It's the best weather we've had for drawing for
weeks but, as I'm having problems with my printer, I find myself
wanting to stay at home, hoping some solution will materialise,
and get on with some writing.
First Impressions
What is the best way to write the text for my Sushi Sketchbooks?
They're supposed to deal with direct experience so I'd like to
write as much as I can on the day I do the drawing, in that way
I'd capture those vital first impressions of a place, but there's
another aspect to any place; its after effects: the way it makes
you think, feel and remember.
In May we spent a week in Norfolk and I'm now adding the text to
the drawings I did there. The experience seems to have spilled over
into my subsequent reading and my thinking. In Norfolk I found serpentine
forms in the cottage garden and in the village church. This serpent
appears on the crest of a coat of arms on a memorial stone in the
nave of the church. It was carved in a slab of black limestone,
polished like marble, which contained fossil shell fragments, which
I guess dated from the Jurassic.
Breakwater
On the beach, half an hour's walk from the church I found flints
wedged tight in between the timbers of the breakwaters as if some
enthusiastic amateur sculptor had artfully arranged them. I soon
realised that it was the surge of the tide that had forced them
into the gaps.
The contrast between organic forms and manmade structures has emerged
as the theme of this sketchbook. Clematis stems twisting through
a plastic trellis on the stone wall of the cottage reminded me of
the snakes and ladders board in the cottage.
I hope I'll have the booklet finished soon so that you can follow
my sinuous line of thought. But with the printer misbehaving it
might take a while yet. 
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