1st July. More rain, but in the moments of sunshine when the bruised black sky opens to clear blue the sun sparkles diamonds on the bright green leaves of the garden.

Painting tigers and chasing wolves in my head between rain storms. Astonished by small I miracles I noticed today that what had been blossoms in May are now small swelling apples.

3rd July. Blackberry blossom, sunshine, washing blowing in the wind and a clear blue sky. Rejection letter from a publisher suggested that I get a copy of The Artist and Writers Handbook and find an agent. Bit sad after twenty years in publishing to get a letter like that. Maybe that is where I have been going wrong all these years.

Feeling like a juggler with too many balls in the air and not enough time to stand and stare.

Then I found a friend with a similar fascination to washing lines. Wonderful photographs by Heather Bennett, from Solva, washing lines, wagon wheels and clouds, all this and Venice too.

5th July. Yesterday Nicola Davies came for supper and talked about honey bees and polar bears that lived in Egypt and writing and other wild and beautiful things. She brought back skulls I had loaned her for talks she was doing with children and reminded me to dig up the owl I had planted in the garden. So this morning, just before taking the children to school I dug up the owl. I had found it a few years ago, freshly killed by the side of the road, looking like a fallen sun, golden. I was surprised then by how small a creature it was, feathers so soft. When you watch a barn owl fly in the gloaming light a hush falls over the world and they seem huge in the landscape, wide winged ghost birds. I couldn't leave this one to be crushed under the wheels of ugly careless cars so took it home and buried it in a huge flower pot outside in the garden. I wanted to dig it up at a later date to see what the skull looked like. So today I dug carefully into the soil trying to be gentle, but surprised to find how much smaller yet the owl had become, sleeping in this pot for a few years. Almost at the bottom there was a cushion of feathers still remaining, brittle yellowed bone, and then the skull, so so small with huge eye sockets. Hardly a weight at all in my hand, but still a weight of sadness. The swallows and martins are so hungry from days of rain and fierce winds they are flying late into the evening twilight to find food. And still the wind blows hard, bending the branches of the ash tree and stripping its leaves and scorching them with salt burns.

6th July. Most of the day went in making bread for the wonderful wedding of Claire and Daf. At the supermarket in St Davids I bought flour, but there was no yeast so I begged fresh yeast from the bakers there. It is years since I worked with fresh yeast and I had forgotten the wonderful silkiness of the yeast and the way it crumbles through your fingers and the smell, so sweet and warm, and the way it changes with water and how the bread dough grows. So different to the dried power that is somehow dead compared to this.

By the time the children came home from school the house was filled with the smell of fresh baked bread.

 

 

7th July. The sun shone on Claire and Daf for their wedding at St Davids Cathedral and they both looked wonderful and full of smiles. So many people came to see them married. At the farm where the reception was held the barn was decked with flowers, and the food was overflowing. So many people had made food for the wedding feast. Bunting hung blowing in a gentle breeze and after weeks of rain the sun shone and the sky was blue.

And where was I while the wedding feast was going on and my children were camping at the farm after the festivities? Swansea, speaking at the UKLA, because I am stupid with dates and had accepted an invitation to be an after dinner speaker at the UKLA conference.

I spoke at the conference and when the talk was over I remembered all the things I had meant to say about how I am inspired by the landscape and the stones and the music of the wind as it blows through the tall grass flowers and the stories held in the stones where I live. But it was too late then.

I did meet some amazing people there, and drove back home at 5 am. An early morning fox watched as I drove along a ribbon road threaded with magpies to find a farm full of sleepy, happy revellers having tea and bacon and eggs in the garden.

9th July. Settled back into working. I had started the painting of the three princesses for Singing to the Sun in between rising loaves on Friday. Having tried to paint this four times already it was fifth time lucky. Time is running out and the book needs to be finished by the end of July.

The four unfinished paintings above are the awful early attempts at the painting. Oh dear. Below is the finished version, or maybe almost finished. Never had so much trouble with a piece of work before, though The Snow Leopard cover I had to paint three times. In between hours of painting I walked.

 

11th July. Sunshine. Decided to walk the dogs before starting work as St Davids is getting busy already with cottages and caravans and hotels filling up. Across the fields a fox, late home, was dark against the golden grass. At the Gessail the tide was out. Centuries ago the people from Maes Y Mynydd would carry nets and baskets down this steep cliff face to boats at the bottom and head out into the waters still rich with fish. When Glyn, who lives in the white cottage next door, was a boy he would scramble down with friends to play on the beach there and they would dare each other to go into the deep cave that was said to lead all the way to the Bishops Palace in St Davids. Now the people are long gone and faded almost from memory and the path to the beach has been eaten away by wind and by rain.

Kestrels still nest on the steep cliffs and today a family of kestrels have fledged and the sky is full of their calls. Born from a tiny egg in a tangle of twigs on a ledge high above the sea they have grown into marvelous raptors. They race down the sloping heather swifter than falling stones, rise up into the blue and then fold back wings to plummet like arrows, full of the joys of discovering what their wings are for. I watched for a while, following their paths through the sky then remembered that I should be painting. Looking down I saw there was an adder at my feet, two foot long and basking in sunshine. It flowed into the grass just as my foot hit the space where the snake had been.

