A contribution to this week’s Writing Workshop, by David, @theghostshirt

Christ of Saint John of the Cross by Salvador Dali, 1951

His face, holds it a smile or frown?

What does he think as he looks down?

On fisher folk of old below

Their lives so simple, as we know

Perhaps a smile for plain sweat ‘n toil

Warm mirrored eyes for a mortal coil

*

But now, many torrid centuries on,

how does he feel as he looks on?

A frown, I reckon, these days he shows

As he looks down, on us below

We pollute the oceans and kill the fish

I fell asleep with my head on the open book, the day enveloping me like the kind of blanket that’s held down. Breathing slowing, vision hot, I fell some more. Down and IN.

It was the smell that woke me. The kind of earth that smells like death and life at the same time. Carbon-rich, thick and damp – I could feel it seeping though my jeans, the heels of my trainers half-sucked beneath.  I lay on my back, thick grass like ribbons in my hair, my hands instinctively reaching to my eyes to rub before realising my fingers were coated with the same mud, determined to reach every part of me. It was warm though, soft. There was the thought that if I kept my eyes closed and still I could let it take me, sink down until it covered my mouth and I was just as much death and life as it was. But the cries brought me to – caw-caw-caw; echoing from one pointed, open mouth to another.

Prising myself from the ground I sat up, face war-painted, knees instinctively drawn close as I took in where I was, gazing along the thick river of mud winding its way ahead of me. A sudden gust of wind woke the wheat, before now blind to my senses, but now pulled low and shaking itself in my eyes and ears like paper waved to make a point. And I thought of the Fox in The Little Prince, begging to be tamed, and how he begged the Prince to love him so that the golden wheat may finally speak to him, as it would always remind him of he who he loved the most. And I spoke to the wheat and the earth and begged it, do not make me special to you, do not tame me else I can never leave. Leave me free, please, my voice joining that of the crows circling above me with their cacophonous rancour, perhaps begging the exact same thing.

My thinking felt thick and I wondered if perhaps mud had trickled in my ears as I lay. I blinked long to try and clear my vision but everything stayed the same. And so I stood, for what else was there to do, and slowly, each footstep heavy and pulling and trudging I began to move. There was only forward, for behind lay somewhere narrow and dark that I did not want to go, and fear gripped me with each slipping step that if I fell for good, the mud may carry me back in its currents to that place and I would never get out again. But I would not fall. Would I? No. I wouldn’t.

I kept my eyes on my feet for the sky was not still and boiled above me like an angry sea, full of the promise of rain, or worse, shifting and turning like something restless and searching and in pain in its position. It made my head spin to look at it, so I didn’t, leaving it to the outraged crows, my business was my feet and I was moving. I walked for hours, for months, for the 23 seconds it took for my thumping heart to pump new blood to every cell in my body. I don’t know. But I walked until the mud began to dry, to be replaced by the ribboned grass brushing my thick, mud-dried clothes, and finally finding the courage to look up, I spied the pale lilac of clearer skies on the horizon.

There. That’s where I’m going.

_______________________________________________

Now it’s your turn. Show me your writing taking us into a picture.

Leave your name and the URL to your post in the Linky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) – it’ll be open til Sunday night so if you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve got plenty of time to join in. Don’t forget that anyone can take part! New prompts will be up this time next week, so I hope to see you back soon.

This week’s writing prompt! Fancy a go?

For anyone unfamiliar with my Writing Workshop, you can have a read all about it and browse old workshops here, or if you’re an old hand at this you can started.

Prompt

 I’ve been studying perspective and composition in my degree this last couple of weeks, learning to ‘walk around’ drawings and paintings to work out why they’ve been put together that way.

This is what I want you to do this week too, but in words. Take a photo, or use a painting or drawing, and use words to take us on a journey past its flat surface and IN. You could make up a story about what’s really hidden behind paint marks on a canvas, or use a photo of a scene from your own life, or your past to tell us something about yourself or the people and things depicted.

Now…

Decide how you’d like to respond, write your post and publish it on your blog between now and NEXT MONDAY. On Monday come back and use the widget that will be up to paste in the URL of your post to share. Then, if you can, take some time to read some of the other entries and leave some comments. We’re not here to critique – just to have fun and support each other in our writing experiments. So be kind and encouraging please. Anyone who would like to submit something via email, or even anonymously will be more than welcome to do so. I’ll post them on the site here and include the link in Monday’s round-up. And, of course, if blogging isn’t your thing, you could always use the prompts for private, off-line writing too.

