Nothing much

Illness. Autumn. Snakes and snails.

Turning the light on in the evening. Storms. A near constant cough. A sniffle.  Whole days of constant rain. But also; Golden leaves. A crisp morning. Abundant fungi. Fallen apples. Huge flocks of birds. Hooty owls. Despite my best efforts at denial, we have arrived at autumn promptly without any delay or lingering warmth. I don’t agree with the decision (I feel I’m still owed some kind of summer) but I woke to frost so I might as well enjoy it.

Winter boots. Less than a month ago I could flip flop through the fields but a week of solid rain put pay to all that. We must focus on the good things. The jackdaws are back. They’ve been back a while, flying over the house shouting on thier way to pick over the now empty field. Empty of wheat anyway, it’s clearly full of worms enough dropped goodies to entertain a jackdaw or 50. They’re hanging out in the maize field with some crows today, reminding me of a cartoon I watched as a child. The crows had teeth and ate sweetcorn off the cob like a machine. I think it was the pink panther show. Do crows even eat corn? I guess so otherwise why scarecrows? Course they do. Worms and corn. There are some rooks in the ever growing corvid flock now. It’s hard to deny the possibility of winter when there are rooks in town.

I walk through the crows, lost myself under towering maize, which has not been harvested yet, on to the soft saturated mosses of the woodland. I am feeling ok. It’s the

sort of feeling I wouldn’t ordinarily notice if I hadn’t spent the last while being sort of depressed, the last week having a manky cold, and the last two days having a migraine,  but finally today, in the cold morning sun, I feel alright. It’s nice to feel alright. I should learn to appreciate just feeling alright more.

Apples

In the absence of actual work I have recycled this journal page about apples for instagram.

The wassailing in January seems to have worked; I’m not entirely sure how many apples is in a bushel but we got four tubs full off one tree alone, having refined the picking technique. Shaking the tree is no good, as the apples will bruise when they hit the ground and won’t store, they will rot and take their neighbours with them, the proverbial bad apples. We have an apple picker but the tree is too tall; my husband climbs and dangles precariously, judging each apple by his own special system- rotten, small, medium, huge and finally, size of a babies head -before tossing them down. Eventually he is so high they cannot pass safely through the branches. I videoed the solution they came up with because it’s hilarious, especially the protection wear. Apples the size of a babies head at speed hurt.

Workings

I have managed to list the snake:

I am considering my next linocut:

I place  the image on the lino by taking a photocopy (or laser print), and transferring it with wintergreen essential oil. I bought some more on amazon using the buy it again feature- a foolproof plan to make sure I got an identical product to the one that works, only I find that because wintergreen oil was out of stock, it had been swapped with patchouli oil. Patchouli oil does not transfer photocopies to linoleum my friends. It does smell a lot nicer, but only because wintergreen smells horrible. Patchouli smells like 1970. I imagine. I wasn’t alive then but it smells like photos of 1970 look. Patchouli smells like faded hippies. I don’t really like it which is a shame because I have 100ml of it now.

Findings

I don’t really have any findings. I haven’t done anything, and I haven’t gone out. You’re probably wondering why I am writing, and that’s I need someone to buy a snake, but also because I either write, or I don’t; if I find out no one cares then that’s the end. Sometimes results are important but doing is important. We must do. Sometimes we do and it’s not great but it’s the thought that counts.

I have a pet snail, or at least I did this morning. This afternoon I am not sure if he is in the tank. It is heavily planted and I can see where he’s been from the trail of uprooted stems but I can’t be 100% certain he’s still in there. I assume he is. He’s a nerite snail and his name is Snurli Snurrison. My tank which has been running a couple of weeks; in some months I am hoping to get him some shrimp friends to live with him. People tell me that fish tanks are relaxing, and the tank is soothing to look at unless you are worrying about where your snail is, so I am assuming more inhabitants will bring more worry. My brain has a natural talent at taking things other people find soothing and turning them into a source of angst. People often assume making art is relaxing and are surprised when I laugh in their faces. Sometimes making art is relaxing. Sometimes you are obsessed with the position of or bird, or whether there should even be a bird and you’ve forgotten no one else cares and oh god now you’ve looked at birds so hard all birds just look weird and now your whole being is worrying about birds. That is not soothing.