Day three has not been a magic number and I want to start today by apologising for the fact that I set myself the task of writing/drawing daily, for a week, just as the shit hit the fan.
Today began with a delivery of wildly differing types of post, one being a lovely, surprise letter from an old friend and the other being two copies of a solicitor's eviction notice under Section 21 of the Housing Act. I'm concentrating on the wonderful timing of my friend's letter which was the perfect antidote to a surprisingly speedy action by our normally glacially slow to act landlords. Rupert went for a run to burn away the fury and I tried to draw Tree.
Then we set off to Penrith get my head looked at.

I've been getting loads of migraines and earache. The doctor suggested an MRI scan and olive oil; only the olive oil has made me deaf, trapped in my own head with unruly thoughts, the sounds of the sea, creaking ice floes and popping Space Dust. The mobile MRI unit wasn't there and we drove around Penrith unable to make sense of the map - which turned out to be a map of Carlisle. All the information I'd been given was muddled up with 2 different appointment times and 3 different locations. I suppose if I'd been less distracted I'd have noticed the letter was wrong and avoided all the eerie wandering about in dark, deserted car parks at the back of hospital buildings, looking for invisible vans. It seems wrong to make a fuss when the NHS is under so much pressure so we came home and ate oven chips.
YIKES, this is not an interesting post is it. I did splosh some paint about; an attempt at Tree and two rough sketches based on walks in the not-our-garden next door at dusk. The garden is neglected and wild but was obviously once very much a labour of love. Over the years I've tried to resist its pull but couldn't bare to see it totally abandoned, with all its rare and carefully chosen plants choked by brambles as thick as a fairytale. I did more than I should have in the circumstances and got too attached but you can never regret gardening, it does demand a kind of optimism and hope that in the future the seed you've planted will flower and fruit.

That's me done for today. Done for, because you've probably unsubscribed but if you haven't, tomorrow I'll make more of an effort, share a wonderful photograph from the family archive and maybe have more drawings. Take care and enjoy the rest of Saturday x

Day 2 of my resolution to use this space more frequently, I hope you don't mind. Your comments and messages yesterday were so kind and uplifting, thank you.
Today was the kind of sharp, luminous day when Catbells looks like a wonky slice of carrot cake with a light dusting of icing sugar (I have to thank Rick at Faeryland, Grasmere for that observation). The patterns in the ice were echoing the bark spirals on my favourite local tree; who I have imaginatively named Tree Friend (I'm terrible at names). The good thing about Tree Friend is that even in a pandemic it is possible to give him a hug, so he's currently storing up all the hugs I can't give friends and family. This is a tree I need to draw, it has a real personality - even without emoji eyes. I'm really loving the tree drawings made by Sarah McIntyre and Phillip Reeve at the moment, they collaborate on a wonderful series of kids books about a flying Dartmoor pony called Kevin and have a long standing tree drawing thing going on.
I so wanted to crunch through the iced puddles but they were too pretty to break; even so my footsteps made it creak and groan and shatter at the edges, like the crust on a creme brûlée. Nutmeg and I had to hide in the gorse bushes for a while to avoid John the farmer with his sheepdog; he's a flighty cat and would have run in panic rather than letting me pick him up. I do worry that he will have to adapt quickly to a new, probably less remote home.

There, I've blogged two days in a row (and after 11 years I still hate the word blog), now I can celebrate that small achievement and add it to my store of positives, along with hot baths, audio books, lots of tea and plenty of toast. How are you coping?
In other news I've applied to be part of an exhibition at Rheged which is part of the Through the Locking Glass project, Cumbrian artists reflecting their experiences during lockdown. I'm still not sure when this will happen but won't it be wonderful to visit galleries again!

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