The sun reappeared last Thursday and after braving the madness of market day Keswick in the Easter holidays I came home and trudged up the valley to lie down on the footbridge for a think. Lying on my back, on the sun warmed wood and looking straight up at the sky, the fells seemed to lean over me in a dizzying way that confused my phone into auto rotating the photograph I took ( the one below). I was only slightly worried that the more serious, less horizontal walkers on the tops would assume I had collapsed; more concerned that vertigo would send me rolling off into the water. I basked in the sunshine feeling a little like I was looking down on the ravens who were flying aileron loops and barrel rolls, apparently just for the joy of it. Perhaps one of those walkers will will read this and be able to stop worrying; my last post was a lesson in never assuming total anonymity or invisibility just because I feel alone - one of those runners I described passing me as I wrote, turned out to be the lovely Hester Cox. We actually know each other a little and I love her work, but the unlikely setting/circumstances for a meeting had made us doubt our own eyesight! I like things like that, I like connections and co-incidences, random meetings and making links.
sonder
Anyway, I was happy to be outside with the sun in my face. After an endless winter I'd started to doubt my love of the fells and their ability to provide any kind of solace. I had a lot of thinking to do and it's easier to think near water don't you find? I was meant to be contemplating ten years of Witchmountain, ten years since getting my fabulous degree and this blog post was supposed to be all fanfares and party hats but, well of course this is real life. I ended up doing a trawl though 10 years of blog posts for entirely different reasons. Here she is, the Queen of the Mountains, the last of the Westwood Studio kittens (my parent's farm), the end of a long line of familiars, the "bloody cat", the muse for Rupert's silly songs, she of the impossibly untouchable, temptingly fluffy tummy and lethal claws, the last of my Snilesworth companions... now only the imaginary bear is left.
The house is quiet today, I keep hearing the ghost of a bell but for the first time in my life I have no animal company. Hey ho Toast, happy hunting; I'm glad the sun shone on your last day.
Goodness! Are you still with me? I'm pretty conflicted about tragic pet posts -there is so much love, so very much, but I couldn't help feeling how lucky she was to be able to leave peacefully, with dignity and without pain. As soon as we returned from the vets a bird landed on the windscreen and wouldn't leave, Pied Wagtail, Polly-Wash-Dish, silly bird. Without voicing it at the time we both had the same thought, a transmigration of souls perhaps.
So...It's April 2018! Two exciting things are going on at the moment, the first is this...
The Folklore exhibition opened in Bristol on Friday evening and it looked like a great night, very well attended. The images are all fascinating with such a diverse selection of artists and folk tales from around the world. It was something of an honour to be included in this curated show. It continues until April 18th and I think someone should turn it into book because I'd love to read more about the stories and why the artists chose them, their working practises and so on. Any publishers out there?
The second super exciting thing is that I got asked to provide images for two poetry pamphlets due for publication in May. Polly Atkin, from Grasmere, has been been so good to me since I first met her online around the time I moved the Lakes. Her poems have at times wrung deeply suppressed tears from me and on a more practical note she once leant me her swimming costume for an impromptu dip in Grasmere so I'm stupidly happy that one of my cyanotypes will be gracing the cover of her latest pamphlet. The two are published by New Walk Editions and will be launched on 22 May at Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham.
More of that strange connectedness of life as my dad is just about to launch the project he has been working on with poet Alice Oswald. The exhibition of their watercolour and poetry collaboration opens in London on April 26th .Now the day is slipping past and I forgot to eat lunch so I will save my ramblings about the past 10 years and the joys of trying to make this creative life pay its way until next time when there will also be news of a prize draw and other such sweeteners. Thank you so much for reading.Here's that cat again...an old embroidery sample from about 2009 that proves at least that my photography has improved slightly in the intervening years.
