This is where I am. The chair looks comfy, but as I get older, despite spending a fortune of Snap Crackle and Pop with a horrible chiropractor, my neck hurts like billy-o when I sit driving the desk. There's a drawing board/drafting table out of range of the photo, for when I draw, but since I'm in a writerly phase right now, I thought that the writing desk was germane. The bunny in pink is Willa from Joyce Dunbar's book Tell Me Something Happy Before I go to Sleep which I illustrated waaaay back when I was pregnant with my youngest daughter. Got so big I could barely reach the watercolour paper with my brushes and I was parcelling the artwork up to post to London when I was in labour. The black lizard/salamander is Orynx from my novel Deep Trouble, the long huge poster of the fox mummy and her child is from my best book ever called 'No Matter What' and if you've got very sharp eyes you'll just be able to see the sheriff's badge pinned to the wall just below the foxes, on the bottom left hand corner of them in fact. That badge is one of my most precious possessions and was given to me by a lovely sheriff in Kansas right at the very end of a book tour celebrating No Matter What being the book chosen for the inaugural Kansas Library's One Book One State initiative. By the time the sheriff barrelled into the diner where I was eating a late supper before falling into bed and then flying home the next day, I was so trashed that my voice had disappeared. What a tour that was. So moving, so heartbreaking and so life-affirming at the same time.
My inspiring view is out to the woodpile and, you can't see, but I can, to the compost heap. I could, if I turned my chair through 90 degrees, look out on sky and hills, but d'you know what? I prefer my wood and compost.And right now, today, i'm looking out on hailstones.
Happy Easter!
I haven't quite finished yet - there are another three months and some rather worrying exams to grapple with yet!
ReplyDeleteI certainly will be picking my commune carefully. The aim is chiefly to learn some of the skills that seem to have been left out of my education (planting carrots, chopping wood, milking cows) in a productive and self-sustaining manner. The WWOOF organisation seems to cater to such a need, and (according to friends who have volunteered through it before) appears reliable - so hopefully I won't be causing my mother too many sleepless nights!
That really is a great deal of wheat. Especially when you consider that most of us don't actually have any involvement in its production. What about other sources of carbohydrate? Potato bread uses less wheat, and I don't imagine that potatoes take up as much room. Having said that, there is something blissful about kneading, baking and eating real, all-wheat loaves. The best we can do, perhaps, is to recognise the sheer amount we consume, and then to appreciate it proportionately. And to stay off the deer.
It's been hailing down here too - we had enough snow on Sunday for a few snowmen to appear in the college gardens. Then, inevitably, the heating system broke, and the hot water bottle, thermal socks and tub of boiled water had to make a re-appearance.
Jess
hi
ReplyDeletethank you for useful knowledges
good blog
http://knit-croche.blogspot.com/