Blue star petunias – 33 x 33cm acrylic gouache, coloured pencil on watercolour card
Little ram with dog roses – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Blue moon with euphorbia – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Sleeping with the pelargoniums – 76 x 51cm collage watercolour gouache pencil on watercolour card
Morning glory under an orange table – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil, collage
Peonies in a cobalt cup – 23 x 23cm acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Taking ten minutes for myself – 51 x 38 acrylic gouache collage pencil on watercolour card
Song of the Stargazy pie – 41 x 35cm collage, acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Horseradish leaves and zucchini – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Breakfast with iPad - 51 x 38cm gouache on watercolour card
Little zebra and the domino players - 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache on watercolour card 490
Dreaming in the deep – 76 x 56cm acrylic, gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Birthday tea 21 x 15cm collage, pencil, gouache
Dreaming Steaming – 38 x 28 collage, pencil, gouache, cold wax, watercolour card laid to wood
Picnic at Prospect Cottage – 76 x 56 acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Stars above seeds below – 25 x 25 gouache, pencil, collage, cold wax, paper laid to wood
Ebook at bedtime – 76 x 56cm collage, pencil, acrylic gouache on watercolor card
The marmalade makers – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache pencil on watercolour card
Probably helping with clues – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Geese returning to Norwood Lake – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Just in time for starters – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache pencil on watercolour card
Nana and Pepper prune the Rambling Rector – 42 x 55cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Refugees fleeing alien forces – 40x 40cm collage, pencil gouache on card
Getting ready – 76 x 56cm collage, pencil, acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Star petunias under a lime table – 76 x 56cm collage, acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card 490
Unexpectedly – 30 x 30cm collage, pencil, acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Dew falling from dark stars – 76 x 56cm pencil, acrylic gouache, ink on watercolour card
Rainy gardens – 30 x 31cm collage, acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Night scented stock under a turquoise table – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, collage, pencil on watercolour card
Marmite breakfast – 30 x 31cm collage, pencil, acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Sky goddess sheltering her creatures – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Himalayan poppies under an apricot table – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Just the quiet drip of the tap – 24 x 30cm acrylic gouache, collage, pencil on board
Orchids listening to gossip – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card £490
Coastal development – 20 x 30cm gouache pencil on card
Tea under apple blossoms – 51 x 38cm acrylic gouache pencil on card
Celestial insurance – 31 x 31 x 4cm gouache, collage, cold wax on card laid to wood
Chess players under pylons 25 x 29 collage gouache, pencil
The long call – 51 x 38cm gouache, collage, pencil on watercolour card
Eucalyptus in a Chinese vase – 31 x 26cm pencil, gouache on card
Stars falling on Smeaton’s pier – 51 x 38cm collage gouache pencil
Another boring phone call – 51 x 38cm gouache pencil on card
Tea with nana – 51 x 38cm gouache on card
Discussing a frozen puddle – 30.5 x 30.5cm acrylic gouache, collage, pencil on synthetic board
Flowers for voyager – 61 x 61cm collage gouache
Supper club at Chelsea Physic Garden – 30 x 30cm collage, acrylic, gouache, pencil
Hyacinths with bar code – 24 x 30cm gouache on card
Next day delivery – 51 x 40cm oil on canvas
Succulent display at the Physic garden – 33 x 27 x 5.5cm 2 piece assemblage in a perspex box
Dreaming under the ironing board – 21 x 15 cm acrylic gouache pencil on watercolour card
Dreaming Steaming – 38 x 28 collage, pencil, gouache, cold wax, watercolour card laid to wood
Every year I grow petunias in my window boxes. A ubiquitous plant, often overlooked. An old lady’s plant and a hypnotic enchanter. The way the flowers space themselves out to make the most of the sun. The way the dying blossoms disappear overnight. The way new flowers arise and replace, finding new spaces. The way they have no time for looking back and need to move on with life. The way they direct bee traffic signalling runways with white stripes across velvet petals. But to arrive here I had to let go of things. Realism - I let go of that.
