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2nd April. In the woods at Abermawr the bluebells are greening the valley sides. The sun shone through branches where leaf buds are beginning to unfurl and on the floor of the wood a wind flower bloomed. On the beach the sea had stripped back the sand from the old wooden bones of long dead trees. Over time the sand and the sea and stones have worked new patterns into the wood.
Back through the wood the twisted wild tree wove its branches to the tune of the light and the wind.
At home I painted in my studio. There are days when even though you know that time is short and you really should be working on one piece of work ( the cover for The Arabian Nights) you just can't help doing something different. So all day I painted the Musicians Benevolent Fund card design, because I want to see what it will look like, because I know I should be doing something else, because I am stubborn and want to put as much pressure on myself as possible? Or maybe just because I want to. Hard work, lots of detail.
Tonight a butter-coloured full moon shines over Whitesands Beach.
3rd April. Butter-coloured moon in an ink dark sky, and the blossom on the trees like snow in its light. 4th April. Sunshine and flowers seduced me into walking further than I had meant to in the morning. At Whitesands, walking towards St Davids Head the sun of the last few days has brought out the sea campion flowers, delicate, white. Thrift is beginning to show pink and soon it will be like walking through a medieval millefleur tapestry. I had meant to go straight home, work is demanding, deadlines too close, not enough hours in the day and I had had one of those flashes of inspiration that take a fleeting moment of time to fly swift through the mind, but then lead to hours of patient work to realize them.
Conscience and a mild sensation of panic pulled me back into the studio, but not until I had seen my first dusty blue wheatear of the year. On the way home blue black crows flew heavy along the lanes and all day the sun has streamed through the studio window.
6th April. The last week has been a hard with with long days. Started the cover for Arabian Nights,
but the painting looked ugly and wrong and clumsy, so I started it again with other thoughts and ideas,
and still it looked wrong, like an illustration inside a book, not like a cover, and then I walked in the morning, to see the flowers on the cliff top and think, and came up with....
Front and back covers, but roughs, not finished art, trying two different golds. And in between painting and abandoning paintings and starting again I walked and watched bright white gannets fly like arrows and looked for, but did not find, porpoise, but heard skylark and wren and saw stonechat and linnets and siskin and a kestrel hanging in the sky against a disc of misted sunlight.
7th April. Walking in evening sunshine. The land is so dry, gorse bushes browning and no sign of April showers.
8th April. Hands smell of bread dough from baking for Claire's birthday. Fresh bread with sunblushed tomatoes and herbs and feta. The day so warm, so quiet.
Will spend the rest of the day working on the MBF card which I have missed while painting covers and trying to keep up with Singing to the Sun. 9th April. A sparrow hawk flew leisurely through the garden, along the lane, and a trail of angry birds called the alarm from the bushes. For a moment time stood still as the birds barred breast and slate back and ochre details came into sharp focus. Then he flew on.
11th April. Days of frustration and interrupted work. Black cap on the bird feeder, looking like a moment of black and white next to the bright painted chaffinch.
Hannah at the farm with the horses, Tom on the boat around Ramsey, but still I can't settle as two many things demand attention at the same time. Maybe today will be better. 13th April. Yesterday dropped a lamp on the painting for the mbf, but the painting seems to have survived. Can't say the same for the lamp. Today the cats are in the papers, both The Sun and The Daily Mail online. They seem decidedly unimpressed, sleeping in boxes and curled on Hannah's bed, drumming their claws impatiently waiting to walk. Still colouring in the huge painting and feeling like it will never ever be finished. 14th April. For the past week the weather has been wonderful, the children have been busy and happy and I have...... well, not been depressed. That is the wrong word. But I have had a feeling of being very anxious and ill at ease and unable to settle. Work has been slow, like wading through treacle. I have not been unhappy, just not right. So, today, when the post came everything slipped into place. It was an appointment from out patients calling me in to see a doctor at the fracture clinic. I know people knock the nhs, but this is wonderful, because it described perfectly how I am feeling. Fractured. The appointment is on the 24th April. It is a wonder to me how they knew. So I phoned to thank them I was surprised when they said that they dealt with bones, not personalities. It seems that like the phone call I had last week telling me that someone would be round from the hospital to check my mattress for me, which I thought was also a marvelous new service, (who knows what danger could be lurking in my mattress) alas, it was a clerical error. Either I have slipped into a parallel universe where I have fractures and need to have my mattress checked, or there is a fault in the nhs computer. Anyway, it has all been a help. I have realized that fractured is what I feel, trying to do too much and too many things. So I wandered off up the hill in the sunshine to write and think and watch and see. And I saw speckled brown butterflies in intimate embrace.
And I saw the first fresh foal of the wild ponies this year, unsteady on its legs still and new to the world of soft warm winds.
And Kurt Vonnegut has died. A wonderful writer with a face so lived in and lovely and a wit so wise. He will be missed. So it goes. 15th April. In the lane beside the house it is snowing. White petals shower down from the short lived blackthorn blossom. I can do nothing but read as I near the end of the Tawny Man trilogy.
17th April. Sitting in the garden reading in sunshine when fluting song filled the air. Looked up to see three wimbrel fly past high in the clear blue sky. Later an orange tip butterfly, the first of the year, on the hedgebank by Penrhiw. Evening walking with the cats, sky crossed with the trails of planes, lines drawn across the blue, transitory.
18th April. Walked on the beach in the sunshine with the dogs after dropping the kids off for school. The sun hit the top of the small waves, the sea was a sharp blue, and on the cliffs the flowers have grown and thrift blooms everywhere. I avoided the beach over Easter. St Davids filled up with people on holiday, but has slipped back into quiet now. Worked away quietly on the Singing to the Sun painting and then headed for the hill with the patient cats who had waited all day to walk.
On the path up the hill a peacock butterfly rested in the warm, looking dusty and worn, clothes slightly faded, a sleeping beauty of a butterfly sprinkled with gold.
On the cliff path Elmo stopped by a bush, peered in and started to bat at it with his paw. I got the camera ready and watched as he sat like a merecat looking into the heather then batted again and jumped, edgy, excited while I tried to get a good photograph. And then I thought. It was a warm day. The kind of day a snake might be about. Put the camera down and went to rescue the cat and fortunately for Elmo it was a slow worm, not a snake, small lithe lizard, shining and beautiful. A glimpse as it slid into the heather and I lifted Elmo away, wriggling and cross.
Walking, saw dusty blue wheatears, webs of funnel web spiders radiant with dew droplets, walls covered with sea campion and thrift. Out at sea the bright white arrow shaped gannets wheeled and between the rippling floor of the ocean of air glossy black fins of porpoise split the ceiling of the sea.
Later. A day spent walking in sunshine and tidying house, picking up writing. Amazed that I had written so little of the book. Evening, went to the beach to watch the sun set and pick out gold in the water.
22nd-29th April. Away from home and the journey almost started very badly as I just about remembered to check the oil and water in the car before setting off. There was no water in the car and as a result the oil was very low and smoking. Water restored order to the car and I set off for Milton Keynes and Stanstead for Venice and Bologna, via a walk in the woods at Aber Mawr to see how the bluebells were doing. I did not want to go!
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