badgers and tent pegs

Finally got my badger pictures as greetings cards. I picked them up from Minuteman in Bristol yesterday, and they're in the Etsy shop. Also, check out the natty tent pegs. I needed some extra ones since I lent some to Richard when he was going off camping in Cornwall a couple of years ago, researching his last book. Lent, I say. Ha! I'm quite impressed by how smart these new ones are. It's all very well being self-reliant and making pegs as you go using your pocket knife and sticks, but I'm a sucker for shiny red things.

We're past the equinox, and the canal is a good place to be. As I write this, it's ten to six and light outside, and the blackbirds are singing away.

the virtuous wolf of Wells

Lupus virtuus ego sum
Caput Edmundi veni cum
Quis puer bonum est, dice?
Meum! Meum, mehercule!

Here's another Somerset wolf to go with the Roman she-wolf on the top of the Mendips. This time, it's the virtuous wolf that led the searchers to King (presently Saint) Edmund, after he'd been shot full of arrows and decapitated by the Danes. The wolf guarded the head and called out in latin, "Over here! Come on, blimey!" 

These figures are on capitals in the north porch at Wells Cathedral. My latin is v dodgy of course, but if yours is even worse and you want a translation, then here it is;

I'm the virtuous wolf
Come with Edmund's head
Who's a good boy, say?
Me! Me, by Hercules!

In our latin text book at school it appears that the Ancient R's had no stronger language than the occasional 'By Hercules!" but I suspect that the rougher elements of the proles or the Legions might possibly have had a few choicer words to use too.

Edmund is shot full of arows

rough winds do shake

Cruising with Jim (photo by Carol Payne, who happened to be passing)

Spring had been coming on nicely. Moored up at Widcombe top lock, looking out across the city of Bath, we watched the peregrine falcons toi-ng and fro-ing to the steeple of St John's church, where there's a nesting box. Sometimes one would appear with a dead pigeon, and then patiently dismember it on top of a corbel. Mind you, this was a long way off even through the binoculars (though you can cheat and look on the webcam), and peregrines generally seem to lead quite dull lives in the main, just perched there with an air of lofty disdain. Like war, their lives are long periods of boredom punctuated by short bursts of absolute terror, although the terror is usually some other creature's. 

And in the warm sunny weather we boaters came out and socialised on the towpath, and I laid out my stall and sold lots of poetry books and pictures, and met lots of nice folk. And the trees alongside the boat were busy with fossicking goldcrests, which are always a small joy to see.

And one day all the boaters woke or came home to find bunches of daffodils waiting for them on their decks. Ding Dong had brought in a great load from the flower market, and he and Sherry Jim had a busy day delivering them from Bradford on Avon to Bath.

And then the storms came along, one after the other, and we all retired into our boats and huddled round the stove. I got on with my drawing, and did a quick trip to Bristol to pick up prints of the latest one, this picture of Dartmoor (which you will find in my Etsy shop, cough cough)

Honestly, I've not known weather like this before; gale after gale after gale. No sensible person was moving their boat. A few daft people, of course. But at the peak of the storms, when it was gusting up to Force 8 and more, wise folk who like their boats stay put. I did get a phone call from a CRT person while I was alongside in Bathampton on the 48 hour moorings; "You've overstayed on the visitor moorings" "Yes, and I'm very sorry, but it's blowing a hooley, and it's not safe to move.." The moorings at Bathampton are policed by some local residents; it's a stark contrast there between the net curtain brigade, in their neat houses where the plasticine factory used to be, and the ramshackle floating homes of Eli's Navy and other ditch gypsies. Two nations... 

But I don't like folk who take the piss either way, and I took advantage of a lull to slip away eastwards.

Then there came another storm, and with it loads of hireboats, because if you're on a hireboat you don't want to just sit and stay put. Someone said there was a Groupon deal going on, which might explain it. Anyway, as I'm now moored close to the swingbridge in Bathampton, I watched them approach the landing, and as often as not goof, and end up broadside across the canal, fending off from the moored boats with bargepoles. Ouch. I did go and help, when it was possible. I don't just watch and snark, honest.