On my walk, before the morning breaks open, I come across entanglement. A great polyphonic chord stops me in my tracks. Filaments of morning mist still hiding in its busy heart. Flat paper roses popping here and there. My thoughts skittering, as they do. Polishing the surface, unable to gain entry through thinking. Such riddling, such tangling and twisting. Such mazes and puzzles rooted in our shared history. The impenetrable forest. The unreachable castle. The insoluble problem. Then, carrying this wonderful randomness home I reach my blank paper. We are spirits briefly caught in the net of life.
Euphorbias stand proud in my garden. They catch my eye as I water the lavender. Their huge heads last for months. Slowly turning from a vivid green to yellow before they completely fade away. Their cycle somehow imitating that ebb of energy between paintings when I return to my boring self and have nothing else to say.
Coming home with shopping, my bags brush past the trailing pelargoniums by the front door. I put the groceries away and, cup of tea in hand, make my way up to the workshop. Just sitting with paints and brushes. Doing nothing. But still somehow the citrus smell of their leaves has found me here. Absorbing me into their dark scented heart. Dreaming them into a long narrow space the way they hang. Not a shape I would personally have chosen but I move myself aside. They don’t need me now. Doing nothing again.
Just so much music here. The big blue trumpets of the morning glory. The pink silver bells of the Rosa glauca. Even the orange table is not free of noise. The milk jug continues to remonstrate with the coffee pot. An old grudge. No one remembers how it started. The glass keeps well out of it. Only the coffee mug does what it should and contentedly puffs out a cloud of steam. Lovely.
Not everything has to be liked. Not everything has to be sold. Some things are for my own delight. I’m on this path just like you are. We can enjoy our own things, take pleasure in our own thoughts.
The unconscious is entirely unconcerned with my sense of time or urgency. A slow, unreliable companion. Even in its gentle moments it’s never biddable. Shape shifting as it swims around the conscious island I have made for myself out of scraps and notions. Its dark waters hiding ancient purposes. Just now and again leaving apparently random fragments for me to encounter. By comparison I am an idiot child, impatient and full of silly ideas stumbling from room to room distracted by shiny things. I still don’t know how we found each other.
Old summer has grown his whiskers now. Dry grasses nodding past the solstice. Birds half disappeared standing among the drying stalks of shepherd’s purse. Winter still distant but looking around. I ferret through my workshop throwing out things I had once thought important. Now dried up husks, their meaning forgotten or never really my own story. Always getting ready for the flow of coming change. I have nothing I want to win and nothing I want to do. Those ideas belong to some previous story. Age has embedded me here in its delightful present like a fly in amber. So happy to pick up whatever comes….
I grow horseradish for its leaves. It feeds my constant amazement. How they grow straight up and up from the soil. No dividing or fanning. No fancy business. They only have one job. On the other hand zucchini go for unexpected consequence. Such swellings and protrusions leading to contorted flower hats. Leaves scrambling every which way. I can only admire such rich diversity.
Each morning the news comes scrambling to my door. Cramming my eyes with its mix of the starving, the money-glazed, the poisoned lands, the greedy. Until I lose myself and have to fall back and touch my simple inner world where the green springs out with its abundant growth. Where the ancient seeds lie. Where I reach up to birds flying into blue and I am home.
Enjoying a little time with my granddaughters, seeing their delights, listening to their stories. So my painting and playing roll in together as I go. So the unconscious comes out of the darkness rich with leaf and colour and into conscious light.
So once again I arrive at the white page that offers no solution and once again I am hopeless in its grip. So once again the real work starts. Dreaming again among the glorious entanglements of nature. No big vision here, no fully formed composition. Painting among the odds and ends. The treasures from below. Just the wonderful mess of reality coming together in random spurts. It’s always further than you think but still closer than you know. And I never know anything. So that’s helpful.
At my time of life birthdays are no longer the welcome celebrations they are for my granddaughters. For me, it’s just another one to add to so many that have gone. But still I love to see their anticipation and excitement - and once again I can laugh and share their happiness and that of so many others. Happy birthday.
Becoming a dog owner I became a pack member. I didn’t know it at the time. There was no clear explanation as to how it came about. But after a while I understood it and had to give way. It was in part the constant following. Everywhere. It was an ancient, serious business. I say this, but I have no proof. But since I am “not entirely dependent on space and time” (Jung) I can say whatever I want. And then again I am comforted in this because people say all kinds of things they know nothing about. So there is that.
