting.

Don't you think that sounds like the title of a childrens' book?

These are Topolino looking cheerful in a pot by the yellow front door.

They are so, so tiny! Scarcely bigger than my thumb.

And this is the moon light (courtesy of Ikea) shining out from the window in the apex of the roof....

Oh, we do have fun,

Ths sun shone brightly all day today.

We had breakfast and lunch outside.

I think I'm going to have to write a book called Topolino and the Moonlight.

I hope you had a lovely day too.

..to laugh and do my own thing.

I've decided not to take part in the excellent Cowal Open Studios this year as I'm going to open my studio every weekend for a while this season.

I am ignoring the voice that says 'I can't possibly' (letting others down/not joining in/it's the thing to do/I'm being selfish/I helped set it up after all how can I abandon it/and the dozen or so other 'reasons' that come rushing into my mind....)

And...

I've decided that if I am wide awake at 2 or 3 or 4am, as I often am, it's perfectly fine to get up and do some work, have something to eat, play some beautiful music, light the stove, and just enjoy the solitude and peacefulness.

It's funny that before I made these decisions these seemed like big issues, and afterwards I see how small they really were! Have you had this experience too?
Are there things, even small things like these, that you are doing because you think you should, that really, in the depth of your heart, you'd rather not do?

I dare you to simply decide not to do them!

The sky won't fall in. In fact it's quite possible that no-one else may even notice....

A sad comment from Alison on yesterday's post, and a most interesting link from Julia (see here) got me thinking of the ways in which we are all stalked and harassed in the modern world. Our every move can literally be followed if we use a mobile phone, all the purchases we make are recorded, CCTV cameras abound, headlines and news bulletins and musak are the permanent background to many lives 24/7, TV's can monitor our conversations in our own homes and the camera on your laptop can be controlled by someone else unknown to you. Advertisements plaster every surface and pop up on your screen unbidden while you are in the middle of doing something else.

(The irony is that we have voluntarily signed up for this. Not so much Big Brother Is Watching You, more You Are Watching Big Brother...)

Isn't it crazy?
 
And we wonder why anxiety and mental health problems are on the increase?

And what is it doing to our children?

Filtering and editing what comes at us is a skill we surely must cultivate if we are to stay sane and healthy, and independent.

In practice I think that means switching off, disconnecting, unsubscribing, slowing down, and finding, and learning to love and cherish, silence and empty space for at least some of our precious time.


Taking the time to think our own thoughts.

Taking the time to live our own lives.

It's a choice we can make.

What do you think?

Note the capital letters. They indicate that I am serious about this!

In this month of being away from home and thinking and writing, something has clicked inside my head. Yet another light bulb has gone off! I've reached another click point as Marie Kondo would put it.

I've decided that, as from now, I am  doing  my  own  thing.

Not anyone else's thing. Not the world's idea of what I should do, or my friends' idea, or other artists' idea, or society's idea, or my peers' idea, or the media's idea (I really have lost it where apostrophies are concerned!).....

Freedom and joy beckon.

Excuse me while I go and put on some loud music. Well not very loud as it is 5.05am and my husband is still asleep. 

I am now listening to Mitsuko Uchida playing the divine Schubert Piano Sonatas...

Homeward bound.... do you get excited about going home when you've been away?

Random Experience Generation Pills that is, and off to find more things I hadn't noticed on this walk before. (See yesterday's post.) This time wearing my favourite pair of rose-tinted specs. It was interesting to look harder!

I think I might buy this fun book which encourages new ways of looking and breaking the rules!

I spotted this book in wonderful Blackwell's in Oxford and decided to give one of the exercises a try on my walk around the village today. So I took two Random Experience Generation Pills, with water as directed, and went off to spot 10 things I hadn't noticed before

Here are some of the things I hadn't noticed before -

I'd noticed the daffodils but not so much the 26 other items on this little triangle of grass at a road junction..

!

Well, that cheered up your day, didn't it?!

Sorry!

Rose-tinted spectacles back on tomorrow (I do like my rose-tinted spectacles..)

What would you like to see cleaned up where you live?

I'm not homesick, but I do find my thoughts turning to home these last few days....are our daffodils out? And the pulmonaria Blue Ensign? I'll switch on the propagator as soon as I get back, and I feel an urgent need to look through my seeds. I expect the sweet peas have germinated...and is there still snow on Creachan Mor I wonder?

I went down to the beach on 8th February and took photographs through 365 degrees...

So different from thatched cottages and cream teas in the Cotswolds. I count myself lucky to be able to enjoy both.
 
Britain is beautiful!

Have you ever been really homesick?

You could have a worse epitaph, couldn't you!

It reminds me of Dorothy Parker's suggestion for her own -  'Excuse My Dust'

Honest Joe lies in the graveyard of Stewkley Church just 20 minutes and 865 years away from here. It's a largely unaltered gem of a Norman Church, beautiful in the spring sunshine.

Cream tea in The Cotswolds today - well you just have to get out when the sun is shining, don't you? And we've not been to Hidcote for so long. Smell of Daphne odora was divine.

We fulfilled a long-time ambition yesterday and took the Winter Walk in the gardens of Anglesey Abbey just outside Cambridge.

There were carpets of snowdrops, aconites, crocus, hellebores and these ghostly little iris reticulata Kathleen Hodgkin.

Massed plantings of coppiced willow, cornus, and corylus avellana contortua - I love the way the elegant catkins contrast with the twisting branches.

A good garrya elliptica is a sight to behold, but not for long as once the tassles are over they are the dingiest looking things ever to be seen in a garden! They are still looking rather lovely here..

What we really came to see was this stand of birch - betula Jacqumontii. It was a photograph of these which inspired us to plant ten of them in our own small garden.

There are ten in this group! How lovely is that?

The other most striking thing was the strength of the scent in the air in the winter garden. Winter honeysuckle, mahonia, daphne, viburnum New Dawn, wintersweet, witch hazel and long hedges lining the paths, of sarcococca. It was astonishingly fragrant. We saw our first bumble bee of the season..

Well worth a winter visit if you get the chance.

 
One of my favourite and easy looks is a neutral coloured T-shirt with a bright simple necklace and a big scarf.

This colour just makes me feel happy!

I bought this necklace of glassy beads from Anna King Jewellery at the St Nicholas Fair in York in December and have worn it often since. I'm ordering two in other colours - sea blue and a bright yellow as I know this is an accessory I won't ever tire of, and she is very kindly making them to the exact size I want ( a touch shorter than this one to sit just insided the neckline of the T-shirt)

What a lucky find!

This month's edition of The Economist's bi-monthly Intelligent Life has a good article about author Diana Athill's love of fashion.

I like the fact that she is 97 years young....

..in your eyes when you are driving is very difficult.

On your outdoor lunch table two days in a row is very enjoyable, and on your chair for an afternoon snooze is hard to believe in March in England. I had a thick jacket on but the sun was hot on my face - sunbathing! Bliss!

At sunset it made beautiful effects inside the house -

The sunset through the gate was spectacular (but my camera battery was low and I missed getting shots of the best of it!)

Looking back at the house in the sun's golden glow.

As I write this the sky is darkening, the temperature is dropping fast, and the first stars are showing....

I hope sunshine is part of your weekend, wherever you are.

Now I really can believe the season is changing. One of my greatest simplest pleasures is eating out of doors and today we sat out, well wrapped up, enjoying sourdough bread from a great little shop in the next village (Quainton) with some good cheese and my first glass of Clos d'Yvinge Le Prince - superb. Your health!