February 29th

I travel to York this cold, frosty, bright morning. At York station, a woman poses strangely beneath the iconic Victorian clock above the footbridge, and I see a clear plastic knife on the steps down. I collect a pair of bottle green trousers I have ordered online, from the website's corresponding shop, where customer service is taken seriously and I am treated with kindness, and invited to try on my trousers, which I decline to do, telling the young assistant that I know they are the right size (I have others the same but in different colours).

In the cafe where I eat my favourite Bostock (or brioche aux amandes) and drink a decaff cappuccino, I share a table with a young man wearing headphones and reading Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death. I go to therapy. Mostly I feel glad it is February 29th, since in leap years the actual day of my Dad's death arrives and stays for a day - before going away again for four years. In the other years its absence underscores his and is always upsetting (as I have often written about here and in the old blog before, so you know it's true). Today's Google doodle might have been made for me and my family. 28 years. So, so.

Travelling

Tomorrow we head for London. It will be my first trip since travelling down to help my sister clear my mother's room a year ago. L and I will stay in the pleasant hotel where we stayed just a few weeks before that, round the corner from the care home, when I went to visit Mum for the last time, though I didn't know it then. Right in the heart of NW3, it is also only a stone's throw from the flat where we lived when we first moved to London from Hertfordshire, where my mother remained until she married R some ten years later.

These are also the last few days running up to my Dad's four yearly 'real' anniversary, and he too lived in North London for many years, between my parents' separation, and his death in 1988. The whole thing feels something of a pilgrimage, though there are other exciting objectives to our journey too, of which more later.

Sometimes

Sometimes I am the dead
stamping all over the living.

Sometimes the dead stand all around me.

Time

Hot honey lemon and ginger. Not ill, but the immune system being kept busy after being in the artist's studio last week with several people with coughs, colds and the like. Flurries of snow this morning, first pellets, then sleet, as I drove over to Leeds, but none that settled. Wednesday it felt like spring in the sunshine, today definitely winter again. It's that time of year.

Eight Images

Dip

I will share some images from the drawing course in the coming days but for now let me just say

a studio in an attic with panoramic views and acrobatic jackdaws wheeling
pencils and chalks and charcoal and Indian ink and paper a plenty
music to draw to, dream to, play to
a sharpened stick to dip in ink and dance across the page
lovely S who created a space of freedom and safety
lovely B who brought tea up to the attic at just the right times
a group that halved overnight due to the lingering bugs of winter
leaving the remaining three of us today with privileged space and focused attention

the freedom to play and dream, and not know and see what happens
make marks, discover media, and be amazed

Tonight the rain

again

Baby Sun

The season of Imbolc. I read somewhere: It is the day we honour the rebirth of the sun, and we may visualise the baby sun nursing from the Goddess's breast. How great! Thanks to Sabine for the reminder. I am noticing the time I am closing the curtains is a little later and a little later, and when I wake up sometimes there's a hint of early light. Tomorrow I'm off to my drawing course, with sketches, photographs and poetry relating to the willow herb I love so much. I don't know what will unfold and I'm excited to find out. I'll also take my camera since I now know (more or less) how to use it!! The rose bay willow herb, as you may remember, is the phoenix of wild plants, also known as fire weed since its seeds can survive fire. Hence its colonisation of bomb sites in WW2. Fire weed for the fire festival. Synchronicity. The meaningful coincidence.