Enjoy!

Badge Code

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Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason.

Exercise: Sketchbook walks

Hmm. January/February is not an ideal time to be starting landscape drawing for the first time, is it. Given the fact that I’d got no idea what I was doing, plus freezing temperatures/rain/snow, I think I’d guessed this one wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. (HA! Well maybe more sitting on benches in the park). I’ve almost missed the fruit. Almost. At least it was inside!

Oh well. I’m never one to shrink at a challenge, and although I think this module is going to require a bit of creative working, (from photos etc), I shall give it a good shot.

To get us warmed up we were encouraged to go on a walk with our sketchbooks and start making quick, rough, sketches of views that we saw.

My first effort (right) was sooo hesitant, with almost no contrast in it at all, now I look at it, but at least a sense of fore, mid, and background which is so important to landscape drawing.

The path a bit further up proved a bit more promising and I set up camp with my little stool to do two quick sketches in ink pen (to try and force me to draw a bit bolder – MUCH better.).  I liked the varying curves of the path leading into the distance and tried to capture the perspective in two views, although I was already struggling a little to know how to depict trees and vegetation. Such a mass of branches and details. How to simplify them while still keeping them interesting, but also make sure the lines aren’t so dense that you lose possibility for definition and variation in tone? At this point?… CLUELESS (although I managed it a little better with the silver birches in the second picture).

Without knowing what else to do, at this stage I tried to concentrate on making a good range of marks in my drawings, and to start thinking about things like focal points and how to ‘frame’ a view that you’re looking to draw. The course suggested making and using a viewfinder to help with composing your pictures, but as I always have my camera with me anyway, I found the camera’s viewfinder worked just as well, even if I didn’t take a picture. Looking through my camera helped to compose a possible picture in my head. Just as I would instinctively recognise the right view to photograph, I could look at a view through my camera and mentally note what worked before taking pencil to paper.

My two days in Jersey were bitterly cold but I did manage one walk with my sketchbook, with varying degrees of success, but still, it was fun. People are so friendly to a young girl in a big hat sitting on verges with a sketchbook! I’ve never had so many people come and say hello!

Exercise: 360 degree studies

This next exercise required four sketches from one spot – one north, east, south and west. I chose a spot on my neighbouring marshland nature reserve where I walk nearly every day (and suspect I’ll be doing most of the drawing for this unit), and though it took two sittings, managed all four sketches.

This was haaard – just keeping my energy going with it, and having so much to think about with each varying frame. I attempted to try and find a medium between the soft pencil that made for such an insipid first sketch on my sketchbook walk, and the bolder medium of pen that I preferred but that was harder to vary contrast with, and settled on using a HB mechanical pencil for the first time. I loved it actually, loved the hard lines and the depth of tone, although need to try out some varying thickness of nib in future and see how the softer leads can be used in conjunction as well. Not having to sharpen was perfect for working quickly and keeping a defined line, and I was still able to work areas of mark-making together to get the areas of contrast needed. Will definitely keep practising with this one.

My biggest problem with this one came with the fact that, (like a lemon, I have discovered) I faithfully tried to reproduce everything that I saw. EVERYTHING. I felt bombarded with varying light, and focal points and detail and depth and complex vegetation and and and *head explodes*. I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to be concentrating on, so I tried to draw everything. I gave some consideration to perspective and fore and background and got a much better range of tones and contrast in these ones, but in all honesty I felt completely out of my depth.

So I decided to hit the books, and what a good idea that turned out to be…. more soon.

A contribution to this week’s Writing Workshop, by David.

Second

@theghostshirt

The mist swirled at the break of dawn.  Somewhere, beyond the veil cast by the trees around the clearing, a cockerel crowed once, then a second time, chest puffed out, its wattle vibrating like a red warning on this, the most final of days….for someone.

How it had come to this was truly beyond me, but here I was, ready to ensure an outcome.

The looks between them bred their own kind of venom.  Like vipers cursing each other at the apothecaries store as they were milked for their poison.  And oh, what an apothecary she was!  Tall and brunette, with fire in her hips and that light taste of pomegranate on her lips, she was to be worshiped.  And now was the reckoning.  One snake would coil forever at her feet.  One snake to lick her soft flesh with a forked tongue of her making.