Trees have been coming down in the wind, too. A beech and oak came down together at Murhill, and a shout went out for help. But my chainsaw is acting up, so I couldn't do very much about it. Then Jim came along and so we took his boat down there. Stephen, a boater and tree surgeon, had already got there and cleared the way through for the convoy of hireboats that had been held up. They'd tipped him generously too, and in the case of the stag boats, they'd mustered and heaved the trunks across the canal and out of the way. 

So we filled up the boat with timber and went to the pub.

on the Archangel's Trail

Deborah and I were down in Devon a couple of weeks ago, exploring places on Dartmoor from Brent Tor and the church of St Michel de Rupe (or 'St Michael of the Rock'), across to Chagford, another church dedicated to the Archangel. And then we met some folk from the local church and diocese, to talk about a new pilgrim trail that they're putting together. It's nice to be asked to join in with it, and as a getting-into-the-mood exercise (and of course a useful way of putting off some admin) I did this picture. 

There's Brent Tor at the top, then St James' chapel in Okehampton (I thought it was a bit more picture-friendly than the parish church), the Lady Well at Sticklepath, St Andrew's church at South Tawton with its three hares roof boss; then Peter Randall-Page's Granite Song sculpture on an island in the Teign; and finally Chagford, and its figure of St Michael biffing the dragon.

And there's a few other things too, of course.

Here's Deb's account of the trip, with photos. Must get down there again soon. I'm already dubbining my boots...

I've run off a bunch of these pictures as a poster, because some folk have asked for one and heck, why not. They're here, in my Etsy shop

the cartography of deer

This snow has let the deer redraw the map.
Now waymarked paths lie buried in the drifts,
and hoofprints thread the beechwoods to the rifts
of new-scraped valleys where they sought the sleeping sap. 

The lichen and the moss, the leaves of the discarded year,
those olive greens and russets of the old
are scattered on the snow. It's cold.
The nuthatch's bleak note is all I hear. 

But downhill, where the stream is whispering unseen,
I find the snowdrops; lanterns raised against the snow
on arms that seem so slender, but have grown
with all the force of spring's first instinct to be green.        

And sudden from the ivy there, the wren's song is a flood
of notes that sound the reveille down through the sleeping woods.

Last week's snow was good old-fashioned snow; it lay deep, and didn't stick around to overstay its welcome. I remembered a walk on Great Doward, overlooking the Wye, on Christmas Day a few years ago, when mine were the only human footprints in the snow, and the first line of this poem suggested itself. So finally it's got some more lines to go with it.

The snowdrops are abundant right now, along with crocuses. Nights are still chilly, though, with frost on the ropes in the mornings. On really cold mornings, the birdsong is subdued, and the nuthatches are indeed about all you'll hear. On warmer mornings, the song thrushes start larging it, and I heard an early morning blackbird in Bristol a few days ago, a fine sound  full of spring.

Shepton Mallett, by the way, have a Snowdrop Festival this coming weekend. They're big on snowdrops in Shepton Mallett. They also have a lovely Portuguese cafe. Or at least they did when I was last there a few years back.

small victories

I had an abscess in my gum last week, and tried lancing it and keeping it clean by gargling with salt water (urk) and whiskey (yes!). Sherry Jim suggested applying mouldy bread, for its penicillin effects, but I didn't, because I don't have any mouldy bread, and because, well, just because.

But it didn't go away, so I  took myself off to the dental hospital in Bristol where you can go if you don't have a dentist of your own and it constitutes an emergency; and while I didn't think it was quite an emergency, I'd read up enough to know that you should tke these things quite seriously, and it was getting worse...

So I got to be looked at by some dental students, under the supervision of more senior folk, and they pulled out the problematic tooth and made a very good job of it too, and the whole thing was as cheerful and friendly as you could ever hope for. Thank you, Bristol dental hospital!