Somehow the unconscious scatters the seeds of synchronicity and entanglement across my painting. Ideas spring out of the darkness and burst into leaves and flowers. Thoughts twine and twist above my head. Everything with its own voice. Dogs and cats give advice. Stones dream and remember and speak. Below mimics above in its own way. Here at the unclaimed boundary a vanished forgotten sea still ebbs and flows. Still not finished with us after all this time.
For those of us out on the edge, far from the noise, far from reality, I catch at silence and its intangible offerings. The fascinating pull of objects that appear when I don’t know what to do or how to do it. Putting one foot in front of the other. Disinterested in the results but still moving along through my own darkness while planting my own small thanks for everything.
There’s a lot of comfort to be had from listening to pulp fiction. Mostly it removes the need to think which I suppose can also make it pretty pointless. But I find that it can also be freeing since it allows other elements, previously hidden by logical thought, to emerge. Life goes on as the writer burbles away in the background. Mysteries get solved. Goodies get their reward. The missing are found. Bad fortune turns to good. Baddies get whatever they deserve. Mostly. It’s another world but not one that needs my close attention. A relief really from the news and the general unhappiness. Mostly.
Sometimes I can’t get out to be in nature as much as I would like. Walking and using my eyes to pay attention to all the tiny details, slowly allowing the greenery to cleanse my spirit from the outside. Step by step. So instead of rambling I feel the unconscious conspiring from where it lives in its non-spatial universe, sending its images to restore me from the inside. I wait for its arrival by being available, by paying attention. Step by step. Only doing what I have to. Being quiet, being alone, slow and patient. No expectations. Then happiness begins to unfurl itself like a great flower. So much to be grateful for.
I choose colour and chaos and then pattern comes along and before I know it I have made my way into the peace of the present moment. I choose pleasure and artifice and then disregarded elements filter in from the basement and create my personal world. I choose the vivid and the sensual and am flooded with the mess of reality. Everything I notice slips in and rests its head on my paper while I follow my attention. But we all know these dog manipulation strategies. Apparently doing one thing while secretly focusing on another. We are not fooled but still we let it go. Nature winning out over training, resolutions and best intentions. As true for myself as the dog.
They arrive with the grey dawn. Arrowing through the frozen sleep of darkness they fly to restart the cycle of life. Honking and heralding they materialise the great beginnings of Spring. Non-locality things connect and the unconscious, rich with its profusion of images, sets the stage and joins up the dots. Buds and bulbs waking early are the first responders. But I, I struggle along in the background, changing my mind and then finally waking up myself to the present moment when I hear them passing overhead
I plunge into the shock of white card without any idea of what I am going to do. My hands though rescue me with brushes and green paint. They reach out of the darkness and create their own world. They follow their own trails. Leaf memories and other stories I know nothing about. So we go along together. Somehow ancient friends although we don’t discuss anything; speaking different languages and looking in different directions.
Today I am off with the secateurs pruning back the unnecessary that has crept up on me. Lack of self discipline, laziness and general delaying tactics. Distractions. The slide into unnecessary thought that can only take me away from myself. The distant voice criticising from some dried out stony wilderness. Pepper, helpful as always, does nothing useful. Following her nose to happiness. Being herself. An example to us all.
So at the beginning we had to approach each other tentatively. Almost nothing is known. Slowly. Waiting then, and listening for a minuscule direction. I had some such thoughts a while ago but they petered out. I held my horses. It always has to come from elsewhere; during play or being delighted to step aside and watch and let the stream rush itself into being by itself. Whatever grey it chooses, whatever shape it flows into. Whatever memory arises. Whatever the composition. Not having to please anyone is such a delight. An ambiguous intent. A freedom and an invitation.
My mind is always being changed for me. Energy responding to my attention. The painting I journeyed out on using my little raft of pattern is hardly ever where I will end up. It’s a wonder I ever get anywhere. All around me stuff happens all the time. Monday changes to Thursday. Rain comes and rain goes. Changes. Why would things be different for me? Just like all of us I have been woven into this amazing web of life. So I’m always getting ready, plunging into the flow, filled with delight at just being present. Helplessly tossed among the changes. Loving every minute.
