I paid the annual fee for my blog this week so thought I'd better start using the damn thing. Every day, in my head, I write several award winning, earth shatteringly insightful posts and draw achingly gorgeous scenes, before failing entirely to commit them to the page. Stories have gone untold and sketchbooks have remained pristine. The things I want to make or tell you, whilst lying awake at night or during my daily stumble up the valley, evaporate with the morning light or as soon as I sit at my table.
Yesterday on my icy walk I suddenly thought that part of what stops me writing or drawing is the pressure I put on myself for it to be "good enough" to share, when really this blog could just be a kind of wordy sketchbook; it's not as if I'm writing an article for the Guardian is it. I think these past months have made me think of all the people whose stories are lost, all the words unsaid and moments unshared because of the pandemic. What are we if we don't tell our stories, however ordinary they seem?
Having failed at all other "lockdown" tasks my aim for the next few weeks is to share an image and a few lines everyday instead of waiting for perfection. Hopefully this might reawaken the fat, lazy muse who has clearly been asleep, clutching an empty bottle of Sherry for most of 2020 (who can be blamed for that though).

... That first paragraph took several hours of yesterday and this morning, full of good intention, I was going to fix my heat press, restock the virtual shop shelves, wish my parents good luck for their vaccinations tomorrow and then tell you all the about the Long Tailed Tits in the Hawthorne tree on the edge of the fell (such joy and fluttering), the creaking crunch of the ice and oh, all sorts of other stuff you might have liked.
Anyway, I'd just got the heat press soldered without setting fire to my hair and everything was going ok but then I got an e-mail.
It's happening all over again, we're being evicted, they're drawing up the papers. Perhaps because they don't want to spend money fixing the leaking windows and providing us with drinkable water, perhaps because they want somewhere to stay while they fix up their neglected cottage next door, perhaps because the Lakes seems like a better place to live in a pandemic than a flat in Mayfair or an Arts and Crafts Mansion in Wales. Either way the timing and the wording of the e-mail is spectacularly bad; the failure to properly fulfil their obligations would be almost laughable if it hadn't left us desperately scouring Rightmove in the middle of a national disaster.

I don't want to be the voice of gloom, I want to write about the patterns in the ice, look for the snowdrops under the fallen leaves, work, do something useful for other people, hunker down and try to stay sane but it knocks the breath from you and makes your arms tingle, too much Cortisol like coming up on a bad pill (apparently). Maybe all I can do is talk about it so that other people know that this happens, it keeps on happening; hopefully one day things will change for tenants so that landlords and estate agents properly understand the importance of "Home" - not "It has been very useful having an income from the barn" (around £50,000 over the years, to spend on doing up next door)
I saw it coming but the impact still hurts, it makes me want to give up art and volunteer for Shelter.

Enough. The fire is on, Nutmeg is sleeping at full stretch and I have a LUSH bath planned. Change is good right?
Stay safe x

