I have had a couple of reviews published on ezines recently. The first of which is a review of Lateralus by Tool for a Classic Albums section of the e-journal. You can read it here.
The second is a review of a wonderful book called a Handmade Life, please go here to read my review.
I’ve been having so much fun recently, away from my computer and involved instead in much more down-to-earth activities. Mary and I have been cooking in the woods a lot, but now she has gone off to live with Dick Strawbridge and co down in Cornwall for a while.
I’ve been making many jams and jellies, the most delicious of which being the Elderberry and Blackberry jam. Crab apple jelly was so, so yummy but Mr Kite and I went too far beyond the setting point and it has the consistency of Turkish Delight rather than jelly. Works beautifully well in jam tarts though.
The beetroot chutney I made is really good. I wish I had made more. Next plan is for some tomato chutney.
I have also started up gymnastics after a ten year hiatus. It’s incredible how my muscles remember what to do. I just run up to the springboard and then I do a handspring vault just as cleanly as I did when I was 14. When I was last a gymnast I suffered a lot from lack of confidence, and I never liked to do backwards things. I assumed I wasn’t built for gymnastics. Now I’m older and slightly more confident I know I can do these things if I put in the training. I learnt to do a backflick yesterday, which is something I was always much too afraid to try in my however many years of childhood gymnastics. I’ve managed to do front somersaults, handsprings and a dodgy backflick after just two sessions.
I’ve been away from the internet for a short time, and might not be back for a few days or weeks. As I said in my last post; I finished writing the first draft of a novel and figured it would be nice to spend some time doing practical things. I feel like jotting down some interesting things I have seen and done recently.
I saw an Osprey down at a lake a little way from my house, in fact there is a picture of the lake on an earlier post and a mention of spotting a strange large bird that I thought was black, or at least dark. It transpires that the bird was probably an Osprey; and even if it wasn’t, I later saw one for sure. I had the great fortune to go by the lake when some twitters were set up there with their long lenses. I asked them what the bird I might have seen earlier in the month might have been and they directed me to look in the lenses. There it was sitting in a tree, all proud and beautiful. An Osprey. I couldn’t believe it.
Myself and my boyfriend (Mr Kite) made some jam (a batch of strawberry and a batch of raspberry, picked at Ansty PYO). It’s so delicious. We’re going to make some hedgerow jams and jellies tomorrow with the help of our newest fabulous friend, Mary. I love meeting new friends, especially ones who are on my same wavelength. Today we went to the woods near Bath, and Mary and I were working in the outdoor kitchen together, baking a cake in the cob oven and making delicious food for the workers to wolf down. We both would like very much to be homemakers in self-sufficient heaven. Maybe someday we will. Maybe I will post some photos of this sometime.
Cheese fair in Stir on Saturday and then back to the woods for more outdoor cookery on Sunday. Fun times!
My all round favourite is probably Ash, for the sheer versatility of it. Ash is a wonderful wood to whittle things from, it’s strong and fairly flexible. The only wood to burn well mature or green is Ash, and it’s a very handsome tree.
My favourite individual tree is the Wyndham Oak in Silton, near where I live. This tree is so old that Sir Hugh Wyndham, who died in 1684, sat under this tree. It’s massive and gnarly and beautiful.
Aesthetically I think white poplar is very stunning. It shimmers and dances in the wind. A whole row of them look so out of this world, like you’ve fallen through a wardrobe and come out the other side.
And you?
I made two batches of shortbread today with the help of my little sister. One made with caster sugar and the other with Dorset honey. This is the consensus: refined sugar is no good for anything. Honey is good for bees and good for me and it tastes damned good in shortbread.
I finished the first draft of the novel I am writing for the same sister who helped me bake shortbread. I feel sad to know that I will no longer be journeying with these few characters I have shaped and learned to respect along the way. At least now I can finally get on with things. Learn to make a basket, whittle a spoon, bake some bread. I’ve been too long sucked into this world of my creation. Time now to immerse myself into a world that created itself.