The cockerel crowed once more.

I held up the pistol box and slowly opened its lid.  My friend, my comrade, my brother in arms, he didn’t look at me.  His gaze was on the fine barrelled pistol, weighted and crafted for his hand.  It lay nestled in the box’s velvet lining, one single leaden shot already loaded.  With my counterpart, the other second, I had already checked the twin pistol.  It was being displayed now, mere yards from us on the other side of the clearing.  It was like a fantasy mirror before us blighted with stupidity and male pride.  A pistol in an identical box, one with an identical pearl handle, crafted by the same gunsmith that had made arms for their family for decades

The glove, that modern day gauntlet, it had been thrown down last week.  At the end of a long night of chase and counter chase.  The dancing had been sublime and the costumes fanciful and pearl studied, with crinoline and lace, enough to entrap the most pious of priest.  My friend and his brother had been alive to the drama of their sibling rivalry, like two cuckoos forced to share the same nest.  She had smiled.  Thin lips, wandering eyes and that whiplash of a smile, blinding them both with its star crossed sting, dazzling enough for all our eyes.

The hammer cocked, and with steely determination he trod the yards to meet the approach of his brother, for this, the most secret of duels.

The pact had been solemnly made.  Nobody, bar those present would know the identity of the victor.  To slay your own blood is taboo.  It was agreed, when the protocol of the duel was decided, that the vanquisher would lead their life without any stain on their name.  The dead would take their killers name to the grave and as seconds, officers and gentlemen our silence was beyond question.

No matter their history and blood ties, the duellists were strangers now.  Strangers ready to end one another’s lives in a ritual of aristocratic folly.   They met.  Eyes empty and hollow, as if brotherhood no longer existed except as a martyr for personal honour.   They were soldiers and death was now their only fraternal calling.

‘Turn.  Back to back. Then on my word, advance, 5 paces gentleman,’ the other second cried.

Such was the wrath that they felt for one another, that an easy ten paces was the agreed distance, one pace for every five years of their lives.  They both knew it was a short, and certain to produce a victor.

Back to back.

They started as they had been in the womb together, when one would be first born, my friend, the stronger, the other, born second the weaker but more cunning.  Their birth, after hours of labour and subsequent septicaemia, had almost killed their mother.  The medical men had saved her life, but not her womb.  They were the last of the line.

‘Advance!’

First pace.

When they were five they had fallen ill together.  Scarlet fever had struck them both, they had been lucky to survive.  Their fevers had burned, and then broken, each at the same time.  The doctors had been amazed, their father overjoyed.  To lose both sons would have meant no succession.  My friend, first born, he would inherit, the second born, he was merely the safe guard.

Second pace.

Aged ten their mother died in a tragic accident.  It had been the boy’s first true glimpse of death.   The Reaper’s hand had turned slowly into a fist, to grab and shake them both with a sense of their own mortality.   Perhaps it was then that the true rivalry began.  One day their father would die, and only one would inherit.

Third pace.

Aged fifteen they had fought one another for the first time.  My friend was the victor but only by the slimmest of margins and it was he who carried the scar above his eye as reminder of his brother’s fury.  The rock had almost cost him his sight.  The drawing of that first blood had fuelled their rivalry for years to come.

Fourth pace.

Aged twenty, and then came the parting of ways.  My friend took to the horse and the charge of the cavalry.  His brother sought out the sea as a Captain in the making.  Every conquest and battle was merely a further tale of heroism, each trying to outshine the other son.

Fifth pace.

When they were twenty five they had met her, the apothecary.  Both were smitten.  But the Captain won out.  In secret he proposed, before he left for a ten month voyage.  She accepted.

Oh, but she played them well.  My friend she’d married whilst his brother was at sea.  She loved the lure of his wealth more than him.  And so, the Captain’s homecoming had been a stormy affair.  Home to the discovery of his brother’s prize…the woman he loved.  The duel would right this wrong.  His brother dead she would be his, his brother dead he would also inherit.

‘Turn,’ the voice called out.

Neither knew about the life that stirred inside the apothecary’s womb, her belly just beginning to swell with the presence of an unborn.  She knew well that she was with child, as did I.  She would produce an heir, who would stand, one day to inherit a fortune, with both land and title.  Blood will out, but succession can easily be controlled by those who seek to manipulate such things.  She knew her frail father-in-law would not last long, not after the death of his precious son.

