Journal entry for mid-May

iPads, ravens and David Attenborough

Hello! I first want to thank everyone that has supported my efforts recently, as this week the new iPads were released and as you know, my iPad was running on my willpower alone, so I used all the money from your purchases to buy a purple one which I had engraved with monkeys because Apple offer a free engraving service and I’m a grownup. It was a lot cheaper than I expected, so I got a new pencil too, which was good because that was precisely the same time my son ‘exploded’ his. I don’t know how you explode an Apple Pencil. I’m not sure I want to know. Anyway, he inherited the old one and the old iPad has gone to be recycled in the big apple in the sky.*

This week was defined by the iPad arriving, the chimney sweep, and the house inspection. I had the brilliant idea that since I would be in waiting on the first two on Wednesday, after the chimney sweep had been, I would give the place a jolly good spring clean. The house inspection is more about how safe the house is, but cleaning is tedious so I need deadline to work to. This would’ve been an absolutely watertight plan if the housing inspection had been on any day after Wednesday, which it wasn’t, obviously. It was on Tuesday. Luckily, I I was in, and had started the clean process. I was at exactly the stage where everything is mostly still filthy,  but it also looks much like a tornado had ripped through the house.  Very embarrassing , but not th first embarrassing thing I’ve done in front of the house inspector guy. Or the second, and I recovered quickly when I realised I now had no reason to clean for another 18 months and abandoned the whole thing on a far superior mission to check up on the lapwings (they are still there) and the lake birds.

The geese have had five babies. The swans are on the nest, but I can’t see how many eggs there are; none are hatched yet. The male swan looks absolutely gorgeous in the late evening, swanning about wings held out like a love boat with the rosy light of sunset falling upon him. He’s not actually very gorgeous because he gets very over protective and tries to drown the baby geese for being irritating, which might be why the Egyptian geese have gone elsewhere, or maybe just because their goslings are quite big now.

Workings

After half arsing (or more realistically, quarter arsing) the rest of the spring clean, had an influx of free time and got to print this guy. I fully intend (though can’t be fully trusted to follow through) this to be part of a much bigger print, but have had some requests to print her separately. The raven is annoyed, but you can’t see who is irritating is because as I said, I have not printed the whole print. You could however, frame it and put it slightly above and to the right of someone you would like to be harassed by an angry raven, your favourite politician, perhaps, or an aggravating relative. Or you could wait and see if I actually manage the large print, and you would get double the ravens because I’ve been busy carving this guy:

At the moment, I can’t quite decide whether to print the colour layer (of the larger print) as a relief print, which would be harder, but more subtle, or to screenprint it, which would be quicker and easier but require a new large and expensive screen, and a loss in definition because the oil ink doesn’t print quite so nicely on the acrylic screen ink. This has really put a spanner in the works because I swing to and fro between the options quite uselessly, failing to make up my mind. Yesterday it was definitely relief, the day before that silkscreen was ideal; today I might do a combination of both to fully get the worst of both worlds.

Findings

The sun has finally hit these sceptered isles, and I have spent some time reconnecting with nature by lying in my hammock, which is next to very long grass. Long grass is great. Firstly, and I cannot stress this enough, you will not be annoying your neighbours mowing your excessively large lawn with a loud stinky lawnmower for four hours every day for a whole week repeatedly through the summer. It’s very important you don’t do this, for everyone’s health. Secondly, long grass is full of life. The grass attracts nibbly rodents and insects, the insects attract the toad army, and in turn, these will attract the bigger hunters like the foxes and the kestrels. At the moment, a small animal is munching on the long grass, making a characteristic sound you will know if you have lived near cows, which also munch on grass. It’s like that, but tiny, because it’s not a cow. It’s probably a bank vole, though I can’t see it, and never will because it’s psychic. As soon as I try and video it, it falls completely silent, so to experience the joyful sound of a bank vole (probably) eating grass, you need an overgrown lawn. I’ve uploaded the video (grass twitching in the bottom left) and thought I could hear the vole quite well, but that’s because he’s eating grass next to me again.

There’s also a slug crawling up David Attenborough’s leg. Not his actual leg (probably) but an author photo on the back of  ‘Life of Birds’, which I have been reading. I bought for not much at a charity shop, or rather my husband did, under protest, because he said I would never read it, and it would get added to the massive pile of books I regularly transfer from charity shops to the floor just beside my bed. Obviously I had to read it immediately out of spite, but sometimes spite is a good thing because it’s a really good book and birds are amazing. I even found myself appreciating hefty wobbling flight of the garden pigeons as a marvel of nature, though I’m still annoyed at them destroying my kale. It’s quite inspired me to read some more of my book hoardings, and I probably should start with this one about flight, which has just been published in paperback. Anyway, if you see me about, be wary because you might be the recipient of some badly paraphrased, poorly remembered  bird facts. You’ll say hello, or something normal like that, and I will tell you birds don’t have a penis, so they kinda turn their bum holes inside out when they bump groins. That’s not what David wrote, but I’m pretty sure that’s what he meant.

*Apple think it is worth money and can be refurbished, possibly a due to a fault in their questionnaire, because to answer yes to all the questions implies a thing that is in working order but that isn’t true; it does charge, but it needs to charge at all times. It does turn on, but needs an good 8 hour sleep or it starts having absence seizures. It is on the brink of death which, now its has completed its final act of transferring my data onto my new device, it welcomes. If apple gives me £100 I will be amazed.