I was fit for nothing much but bed by the time I got back to the boat, and the next morning was still extremely lacking in get up and go. So it seemed like an ideal time to try a jigsaw.

Some friends had seen my picture of the badger at Avoncliff, and asked if they could use it for a jigsaw, as a present for somebody. I was happy for them to do that, and as a thank you, they gave me one of the jigsaws. I felt rather daunted by the prospect of 500 pieces of mostly blue, and I gave it to Mal, who likes this sort of thing.

Then I got thinking about what someone was incredibly active as Mal gets out of doing a jigsaw, which I always rather thought of as a good picture spoiled. Is it a hygge thing? Mindfulness? Obviously I loathe and detest both these terms, and so would she, I'm sure, if asked, but you know what I mean.

I have an old Victory jigsaw, found in my favourite charity shop in Bath (the women's refuge shop, opposite the Bell on Walcot Street). I like it because it's a nice picture and especially because of those flying boats rumbling over Queen Mary, presumably in the Solent.

Finding enough space on my desk to start with meant a fair bit of reshuffling. I picked out the most distinctive bits and made headway with the ship's bridge and foredeck area.

Mental state: moving from o fuck, there's pieces everywhere to ha! It's starting to come together!

I put the flying boat together, and examined it closely. Three engines, RAF, a single tailfin (as far as I can make out). Perhaps a Short Rangoon? - though those engine nacelles look rather long and boxy. 

Mental state: a bit excited about the flying boat, but frustrated that I can't identify it with certainty. But I must accept this inability with fortitude. Life doesn't always turn up the answers.

Presently, I was cracking on at a great pace, and all the foreground was coming together at a rate of knots. It felt good.

Mental state: positive and enthusiastic. I think this is the stage of the jigsaw that corresponds to The Magician in the Tarot's major arcana. With hindsight, I was setting myself up for a tumble.

O god, this sky took for ever. I selected all the obvious edge pieces and juggled them until they formed a border. It was a bit of a slog, to be honest. 

Mental state: resignation and fortitude. Like being in the middle of Dartmoor when it's blowing a hooley and has just started to rain. It's not exactly fun, but what can you do but keep on doing?

Look! A vic of three more flying boats, Short Rangoons or whatever they may be.

Mental state: rather chirpy. I do like the thought of a formation of flying boats rumbling overhead. Concentrate, Dru, concentrate.

In time, the holes shrank, and it became progressively easier to locate each new piece by matching it with the holes. The end was in sight.

Mental state: you're finally coming down off the moor, and the sun's broken through, and there's a pub just down the lane.

And there it was, finished! I'm not a quitter after all, and my life will be better from now on.

Mental state: Hmm, nice pic. Not going to do that again.

the Barn Owl at Diggers

I'm moored near the Dundas aqueduct. A very sociable spot, with good folk all around (and the occasional miserable scrote, like the dogwalker who let his dog piss on my POETRY ART BIKE REPAIRS sign and on my bike trailer while I was standing there going OI! Some of the natives round here are not very nice, and dislike boaters. Hey ho). Ding Dong and Sherry Jim are moored next to each other, and Ding asked me to pick up some vodka and tomato juice from the shop at the garage, whither I was cycling to get some eggs. There was no tomato juice, so I got three tins of Heinz tomato soup, and joined the party for a nutritious Bloody Mary.

At night it can be so still that when a muntjac deer barks in the woods, it echoes all along the valley as though you were in a deep cave. Sometimes in the small hours I lean out of the hatch and watch the stars, failing to see any falling.

It's a good spot for wildlife watching. From here, we've often watched the barn owl hunting the scrubby slopes on the other side of the valley, perfect territory for voles. Sometimes you'll se a fox wandering up the hill, or a roe deer bound out of cover and then back into the woods at the far side of the field. 

I started this picture ages ago, based on a sighting of the owl on a September evening when the last of the sunlight was slanting across, lighting up the newly-blossoming Old Man's Beard so that it was like May come again. It's still bright now, with frost. But the colours of the valley have turned to olives and browns and russets.