July, The Feeling of Being Under Water.
I’m sitting on a mown path in a little wood that was planted the year my daughter was born. It’s just a small belt of trees that runs between the road and the hay field. I’m painting in here because I’m in love with the colour and texture of the ash tree’s trunks. Tall and slender and smooth grey green blue, they’re more like seaweed than trees. There’s a real feeling of being under water in here. The long grass each side of the path is hanging heavy with pale blue seed heads, each one coated in a mother of pearl rain drop. And through the layers of different leaves above my head, come trembling pools of brightness.
Cars drive past, nobody notices me. A yellow council lorry pulls over and two men sit and drink tea,I hear their chat about football. Then Arthur drives past and stops to unlock the gate. He’s looking summery in his hay making clothes; purple shirt, mustard tie, pale blue knitted tank top and floppy hat. As he swings the gate open I wave. He hasn’t seen me. I shout Hello Arthur! But he doesn’t hear me either. I feel more than ever submerged, invisible to the outside. I’m in a strange wooden, watery bubble,where trees have blue trunks and girls have blue hair (yes, my daughter really does have blue hair this week!) And as I look up into the canopy I wouldn’t be surprised to see Edward Lear’s Jumblies sail over my head in their sieve.
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea;
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winters morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, ‘You’ll all be drowned!”
They called aloud, “Our Sieve ain’t big,
But we don’t care a button! We don’t care a fig!
In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!”
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a sieve…….
