Although the face of the gate was much faded, where the cloth had been hidden from the light the colours were still bright -2/2/16

And the front - 2/2/16

The back of Bigod's Way 2 - 2/2/16

On tuesday of this week I went back to the River Waveney Study Centre, the site of the Waveney River Sculpture Trail in which I participated last year. The managers of the site had very kindly allowed me to leave my piece, Bigod's Way 2, to over-winter so that I could observe how it weathered, how it took on time and the elements. It fared much better than I had hoped, in fact. 
I've been to see it several times over the autumn and early winter but now it is time to take it down, so that the space is clear for this years sculpture trail. 
The weather was bright and beautiful, sunshine and clear skies but very cold with a sharp, skin-biting breeze. 
The site has a different feel, of course, wind singing and reeds rustling, geese, and the colours are fawn and silver-grey, bright green (grass), bright blue (sky), and shades of purple, red and gold on the twig ends of trees. 
After taking some final photos of the piece in it's entirety I knelt to begin dismantling it. Just as setting it up became a kind of prayer, so too is the taking down it seems. 
Slowly, and with cold-stiff fingers, I began to untie the scraps of cloth. Remembering the love that they represented. Remembering the journey beyond that love that they represented too. The new friends, the year just past, and the years before that year. And wondering what this year will bring.
It will take me some days to remove all the pieces. I am doing it carefully, no scissors, so that I can re-use the cloth, and also so that I don't hurt any of the creatures that have made it their home over the past few months, mostly spiders, but also a ladybird and a few bugs. Breaking it up felt like a meditation in reverse, not better or worse for that but a different quality of contemplation.  Just as folding and unfolding have a different quality. 
It will be interesting to see how it feels when I rework the pieces into a new something. They have so much of me invested in them, tho' I daresay no-one else would know, to me they are the dreams of my being - excuse me if that reads like nonsense I don't know quite how to put into words the feelings that those lost dreams arouse.

I've had small problems with my health over the past couple of years, exhaustion mainly, which turned out to be severe anaemia which meant monthly trips to the doctor and a hospital referral. That referral led to another referral within the hospital as I was diagnosed with the beginnings of bone thinning and so I ended up in the endocrine clinic with symptoms of an over active parathyroid. The doctor I saw was very good, he could sense my reluctance when he offered me an operation, and gave me four months leeway. My feeling was that if I could give myself rest and live within the means of my energy levels I might be able to stave off surgery. I wanted to keep my body intact, I felt that if my parathyroids were a bit hyper then the chances were/are that they were working to balance an imbalance in my life that ran deeper than a small gland getting a bit het up. 
Yesterday I went for my follow up appointment, I was anxious and psyching myself to beg him for another four months as the thought of general anaesthetic and being under the knife scares the be-jesus out of me. 
But, wonderfully, and as a confirmation that intuition is my finest sense, as I sat down the doctor asked me what I'd been doing. So I told him. And he said, "well whatever it is you've been doing it's worked".  We then had an discussion about chinese medicine (my subject) and the four humours (his) and the marriage between modern and ancient medicine practices and how complimentary medicine (shiatsu, acupuncture, homeopathy ...) can meet and support the national health service. 
This led us briefly into discussion about how our government under David Cameron and George Osborne seems to be actively working to destroy the national health service. It's a strange thing because Cameron's own child, being severely disabled, benefitted hugely from the system he is now working so hard to break. Why would he do that ? What kind of man denies another the care source from which he has so heavily drawn ? Who knows ? Only David Cameron can answer that question.
But I woke this morning thinking about my conversation with the doctor and also about the Buddhas of Bamiyan in afghanistan that the taliban blew up in 2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan. I wondered if  a comparison could be drawn between governments like our own who are wilfully dismantling all that is best about our country, and groups like the taliban and isis who similarly seem to have a great need  to break that which is good for no better reason than a desire to dominate. 
So that doesn't sound too crazy great but I think that the best in man has a way of breaking through - lux lucet in tenebris. In 2015 Janson Yu and Liyan Hu created a 3d light installation in the hollows that had once contained the Bamiyan Buddhas .http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-06-11/they-were-destroyed-taliban-now-giant-buddha-statues-bamiyan-have-returned-3-d. 
Now I have no religion and in some ways I am quite nihilistic about the fate of the human as a species being perhaps more deep-green than green. However I found this story uplifting in that it represented to me the impotence of governments against spirit. Bodies can be broken, spirits too, but a pin prick of light can penetrate darkness and hold it to account. And therein lies the soft spot on the dragons belly. 
I guess that on that note it is perhaps up to each of one of us like the who's in Horton Hears a Who to be that pin prick of light, to be a who. That is the choice we have maybe in a world that seems to be being overwhelmed by the "dark forces". 
So ends my thought for the day

By chance I won a prize. A beautiful box of notions from Merchant and Mills. I never win prizes normally. I think my postman thought I was a little nuts getting excited about needles and things but he smiled anyway.