Acts of Beauty

It’s a long overdue goodbye to my pink trainers, and hello to some new ones soon.  But I love them so much!!!  How can I say goodbye!

Late night, no sleep… paint!

It’s a message to myself to do the things I’m dreaming about.

Here are the details:

I went for a walk today to play with the leaves.

Astonishing colours, there’s so much vibrancy even after summer has gone.

This pile of leaves needed to be admired.

It was windy so I re-placed the leaves several times and held them down with mental glue.

I stopped to chat with some friends who walked past, and then the wind dropped and I finished it, into a large V shape.

Here are some of the leaves that I loved:

After dinner fiddling,

first light in the morning,

daylight,

Performing tonight in Pinter’s One For the Road as Gila and she needs to look beaten up, so today I’ve been practicing bruise make-up for the first time, and I’m quite pleased!

In the end I made everything darker, especially under the eye.   The performance went well too.

He doesn’t need nailvarnish.

We just installed this basket to hold kindling, but it has become a cat home.  And the world is a better place for it – everyone should have a cat in a basket by a roaring log fire in winter.

I bought a new dress for my birthday (yesterday), and I have ideas for it…

19 spots

The moors near Hemel Hempstead are home to many magnificent horsechestnut trees, and I have developed a new fondness for them – their shape and style.  Sadly they are all catching a disease and soon they might all be gone, which is actually quite heartbreaking.  They have started to plant new willow trees now just in case.

The other good thing about horsechestnuts is conkers!

Every year they have a conker festival on the moor.  The car is parked under a tree and you can hear them raining down on the roof – bang, bang, bang.  Fun!

Conkers are also the shiniest, most beautiful natural object, I look down and see endless jewels in the grass, each one looks more brilliant and collectable, I want them all!!  Some are slightly heart shaped, some are round, some are flat with neat edges.  Therapy for your hands.

So time to play:

I’m leaving something for someone else to see.  And maybe sit on.  Or at least manoeuvre.

I hadn’t quite finished, I was going to make the line in the front extend and connect to the other line, but someone came along who was desperate for a sit down and a cigarette.  She barely batted an eyelid.

And here are those trees.

Do you see how the crumble has gooey-ed up, and it’s soft and still has a good bite, and the fruit is all juicy and explosive, good god I wish I had some now (sound of entire digestive system juicing).

And that’s the low October sun coming through the window.