Confessions of a straight lace

This is my 2013 vision board.
Owing to various circumstances I didn't finish it until last week.
I've had the images stashed away for ages, the words rolling around my head. I know how I want this year to feel.
The thing is this: I'm worried about that word Wild. I don't think I am capable of being Wild. Not really.
That woman up there, on that board, she is so intimidating to me right now.
I was teaching my watercolour class yesterday. We were painting images of rambling gardens. Lovely English cottage gardens. Lupins, poppies, alliums. Little stone benches. Willow trees bowing in a light June breeze and little gateways hidden behind over grown foliage. I had one of those rare moments where you actually recognise your own contentment at the time you are feeling it. I had found a little patch of sunlight to sit in. There was the sound of paintbrushes in water and I think I might have heard a cookoo in the distance.
On Monday I will pop over to Hornton, the village my mum comes from. A lot of my family still live there and there will be proper Mayday celebrations. There will be a Maypole. Homemade cake and cider in the pub garden.
I don't know how to be that woman; wild, unapologetic, natural and brave, in these quaint settings. That little word. It just popped into my head without me giving it a huge amount of thought as to what it meant to me. And, of course, in my woefully naive way, I have become worried that it might mean going out when I don't want to, drinking when I don't want to, talking to people when I don't want to, talking to men when I don't want to. I'm worried it might mean accidentally becoming something I'm not. Which I have accidentally done before.

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Ok. It's three hours later. I very often write blog posts that I don't publish, mainly because they are a bit open ended.
I have decided to define what this word means to me.
Wild.
It means being slightly more audacious.
It means apologising less.
It means tending to my own needs before everyone else's.
It means listening to my body more.
It means calling people out on their bullshit. Quietly and politely. And then probably running away and hiding.
It means, actually, just doing what I bloody well want to do. Without reference to any of the dozens of people I nod at and say hello to as I walk from one end of this small town to the other.

Seed heads workshop

 

A happy day spent painting with a group of enthusiastic students. When I'm teaching I do tend to sit there sometimes and think "I can't believe I get paid to do this".

This kind of painting, the kind that pays tribute to the change in seasons, that asks you to respond the world around you, puts me right back in to the moment. After three months of drifting in and out of my life I have slipped quietly into autumn and, as the natural world winds down and prepares to sleep, I feel awake at last.

I had planned to spend the evening tidying the flat, exercising and making food in preparation for a colleague's leaving do tomorrow. However, I've paid a visit to my mum instead. She has wine. And homemade chicken soup.



Fowey, Cornwall, part one

An indulgent Saturday

I went to this place yesterday, one my favourite places ever. I spent the afternoon happily traipsing around looking at vintage cake stands, green glass, Edwardian table linen and antique jewellery. I cooed over French grain sacks and one particularly fetching oak table. In Cafe Violette next door I had something called Chocolate Lover's Delight.

In the evening I caught up with friends in Oxford, where we went to this place and I had a Messy Jessie and a peanut butter milkshake. On the Cowley road we drank in pubs sticky with snakebite and smelling of stale goth. I am always more comfortable in these darkened hovels, in trainers. I am over 6ft 2 in heels. People make so much desperate effort in small towns.

I wondered down Walton Street in Jericho admiring the little terraced houses with their tiny doors. There is a bookshop there called The Albion Beatnik Bookshop. It was still open at 11.30pm. There was a man in a wizard outfit stood in the window. On a low wall someone had left not an empty can of Stella but an empty bottle of vintage cognac. In the Jude the Obscure, on the toilet door, I found a solitary piece of violently scrawled graffiti, stating simply I love him.

Why I hate dresses

Another family wedding to go to on Friday. Despite being single and, at times, embittered, I love weddings. I love weddings involving my family most of all. It's a guarantee that by the end of the evening someone will end up crying in the loos, someone will have to go home early because they haven't paced themselves, someone will have fallen over and flashed their knickers, every female present will have long ago discarded their crippling shoes somewhere on the dance floor and people will be drinking Courvoisier because there will be nothing else left behind the bar.

The thing is I can never get the outfit right. I always end up feeling uncomfortable, hemmed in, tummy control knickers cutting off my circulation. I bought a great dress two months ago but, because of exercise and dieting, it now resembles a beige sack. I have spent the last two days traipsing around the shops and sobbing in stuffy dressing rooms and have come up empty handed. I have decided to wear the beige sack anyway. At least it won't be too tight for a change and it won't matter once I've downed a few glasses of wine.

Love in the Mist

This is a work in progress, I'm using a new type of paper and, though it is lovely and allows the paint to granulate and create wonderful effects, I'm not sure it's getting on very well with the masking fluid. Every time I try and peel it off, some of the paper comes away too.


This is my painting corner. I still think I need to have a bit of a move around of furniture but last night, sat here with the candles burning, felt good. The flat has been well and truly man-proofed with flowers, fairy lights and bits of fabric draped everywhere.

Yesterday afternoon was spent at another family do, this time saying goodbye to Jenny and Ben who are off to Hong Kong to live for two years. It's going to feel very strange without them. There was too much food as per usual but where we really excelled ourselves was with the puddings; Boozy Chocolate Mousse, Chocolate Mousse Pie, Eton Mess, Carrot Cake, Apple Pie, Red Velvet Cupcakes and, best off all, cupcakes made to look like panda bears. Consequently I spent most of last night slumped on the sofa in a sugar and Prosecco induced coma. I even dozed off during Sherlock.