Pinfeathers
New woodlands |first ink| Christmas presents
They’re putting trees in the back field; they have a machine. A post, a little sapling, a plastic sheath to protect the delicious sapling from my friends the deer. The field is studded with plastic tubes, reminiscent of the sheaths surrounding new feathers when plumage grows in; a woodland is fledging. I wonder if anyone else looks at those plastic things and thinks of pinfeathers. Probably not.
Last year’s saplings, planted in different fields, did not fair well in the dry spells, and I hope that the weather is more clement this year; it certainly seems to be wetter so far. The lake defrosts and promptly overflows. The cormorants return, and I keep careful note of thier increasing number. First four, then five and then yesterday, two in the tree, one on each fountain head, and three on the bank, which made and enormous seven, until I saw another swimming; which makes an unprecedented eight. Eight! I didn’t write last week because I didn’t have very much to say, but a 60 percent increase in cormorant population? That’s news that needs reporting in a newsletter alright? I’ve got to tell someone these things.
The new cormorants have jaunty white face markings. I stare at one from a distance wondering if it is some kind of grebe (or more fancifully, penguin) before it helpfully gets out and stands on the bank, wings outstretched in the archetypal cormorant fashion. Breeding plumage, with white marks on the flanks too. Fancy. They’re up to something, those cormorants, but thier ways are mysterious and unknowable to mere human minds.
Things are getting louder. It starts with the owls, which can sometimes start hooting before December. Then come the great tits. I heard that the great tits are declining which seems unfathomable to me, harbingers of spring that they are. I suppose the silence of corncrakes or passenger pigeons seemed unfathomable to people once, so we should protect species long before a terrible silence is upon us. Now, as January drearily trudges towards on, other birds are starting up to add to other sounds- the deer barking, the wompf of air moving through the flight feathers of a swans wing as he comes in to land. The world is starting to awake, slowly, to become noisy after the frozen hush.
Workings
I have left the world of drawing bad paintings with cheap markers temporarily behind as I did some actual work this week. I still haven’t updated the shop though. It’s like I want to live in poverty, I don’t know what’s wrong with my brain sometimes.
Anyway, look a this, its gonna be good (I hope)
I didn’t take a photo of the resulting print, you’ll have to wait for that.
Findings
My son asked for a bass guitar for christmas, and being an obliging parent that only knows about the regular type of guitar I gave some cash to a knowledgeable friend and let him trawl facebook for deals, which apparently he had a lovely time doing. That’s why I currently have a bass amp only slightly smaller than the living room in the living room. Apparently bass guitar means playing in a band, so you might as well skip to a giggable amp straight away, and the amp was a steal too good to miss at £35. Why is it in the living room? Possibly because that’s where the Christmas tree was and no one wants to move something that heavy. Having friends with specialised interests is useful when your child hits adolescence, and is suddenly interested in things you know nothing about like record collecting (I will never call them vinyls) and bass guitar. Have I been giving advice on my friend’s childrens new interests? Yes I have. It’s not a one way thing.
My husband, on the other hand, wanted a new radio. I got him a digital radio as soon as Pure started making ones that were affordable in times of yore, before smartphones, so it was quite old. When talking with my friend I accidentally made her laugh when telling her what I’d got my family for Christmas, because she asked me what I had asked for Christmas, and I answered ‘noise cancelling headphones’. I wanted them for the gym, and hadn’t thought about the noisiness of my gifts, but they are life changing in reducing the amount of stress I feel in response to sounds. I don’t think I actually realised I was constantly stressed. I’ve begun to wonder what the environmental implications for streaming the sounds of thunderstorms for several hours a day are. All the tracks on the 10 hours of thunderstorms sound pretty much identical (like a thunderstorm) but I make sure I don’t start at the beginning of the playlist so I get to listen to all the tracks like I do every other playlist. I am thinking they are right when they say I have problems.
Anyway, it’s lovely to get what you have asked for christmas, and it was nice to see my son excited for christmas, but I think it nice to get a lil surprise now and then. Personally I enjoyed this excellent sticker book, lots of lovely mushroom and toad stickers, nice paper, good binding- why should kids have all the fun when it comes to activity books?
This one is very grown up- I was going to say adult, but that’s a different type of activity book altogether. Reminds me of when I ordered a doll- a regular toy doll, the collectors type- and the seller had written ‘adult doll’ on the customs label. The look on the postman’s face was a delight, I tell you (I was working painting doll faces at the time, so I got a lot of doll packages and he knew it was a toy but adult doll is legit hilarious). Anyway. Till next time.