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WHEN THE SUN goes down, our evenings are orange. Lit by oil lamps and candles and smoking logs, lugged far and sawn to keep us warm. We squint at our meals cooking and peer into the shadowy sink to find spoons, read books by little circles of orange where the furthest away words on the page fall off the edge into the darkness.
The other day we took our home to the garage to be mended.. we hope the six expensive new diesel injectors will make the engine breathe more easily. While we waited for the work to be done, we drank pots of tea and ate scones too early in the morning. We wandered into interesting old bookshops and I bought a chamberpot in a brickabrack place. I found a delightfully dog-eared story called Tale of Sister Vixen and the Wolf with turn of the century Russian illustrations, a beginner's guide to Anglo Saxon Literature and Ted Hughes' collected poems which I find just beautiful. We sat by the wharf in Faversham, ate monkey nuts, and read the books until the engine was better...
And we have spent days hunting for lovely spots to put our house with not much luck, though there is a perhaps place by the sea where we might sneak for a few days. Life in the carpark is not so bad ... I have been drawing and painting and the days have been mild like the beginning of spring, and I sold the original painting of The Visitors too!
I leave you with some words made beautiful by Ted Hughes about an evening.
Full Moon and Little Frieda
A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.
Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath -
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'
The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.
Ted Hughes