I move towards a red violet but I don’t have a plan. A difficult colour in its full song. A hidden rose in its blood that can emerge from the margins with studied carelessness. Looking for a companion I happen upon a lime green, slaked with cream and honey so it’s no threat. But it took me a while to get there. Looking for companions on speed dating is unlikely to be the best idea. Black-eyed-Susan winks down but says nothing.
I never seek happiness. I wouldn’t know where to find it. But still it sneaks up on me like a naughty cat wanting attention while I am busy doing something else. So I might spare it a little tickle while I consider two shapes together. Or while playing with blue and thinking of nothing in particular. And before I know where or who I am I find myself flooded with delight and wonder how it came about? A tiny wren busies herself rummaging about in last year’s leaves and then the sun comes out and everything turns to gold. So it happens for all things.
I’m a very early riser; always eager to savour the day’s untouched energy. There’s an element of stealing to this but since so few want it I have no guilt. The silent city doesn’t notice how my inclination escapes past its orthodox patterns and gets drawn into the personal. Keeping low. Embracing the liminal way. It’s happened gradually with age - this business of working on the margins and not really belonging to the main stream. Thank goodness. What a pointless battle that was for me. So I feel it when the sky lets go and tumbles itself into the garden. Its secret tears misting down. To play. So we can all be as one again. I feel it but I don’t make the rules.
I love my compost bin with its fat pregnant belly. I’m in awe of its silence and mystery. The alchemical darkness at its heart. The invisible internal processes. Mouth open it waits for vegetable scraps. All those things I did not care about. Impressions that I thought had been forgotten. A girl passing with an umbrella. Plant life unfolding like the spirit. Rain dripping like tears through leaves and trees. Then, finally, months later out comes the wonderful dark compost like chocolate for the garden. So my paintings are fed with the fleeting impressions of life and then changed.
I set myself about with colours and a peacock blue rolls its eye at me. Opening the cold secret pool in its heart. Hypnotising. A swallower looking for a lilac milkshake to quench its strength. Even a colour can long for its opposite. Small brushes, you know, like a blind person tentatively feeling their way. Silently locked into another world but still doing their best with this one. ‘Love what you love’ I say as they scumble along blending and terraforming. Coming and going. Absorbing and releasing. Leaving their tiny markings. The longer you take, the longer I can stay here with you. What a delight!
Walking through time I arrive at breakfast. A celebration of taste calling us back to life after the darkness of sleep. Tempting us by spreading its feast of colours and scents. Inviting us to share the excitement of flavour that had once heralded the tentative beginnings of our entry into this world. Into the light of day.
We know nothing of reality and that’s a comfort. Personally I’ve never found it trustworthy. Always over-keen to trap me into one set of boring rules or another. Always with the assumptions. Always with unsatisfactory compromises. So I am invariably uncertain and that’s where I make my bed. That’s where I am lost. That’s where I wander aimlessly among the cast-up objects of the shoreline. No guarantee of results. Delighting in the chaos of possibilities.
Today I find myself painting between thunderstorms. Somehow their dark energies reach out and incline me towards a black purple. I wait. The unconscious is here. I don’t paint in any orderly method. Something here, something there. Just whatever happens to come along. Whenever. My attention is captivated by the slowness of liminal clues, the way waves roll in and roll out and leave treasures behind. Inevitably I miss so much through my own witless stupidity and internal arguments. But still. But still I am its creature. Accepting the chaos while stitching together whatever I can gather. Such a delight to be playing in this garden.
Beyond the steamy window crouches the world. Waiting with a mouthful of worries in its jaws. Here though, in the silence of the bathroom and the warmth of the hot water I can doze and bathe. A few moments to myself. A few moments to return to the simple pleasure of the body. Time passes. The tap drips. On his rug the little dog naps.
“Do you remember her?” She asks. A questing tendril emerges. All around us leaves entangling among plants we love, the ferns, the figs. What we knew. What we didn’t know. What we assumed. And I, distracted, taking in small images like mouthfuls of cake, collect shapes and colours. Such choices, rich with nuance, winding among the stalks, talking of this and that. Until I lose myself, the thread disappeared. Only images remaining. No use talking when you’re looking.
