I have neglected this journal woefully. I have been drawing, over and over again. The project looms and I am frightened. All I can do to quell the fear is keep drawing and drawing and drawing…..
I’ve foraged for blackberries twice now and there are still lots more to come. What a lovely feeling it gives me. Such a simple delight. And so sensual. There is no smell, like there is with blackcurrants (hot, dusty and green) but the sensation of delicately releasing the berry from its stem is gorgeous. They stain my fingers, those fingers already, and now perpetually, stained with Indian ink.
There were two flashes of lightning over the sea this morning as I walked. There was a mysterious magic to it. Did anyone else see it?
We were just getting our little deck chairs out of the car like a couple of old codgers on a day out to the Peak District when we saw one of our neighbours (they live in one of the big houses round the front of the estate) coming up the back lane with three Tupperware containers in her arms piled high with blackberries. Are you going to beach? she shouted. No, I said, bold as brass, we’re going to sit here. She showed us the blackberries. They were just from the lane, she said, and there’s lots of red ones so more are on the way. We watched her walk off, her arms laden. Then he began his tirade about the cheek of it, her taking all of them and so on. It was semi-serious, semi-joking I believe. It makes me laugh. They are lovely people. And she is so cosy in her neat smallness. I’m off to make some blackberry and apple crumble, she said as she left, not for now but to freeze for next year. It’s like watching another life (we can see all their comings and goings from our upstairs window), one that I could never live out. It both warms and chills me such spectator-ing.
I think that I am invisible and mostly I am but these days people are engaging with what I am doing as an artist. ‘The artist lady’, one man called me yesterday. And then there was Barry the Busker wanting to photograph my drawings of him for his FB site. I’m not sure how I feel about it. It increases the nerves, certainly.
They promised a meteor shower this week. I looked at the sky as a walked. I saw a moving light but I suspect it was a plane. I will persevere. Shooting stars always give me a fillip.
He, and what we presumed was his wife, were sitting at the table across from us in the coffee shop when I noticed that he was making drawings. He seemed to be drawing me drawing. It reminded me of all those years ago in the Royal Festival Hall when M and I were doing the very same thing. He looked like him too. He had the same loose linen trousers, the linen shirt and the beard and he was using what looked like hand-made sketchbooks. But there was no pipe. Maybe he had one in his pocket for later. When they got up to leave he came over. He had a trace of accent, was it German, Swiss or Dutch (hence Wolfgang). He talked about taking life-classes. He showed me his drawings and asked to see mine. You are a painter, he said. His response to my work was kind and genuine. It made me feel good. And he asked me to show his wife too. Oh, she said, that’s me.
The man sitting outside Matalan yesterday who asked him for change was sitting outside Smiths this morning as I walked. Good afternoon, he shouted, adding, any change? I explained that I didn’t carry any money. Have a good evening then, he said, unphased. You too, I replied aware of the ludicrousness of such knee-jerk responses. What’s wrong with your leg by the way? he called after me. I stopped and turned round to face him (his face lit in up in the dark by his iPad) oh, it’s just a bad hip, I said. Is it arthritis? he asked. I was going to explain, touched by his care but he’d lost interest and had turned away. I carried on walking smiling at his lugubriousness. I told him the tale at breakfast. I liked him, he said.
I haven’t seen him for an age. I used to see him at least once a week doing his morning stride as I was, his long cotton trousers flapping around his legs, turban tight on his head and with a western-style anorak over his tunic. He walked with a determination that I recognised in myself. I saw him this morning seemingly being accosted by a man in a raincoat. I paid attention as I walked past to check he was OK (he’s such a tiny man, fragile in his elderly frailty). The other man was doing all the talking and he listened patiently until he finally put up his hand as if asking him to cease (or showing that he’d had enough) and walked off. I hurried on not wanting to be the next victim of the man’s obvious garrulousness. Then I worried that I’d been unkind, perhaps he was lost or needed help. Was that the case? I will never know. And I feel so vulnerable in the dark. Is that excuse enough?
