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2006

November 1st. Wind, rain. The hillside is covered in browned bracken pressed down on the earth. What colour there is fades fast from the day as the evenings draw in darker. There are times of the year when the world seems to turn faster and this is one. At night the Milky Way stretches across the sky and twists to a different place and I look every night for Orion to be rising in the sky. The days get shorter so fast, but the poetry cover is almost finished. (Click on the unicorn to see)

In Cornwall there are more beautiful hares to see and angels. Click on the image of the hare over water to see more of Catherine Hyde's latest work. Catherine has an exhibition at The Light House Gallery in Cornwall at the moment.

Winter is setting in with gale force winds, but even though they are fierce it is not yet cold. The cats don't seem to think so though. Martha has remembered her favourite winter place is above the fire and Bird and Pixie and Maurice have joined her and they are guarding the fire from the dogs. Lazy cats, who should be out catching mice and rats. With the rain and the wind walking has become a great deal less attractive than painting and I have been busy trying to get to grips with a new book while paintings run around inside my head wanting to be painted.

So I am afraid that I have given in to temptation after all the stress of trying to paint the poetry book cover. However another four or five ideas seem to have flown into my head, and there is not enough time to do the work that I should be doing. The program arrived today for the festival at the French Institute in London and it seems I will be signing books there on Saturday morning, 26th November. For details of the festival see www.institut-francais.org.uk Lots of people there on the Saturday including Quentin Blake and Angela Barrett, Michael Morpurgo and Francois Place, Philip Ardagh and Erik L'Homme.     10th November Today is Tom's birthday and he is 13. I bought him a tide watch and when I asked him what the time was he said that the tide was on the way in, it was a neap tide, though between the two and the moon was a gibbous moon. So I looked at my watch and saw that it was time to go to school. Up the hill the badgers have been pulling in bedding for the winter's hibernations, trails of browned bracken and moss leading to their sets. The badger sets up the hill are centuries old, a honeycombed warren of tunnels and chambers.     .

16th November.

The last few days have been quiet with little wind, but a snap of winter at last. Walking in between rain and sheltering from showers underneath bushes with the cats and the dogs, listening to the rain, and painting for the poetry book in between walks.

The new Discworld Calendar is out and this year I painted dragons. Click on the dragons for more of Disc World including the Educated Rodents.

21st November. The lead up to the exhibition in Bath has been fraught with broken down cars and other difficulties, but having hired, and fallen in love with a Kangoo, the exhibition is now hung and am sitting in a freezing cold chapel. What I didn't think about is that it is November and though quite warm for winter in West Wales, it is freezing in England! Also I had no idea that the chapel is an old mortuary chapel. Very elegant. To see more click here, or on the doorway to step through. I spent the night at Tessa Strickland's house, where remarkably in the last 9 years or so since I had seen them her children had turned from kids into young adults. Very alarming. When I came in to the chapel this morning two of my paintings had fallen to the floor and the glass in one was smashed. Spooky. But the first person to come in was Martin, picture framer from down the road and he took it away to re-pin and glaze. Hadn't seen him for 14 years, so good to catch up and very good timing on his part, so many thanks to Martin and everyone at The Framing Workshop on Walcot Street for making good my angel!

30th November

Very good to be home after what seems like an age away. At home the weather has been dramatic and awful with snow, thunder and lightening and hail and rain and black ice on the roads.

Yesterday I took the Kangoo back, reluctantly. My car is still dead in the garage forecourt.

Trying to sort out the past week in my mind, everything was so busy and so full and coming back has been so too. I need a walk on my own to try and settle my mind. But, the French Institute was a wonderful experience, so friendly. Small children flung their arms around my neck and kissed me, tried to climb into the pages of the books and opened their hearts to the idea of the selkie legend. Sylvie Tollet looked after me wonderfully, and Robin, and put up with my bizarre stories about making pants out of mouse skins brought to me by my cat! It was a great privilege to be working at the same festival as Quentin Blake and Michael Morpurgo, but what I loved was meeting the French illustrators, Francois Place and Chen Jiang Hong and Rebecca Dautremer. To watch Chen signing books was wonderful, such an elegant man even in the way that he walks and moves, when he signs books he paints with a brush and Chinese ink and in no time a portrait of the child who is buying the book appears on the page.

It was an eye opener to see the French children's book which were wonderful books with beautiful pictures, design and quality of paper and finish. Francois Place was talking about how there can be so many pitfalls to the success of a book, from the writing to the illustration, the design and finish and the marketing and selling, how all these things have to be right for a book to be successful. I bought so many books, mostly at the Institute, but also The Snow Queen illustrated by a Ukrainian illustrator, Vladyslav Yerko, published by Templar, and was given Pinocchio illustrated by Roberto Innocenti.

I also ate far too many lovely pastries and drank too much coffee. I was sorry to leave on the Saturday as the place was buzzing with eager children, but we headed off towards Bath and the exhibition opening in the afternoon and arrived in Bath in the cold to a busy evening in the chapel. I found out from various means (including looking through the feedback books from Cheltenham Festival that it seemed I was "cool" and "mint". Funny because I thought I was just a fat woman with bad hair in a strange car.

Home after a long drive from Bath it was cold, the kitchen was full of cats and there was no door on the house and water coming in through the roof, a spring in the lane so I had to wade through water to get to the house. It looked as if a troll had been living in the house while I was away, but actually was as I had left it (though there was a door when I went away).

Yesterday I saw the eye specialist at the hospital who said that I had had a blister on the back of my eye caused by a slight tearing in the retina, something very unusual in women, but self repairing, and it was this that had caused the hole in my vision that I have been suffering from. Takes about 5 months to get better and I am supposed to cut down on stress and take things a little easier, so for the next few months will stay at home and paint, finish the poetry book and walk, watch the world turn and the birds fly and dream a while. And after the trip to the French Institute and seeing how much more beautiful the books were and the respect that suggests for their audience I think it is time to book myself in for evening classes and learn to speak French.

Good to be home now, and I have a front door and the house is warm with a fire burning and demanding to be fed morning and evening,and the cats are pleased to see me.     next............

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