American Rocker

Beaty bought the American rocker, it was her chair. Grandpa Davis would rock me in it as a baby and small child. When he died and Beaty lived with us it sat by the window in our front room. It became my Cinderella carriage and my sleigh at Christmas or, sat astride facing the back, I galloped wildly accompanied by the pranging sounds of the springs. Most often it was our stagecoach, Dave and I jammed in side by side rocking like crazy, me whipping the horses, him shooting over the back. Until we were caught.

When I bought my first flat Beaty gave it to me. I waxed the woodwork and had it re-upholstered. It reined supreme among the floor cushions. When I moved in with John it muscled into our rented flat in London. Dad sat and rocked Emma as a newborn baby in our first house. It was the comfy chair Belle curled up in the dining room of Grange Bank.

All my life it has been ready to comfort and soothe with its motion.

It now sits by the fire in the cottage. I must now be the age Beaty was when she bought it.

Birch Bark Study

Ronseal really!

Amaryllis

The Amaryllis bulb was a Christmas present from Auntie Elaine. She has always had a knack with gifts. When I was small she sewed a long white dressing up dress that fitted me from a drawing I'd made. For my twenty first she bought a suitcase with, most satisfyingly, a matching vanity case, pink satin lining with elasticated pockets.

I'd fancied an Amaryllis in a fuzzy, corner of my wishing mind sort of way for a while. I planted the bulb, egg-like in its' pot. It grew almost perceptively in the way of wolf hound puppies and produced a multi-headed bud. The bud very gradually burst and the flower was red.

Grange Bank

This was our home for twenty years and we all love it. This is how it looked when we first moved in, now the trees are a bit bigger. It is drawn over an old field plans of the area given to us by the previous owner.

Fairy on the Tree

We had an artificial Christmas tree. Granddad Davis ordered it from a newspaper and it arrived in a surprisingly small cardboard box. Plastic coated branches slotted into a screwed together wooden post. The final effect seemed magical. Every year we would sort the branches by size slot it all together and decorate it with a mixture of lights, tinsel, fragile old foxed baubles and 'unbreakable' seventies kitsch. The fairy graced the top. She had gold paper wings and a net skirt in those days.

After Dave and I left home Dad put up the tree every year, chuntering about it. The Christmas after Mum left, the girls and I put it up in her new flat. She invited us all round to tea and we pulled crackers and played charades. It was a snug family evening. After Christmas she binned the tree, without warning, because it was "no use hanging on to things for the sake of it."

Chatsworth Walk

This is my attempt at a Richard Long inspired piece based on a walk Marie and I had in January.


His work is rather more elegant.

Twenty Drawings ; I'd love a Babycham

Babycham was a rare childhood treat, especially one in my Granny Beaty's proper glasses with a cherry - even if it was a glace one, floating in an oily slick. Once Beaty and I sat outside our local pub and she had a lemonade and I had a Babycham with a real, juicy cocktail cherry. We kept the two glasses ambiguously between us "in case the Bobby came ". I was about five at the time.

Years later when I was in the throws of some now forgotten teenage despair Dad took me to the pub, just me and him. He went to the bar without asking what I wanted and came back with a sparkling babycham complete with cherry for me. I'd forgotten all about them. It was sickly sweet and hugged me with childhood.