Gilded

Sunshine on dusty, yellowed pages and a shabby, gilded cover with curling corners.

Early

Quieter, softer: early morning - we should get to know each other.

Mexican

Mexican chicken salad: green, pink, brown, herby, spicy. Gently, it bites.

Unanchored

Today I was unanchored to the world - my eyes saw nothing. Try again tomorrow.

Patterned

The abandoned freight container has become a work of art, its deep-blue panels patterned with layers of half erased graffiti and the peeling traces of fly-posting.

Slender

Four slender white legs come flash, flashing on the grey road. Four dainty black shoes tap, tapping. At the edge of vision: green, amber, red.

Insidious

Despite the soft, stippled sky, there's a small, insidious chill that makes the body stiffen. It's as if the cold is a worm within.

Painted

My painted plate: the white yoghurt runs into the burnished yellow of turmeric, the smooth surface broken by floating beads of channa dal.

Undignified

The men sitting opposite read the news on their phones. It's an undignified activity: two outsize, baggy children poking and peering at their tiny screens.

(I've been away for a week without internet access, but continued to write these every day)

Heightened

In the sculpture park, everything is sculpted by the eye, aesthetically heightened: tree, gate, sheep.

Rectangular

The big, rectangular window in the white gallery wall is a picture that dissolves and re-forms with the shifting angle of view.

Unchanging

In the millpond,
time’s unchanging
reflection.

Invisible

The heron is invisible – so still – until it unfolds wide, blue-grey wings and floats above the water.

Wavering

The wavering reflections of tall windows in the dark canal conjure a fantasy of living in this elegant, haunted place.

Ragged

These ragged purple flowers that sprout against the old, red bricks must have bloomed here unseen when this was all dereliction.

Pointilliste

Rain on the train window turns the landscape into an unfurling pointilliste fresco.

Muggy

Muggy heat, but it might be cold tomorrow. Noisy electric fan, but behind it is silence. Mounds of work, but no urgent deadlines. Floating anxiety.

Deep

Suddenly, vibrating warm air and deep colours:
a storm approaching - or passing over.

Sticky

The office pot-plant crouches miserably on the window-sill: a thick layer of sticky black dust coats its once shiny leaves.

(after writing this I washed it and talked nicely to it)

Noisy

Deserted office after hours, but noisy still: a tumult of voices funnelled upwards in the cleft between buildings and a roar of low-flying aircraft funnelled downwards.

Grey

The man is all grey - hair, clothes, aura. He moves so slowly. Doesn't want to get to where he's going. Doesn't want to get to anywhere.

Cool

On a warm day the cool pleasure
of clothes holding skin less tightly,
skin holding flesh less tightly.

Mournful

Baggy, mournful eyes,
ears of long, grey, silky hair -
spaniel woman.

Red-black and blue-black

Cherry and blueberry
Red-black and blue-black
Shiny and velvetty
Bite one and suck one
Neither too sweet

Alien

White smudges all along the street - the paw-prints of an alien visitation?

Pink

The sun comes out. The thousands of old pink bricks in the wall opposite my window light up softly and emit their infinite gradations of rosy glow.

Chill

Chill rain pounds on the roof, which hunches self-protectively, dribbling at the edges.

Floral

Back-to-back in the bus aisle, two floral cotton dresses, two flushed bare arms, swaying in the clammy heat - they could be a single, two-faced creature.

Oily

The deep, gentle, oily scent of lavender reaches over the low garden wall, clings to trailing fingers, fills the pale London air with purple.

Green

The man in the green dragon suit bends over, carefully packing his groceries into a big back-pack. His stiff, bright-green tail sticks straight up.

Diagonal

Behind the fluffy tree, two perfectly diagonal contrails cross at right angles - a thick, bright X chalked on the sky.