12th July. Working on the last few pages of Singing to the Sun and as with every book it gets harder and harder as the end gets closer. The dogs greeted the postman with their usual violence. I found a pakage from Frances Lincoln. Inside was the French edition of The Snow Leopard. In France, where the net book agreement is still in place, the French publisher chose to have he book printed at the same size as the artwork. I am rarely impressed with my own work, but when I opened the package and held this book, big enough to loose yourself in I felt pleased. For the first time in a while words fail me and I can only say a heartfelt thank you to Gautier-Languereau and Brigitte Leblanc.

14th July. Sunshine after rain and the birds shout at the ginger cats as they walk, ginger bright in the fresh green bracken. I creep closer to the end of the artwork for Singing to the Sun. Listening to Family Tree by Nick Drake. Intimate, songs from old tapes and singing with his mother. I feel nosy, like an intruder into something private and precious, but also like a friend is singing songs and chatting in another room while I paint. Poignant and beautiful. "Tomorrow is a long time" makes me wish that there could be found, somewhere in an old shoe box among thin leave of paper, an old tape where he recorded more of Bob Dylan's songs.

Polar bears still dancing in my brain.

On the back of the studio door, as with every job, a storyboard with thumbnails is pinned and as each page is done it is scribbled out, more frantically as it gets towards the end of the book.

Starting a new relationship with a gallery in The States. The True North Gallery has some beautiful art including work from the northlands, home of the sea bears, and others inspired by the ice and the animals.

15th July. Green gold, white gold and red gold all around in glowing fields of tall grass flowers. Ruins by the sea whisper stories of lives lived long ago.

The grass is higher than a dog's ears, filled with flowers.

 

17th July. Rain. Stonechat, skylarks and grasshopper warblers, buzzards, raven and swallows. Rainbow.

19th July. Butterfly love in the bright sunshine with emerald green light thrown of fresh bracken, and gold dust wings. Cat in the sunlight against a field of gold.

A friend sent a link to the site of an artist in America. After reading the story of digging up the owl they thought I might be interested in this "Strange lady who plays with dead owls". What I found was beautiful work full of reverence and magic. Received a lovely letter from the editor at Hodder apologizing for sending the letter above and the fact that my submission had been put on "the slush pile" and asking if I would like to resubmit . Which was nice. Don't feel quite so dismissed now. Reading of ice and snow and wildness.

21st July. At midnight last night Hannah and I went to the local bookshop on The Pebbles in St Davids and queued to get a copy each, one for Tom and one for Hannah, of the new Harry Potter. In a light drizzle in the dark a crowd had gathered and as the cathedral bell began to strike midnight the magic book was released. So good to see so many people who had come to support the local shop instead of trekking off to Tescos to buy it at a price so cheap. And there was a bit of magic in this 'end of an era' moment.

Today the house has been quiet, so quiet as they are both reading while I try to finish another spread for Singing to the Sun and inch closer to the end of this book. The pearl pale princess and the rose pink princess and the midnight princess all on their thrones with the waiting hungry wolves. There were many times this week when this painting almost ended up in small mosaic pieces in the bin. Already a second attempt, but it did survive, so far. I will put it somewhere safe and then send it to the publisher, as far away from the stanley knife as it can be.

And yesterday one of the cats went missing, for a while, but that is another story.

The flag in the Cross Square flew at half- mast and the cathedral tolled its funeral bell, a medieval sound poem to mark the passing of a life, slow, rhythmic and resonant. It was the lifeboat flag. A leaden sky and the sea flat calm, heavy with reflected dark, it seemed the very landscape mourned.

23rd July. There is something very flattering about the way a cat will fall asleep curled around a human. Such a deep and trusting sleep like a baby, and so very complete. Having dozed off to the soporific purring of Maurice, curled like a ginger fur collar around my neck I managed to crawl out of sleep in time to get into St Davids early to post artwork. So, a package has been sent to Egmont with work up to date and now I feel sick at the thought of it having to travel into England, where apocalyptic flooding is awash everywhere. Watercolours do not fare well with flooded rivers. Fingers crossed.

24th July. Early morning walking and thinking with too many stories in my head, of owls and flowers and bears and seaglass. Beautiful pale honeyed light, and cats performing for the camera.

27th July. This week I have walked with and without cats, chasing words like butterflies, trying to catch a story. I have painted early and late, dreamed of polar bears, helped to move a field full of horses, grown more silver-gray hairs, had supper with a good and beautiful friend and been kissed by a cat who had been eating mice.

Last but one spread for Singing to the Sun, of the princes waiting for an audience with the three beautiful princesses. Some have brought gifts. One more spread to go and nerves in tatters like plastic bags caught on bramble bushes. Not conducive to painting!

29th July. Summer arrived. Sunshine and blue sky. On tug beach the sea has dismantled the tugs and ripped the metal and spread it among the stones. The path to the beach is steep and full of shale and in a time when Whitesands is packed with people with windbreaks and noise and strange games it is a haven of peace and space. The rocks are trailed with the paths of limpets, smoothed and sculpted.

In between times of feeling the sun and a gentle warm breeze on my face, almost, but not quite, finished the main body of Singing o the Sun.

"As the first few notes sang out Thorfinn put out a hand to steady himself. He could hear the sweetest birdsong and children laughing and women singing lullabies. He could hear young men and women whispering secrets to each other, and in and out danced a little tune that was so happy Thorfinn thought his heart would break in two.

"Now", said the jester gently, "tell the king what you know."

 

30th July. More sunshine. Walking with cat. Thinking of starting another blog "what I almost stepped on this week" Last week it was a snake, I was lucky. This week it was a frog. Frog was lucky! Eyes like flakes of gold leaf.

Rough for cover for Singing to the Sun sent of an awaiting response.

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