Two pistols were raised.

‘Fire!’

Two shots blasted out.

My friend slumped.  His knees buckled.  Crumpled he lay by my feet, life seeping away through the gaping wound to his head.  It seemed odd to look down at him dying so rapidly.  We had fought side by side so often, and he had always seemed, like me, beyond harm.  Indeed we looked slightly alike and could have passed for brothers.  For a fleeting moment I caught sight of my own death, prostrate at my feet.

His twin brother, the Captain, he stood unharmed.   His arms fell to hang by his side, limp and helpless.  The enormity of his deed had finally struck him.  As the look of anguish passed across his tortured face the third shot blasted out.

My pistol smoked in my hand.  I didn’t miss.  The ball of lead ripped into the Captain’s heart and he fell backwards to the ground, dead.

Two gentlemen’s corpses, lying in a cold clearing, sometime after dawn, ten paces apart, duelling pistols in hand and two fatal wounds.  Such evidence spoke for itself.  It was a tragic outcome, no victor, simply two dead duellists and a faint sense that honour had somehow been restored, no suspicion on anyone else.

From somewhere through the veil of trees she came slowly, a bag of gold coins in one hand and a smile on her lips.  The apothecary approached the other second and passed him the velvet bag containing his price.  The cockerel crowed once again as he slipped away through the veil of trees.

The two brothers lay dead, ten paces apart.  She didn’t give her dead fiancé as much as a second glance.  She crossed the recently trodden ground.  Ten paces; then passed the body of her dead husband.  She walked toward me, my child in her womb and the sweet taste of pomegranate on her lips.

With forked tongue I kissed the back of her hand and coiled myself around her feet.

There’s a whole host of colourful characters that live in my neighbourhood. I thought you might like to meet them…

Demented Dave

Punk-rock Pete                                                                                      Rover, the one-eyed hound

Steve the Ogre

Blackbird Sally

For my writing workshop this week, I set the prompt ‘second’, and I thought that today I would share with you an except of the second chapter of a story that I’ve started working on again, after putting it down for a while. There seems to be a fair bit of interest in my writing at the moment which I need to make the most of, so I’m hoping to get this good enough for submission this year, if I can. 

I’m not going to tell you as single thing about what it’s about, what came before or what might come after and it’s just a first draft, but  I hope you enjoy it. 

___________________________________

“I slept then, deep. No memory, even, of finding a seat, only the repetitive lull of the train bending its way through the miles as I was pulled under.

I did not dream. I slept the sleep of something dead with no capacity left to rearrange fractured thoughts into pictures, if that is what dreaming is, I have never been sure. Although, actually, no, I did not feel dead, numb as I was. Perhaps, the sleep I slept was more like that of something brand-new, without yet sensory impressions to give shape to those fleeting cognitive flashes. Yes, it was more like that.

I woke to the feeling of being shaken, and wondered, briefly, confused, if perhaps I had passed out on the station platform after all, and whether everything that had come after it had been the dream, that perhaps I would come round to find myself still sitting there, still with that choice to make. But no: my nose working quicker than my brain, and the smell of upholstery and coffee and the stale, air conditioned air that comes with many shared hours in a train carriage with a few dozen strangers, quickly convinced me otherwise, and I looked up into the oval, white-downed face of the ticket officer as he roused me to state we had reached my destination, and that the train service was terminating here.

Here. I was here. Christ, had a slept that long?

My bones ached, like they had been shaken to the point of breaking, or perhaps squashed together in some tight, restrictive place, and only just unfolding and knitting together for the first time. Maybe both were true. I was trembling as I stood, pulling my bag out from under the seat, stumbling against the edges of the seats in the aisle as I made my way toward the exit as if the train were still moving. The vague concerns of the ticket inspector followed me as I lurched and recovered on my newly purposeful legs. No, no I was fine. I didn’t need to sit down, or for him to call anyone – I vaguely flapped one arm reassuringly as I used the other to steer myself, turning my head to smile, only to trip once more. It occurred to me that he probably thought I was drunk, and that made me laugh, an irrepressibly girlish giggle that burst from my mouth like a dropped bell. I had not heard that sound in a long time, and it seemed so wildly inappropriate in the circumstances that it made my face flush, fingers covering my mouth in an attempt to stuff it back in.

