Bergamot and heartwood.

This is the work that allows me to take time off in the Winter. It is my livelihood and I should be thankful. And of course I am... but sometimes I become resentful. All of a sudden I am not only responsible for myself, but for a team of six. The emotions, the particular problems, the language barriers. It's more depleting than any physical work, of which there is a fair share as well.

In the garden the fennel has grown taller than me. In the evenings I water and I long to spend more time there. The turmeric is shooting up by a foot a week. I brush against the bergamot bush and think of Aida. People are wonderful, and terrible.

Mostly a bit of both.

There have been cats.

There have been cats in my life that I have loved more than humans.

Thinking of Estorbo, and the woman and the man.

This little pig went to market.

If you were to go back to the beginning of this blog, some five years back, you'd see that it was originally a record of my finds at the Milnerton boot sale. And then you would see that life stepped in, not shortly after.

But I still go to the market whenever I can and I still find things there that I love.

This morning Bev had a pair of Victorian wick trimming scissors for my growing collection of used tools. Ernest phoned me last week to say that he had found some wooden cotton reels for me. They have become a passion - I must have close to two hundred by now.

Last night's dream about Tuareg necklaces came back to me with a shiver as I held the one above. When I told Bev she said: Oh Darling no - then you must have it. She refused to let me pay.

I believe in these things you know...

Singing in the dark.

I've been reading - with delight and a sore heart, Marguerite Poland's Taken Captive by Birds. The people in Exclusive Books who have packed it next to the coffee table books about lions and cheetahs haven't the foggiest idea.

This writing strikes my heart like a gong. Is it an African affliction? I find it in the writing of my friend Marie, in faraway New York. In the books of my friend Diane, just down the road.

(Don't let's go to the dogs tonight.)

Singular miseries. Nobody knows the trouble I have seen...

But we recognise each other and there is comfort in that.

Over oceans and through windows.

Woman, I love you. This wry laughter we share.

I can't say it better than Wednesday Addams: "I'll stop wearing black when they invent a darker colour."