Wednesday 28 October 2015

Slices of Quince!

My friends have a quince tree!  I have never seen a quince, nor eaten one.  All I know about them is that the Owl and the Pussycat ate them with a runcible spoon.  However, on the reliable information that they can be poached, and with half a dozen quinces straight off the tree, I had a go at making my own autumnal dessert.

Tuesday 6 October 2015

Sometimes A Wild God

Something marvellous has arrived in the post. 


This is 'Sometimes A Wild God', a poem by Tom Hirons, partner to the wonderful artist Rima Staines whose work I've been following for about seven years now.  I have a couple of prints of her work.  This beautiful artefact, however, is a collaboration between the two of them.

I first came across the poem almost by accident, and it's rare that I'll stop for poetry that isn't spoken aloud, but I read it all the way through three times and then stopped and looked at it for a bit.  There's no telling why some things hit you and other things don't, but Hirons seemed to catch on something that rings true.  Something terrible and horrible and beautiful and incomprehensible.  The kind of thing where it's more a feeling than anything you could put into words yourself, but when someone else says it, you go 'Yes.  Yes, that's exactly what it's like."

So I bought a copy.

It came in the post.  It's small, and neat, and unassuming.  The paper is solid, not flimsy or cheap (as someone who draws, I'm a student of paper), and it manages to be professionally smart yet subversively tactile at the same time.  As I say, it's nothing half-done, it's an artefact.  Not just a carrier for the poem, but an object in and of itself, made with care.  There are six illustrations, and the cover, all done by Rima in simple black and white.

You can read the poem for yourself Here.  Perhaps you'll feel the same, perhaps you won't.  Who can say why some things hit you and other things don't.


Stories from Summer

It's been a long summer this year, or at least it's felt long to me.  Lots has happened, good, bad, and somewhere in between, in a lot of different areas of life.  A strange season, and a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, but that's life for you.  Things can't be peaceful all the time or we'd be bored and never grow at all.
In some ways it's been a struggle, but as always there's been time to regroup too.  To take time out, to spend time with the people I care about, and to be contemplative, which is something I'm finding more and more essential...

... and to watch seals.

Seals!!!