After what felt like an age, I was there, the hungry mouth of the train that had swallowed me just a doorway once again as I stepped down and over the gap to the hard concrete platform, reassuringly stable and firm through my thin pumps. I had a sudden urge to kick them off and feel the rough coldness on my soles, just to convince myself I really was here, but the owl-like ticket officer, his head bobbing up and down in curiosity and mild alarm, was hovering in the doorway. I suspected taking off my shoes might be the final push that made him pick up the walkietalkie at his belt and squawk a call to the police. And I couldn’t have that, god no.

I gave him what I hoped was another confident smile, my teeth and lips seemingly clambering over one another in an over-eager bid to display my sunny togetherness. God, I must have looked insane. But it was too late: look, I was walking! I was walking away, down the long platform, my legs more confident already, the sounds of the Tannoy system and the engines of cooling trains echoing and vibrating in my ears.

I felt my head lift and my back straighten, knots of tension and held emotion falling away from me like an unravelling jumper as I walked. I felt good. I couldn’t believe how good I felt! Was this what adrenaline did? Or shock? Or was this more than chemical courage? Was this simply freedom? Is this what freedom felt like? Fuck it, I didn’t care. I was here. I had done it.

As was my habit, my eyes started to pull upwards as I walked. They always seem to do that, to pull down or up but rarely look straight ahead, as determined as any persistent squint. I often wondered why I did it, and, as far as I could remember, always had. But as my gaze met the thick stripes of molten sunshine stretching from between beams, heavy with motes that hung and shimmered, I remembered that feeling of new worlds above and below me as I walked as a child, worlds that everyone else with their straight-ahead focus seemed to miss: a mass of discarded, plastic wiring heavy with dew under the hawthorn bush on the walk to school, like stars in some tiny microcosm of the universe; the horse-head gutter outlet, high in the dim overhang of my Grandmother’s blue house, dirty water gushing from its open, screaming mouth… oh there was so much light here, so much life.

With my bag heavy on my shoulder, I let myself be pulled into the heaving tide of the station concourse, stumbling to avoid suitcases, and groups of hesitating tourists with anxious tour guides. Shuffling in-bred pigeons hobbled on their stunted, raggedy feet between the ironed legs of men in suits, and waiting teenagers, and an endless stream of beautiful, purposeful people wearing confidence like cheap perfume. The air smelt of burgers and sweat and toilets and coffee, and it was quite possibly the most wonderful thing I had ever laid my eyes on.

Overhead, time hung, suspended in a cubic clock, an upsidedown face with moustached-hands pointing to the ten and two. Its eyeless countenance dripped with bird shit tears as it laughed and turned and clacked its tongue at the shifting mass below it and the insistence of this place to count the hours and minutes, as if they actually meant anything at all. And I stopped and I stood and I laughed too, until people started to stare and I remembered where I was and that I had better keep moving.”

- an extract from Untitled, by Josie George

_______________________________________________

Now it’s your turn. Show me your writing on the theme of ‘second’.

Leave your name and the URL to your post in the Linky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) – it’ll be open til Sunday night so if you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve got plenty of time to join in. Don’t forget that anyone can take part! New prompts will be up this time next week, so I hope to see you back soon.

My Dad turned 60 on the 21st of last month. I promised him I’d draw his portrait as a special present and here it is, before and after framing.

It was a special project this one. I’ve only ever done a couple of portraits of Kai before so this was a whole new challenge and one I lost myself in, loving working the lines and curves and soft eyes of a face I have known my whole life, and love dearly. And I loved it, because it was challenging but not too hard, and I felt like I was doing something that is becoming part of my bones and my breath and that is beginning to feel as natural as picking up my camera, or writing words on a page, or brushing the hair from Kai’s eyes with my fingers.

I think I might be becoming a proper artist, and I’m so excited by the feeling.

Dad smiled WIDE when I showed him. Making something for someone you love and seeing the joy in their face when you give it to them is good, good, good for your heart.

Happy Birthday, old man xx

(Drew on A3 with charcoal and chalks and a bit of pencil,  in about three and half hours.)

Hello there. Part of the reason this blog exists is to encourage my own and others’ writing and in all my distraction getting stuck into my art degree last year I managed to forget that a little. I feel strangely guilty, like the blog’s lost its way a little, and that’s no good.

