early in the morning

It's early in the morning. Before they awake, before he awakes, the cat and I have opened our eyes and are creeping around the half-lit house. In the dusky, nearly-dawn, I half dream of what might happen. At the moment, doors are opening in my house, in my life. People are interested in my writing, which has been travelling around the Internet, neatly packaged in a file for them to open. Hope has been glaring at me from under my bed, reclaiming the light of day from amongst the dust bunnies. This summer, I must brush off the cobwebs from attic dreams, tie an apron round my waist, put my hands to work, finish my book. I will shelter in the deep green of the forest, drift in the emerald leaves and type.

disturbingly beautiful

I would love to go and see Marion Mitchell's exhibition.

Unfortunately I'll be on the wrong side of the planet. Go if you can.

late at night

Late at night; I sit on the sofa, tucked into the warm sound of a cat licking it's fur. In the soft lamplit evening glow I feel the day stretched into my legs. Around me my house sleeps gently in a chocolate darkness. Hours of movement have come to a slow, slumbering halt. "Sssh", that is what the night is saying, "Listen".

May and June

May and June. Months for growing. June brought wet, greasy rain that soaked into the dry earth. In May, the sun shone, burnt the earth desert brown. We bought bright flowers and planted out our window boxes with sweet multi-coloured petals. I sat, back bent, eyes fixed to the pixeled screen and wrote, wrote and wrote some more. I sent my dreams up into the sky and imagined fairy dust for my daughter's birthday cards. We ate summer soup for the first time; rich, spicy minestrone, speckled with barley and courgettes, fresh tomatoes blended into deep red. We swam in the freezing sea, plunging winter white skin into icy water. For seconds. May and June. Unforgettable months with surprising answers. I catch a train, run a course, sit waiting at the station in the still of the heat. While waiting for my connection, I learn that immobility and stillness are essential in the cocktail of travel and high temperatures. I rest on a chair, eat sprouted spelt bread and wait. May and June. I neglect this space, do not unpack my case, have left washing dirty and to do lists unticked. May and June. I feel like the shape of my life fits my body and soul.

Postcards from my travels : 2. San Sebastian

In San Sebastian we drink soft café con leche, admire sharp mountain landscapes, eat stewed red beans served with slow cooked cabbage and tiny pickled thin green chillis, play in parks with gentle carpeted floors, drink rough red wine, feel the heat, ignore keen drops on the winding roads, peer through the yellow beehived glass in our appartement's sliding door, eat a hundred second breakfasts of tender croissants standing at the bakery's wooden sculpted bar, feel exhausted, try to sit, walk through chic shops, spot Spanish fringes, bluntly beautiful, have a morning off the children, sit in the rustling comfort of a Reading Room in a Spanish public library, surrounded by old men, turning pages, browse articles in art reviews about John Cage and the Anarchy of Silence, relish in small bits of thinking time, fall into the colours of Stephen Dean, buy five litres of olive oil and a big blue sunhat, discover Spanish charity shops with my eldest daughter, search, look at the elegant remains of a Basque Palace, green seed packets and admire the smell of hanging laundry inside the internal courtyard.

Postcards from my travels: 1. Ten things to think about when you are driving to Bordeaux

1. Think about the distance - it's five o'clock and five hours drive, 520 km. I've just finished a day at work; run workshops, seen patients, eaten a plate of pale institutional pasta, imagined.

2. Think about entertaining two little girls; bubbling in the back of the car.

3. Think about black coffee, eating food, having a pit stop. Starting and stopping.

2. Reflect upon death. A close relative just came to stay, talked peacefully about where he would be buried one day; a spot in a rural graveyard. When he left, I felt like weeping. In the car, I feel at peace.

5. Think about trees. As we drive further South, they line the roads to shade us from the heat. The trees change shape with the geography of the land.

6. Ponder upon the taste of creamy leeks and chips, at the restaurant in the giant blue shop. Relish in the fact that I love cafeterias, the anonymity, the meeting of people, carrying my tray, being in this strange, multi-coloured, plastic world.

7. Think about driving, hands on the steering wheel, over-taking, using the indicator, leaving it on when you're in the left-hand lane. He says that only old ladies leave indicators ticking. Tick tack.

8. Think about sleeping, resting your head on the seat belt strap, when he takes over at the wheel. Try to stop the buzz of your brain, drift off with the sandman.

9. Reflect upon the innocence of sleeping children, when I see their heads nodding in the back. Remember the early weeks after their birth, the terrible vulnerability of a new-born child, a fragility that is hard to bear.

10. Think about carrying on forever, never stopping the car, just driving through darkness. Drifting along in the inky blue motorway night, lit by the yellow lights.

my wall

on my wall: a soft pencil drawn baby duck takes it's first flight, a glaring bobby baker carries shopping home, two anonymous female relatives from the 1940's grin in gum boots and baggy trousers, cobatt blue hugs burnt sienna, keri smith explains how to be miserable as an artist, a photo i took in bombay from the inside of a dark metal bus shows an indian man holding a pink balloon, my eldest daughter jumps, three green old ladies cluck in a pen and ink drawing i made when i was 16, i stand facing the camera with my siblings and father in my grandparent's shadow-ridden emerald garden, a jumble of printed letters bedeck a hand-made postcard, a bluebird flies on a vintage wallpaper envelope, flowers bloom for spring.