I started writing this last Friday, the day before Storm Desmond showed up.....Have I told you that this house feels like a boat at the moment? Not that it's moving, just that it sits here at the head of the valley with it's stern to the prevailing wind and rain which slams into it as it rushes down from the fells and it sounds like crashing waves. In front the track becomes a river; cutting channels in the fallen leaves which never got dry enough to crunch through . The land rises steeply at the back where a tortured, pollarded Sycamore holds bird feeders that swing out almost horizontal in the wind and the woodpecker clings on like a trapeze artist; the only bright thing out there (recently I saw bullfinches who were pretty snazzy too but preferred nettle seeds behind the oil tank to swinging about for peanuts). It has rained for days and days and days *** Here I was going to insert a big rant about MPs voting to bomb Syria and Climate Change and biblical floods but I think I'll leave it to your imagination. It's frightening and frustrating and I despair ***So after I wrote that, things went crazy and after getting home on in gale force winds, clearing fallen trees from the lane, we battened the hatches and spent all of Saturday feeding the stove, catching drips in buckets and feeling helpless to help but guiltily cozy as the disaster unfolded just a mile down the road. Twitter was the only way to make sense of it... real time posts as the water levels rose in Keswick, inching up the glass storm defense and eventually tipping over to inundate the town for the second time in 6 years. Now everything I was going to write seems self indulgent and ridiculous. We walked up Latrigg yesterday, as the day was insultingly sunny and calm, and marveled at the scene below- Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite Lake joined in a continuous stretch of shimmery water - one lake to rule them all.It was beautiful and fascinating from a distance but back in the town I felt guilty and too ashamed to even take a picture of the river as people's homes and businesses were spilled out on to the pavements in muddy piles. It was horrible and reminded me of what I was going through this time last year; losing your home, no running water, mud. I wanted to help but it also made me painfully aware that I'm not yet a part of this community.Anyway, there is a fundraising page here and various collection centres for donations of food and clothing across Cumbria so hopefully by sharing this I will be doing what I can. I tried to drive to Braithwaite ( our closest village)  today, armed with a shovel and a yard brush to help the clear up but there was a digger clearing a landslide so I had to turn around. I'll try again tomorrow. Meanwhile my heart goes out to all those affected, I wish I could do more.Whenever I write a blog post I upload the photographs first with a vague idea of what I wanted to say but to be honest it's completely slipped my mind now! I think it was going to be a thing about how excited I was to have sold some work at the Great Print Exhibition, amongst such great company, followed by a mention that these cushions are now in my Etsy shop; I might even have been going to share the recipe for my wonderous cherry and almond cake...I wanted to write things about the fact that its a year ago exactly since I first saw this place and how that feels, and about how the cat now occasionally sits on me  which is cozy (until she bites) which makes me understand (almost) how easy it might be to turn in to a crazy cat lady if only to save on heating bills! The reason the cat sits on me could be that my daughter bought me a polar bear onesie as a surprise the other day and it makes hibernation even more tempting.But for now I think it's best to just be quiet, hope that the kettle boils soon and that the wind and rain settles down and gives us a break. Stay safe and warm where ever you are. x 

Another Thursday, another month and while everything seems "normal" on the surface, underneath is shifting and slipping and bubbling like a house built over a sink hole...or a Baked Alaska pudding...no Chicken Kiev! My attachment to "home" and the difficulty in uprooting me, even for a day out, has been a bit of a joke over the years; so it's hard to express the almost physical effect the threat of eviction has had on me this past month. However, the garden won last week and I couldn't leave it alone, for so long the meditation of working in the garden... totally absorbed to the point of almost forgetting real life has been the way I've coped with bad times. Ok, mostly I retreat under the blankets with Jack Daniels but once outside I soon become lost and "carried away" as Sara and Jake used to say. The temporary nature of everything I do now does not fit comfortably with my bear like urge to build my winter den and feel as safe as this world will allow...and so the coal shed is empty, the logs have not been delivered yet and is there any point in turning the compost?Such negativity! If you are still reading I promise the next bits are more uplifting...Over the past week the Morning Glory in the Freecycle greenhouse has been glorying like mad , heavenly blue and as short lived as a May Fly... if only I was more Zen in my outlook I'm sure there'd be a lesson there! Good things have been happening though. The Saltbox Gallery where I work a couple of days a week took an order for some of my Natural Partners cards and so it was nice to put them on display and overhear the occasional comment about the lovely polar bear! The gallery also took some of my good friend Susie's needle felted creatures which makes me happy as I love to feel that I've helped promote another struggling artist. If I was suddenly rich ....There have been a couple of much needed trips to the Lake District, partly on a potential house hunting expedition and partly because being made to walk up hills like a reluctant pack pony (admittedly I don't carry the pack!) seems to be as spirit lifting as gardening. Re-visiting Castle Crag I nearly pushed Rupert over when I spotted a little red squirrel person busily collecting things under the Scots Pines. There were deer too, and autumn colours and that wonderful smell of Autumn woodland and earth still warm from summer. Somehow the North York Moors feels hostile and barren in comparison ( or is it that just a reaction to my situation?) with the only wildlife apart from sheep being there only so it can be shot.Now I am setting myself the task of drawing something everyday and e-mailing it to Sara who is now in her final year of Illustration at UWE in Bristol. She is meant to do the same so we'll see if we can keep it up, unlike our various attempts at giving up crisps or taking regular exercise.... I'd like to be able to draw landscape, and clouds but it doesn't work so I think I'll leave the clouds to Daddy.Last night I started a new book having finished Rogue Herries in an all night session. I enjoyed it...maybe the story more than the style and I can see a bit of myself in all the characters. Now it is time for a mug of tea and some more drawing... a rabbit and a pony were the requests on my Facebook page last night.... Reading:-Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami    Listening To:- 6music