I plant my fragile houses on dark volcanic soil. The narrow band of sky above them a misty, difficult blue. Transient, uncertain shapes that won’t come smooth. Tragic somehow in their seeking for footholds and their cautious balancing. Tenuous walls. Misunderstood, unhappy windows. Uncertain futures. In the foreground though, the old sailing boats rip along through heavy seas, matching the flock of seagulls for speed and purpose. They revel in their element, seized with delight, throwing themselves into the foaming waters. Unexpectedly decisive, created for their moment. I have both feet - the wary one and the reckless one. A tricky path….
So I’m compelled once again to start something new. Don’t know why or what I need but my hands seem to grope their way into colours and shapes from elsewhere. And gradually, from some hidden crack in reality, Spring arrives warm from the sun. Showering blossoms and birds and spreading her treasures over our tables. Tones and textures, patterns and memories. Careless with generosity. Heedless of any lack of attention nature persists, throws herself into life. Time and again she returns. Joyous and optimistic. Somehow I have pushed past the pearly grey days, past the cold and wet and accidentally landed here. Maybe this is exactly what is needed.
My brush touches the naked surface of my paper and through the magic of mark making I invoke time and so change flows out in ultramarine. Slowly it walks across the hot-pressed surface and in front of my eyes a flying plane pauses mid-air; pylons are caught striding over hills; patterns arise and freeze as they transform into landscape; rain into crocuses. That wonderful flux, the melting of shape, colour and thought spilling itself out at random. Overhead wheels the night sky, constellations fluctuating while Nut arches over us all, benign as always, casting her veil, entangling us together even when separated by vast distances. We really are ‘such stuff as dreams are made on’.
Set-aside land. Unregarded. Bordering vast hectares of commercial grain. Field edges dense with accidental mixtures of wild grasses and escaped corn. Across the upper ground pylons block out the sky as they stride across distant hills. Corporate energy coming for all of us. But here in the foreground the wind blows freely through the flowering weeds and the day lilies nod and bow. Here on the margins timelines cross, random events happen, nature continues. Characters from ancient paintings play board games, saplings spring up, hybrids flourish, birds shelter. Here I have somehow become entangled with memories of a long distant paradise that echo in my mind. Perhaps we all remember. Now unregarded but still there in the margins.
Across the background an underwater fantasy unfolds ‘When fishes flew and forests walked’…. Chesterton’s poem seems to blend in with mustard gouache laid over lavender underpainting. A dreamlike dance of sea creatures surrounds a bathing figure. On the phone as always. But the little cat is determined to recall the figure back to reality. Staring daggers.
Ah yes. Women and cats. An old alliance. Well known and well reported. Not completely understood. Partial theories exist. “For I will consider my cat Jeoffry.” We don’t know. That’s the joy of it - stumbling into something so familiar and at the same time something not fully understood. A moment of connection, a moment of quiet companionship (but thankfully saved from drama by cat silliness). A transient portrait rising out of a dark cobalt blue while the velvety textures of gouache reflect comfort and softness. Watercolour fur. “For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit”. Embraced by a moment of happy tranquillity. Before serious comes stomping in with its big boots.
At some point on a dull Monday morning, while looking for something else, I came across my old Chinese vase and fell (once again) into the pleasures of painting. I thought I might try one thing and then another but something else, trapped silently beneath seemed more keen to emerge than any of my wavering ideas. So then I took myself off out of it and allowed the simple nature of my eye to dictate details, exaggerating the shape, enhancing the colour to match, selecting tiny details…. Only towards the end did I manage to take a back seat and perceive how the early buds on the eucalyptus sprig had emerged from something so old. All by themselves. So surprising. I’m just such an old donkey!
For those of us journeymen, outliers who have yet to find their place. For those of us without directions or maps. For those of us who seem to know nothing useful and find ourselves unable to trust in the usual signs. The lighthouse with its steady comforting beam. The fixed stars following their clockwork intricacies. These may not be for us as we trudge the narrow paths instead of the clement way. For us at night all we have are the stars coming down gently like snow flakes in our dreams. Nothing clear cut or gainful just small premonitions.