So, *best commitment face*, let’s get back to it. New writing prompts every other Monday, with a chance to share your work on the Monday in between. It turns out 2012 is going to be unexpectedly full of writing for me and I’m going to really need the practice – I figure I might as well take you along for the ride. And for any of you that started the new year pledging to do more creative writing, or for those that just enjoy the excuse, hopefully our fortnightly prompts will give you a focus and a reason to sit down and try something new. You don’t need to be a writer, or even consider yourself any good. It can be a couple of hundred words or a longer piece – the important thing is just to have a go.

For anyone unfamiliar with my Writing Workshop, you can have a read all about it and browse old workshops here, or if you’re an old hand at this you can started.

Prompt

 I wrote about January at the weekend and how the first month of the year is often my wash-out month, my false start, so with us moving into a more optimistic second month I thought that could be our prompt this week – second.

Write about a second something, a second anything. Does it come with the disappointment of not being a first? Or is second somehow better, without the pressure and expectation that comes with a first something?  Write about yourself, an experience, something in your life, or in your past, write descriptive prose or poetry, or, (and I’d really like to see some more fiction on here), dream up a story with ‘second’ as the theme. It’s absolutely up to you how you interpret it.

Now…

Decide how you’d like to respond, write your post and publish it on your blog between now and NEXT MONDAY. On Monday come back and use the widget that will be up to paste in the URL of your post to share. Then, if you can, take some time to read some of the other entries and leave some comments. We’re not here to critique – just to have fun and support each other in our writing experiments. So be kind and encouraging please. Anyone who would like to submit something via email, or even anonymously will be more than welcome to do so. I’ll post them on the site here and include the link in Monday’s round-up. And, of course, if blogging isn’t your thing, you could always use the prompts for private, off-line writing too.

Enjoy!

Badge Code

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Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason.

Although I did do a bit of a gasp today when I looked at the date of my last blog post, it’s not actually that much of a surprise that January hasn’t seen me make much of an appearance here.

January is traditionally my nemesis month. One for head down, plough through, and this one hasn’t been the exception. It’s a keep your eyes on your shoes month, where big thinking and decision-making is limited to safe choices such as whether to have another piece of toast or put an extra jumper on. Light is low, pain levels predictably high and my immune system practically non-existent (I managed THREE itis-es in the space of a fortnight. GO ME!). I forget that this strange illness of mine, along with robbing me of energy, likes to play funny with the chemicals in my head to leave me demotivated and low and devoid of confidence and it’s usually late-January by the time I remember that that’s why I’m probably feeling so crud. And Kai’s not been sleeping either, really not, which, plus pain at night makes for a stupidly little amount of sleep each night, so the whole month has passed in a foggy haze.

But there’s been little islands of awakeness: a birthday, and gifts from friends and family that gave me sudden pounding feelings of gratitude and reminded me there were people out there who thought I was okay; an unexpected, arm-pinching proposal from a publisher which is all looking very promising and I hope to tell you more about soon; and a whirlwind 48 hours where I was transported to a temporary solitary oasis of sky and flat sea and low sun.

My hotel room lay just a short corridor and one flight of steps directly from the beach and I wrapped up warm and spent most of it outside, wandering up and down the beach taking photos, around the cliffy headland which I walked for miles, getting lost as befits a proper adventure, and finding a hidden cove down hundreds of steps. I watched the sun go down and the sun come up and said words out loud to the sea, and befriended an old man who sat with me while I sketched and told me I didn’t look a day over twenty one. The hotel staff couldn’t seem to quite get over the novelty of a young girl appearing there alone for her birthday, and I smiled wide when waiters in the restaurant appeared proudly with a gorgeous white chocolate-inscribed ‘Happy Birthday’ dessert. And I found a bench, high on a cliff, with the words “stay awhile and turn your thoughts to those you love”, amazed by just how many people I had in my life to think about.

So there have been good things. Many, really. And February is teasingly close, with daffodils on my fireplace and 4pm yielding a little more light each day. Time to start putting my best foot forward again, because there are Things To Do.

I shall leave you with some photos of Jersey, for those that haven’t seen them, and the news that the Writing Workshop will be back on Monday. I need the writing practice myself and its time to wake this blog up again after its winter sleep.

Here I am again, little blog. Onwards.