This is an old freewritten thing I wrote some time ago:
She worshipped him. He ignored her. Never once did he answer any of her letters, yet she never lost faith in the hope that one day he might show her he loved her like they said he did. It was more their fault than hers or his. They told her that he loved her more than anything in the world, and the more she spoke with him and tried to please him the more he would love her. They told her that he liked things to be done in a certain way so she made sure to do everything in the correct way so as to please him. They told her to deprive herself of things to show him how much she loved him. In actual fact they didn’t even know him; he did not care what she did or how she did it. He thought she was stupid for being gullible enough to take all they said literally without thought or reason.
I have to go on a walk everyday otherwise I start to loose connection with what’s important and what isn’t. The only days that I don’t go on walks is if it’s raining heavily or I have become too neurotic and sucked into what I am working on, which usually happens when I haven’t gone on a walk in a while.
Yesterday it rained all day. I did not go for a walk. My words started to slip and get lost somewhere between my animus and my ego.
The day before yesterday I went for a walk. I thought I was gone less than an hour, but when I came home it was already 6pm. I’d been walking for almost three hours. When I walk I try hard to push verbal thoughts out of my head, to live only with what my eyes see, my ears hear, my nose smells, my skin touches, my tongue tastes. Anything beyond this, anything verbal, I try to dispel. I am a verbose person, I guess that’s why I choose to write stories. If I’m not careful I start to drown in words. It isn’t good. It isn’t healthy. I have to take a break sometimes.
I am very fortunate to live in a stunningly beautiful place. The things I feel for this land are extremely primal and powerful. I love this land more than I love almost anything else. Within walking distance of my little white cottage there is so much to see. Here are some photographs of just a tiny amount of the treasures they lay in the surrounding three miles of my house. I don’t often photograph my walks because the process of photographing what is around me detaches me from my surroundings. I get stuck in Plato’s Cave. But I’ve walked these paths so many times that I think it’s now ok to respond to them from a reflective, detached point of view, on occasion.
This is the foundry. It’s been slowly decaying for 14 years, left abandoned. In 1860 the largest water wheel in Europe was in operation at this foundry (60ft diameter), and this was where the wheel was made. Bomb casings for WW2 were made here. It’s had countless uses, and now after hundreds of years of operation this place lies silent; a window into our history. A lot of the villagers want it to be demolished, because it's been decaying like this for 14 years and they think it is ugly. I think it is beautiful. It's a magnet, it draws in young creative people from all over. Music videos have been filmed here, art and photography projects inspired by it, graffiti artists turning the peeling white paint into a huge canvas for their work.
In a small wood beyond the foundry, up past the golf course, there are a number of underground bunkers that were built in WW2. They have something to do with the nearby Zeals airfield, which was in operation at that time. When myself and my siblings were children we’d play here, afraid that tramps lived in the bunkers. Even to this day I approach them with caution, terrified some bedraggled old man will stagger out into the light.
A view of the forest.
New Lake. I sat here on the shore for a long while, watching the herons and a strange black bird. Not sure what that was. It was huge and hulking and beautiful, nesting in the corner of the lake I think. This lake is very close to the famous Stourhead gardens.
This forest is quite large and stretches from here up to Longleat. One day I will walk from home, from the most Southerly point of this forest, right up to the most northerly point.
This is my favourite place in the whole world. It doesn’t capture well on the camera because its beauty is subtle. I can sit in this coombe for hours on end and never feel bored. A small stream bubbles down the trough of the valley, dragonflies darting across the water. Beyond the valley is a small copse in which is a witch’s cottage.
And here we are parallel with the foundry, back near the start of the walk. The distant view of Shaftesbury across the vale. That’s a town where most of my friend’s live. Sometimes I wish I lived there too, because though I am very shy, I like to be in the company of my friends. I don’t have a car. The town is up a steep hill. I am not fit enough to comfortably cycle it yet.
Where will I walk today? I don't know. I try to let my feet guide me and not plan it out in advance.
On Friday it was my mum's birthday. I wrote a story for her, which I made into a nice little book. Here are some pictures of it (please click on them to view them) :
On a similar note: I am starting to compile some stories together with the intention of making a short story collection and then maybe selling it. Most of the stories are allegorical, or freewritten or both. I have a few ideas in mind for the aesthetics that will probably mean I will self publish the collection. The way I want the artwork to look and feel and sound is very important, and in order to get it exactly right I think I will have to do it all myself.I’m really keen to collaborate on this one, but it’s early days so I’m going to refrain from talking about the kind of stuff I’m looking into. Keep your specs peeled for more news.
