moonpath

Switch off the torch! There’s light enough

to see by, though the path is rough;

and, though the beam it throws is bright

it hides all else, and makes the night

seem darker than it is. So douse the light. 

The Milky Way is one long flow

across the sky’s deep indigo

and timid creatures, soft and slow,

pass by, with food their only care

- and we’re not on the bill of fare.

Here, take my hand! We’re nearly there.

Walking back to my boat from the neighbours under a gibbous moon, I remembered when I wrote this after a similar walk home with Boat Teenager long ago. There's rarely not enough light to see by, and when you're away from street lights and the moon is up, it can be rather wonderful; I once drove my old Moggy van across the top of the Mendips in snow under a full moon with the lights off, which was probably naughty but then there was no-one else around.

meeting an otter

You come to recognise the sound of an otter hunting along the side of the boat; always along the shore side, bumpity splash. Two nights back, around midnight, I heard something pattering stealthily along the after gangplank, and was instantly as alert as I'm likely to get; could it be an intruder? I reached for the torch and checked the air rifle was close at hand. Can't be too careful. But then it went into the water and I was reassured. Tiptoeing to the side hatch, I swung it open and shone the torch along the side of the boat. And there was the otter! It seemed pretty unfazed by my appearance, probably because I was behind the torch beam and therefore invisible.

Then it dived and reappeared briefly at the bow, and was gone.

In daylight, I had a look down by the brook that flows under the aqueduct before joining the Avon a little way further down the valley. The intersection of the two waterways seemed a likely spot for marking a territorial boundary. And indeed, there on a rock in the stream was a spraint.

killing the yellowhammer

Yellowhammer, from Drawn Chorus

Here's a bit of devilry for Hallowe'en. Though the devilry is, of course, on the part of the people who persecuted the yellowhammer, or yoldring, rather than the bird itself. 

This is what E & MA Radford have to say about the bird, in their Encyclopedia of Superstitions

colder, and otter

moon in the ash tree

oh! Where did all the leaves go

since I last saw it?

Change sneaks up on and past us, and then you look at a photo taken a month ago and think how much greener everything was then, and look out, as I did, last night, and go oh!

...and I am getting on with commissions and Christmas card and calendar designs too. This one has Netty on it, as I thought it would be nicer to look at than my ugly old boat. I took liberties with the relative scales of the aqueduct and the boat, though that would be v much in keeping with the style of the aqueduct's builders. Did you ever look at nineteenth century pictures of ships or buildings and wondered at how HUGE they were? -that's because they were drawn to look impressive. Like earlier pictures of prize animals, exaggeratedly massy. In this case, the aqueduct loses out to the boat. Soz, aqueduct.

Apple Day

here are some english apples. Because it's Apple Day.

Saint Melangell and the hare

It was in the work of Kay Leverton that I first came upon the story of  Melangell and the hare, and wanted to do my own version. Melangell was a recluse in the hills of North Wales, and was being all spiritual in a thicket one day when a hare took refuge with her, and she protected it from the hounds and the huntsmen that had been chasing it. The local prince, on arriving on the scene, was struck by her saintliness and gave her the valley where her church, and the village of Pennant Melangell, are now situated.

I thought it would be nice to portray her as a bit of a hunt sab. So this picture is loosely based on a friend who fits that description.

I was trying out some paper that Neil Hopkins of Two Rivers Paper gave to me (thank you, Neil!) It's handmade by him, and rag-based; and very different from what I'm used to using. It's very forgiving; you can lift watercolour off the surface and try again if you goof, and you can layer it up to make quite intense colours. I worked on a very small scale here, which was a mistake; but there you go, we're always learning, hopefully...

up the Bradford Flight

It was time to go up the Bradford Flight, that majestic series of one single lock that marks the frontier between the upper and lower West End of the K&A. Below, the cool wooded valley; above, the broad, sunlit (or windswept, depending on the season) uplands. 

On The Street I failed to get alongside at first, as it was so shallow; breasted up on Fairy's boat for a while and scouted out the stretch further along. The Netties had found a nice spot by the winding hole, where there is some hard standing that you can get alongside; but our friends on Pathfinder, moored close by, were stuck way out into the canal because of the lack of water under the keel.

I admired the artwork on Recalcitrant, and considered hanging around until they moved off on their way to Bristol. I met this boat some years ago in Tewkesbury, where it had been left high and dry by the winter floods of the Severn. Really very dramatic, as you see.

...but Astral Dave was moored right there, and life is never quiet when you're moored near Astral Dave and his cosmic dog. 

So I sailed on and found a nice spot between reeds, where I was able to get close enough alongside to use my gangplank, and yet far enough away from it to be able to pull the gangplank in at night and feel secure behind my moat defensive... because this is the badlands here, and there has been a lot of thievery and wanton destruction over the summer; two bridges have been damaged by having great blocks of stone pushed out of their parapets down into the canal.

the old Bowyers factory, as I cycle into Trowbo

But that aside, it's a nice enough spot and there are good neighbours; and the kingfishers perch just opposite, and if I look out of the galley window while washing up, I see the water vole nibbling industriously away by its hole.