She knows that I draw her. Yesterday I saw her smiling about it. She never asks to see them. And I’m glad. She is tricky for me to capture, I think it’s her fragility, shown in the pinkness of her face, the sometimes greasiness of her and the delicacy of her small body. I watch her eat her croissant, drink her coffee, read her phone before settling down to make her roll-ups for when the coming day. I like her. He told me that she asked him (when I’d gone to the toilet) if I’d had an accident. I was touched by her interest. I like her. Are we (am I) beginning to belong?
I feel the urge to do another list. I’ve been drawing again most mornings so this journal has been sadly neglected. The drawing has become obsessive and not going this morning almost hurts. I’ve been chasing cherry pickers. Well, one in particular. It was or perhaps still is on the Prom awaiting collection after being used in the painting of the RNLI building. I love them but they are a bugger to get right and my intimidation of this one was complete. Five drawings later it has still eluded me. I keep pushing my comfort zones. Yesterday I drew upstairs. It was so different and threw me. We could hear the staff talking. On Saturday a man came in and engaged the manager in conversation for well over 10 minutes. Bless her, she is so good, calm and open, though I knew she had stock-taking to do. He talked about real ale pubs, revisiting old haunts (maybe he had studied here) and how he’d had eggs benedict at Sophie’s for breakfast.
He hadn’t turned up for work a few days before leaving the coffee shop in eerie darkness for well over two hours after its usual opening hours. Everyone was worried. He isn’t picking up, said the manager when we eventually got in at 9.45. He’d overslept. He turned up with his tail between his legs later that morning, she told us the next day. Bless him. He’s a tiny scrap of a thing, with pale skin and a long forelock of a fringe of red hair. He told me it was his birthday. He’s twenty-six. I asked him what he did. Me mum came over, he said, and we had fish and chips. It was nice, he said. Then I had some vodka and fell asleep until 1.
I’ve been out drawing most mornings this week so I haven’t had a chance to write this journal, hence the long list of things to remember to mention.
On Tuesday our boiler went funny, flashing a symbol AU. Look in the book, he said. I did and it was something to do with it not being able to find the flame. I remember the old days when you just relit the pilot light. Not now. We both hate it when people have to come in. It makes us edgy. Always. He came eventually. He’d been here before, he remembered. I remembered too. A nice man, young and handsome. We ate supper while he fiddled around, eventually bringing out a small board with three what looked like spark plugs fixed to it. See this, he says pointing to one of them. Yes, I said, with my mouth full of salad. It’s worn down and can’t locate the flame and tell these other ones that there is one (I’m paraphrasing, I think that is what he said.). I can fix it for now, but it may go again, and if it does at least you will know what it is. Yes, I said. And there was I planning to fill my morning bath with water from the kettle. I love practical people. What a star and hardly a dirty footprint anywhere.
The day before his coming hadn’t gone well. I was desperate for a good morning’s drawing in the coffee shop but when we got there it was all shut up and dark. Where now? we said to each other. We went to Costa – no good. Then to Wetherspoons, or ‘The Spoons’ – yuck! I even asked for our money back the drinks were so dire. And then Caesars. Better but I had too much tea. That looks very artistic, said the waitress looking down at my sketchbook. So does your arm, I said, diverting the attention away from me and my not so good drawings. Oh, do you like them? she asked. It gets rather addictive after a while, she says, I’ve got them all down my back as well. Our favourite coffee shop eventually opened at 10.00 where I had another tea and tried to make some decent drawings but things had unravelled.
The moon was huge this morning. I heard myself say wow as I turned into Bridge Street and saw it looming over the harbour. Is it a wolf moon? Later, walking along the Prom I happened to look down onto the beach just below Castle Point. There was a double bed down there, base and mattress. It was unmade but looked pretty pristine. A jolly jape, perhaps? I said at breakfast.