
You are a mask
You mask your face
You mask your mouth
Your smile is hidden
Dark holes
where your eyes should be
Hiding so much meaning
Muffled
Held in
Good or bad
How can I know
Cryptic?
New paintings and regular art updates.

You are a mask
You mask your face
You mask your mouth
Your smile is hidden
Dark holes
where your eyes should be
Hiding so much meaning
Muffled
Held in
Good or bad
How can I know
Cryptic?

My hubby just disturbed our hedgehogs nesting place in our shed. He put his hand on one of them and it spiked him! He didn’t know they were in there. He was trying to tidy the shed up. He also found that they had used a corner of the shed as a latrine. I’m not happy because he took our hoover out to clean up the shed! The hedgehogs were under bags of straw that we used to insulate the cat bed for the abandoned cat we look after.
They didn’t run out, just hunkered down, so he put the straw back in place. Hopefully they are here to stay!

Hunker down,
Hide and sleep
Find your dreams
And hug them deep.
Find a space
Where you can live
Where things are quiet
And silence keep.
Make a nest
Make a bed,
Stay inside
But in your head
Take a flight
Around your room,
Then through the open window
Zoom!
Above the world
The air is clear
The sky is bright
Bird song, you hear.
Look down on streets
So still so quiet,
With hunkered people
Bunkered, still.
But you are free
And safe to soar
Flying high
No fear
Just dreams.
(from an idea inspired by Martha Kennedys blog ‘I am a writer, yes I am’.)

The Crystal Skull, with creeping electrical charges, shining on a granite plynth…….
She stood in the ancient barrow, staring at the image, shocked that something like this could be in such an ancient place. They has walked in through the back entrance, which was closest to the road. On the way back to the caravan site. They liked visiting ancient monuments, standing stones and triliths, so this had been a must see. They had torches so it was easy to crouch down under the stones and worm their way in. They expected to enter a hollow chamber, with a flat stone seat or altar- but not this? Not something out of myth and time.
The crystal gleamed strongly in the torch light, and yet it seemed flattened somehow? Then the voice spoke, in a Birmingham accent ‘you’re safe here!’ ‘it’s a hologram! Part of the theme for Halloween, if you’d come in the front you would have seen the banners’.
Sure enough as they left the tomb they could see signs ‘Grand opening’ ‘special event’. ‘Yes we haven’t got the money to do archaeology properly any more. It’s the cuts in grants, that’s the way things are these days’, he said quietly. ‘That’s the real horror’.

I didn’t get a photo of them, they move too fast. One cat plays with a small ball, batting it round the bathroom so it clunk’s off the cupboard and the side of the bath, racing into the kitchen, the living room and back again, zigzaging along the floor, sometimes skidding to a halt and then whizzing off in another direction. Her brother, bigger and more staid, sits by the back door as this goes on. Until she chases the ball under a big green coat hung opposite the back door. It’s long enough to reach the floor. She bat’s the ball away, under the coat and chases after it. He watches, head twisted round away from the cat flap. The ball trickles out, he can’t resist and pounces, she rushes out, sees him with her ball, twists in mid air, catches the ball with a claw and flicks it away, all so fast he can’t react. She speeds off and he chases. So it goes on. Life, fun, two cats, one ball.

Corridors lead on through whitewashed walls.
Lead me on down your narrowing partitions,
Funneling me to some creative full stop.
Channelled into straight lined thoughts.
Where is my creative brain.
My thoughts and ideas?
Shut away in the darkness…
Hidden behind locked doors….

Cat hidden in dusty shadow. Lost to the World.
You were smart and neat once, now slightly chipped and nicked.
No longer on display, but hidden in a corner .
Spotted paint is scuffed, dots are faded,
But you can’t leave, you are an old friend .
Will you ever see the light of day, no sign of your return to favour.
Fold yourself into the corner, stay stray until you are called back. Home.