It is a lovely feeling to clear the table and tidy up at the end of a long project. Apart from a few last minute finishing off jobs, yet another lost delivery (hint to van drivers...use a map not satnav when looking for barns in the middle of nowhere) and a painfully slow internet, I'm all packed and ready to set up for BCTF on Saturday. Ok, we have run out of heating oil, I melted my printer, blew up the hoover and the power's due to go off at any minute but it still feels good to be able to say, "I'm ready... as ready as I'll ever be". The kettle is on the stove and I'm going to have a gallon of tea and maybe even make some scones for old times sake (before the power goes off!).
On Friday I'll be heading back to North Yorkshire for the first time in over a year, hoping it feels more friendly than when I left it. It will also be the first time I've spent much time in Harrogate since I lived there when I first left home, for a rather disastrous foundation year at Harrogate School of Art. Sara is coming up to be my assistant so we are combining it with a kind of belated/early birthday treat and staying in the hotel that Agatha Christie stayed in when she went missing in 1926. Originally I was going to camp in the van on the showground but decided to make a holiday of it. I hope they let me in with a ruck sack as I seem to have mislaid all my monogrammed luggage and hatboxes.
Preparing for this event has been an all consuming preoccupation since I first had to postpone taking part last year but, even if it's not a huge financial success, I do feel as though I've learnt so much from it already and it has certainly focused the way I work. No doubt I will come back next week with plenty of new ideas and information and it will certainly make a change from sitting here watching the woodpeckers and chatting to the cat. One of the things I've discovered is that many of the odd things I have needed can be found and supplied by small quirky, local shops and businesses and I've really made an effort to do this, particularly following the floods of 2015.Anyway, that's all for now. I'm currently multi tasking by sitting on hold to an EE call centre who are trying to work out why the internet keeps going off... they don't believe me when I tell them it's because the wire from Braithwaite keeps getting wet. I will let you know how BCTF went next time I write and if you're visiting the show don't forget I'll be on stand N27...also Good Luck to all the other amazing artists and crafts people taking part, I hope it's a big success.
Well on Tuesday I bought a beautiful fountain pen in Cockermouth and I've just spent ages uploading all these pictures for you but suddenly I'm lost for words again; I'm drinking tea and looking at that big sky. Im sorry to tell you this, now that it's the Easter holidays and it's raining again, but last week was probably the most perfect week ever in the Lake District. Sara and I wore our little legs even shorter with some wonderful adventures... it's much easier to walk further when you have a companion to share sandwiches with at the top. We discussed the amazing human ability to forget how it felt to be exhausted to pieces once faced with the view from the summit ... a bit like childbirth! We also talked about the contrast between Sara's city life in Bristol and our love of this special landscape; both feeling a little discontented ... what is it you miss out on in each place? Could you swap city life for a rural one or vice versa?
I loved taking a week away from normal concerns and BCTF panic, to enjoy just being here in the Lake District, feeling lucky despite all the bad luck and upheaval. We climbed three Fells, Hindscarth, Maidenmoor and Low Fell, used my birthday voucher to have a swim and fantastic bone crunching massage at Armathwaite Hall (where we also spotted the Alpacaly alpacas doing rolypoly's under the trees) and cycled to Keswick on unsuitable bicycles to do the shopping (so much more stylish to cycle in the sunshine with a dress on and an aubergine in your basket than to charge around in lycra with serious intent).
And now it's back to work with less than three weeks before Harrogate and the trade fair. Luckily the sun left as soon as Sara went back to Bristol and even more luckily I was able to find almost all of the hooks and bits and bobs that I need for my stand when I went to Cockermouth... I'd searched in the giant B&Q in Penrith and various other shops until eventually finding the perfect things in the wonderful JB Banks .It may seem like an odd recommendation but if you're ever in the Lakes don't miss this shop; it's fabulous and has a museum at the back which I keep forgetting to look in.
