Tales of third eyes, injector pipes, duck eggs, childrens' drawings, and some other lovely things...

THIS IS A SNIPPET OF A JUST BEGUN PAINTING of a white-haired owl-riding lady pointing at a place on her forehead where some believe we have a third eye for seeing Other Things. She has been taking shape in between a rather patchworky few days, and is the sixth painting in the chakra series. I don't know if third eyes are meant to foresee things, but if they are, I wonder if her third eye foresaw that we would be hobbling along the road with a leaking injector pipe just the day after having escaped from our two week sojourn in the garage. We have spent rather a scary amount of hundreds on the recent works that have been administered underneath our house... and had just enough left to afford diesel for a trip to Ikea to stock up on frames for the next weekend selling... and we drove along the road yippeeing to each other that we were free of the industrial estate and actually driving along again.

The joy was short-lived however as on the journey home there followed stalling and horrendous smoking of exhaust and juddering aplenty. We somehow managed to hobble back to our forest spot, Tui expertly manoeuvring our house down the narrow dark country lanes without letting his foot off the accelerator as it would stall if he did. A late night look under the engine hood revealed an engine covered in leaked diesel from a tiny crack in the injector pipe... this had probably been egged on by the recent fossickings under there, and is hopefully not actually such a major disaster as we had thought, we'll just need to get a new pipe made.. and these woods are the most best of all places to be stranded! We'll have a perfect excuse should the council decide to come down and point out the no overnight parking sign to us.

In recent days we have enjoyed a lovely lunch with my family who visited and brought post that had been accumulating on their doormat for me. A house that moves has no address obviously and so for certain things I have been using mum and dad's whist we are about. We also use the Poste Restante service offered (not always smilingly) at post offices. Anyhow, I had parcels from lovely blog readers across the ocean.. and I was delighted first of all by these wonderful drawings of a driving house (with rather apt exhaust cloud!) and one of Baba Yaga's house by the talented children of Anthromama to whom I send big thanks for posting me these delightful works. Also parceled up beautifully was a box of "Rotating Fez Magical Harissa Spice Mix" and a wooden figurine along with kind and interesting words from Joseph Yarrow whose wonderful medieval-slavic-hermetic-norse tale The Goose Grail I urge you to investigate. I was also excited to receive a recently ordered book A Year At My Back Door by my blog friend Ciara, whose beautiful photographs of her view of the Sugar Loaf mountain in Wicklow Ireland through the changing year have been put together in a very lovely little book indeed.


Tui, in between stoically chopping wood for the fire, has been quietly preparing for April when his much awaited and very beautiful second Orla Wren album will be offered to the world. We excitedly peeped in WHSmiths at the latest copy of The Wire magazine where there is this month a fine looking and enticing advert for The One Two Bird And The Half Horse with spidery drawings by me. Soon I shall be telling you more about this wonderful work and showing you animations and films...



Right now, we are parked in this lovely wood where owls hoot by night and woodpeckers peck by day. We have had such happy days amongst the trees and it almost doesn't matter that we chugged here. People have been so friendly, and we have even been brought freshly laid duck eggs (thank you Sue!) which we had on toast and which were of the delicateist duck egg blue you've ever seen. And today, Sunday, the busiest day here, we decided after being asked if we wanted to sell a painting by a friendly visitor, to set up a gallery-in-the-woods on the side of our truck. It attracted interested browsers and two much appreciated sales...

So there you have it.. our patchwork of news for these last few days. Some days are wonderful, some days are stressful... much like anyone else's life really. But we are happily living the life we've chosen. Many people tell us we are brave, but we are not really. We have the same fears and dreams that all folk have.. and sometimes we fly and sometimes we sink. The important thing for me I think is that I am not imagining some other time when I might do this thing I dream of. I'm doing it now, and for all its hooting owls and cracked injector pipes, it is beautiful.
We plan to stay in the woods for a while and then providing there are no more mechanical disasters we will begin to head up to East Anglia where I will be taking part in an exhibition, and where our patchwork journey will continue....