The last room to be attended to in our new house is the garden.  I say ‘room’ because it’s a redbrick courtyard.  Red brick except for one vile wall, which was covered in matting, resembling the braids of hair in the image below.  The builders removed the hairy wall-covering a couple of days ago to reveal the outside of an outbuilding (blocked up door, window) which probably used to be part of the Co-Operative courtyard, but now belongs to the Grocery and Provision flats next door.  It all looked rather messy, so the builders put a skin of render over it, and today it is dry enough to paint.

The garden is fairly small, but removing the hairy scary wall has made it feel much lighter and less like this image.  I have a pot of masonry paint called Cabbage Patch which I can hear singing from the courtyard, slightly muffled at the moment.  I’ll need a ten pence piece to release it, and then for the butterflies….

With thanks again to Aurthur Mee for the words, and my sincere gratitude indeed to the makers of the marvelous silicone glue which empowered me to stick my arms to the inside of my head.  Hosanna and Praise be!  The rest is up to the reader/viewer….She said, slinking off for a plate of spaghetti….

So it’s the first Bank Holiday of the month.  Most of the weekend I have been either wandering on the heath, cooking cake or soup for guests, or making things in the studio. Oh, and I wrote two Bluebeard poems.  What with the constant sunshine and with Martin and I both at home, it’s been pretty ideal really.  I hear rain is on the horizon tomorrow, and if the weather forecast is to be believed, the temperature will drop ten degrees.  TEN degrees?  And it’s Tuesday and normal  life will resume until….Friday, thanks to Kate and Wills.

It is unlikely I will even watch the ceremony, but here is a poem from my forthcoming collection which may or may not be called My Grandmother and Mrs Crow.  It’s about when Charles and Diana were married, me having Chicken Pox, and what with the spots and everything, being forbidden to go the street party.  I was eleven years old, and gutted, as this poem may suggest.

Quarantine

I am shut in my bedroom
in a pale lemon bridesmaid dress
on the afternoon of the royal wedding.

Skin blotched with calamine,
I am an invisible listener
as the world makes trifle.

Since the start of my quarantine,
I have been training magpies
to do my bidding

but they all flew away
when they heard the silver band
tuning up at the end of the road.

So I have gathered my coterie
round an up-turned milk-crate
for a celebration tea of plasticine cakes.

It is a while since we dined together
and strictly between us,
their table manners aren’t as they were.

But outside now, my magpies have come
to their senses, and gather over the heads
of the street-party.

One for sorrow, two for mirth,
Three for a wedding, four for a birth,
Five for silver, six for gold,
Seven for a secret not to be told.

I’ve had to leave the square format behind for this, and the Crow Angel because of the size of the dolls.  Both came with the large job-lot of dolls I found on ebay for £25.  I have been stalking the pages of ebay since for such a bargain.  I am also looking for wings and skulls in hedgerows and so forth, but that’s another story.

Since discovering the power of silicone glue, I have been able to stick most things to most things.  Bisque feet to marble to wooden frame – no problem whatever.  The dolls arms are pinned here with the same type of dress-makers pins I used on the Giraffe Child’s back.  The text comes from good old Aurthur Mee – what would I do without him?

The shelves about the place are filling up with these objects I keep making – there are quite a few we haven’t yet photographed yet which will be posted up here in due course.  Posting work  has become part of my process and I have no idea who visits the site, but people do.  So hello, and thank you – it’s extremely nice to know I am not alone with my scalpel and cutting mat…

I have just put the manuscript together for the new book, which I think might be called ‘My Grandmother and Mrs Crow.’  This is the title of a poem which was a runner up in the Mslexia competition last year.  If my editor is happy with this title (and the poems!) I will use the Crow Angel image as the cover, I think.

I used to think of using this blog as an open sketch book – a place I could hang up new poems to catch a bit of fresh air, but have recently been informed that this counts as publication in most circles.   It is therefore unlikely I will be able to send the work out anywhere else.  I am going to try to have a go at sending out to some competitions this year.  It’s not something I usually do as I feel my poems are not the variety that win competitions – they are stronger when they are collected.

As I won’t be putting many new poems up here, I will simply have keep showing you the weirdnesses which are happening in my studio.  So here’s a thing.  You probably won’t be able to read it, but the label on the giraffe body says ‘Standard Giraffe.’  This makes me chortle in this context.  The leash is made from plaited hair and there are dress-maker’s pins in the body of the doll.  I had the idea that the doll (or the giraffe) was playing make-believe too far into the midnight hour, and is unable to turn back.  Very naughty indeed.

Well, it’s more of a pigeon angel actually, but it doesn’t sound as dramatic.  I was rather taken with the doll’s freakishly long arms and body, and the impossible distance between the top of her head and the tips of her toes,  so didn’t need to do anything except remove the mouse poo from the dress.  The left hand was already missing, so I gave her wings instead.  You’ll see she is already hovering a little.