So Spring has sprung, the air smells good and all is well... ah, apart from the fact that I smashed one of my vases while trying to photograph it today, I have a sore thumb from folding and stapling catalogues, all the printing I did yesterday went wrong and the cat has taken to sleeping up a 7 foot holly tree, perched on a twig like the Cheshire cat (only with a resentful look instead of a grin). I think I'm making her nervous.
The next three weeks are going to be hectic for me and very different as today is also Rupert's last day working at Carlton Outdoor Education Centre. For the past year he has driven to the North East at the crack of dawn every Monday and pretty much lived in the van all week; but he's got a new job here now, within cycling distance, so life should be easier for him and I'll have to become a little less feral and learn to live with people again! (I talk so little during the week that I almost forget how at the weekends and a whole day of talking gives me hiccups so Harrogate should be fun!). Fingers crossed for more days like last week's to share.
Here I am heading up the valley on a small bicycle with the sun in my eyes. And here is a quote that I think is relevant to the whole BCTF preparation process, because whatever happens I have learnt a lot and after all, thats what we're here for isn't it, to learn and experience and breathe in the air? Have a very happy Easter.“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”― Ernest Hemingway
Reading: Various terms and conditions and a Maigret mystery. Listening to: David Grey "Sell Sell Sell" Watching:- Rare that I watch TV but "The A Word" was filmed right here and it's pretty good so far.
I got side tracked and didn't write last week so now I'm all out of sorts, with the rambling left overs of what I had planned to say floating just out of reach. Failing to write a few words once a week has made me even more impressed by my good friend Susie's wonderful blog which she has been writing every day for nearly a year; it's called "Why Today is Brilliant" and must take ages to research let alone write! As for me, I have been thinking a lot about how the creative urge can be captured, tamed and made to keep more sociable hours. I've had several interesting discussions lately about sleeping patterns and daily routines. It seems that many of the most creative people I know keep very strange hours and also struggle with periods of frustrating inertia when inspiration and motivation refuse to co-operate.To completely contradict myself, the most amazingly inspirational artist I know keeps very regular hours and has pretty much painted 9-5, 5 days a week, for the past 60 odd years, so it could just be that I lack gumption and good self discipline. Either way, I often find myself at my most productive late at night which, according to my brother would have made me a rubbish cave man.
These are the kind of things I muse on as I wander about lost in thought; often planning out a whole blog post in my head only to lose the thread before I can trap it. Last week I could have written pages on the overcoming of fear (I'd climbed up the scary rocks on Robinson alone and without my magic "sticky" trainers, celebrating with hot Ribena and feeling as intrepid as anything), I imagined a whole piece on the sensory delights of walking slowly, mindfully I suppose... the sounds of boots in sucking mud, half frozen grass crackling, metallic ringing of rock and shale, a thousand different water sounds, the smell of approaching rain ( do Cumbrians have 50 words for rain like the Inuits do for snow..?) .Anyway, that was last week; this week I slept like a bear, had no energy to walk except for my weekly volunteering at Calvert Trust and couldn't be roused before 10 - but I feel like I'm getting somewhere in the evenings. Listening to Pilgrim on BBCiPlayer I've been cobbling my stand design together for BCTF and embroidering notebooks, making velvet cushions, trying to work out how to display things and putting together a trade catalogue.
At times it feels ridiculous and self indulgent; the annoying devil on my shoulder ( sitting on the big pile of chips) keeps muttering about "real jobs", bills and pension plans but today I collected some card samples from Temporary Measure and I have to say they looked great, really professional and even I have to concede that I'm my own worst enemy. If only self confidence shouted as loudly as that little devil!
So there you go; despite a week in which I've felt incredibly lazy and unproductive because I got up late and didn't walk miles everyday, I've actually achieved quite a lot and this is the point... not everyone is a morning lark, not everyone fits in to the neat slots expected by the modern world and being an owl is nothing to be ashamed of so long as things get done. Which are you an owl or a lark?
Reading: Last weekend's newspapers and a knitting pattern. Listening to: Pilgrim, a radio drama by Sebastian Baczkiewicz