A Small Notch In The Green Belt

The artist said she missed me today. I was honoured. I left early this morning. I met a friend at the station by accident, then a friend of the artist at another. (For years, a cast of her naked breasts leaned against the wall of the artist's studio, and it was impossible - in a clean sort of way - not to remember this as she gesticulated across her coffee.) An hour later, the friend I had really come to meet - an Arabist with a military bent - was walking in front of me at a cracking pace through pure countryside. Two men and a country trail. Tall trees, as a community of branches, met overhead. Lonely tracks, searching for something, went this way and that. We were, in fact, aiming on walking for the next six hours and we were just warming up. It was amazing to think, as blackberries scraped and nettles bent, that the city was only half an hour away. (Incredible: nobody around.) We were playfully showing off by running now, probably unnecessarily, up a steep hill - which went mockingly on and on - and we encountered a harras of horses to our right, at the top by a long swooping line of pylon wires. For the next half an hour, we walked through dense forest, past dangling hawthorns, before emerging into the green damp light of a small proud field. And the only sign of human life, when it finally came, was in the form of a woman on horseback using a mobile phone. She soon galloped off. We were walking in a giant rectangle and the booklet we were using as our map enjoyed quaint phrases and signs such as 'ignore ways off' and '(!)'. Just then, a hare darted in front. (!) A sign warned of baby deer. Two pheasants took flight. More horses, these ones like shire ponies, puffed and neighed. My legs were doing well, though. I have a bad right leg at the moment but it was equal to any task, I noticed, including a regular succession of sometimes gnarled stiles, which left me thinking it was not as bad as I thought, which is a good thing. We nibbled on our dried and sliced mango nicknamed 'calf's tongue'. The damp meanwhile had turned into a sharp and biting rain and as a result my waterproof leggings justified their inclusion in my rucksack. We approached a famous old poet's cottage. Respectfully, we lowered our voices as if careful not to interrupt his train of thought, even though he has been dead 325 years. At one point I peered into the smoky windows, looking for clues, and saw a colour TV blazing back. We ate brown bread and salmon by a church. We moved on, past a wall of blackthorns, or sloes. Several miles later, we passed through a small Quaker graveyard and one of the graves bore the name of a woman and the dates of 1877-1977. Remarkable. Now, the artist and the children are in bed and I am sitting at the table with unbelievably aching legs and feet, so glad I've written this down before collapsing in a heap. Nature. I tell you.

An edge to the boundary: one lucky hundred

The artist is out on the town, well, locally speaking, and the children are gathered by the bright red sofa like kids at a bus stop on a Saturday night. There is a kind of sugary rebelliousness in the air at home tonight. Sweets are being chewed, ostentatiously, in open mouths. Shopping catalogues are perused, water sucked from neo-athlete's bottles. The children stare into each other's eyes with a kind of imagined elderly statesmanship. I should be laying down the law, but this is a treat for them, and they deserve it, just as it is for the artist, who deserves it. Besides, I encourage this kind of thing. Treats reward. Everyone gives it a go. The artist spent most of the day working outside on her mural for the school, and there’s not much I don’t know about going out that requires me out tonight. Strangely, I don’t feel like it at all at the moment. My idea of a good night out these days is a good night in. If I have to go out, it's going to a lecture or a talk or a book launch or concert. A year ago I would have laughed at that sentence. Indeed, it would have seemed like a sentence. I would have thought I had too much work to do, or too much social networking disguised as work to do, I should say. At the moment I have a good book. (A fresh and thorough look at the seeds which germinated into the war-zone.) Have I really had my share of bars? I don't know. I certainly haven't had my share of friendship. Friendship is very important to me. You can never get enough of that. I saw a very good friend today - a father again: another boy - and I saw a very good friend yesterday. Not that I don’t have something to celebrate myself. This is my 100th daily blog in a row without succumbing to the usual trend of goofy pictures. I don’t have links. Every blog has links. If I did, I think today's would be this one. Watch it. It is kind of relevant. But it does require sound as well. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nUDIoN-_Hxs? But I do still have a raison d’etre. And that is to see these blogs through to an exhibition for the artist, even if I am out of the country. She deserves it. The public deserve it. The art world deserves it. Just as acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances, art for the artist is truth made art. Talking of truth, the children are asleep on the sofa. The artist's finest work.