When phone calls become interminable. When no amount of cute will provide a distraction from endless talking. When the tedious treadmill of daily life threatens to overwhelm. Then, having observed the ways of teenagers, I craft small revenge strategies. Singing to myself with unhappy music at 3 in the morning. Grubbing out the contents of my litter box. Shredding objects of disdain. Disinterring and gifting something recently dead. Some may say ‘attention seeking’ but I say ‘teaching opportunity’. Some may say ‘use divergent thinking’ but I say ‘why would I use anything that diverged away from me?’
Teas at Nana’s house were always happy events, a great exciting rush of pleasure and colour that have remained stored in my memory long after they were over. Even now I find myself drawn into those half-remembered warm moments in the garden in summer or in the kitchen on cold days. Sometimes we would eat her treats under the trumpet flower arch or beside a huge bunch of flowers on the table, teddy bears and toys joining in the fun. Happy eating while taking in colours and scents is a different kind of eating - like feeding your spirit with the best impressions of this generous world. Nana’s generation was not very demonstrative but she was an excellent dressmaker and cook and used these gifts to show her love. Here I have tried to paint the memories I have without concerning myself about reality, so often over-rated.
Suddenly, during the night the frost came and when I walked into my workshop it was cold. ‘Lovely’ I thought wrapping up in jumpers and scarves as I sat down. Then I remembered birds, puffed up against the cold, surprised by the turn of events, how things can change so quickly. How the familiar ways are suddenly abandoned and we can be plunged into unknown territory. Helplessly caught, undecided. Whose decision was this? The barren greenhouse frosted over, the frozen puddle reflecting the cold of navy blue, the bare trees. Only the stars wheel over in their established patterns. Unconfused. Unconcerned. Unhelpful
Dear little Voyager, flung out of your warm familiar bed into a bitter sub-zero darkness you speak to me in tiny bursts of sound. A ghostly haptic touch. A brave warrior plunging into the unknown, carrying a scant handful of trinkets like magic charms against the coldness of death (meaningless to metal-eaters or acid sea dwellers). Still you continue spinning ever-outwards, only tentatively anchored to the earth by the most tenuous of numerals. So I send you fruit and flower greetings from your home (sprinkled with a few Louis Vuitton symbols from travellers’ luggage). So you don’t forget this amazing world. So you know we haven’t forgotten you. Entanglement
Sometimes, on warm summer evenings when the old Chelsea Physic Garden breathes slow and deep, an unexpected sense of excitement breaks out and ribbons it’s way along the paths and curls between the trees. Distant music drifts from the shadows, tiny flickering lights touch a table here, a chair there. In my mind’s eye guests pass under the blossoms in twos and threes. With invitations in their hands, they walk and chat towards the supper club and as they flow they become fairy folk, falling into a dream, falling towards pleasure and food, falling towards laughter and wine, falling into the magic of the garden’s ancient spell, waiting for the evening to begin.
Two blue hyacinths in a black vase. One bows over as if the weight of its flowers are too heavy or as if it’s peering at something on the burnt orange surface below. In the bottom right hand corner a barcode on a sticker, a portal to elsewhere. A ubiquitous symbol of the modern world but also mysterious and ambiguous. It might be an indicator of the cost of the painting or of its content or colour or artist or an index or something other which we don’t know and cannot guess. Carelessly we allow the code’s meaning to bypass us. It can only be deciphered by an electronic reader. Maybe meanings are starting to escape us, semiotics covertly moving past our understood consensus of ‘two blue hyacinths in a black vase'.
When your plants arrive” the instructions said “open the box and leave them outside to rest and acclimatise”. So I did. I left them overnight, near the hedge, ready to catch the early morning sun. Next day, coming out with my trowel in my hand I was full of plans about what should go where. I wandered down the garden and stopped in surprise staring at an unexpected development. A neighbourhood cat had made a nest in the straw packaging. “Well” I thought taken aback, “let’s leave it for a while then”. So, like an intruder, I took my trowel, my plans and myself back to the kitchen and had a well-earned cup of tea. Decisions.
Copyright © 2026 Gertie Young