Well Day Four has been very unusual , It's had its comic moments, some moments of clarity and determination and also, I won't lie, some very dark moments indeed. Weirdly the second trip around wind swept car parks in Penrith in search of the Mobile MRI unit turned out to be quite a memorable highlight when set against another e-mail from our landlord accusing us (falsely I promise) of aggression and then returning home to find them actually here!
It turns out that having your head scanned is like a cross between a nasty pot holing incident and a panic attack at a techno night. Who knew all my misspent nights at Goodgreef would come in so handy? Trapped in a Smartie tube wearing a Darth Vader mask and ear plugs was almost unbearable until I realised that the drilling, hammering, beeps and jolts had a rhythm not unlike a banging dance tune (remember Tyres in Spaced dancing to the kettle and the beeps of the traffic crossing?) Never underestimate the power of dance music, I think it was the most relaxed I've been all week. I haven't drawn anything today though, not yet anyway.

In other news I went to church. This is the beautiful church down the lane; I'm not a Christian but I've always loved churches and church yards and this one is a very special place. I stopped my snivelling and wandered around the stones, carefully avoiding the snowdrops pushing up through the mossy grass. It was a lesson in belonging, being "hefted". The stones bare just a handful of names, all stating which house they were from; generations of the same families most of whom are still here, living in those same houses. I walked back slowly up the hill, all the time thinking about what it means to truly belong to a place, about diversity in rural communities and about how, even from the point of view of my own relatively privileged background, it's getting harder and harder to live in places like this unless you inherit or are unusually well off. I'm glad I didn't raise my children here, the housing issues in the Lakes are shocking, although things are much the same in the North Yorkshire village where they grew up. Not sure of the answer and obviously I'm biased; probably my new lockdown breaking neighbour has a different point of view...

I wanted to show you this just for fun, I hope I'm allowed as it is from the family archive. I absolutely love this picture and I've been thinking about it a lot because it's also about belonging. The photograph was taken by my dad in the early 70's just before my paternal grandparents retired from running Allan's Store on Linthorpe Road in Middlesbrough. They'd been there since about 1947. It's a staged picture, with my mum playing the part of a customer while Grandad and Grandma do the hard sell on a tin kettle but I also love the girl skipping along the pavement looking straight at the camera.
I was born and grew up in London, moving North to be near our Grandparents (both sets from Middlesbrough) when I was 13 - so I always had hangups about not belonging, being the outsider with the "posh" accent. I still do but this picture makes me happy, it's a root, a little bit of history and context (and those yellow clogs of my mum's were ankle wreckers!) x