Reading: I just finished a proof copy of "The Psychology of Time Travel" by Kate Mascarenhas, out in August. Watching and thinking about ...[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkoML0_FiV4&w=560&h=315] SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave
This past week or two I have been pondering the meaning of life and the secrets of success and happiness while traveling on slow trains, celebrating major life events in inspirational cities and continuing to explore the wonderful land of mountains, lakes and lush bracken jungle that I'm constantly surprised to be suddenly living in. Maybe I should have opted for Philosophy at university like my lovely brother (so I could say what I mean more clearly)... anyway it seemed to me, at low points, that success and happiness are almost always measured in monetary terms. I've been horrified this week by news stories about the Prime Minister's pay rise while doctors are being told they don't work hard enough, people work like hell to subsist on minimum wage, important benefits are cut and don't even start me on the proposed reforms to the hunting bill. It was the hypocrisy and lack of respect for anything other than Mammon that upset me most. It's easy to feel like a failure (professional, financial or personal) in a game someone else invented... and then to find out they're sitting on half the cards and the rule book. And so, yesterday I forced myself to look at what I had actually achieved in the day, a day in which I felt low and unmotivated, and it was this...
1. I finished some stitching on a print I hope to show at 
2. A pan of gooseberries for a fool (!) and a plate of warm peanut butter biscuits. 
3. I made a climbing chalk bag from a piece of cyanotype printed fabric and other things found in a hastily packed box of fabrics.So, take away the crushing sense of failure that means I am too poor to buy a flat with a nice kitchen for my daughter, a house with a studio for my parents or a car that works for my son... surely all we need is food, warmth and shelter and a bit of love...oh and creativity. Everyone should be able to afford this by virtue of their daily work and I never will understand the crazy economics of a world that sets such inequalities at its heart.
Goodness, this wasn't meant to be a soap box tirade, sorry. Its just that I was in Bristol last week for my daughter's graduation. It was a lovely and emotional time and we had a lot of fun, saw some great 
It is a proud and melancholy feeling to realise that both my children are now grown up and have the hats to prove it. My nest is very empty and now begins my slide into eccentric old age; I may collect gnomes or teddy bears and take them on trips to the supermarket in Keswick...So, leaving Bristol was hard.; it felt full of all kinds of life, diverse and creative, inspiring and shocking, but as the empty train trundled North and the sun fell in to the sea I felt excitement in the pit of my stomach to see the mountains silhouetted in the distance.And some bears are waiting, as well as a cupboard full of stuff to make a loaf of bread. The Fells are green and wet and really don't mind how slowly you climb them so long as when you get to the top you look back the way you came and feel overjoyed to be alive despite the struggle of the climb.
I seem to have lost my writing mojo lately, maybe because of all the letters I've been writing to heartless landlords, estate agents and MPs. However today I am pretending to be sitting on this mountain top on a sparkling Autumn day and writing rather nervously as it is the last Friday of the month and the land agent is due with a nasty letter. The fog is clinging heavily to the hills and the drizzle encourages moss on every surface, it's the kind of day for being in by the stove with something baking. It's still beautiful; I find it hard to make people understand that it is days like these that make me love living here. maybe I just like to be awkward...
It's been a busy few weeks which is also my excuse for not writing. Another house hunting trip to the Lake District saw me staggering to the top of Place Fell on the most perfect Autumn day you can imagine; misty ribbons hung in the valleys with polished mirror lakes and wet roads from the previous night's rain looked like rivers in the bright light. Crazy people were carrying their bicycles up the steep path and I felt secretly relieved that since my bike got nicked Rupert hasn't been able to suggest such madness! We didn't find a house.
Two days later I found myself in Bristol, visiting my lovely daughter at last. What a contrast! But I loved Stokes Croft, full of quirky independent shops, vegan cafes, graffiti and wonderful buildings. This is the view from Sara's student flat, the building is only lived in by pigeons but it made you dream...so many possibilities. It seems so crazy that places like this are empty when people are homeless, I wonder what will happen to it. It was so good to spend time in a place where it wasn't the biggest crime in the world to be a vegetarian and an artist, where not everyone wears tweed and drives a 4x4 ( yes my heart may belong to North Yorkshire but that's because of the landscape not the prevailing attitudes). We went to see Mr Turner and The Imitation Game and got lost in a wood full of badgers, met the lovely 
Snuggled up in bed Sara and I made creatures out of "Sculpy"(?) and I've come home wishing I had a kiln and could make bears out of clay.
Well it's almost time to go and grind some beans for coffee but first, have you heard about 
While I was writing that last bit the postman came so I'm plucking up the courage to see what he brought. Thank you to the 1,024 people who have so far signed our 