I know – it’s been  a couple of months since I posted – sorry dear reader, but I will only plead a heap of excuses which can be summed up by saying time, opportunity and inclination did not come together these past few weeks – but here I am, back and communicating again. 

This past week I have been working on a new piece which I hope I will feel OK about as a QN entry, closing date looming fast.  While I work I have been listening to Jane Austen’s “Emma” for the umpteenth time.  Now I know it almost by heart, and to hear it read by the late Prunella Scales makes it especially good listening.  On one level at least it’s really all about communication.  What a vital role communications play in human life, this case C18 England –  the coming and going of letters and notes, observations, personal comments, gossip, scheming, interpretation, being mistaken….  Letters were shared with family and close friends, and everyone knew who had received letters from whom, if not their actual contents – but no matter there – fuel for speculation and gossip anyway.  Everything was discussed endlessly in minute detail.  The deliciously slowly unfolding events in the lives of inhabitants of a small typical C18 English village were moulded daily by communication of all kinds, expecially ‘letters’.  From so far forward in time, looking back many of the communiques seem trivial to us, but it struck me how little has changed, really.  I realised this as we sat around the fire the other evening over a glass of wine, catching up with an old friend – no friend like an old friend, the comfortable experience of being with someone almost as familiar as a family member.  DH showed us something amazing on his laptop, and our friend was occasionally checking his FB messages, commenting on mutual friends’ recent posts, mostly trivial – and as my desktop was just an arm’s reach away, I too logged in to my email to quote something I received from a mutual acquaintance earlier in the week.  We shared family news face to face,  since I had seen several offsprings our visitor knows.  If our old friend had known the distant long-lost cousin I just heard from (much to my delight) then I’d also have brought that into the conversation too.   You’re right !!! that all sounds sooooo Jane Austenish – you can never have too much of her imho, but perhaps when “Emma” finishes I might move onto something more modern – a Jodi Picoult or Henning Mannkell maybe. 

Then this morning on the beach I noticed this bit of communication – 

Lost house keys on display

Hung on a stick wedged into the sand presumably where they were found, I thought this was a useful form of communcation, and I hope the person who lost them comes back to the beach for another look.  The tag on them looked nearly new so they haven’t been lost long.  As one was a gate and the other a door key, the owner may not have realised they were lost until he got home…. 

And finally, I think this cap has a story to tell – it’s been in the water quite a while !! 

Barnacle encrusted baseball cap

It may have initially been lost on a beach, or blown off a passenger’s head on a cruise boat coming down the river – or blown off a yachtsman’s head out in the bay – perhaps last summer or maybe longer ago – but the colour hasn’t dulled much, I looked in the seams – was it beloved or just something handy clapped on to shade a bald head? or a nose? or to go with an outfit? – worn by a guy or a gal?  Ah well, we’ll never know for that line of communication is broken. 

So now, back to the next masterpiece ….. spurred on a bit by someone buying two of my works a few days ago, and an invitation to exhibit along the coast in a few months’ time.