Blossom

Seed catalogue - personal portfolio work. Watercolour, charcoal, chalk.

Before we speak of illustrations and being creative in Trying Times, allow me to wang on about what’s filling my diary with what we call in Scotland ‘yuftaes’. As in ‘you have tae’. Things on a to-do list. Foremost of which is doing pre-election leafleting on behalf of the Scottish Green Party. ¹

I was out today, on one of those perfect April mornings where the temperature flips wildly between the Arctic and Tropics. One of those excursions where I discovered that the handknitted² jumper I chose to wear was either slightly chilly or borderline suffocating. To thermo-regulate, when the sun vanished behind a cloud, I marched speedily from door to door, and slowed to a crawl when it emerged at full blast. I could have removed the jumper, but I’d just have had to put it back on again, and I had many garden gates and squeaky latches to navigate and doors and letterboxes to visit.

But what a variety of doors and letterboxes! So many miniature doorstep dioramas! Such a hodgepodge of cultural artefacts signalling the interests, status, demographic and cultural affiliations of the homeowner hiding inside³. Mind you, the car parked in the driveway was a tell too. As was the wide-open garage door, with untold wealth (in material terms) displayed inside. The home gym. The ride-on mower. The bikes. The meticulously stored collection of items that might come in handy, items that occupy that liminal space between no longer useful and charity shop, the same phylum of items that our no-longer resident rat population found so irresistibly toothsome. But that was a previous story and we’re not on rats, we’re on cultural artefacts as signifiers of all kinds of things.

As a writer, I absolutely love this aspect of campaigning. I get to make up stories about the families behind the doors, I gather inspiration for illustrations, I meet lots of cats and get to play Danger Digits with a wide variety of dogs who lie in wait for my unwary hand trying to poke a floppy card through their remarkably resistant letterbox. If its vicious springs don’t bite me, or if the resistant carpet fringe of draught-proofing doesn’t reduce my leaflet to a crumpled offering, the dog behind the door will have a go at turning my fingers to sushi.

But people are out and about, and smiling, and very cheery when they realise what I’m doing, and even the Lost To Us Ones who are never in a million years going to vote for a green agenda are friendly and occasionally even go so far as to wish me good luck. Amazing. People are truly amazing. I wouldn’t be campaigning if I didn’t believe this.

Anyhoo. Work. It’s been somewhat distracting this week, what with one thing and another. Knowing that my artwork for Dr Purr is currently at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and is hopefully ( oh, make it SO) winning hearts and foreign rights and future readers as I wait here in Scotland, gnawing the remainder of my fingers ( post-letterbox action) and wondering if a small gin might ease the panic. Possibly not at breakfast, Debi. Do get a grip.

But it is existential, the anxiety is real and if Dr Purr knew how impurrtant her success is to her creator, well, she’d prescribe a hot bath, a slice of fruit cake and a good book.

I made a Dr Purr out of icing to grace the cake, and dispensed with the usual Happy Noel in favour of a stripy 'om'.

We still have Christmas cake left, I prefer showers to baths ( except I can’t relax in the shower to enjoy a New Yorker like Dr Purr) and I am currently reading Mary Oliver’s ‘Upstream’ and Nigel Slater’s ‘A Thousand Feasts’. Comfort reading, much?

And to hell with it - a gin at supper time is still allowed, no?

As for work - I’m in a holding pattern for two projects, which essentially means they’ve stalled. Whether they get rolling again or not depends on how Dr Purr fares at Bologna. Oh, go on, just a small top-up, then.

In the meantime, I’m baking loads of bread,

slowly drawing a comic,

and doing my best to avoid having to faff around on my website in order to set up an online shop for my work. Procrastination is the flavour of the week. Procrastination with a side order of anxiety and Yuftae sprinkles. However, our current fiscal uncertainty is a great motivator, so I will pull on my big girl pants and do the website shop right now. However, if by having doing so⁴, I increase traffic from the multitudes of online book engagement promoter ai-enhanced accounts, I may have to move to Betelgeuse. Their random emails full of praise for my books which then shade into why I’m so obscure and overlooked and not getting the engagement I ‘deserve’? Oh, boy. Not a winning strategy at all. How do I make them cease and desist? I mean look at this:

Damn right my X account has gone quiet. EWWWWWWW. I’d rather floss with a circular sander than post on that. Give me strength.

And on and on. I’ve had loads of these. Pointing out how essentially, I’ve failed. By the metrics of late-stage capitalism, yes, I guess they might have a point but…

But I am more alive now than I’ve ever been. I share home and hearth with a Beloved man. We have raised the best people I know from infancy to adulthood. I am truly present in my morning walks with birdsong and otters. I am blissed out by opening my studio door ( thankyou Vicente!) and seeing all the piles of creative possibilities waiting for me. I am a domestic goddess on the bread front. I have made books that are read to small people at bedtime and bring comfort to both readers and read-to. I am still exploring what I can make with brush and pen and paint and paper. Fewer than 2000 Instagram followers doesn’t really matter a damn. What really matters is the love I share ( and receive) by what I do, how I live and what I bring to the global table.

Namaste, y’all. Feel that sun on our faces, listen to the birdsong, and, as ever -

1. Essentially poking printed cards through a variety of letterboxes on repeat until

a. I run out of cards, which isn’t going to happen because I have squillions or

b. My feet/legs/hips finally remind me that I’m not the twenty year old who used to campaign against the construction of our local nuclear power station, or the twenty five year old who campaigned against nuclear weapons being stored at Faslane, or the twenty seven year old who went back to the completed nuclear power station and campaigned against something that I forget but which required marching and standing and the singing of stirring songs and the post twenty seven year old who had many children and quietened down a bit or

c. I need a bathroom stop and decide to head for home.

2. By me, I hasten to add. It actually causes me pain ( as a knitter) to pin my SGP party badge through its carefully stitched frontage. Aaaargh! Spiky. Mind the wool! But also very necessary. It’s kind of my credentials for opening gates, walking up garden paths, poking stuff through the letterbox of a complete stranger like…like an unlicensed postperson.

3. “Has she gone yet?”

4. OMG. I did it. Those big girl pants? Yeah, I know, they’re pretty industrial and have loads of room for improvement, but they get the job done. Go, me!