Pembrokeshire

I (more than) survived my three nights in a tent alongside J's yurt, on the (at times windswept) Pembrokeshire coast, close to the Ceredigion border. My friend J has chosen a magnificent spot to spend her summer, and I felt very privileged to share a few days there with her.

And here's the view from my tent.

We sat inside the yurt, gazing out at the ever-changing sea, and across to Cardigan Island through the doorway, for hours at a time. The beauty of the yurt is you can have a feeling of being inside and outside at the same time. It is very light inside, yet cosy, and while you sit there you feel as close as can be to the land and the sea.

The yurt, made by J herself on a course in Cornwall many years ago, is a thing of considerable beauty and elegance.

When we weren't simply gazing out to sea, we pottered on beaches, walked along fantastic stretches of the coast path, picked blackberries, read, ate, talked, and were silent.

Cusp

I'm heading off to the Pembrokeshire coast on Tuesday for a few days to visit my old friend J who is spending the summer there in her yurt. I shall be sleeping in a tent nearby which anyone who knows me well will know is a very unexpected development. The last time I slept under canvas must be cracking on thirty years ago, on a not especially successful holiday with my then boyfriend. No, I'm not a natural camper, and the prospect of three nights on a campsite is stirring up all kinds of infant anxiety... However, J is a close friend of the kind to whom I can say what's on my mind ('I'm really scared about going for a wee in the night...') On a more adult level I'm looking forward very much to some 'quality time' with my friend, and being by the sea, and the rest can take care of itself. I hope to do some writing while I'm there. I shall take photographs of the yurt amongst other things to share with you upon my return. Before I go, I am launching my new practice working with children, with a meeting tomorrow evening with the parents of a prospective young client. The blue room is pretty much ready, though still awaiting a dragon or two. Deep breaths...

More Surprises

I find it fairly awkward to write about art, but must just tell you that there were more marvellous surprises at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. For one, it is a very lovely building with a wonderfully converted interior with lots of wood (stairs, floors), and a calm and inviting atmosphere, that made us want to stay and stay. Also a great cafe (always important) with a nice terrace overlooking a garden, with lavender. An exemplary brownie and decaf latte made a wonderful gastro-interlude, sitting under rather a lot of cloud, but just warm enough, despite a few tentative drops of rain (the only ones that day), which sent others scurrying inside while we sat it out, and watched the clouds blow along...

First we enjoyed Scottish Colourists, especially Peploe of whom I had not even heard, but whose small intimate oils were a delight. There were some utterly wonderful, small 'on-the-spot' oils of the sea - just the sea, the movement of the waves. I think they were by Peploe but I cannot find out for certain now... Robert Therrien's giant stack of plates towered over us, and looked in danger of toppling over, giving me an uneasy sensation in my stomach, while his giant table you could walk beneath, and four chairs made us feel like the Borrowers. Most exciting of all was a video piece by the Boyle Family. Shown on a large screen that lay flat like a table or perhaps a big shallow box was a piece of film of the sea. Waves moving, swirling and lapping. The position of the screen gives the illusion that the water is real, contained somehow in the 'box', yet the pixels are visible, and one has an uneasy awareness of the artifice all the while experiencing some of the same mesmerising, soothing sensations as when watching the sea in reality. Beautiful, unsettling, and resonating on all sorts of levels questions about the relationship between 'art' and 'reality'.

North Berwick

Forty-four pale blue sails tip the horizon,
point up towards lengths of marbled cloud
as the voices of children, muffled by the sand
are held in stillness over small waves,
the same if I close my eyes
as forty years ago, or thirty or ten,
the same salt smell, the same scratchy tap
of a spade on the bottom of a bucket.

Edinburgh Surprises

Edinburgh was full of surprises - the secret leafy feel of the Water of Leith Walkway, though it goes through the heart of the city. At times we felt we were in a green tunnel, dark and cool, emerging after a time into dappled light. Sometimes we had to come away from the river for a few moments, and find our way back to the Walkway, across a road and round a bend. The loveliness of Dean Village and Stockbridge which the Walkway took us through.

This statue of Hygieia Goddess of Health, who guards St Bernard's Well, whose waters are said to be health-giving (not that any of this can be learned at the site - I had to look it up on the internet!)


The sheer variety of the architecture in the city, its height, grandeur, and yet, what I want to call friendliness... so that despite its often towering qualities, it never seemed to intimidate as some city architecture can...


...except perhaps the Castle!



And then there were the cats! Not really a surprise, and yet, I had perhaps forgotten the very great pleasures of the company of cats. And they allowed us, total strangers, into their lives with such a good grace. They were at first a little wary, appropriately enough, then rather curious, and soon positively affectionate in Cassie's case, who came and made herself comfortably at home on my lap, entirely without prompting, of an evening. Sirius, of a rather different cast of character, was magnanimously accepting of worship, in the form of stroking and tender words...
Sirius in particular, reminded us strongly of our dear departed Kali, dead these nine years. A poignant pleasure.

Cassie takes a stroll around the garden.

Sirius as a pot of begonias...

More surprises still to come. Don't miss the next thrilling instalment...

Whose Words?

I'm sorting out stuff, making way for the establishment of the play therapy room. I came across this quotation, scrawled (by me) on a piece of scrap paper (in fact a piece of headed paper from the housing co-op where we lived in London...)

True art is a matter of existence, not of product, and there are phases when you must exist in a form that you can neither perceive accurately nor understand. In this time when so much is possible (I think it says possible), remember that you don't have what it takes, you are what it takes.

Unattributed, and I'm damn' sure I didn't write it! Julia Cameron maybe? Anyone?

The bit I love is phases when you must exist in a form that you can neither perceive accurately nor understand. I think maybe I'm just emerging from such a phase.

Edinburgh

So, Edinburgh. We had a wonderful three days in and around the city, which blew me away with its architectural grandeur and variety, its laid-back atmosphere, its gorgeous river walk, its lovely gallery of modern art, its proximity to the (proper) seaside. And then there were the beautiful cats (of whom more later)... who were generous enough to share their home with us from Monday to Friday. Which is of course also Isabelle's home, whose generosity must also be celebrated, though she was not there. We were comfortable, and felt at home from the word go, surrounded by the family library of fiction, poetry and reference, which we dipped into freely. We even, unexpectedly, had opportunities to sit in I's lovely garden, since the weather was actually warm and dry (almost) the whole time, which from the perspective of West Yorkshire this last five or six weeks, is little short of a miracle! The forecast before we set off was rubbish, but somehow the dark clouds that loomed as the train pulled into Waverley station, and which gathered and darkened now and then, were gracious enough to break up every day, allowing hot sunshine to accompany us on our walk along the Water of Leith Walkway to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and on to the Botanic Gardens, on our exploration of the city, Old Town and New, and on our day out to North Berwick! Just one brief shower when we were sitting on the beach, and heavy rain to accompnay our departure yesterday. Aside from that, dry and warm and mellow!!

At the Gallery of Modern Art, and along the Water of Leith is Antony Gormley's latest series of life-size figures '6 Times'. This one just beneath the Gallery itself.

We walked as far as Stockbridge to see another, but didn't venture all the way to the docks at Leith to see the complete set.

People are beginning to remark upon Gormley's repetition of this theme, his wide dissemination of images of himself. I'd only seen the London ones before these, and loved them. And these I found poignant, lonely, courageous, tender. Perhaps its the water that makes them seem especially vulnerable, exposed. Yet, enduring, despite the rust...