It is amazing the effect a small idea can have on my general demeanour and feelings of well-being!

What it does is give the general bumbling around a sense of purpose. I am tidying up because I will need room for X… I am getting rid of old drawings so I can re-use the paper for X… I need to move my furniture about so I can make X… 

It is as yet a very small idea, that will need extra focussed thought after Christmas, but I am astonished at the difference it has made. I am even wondering if it could form the groundwork for a funding application. When I think about funding, I am always on the look out for a neat and tidy nugget of loveliness: a self contained piece of work with a beginning, a middle and an end, with a sure focus within my otherwise wide-ranging practice. I am thinking of a year’s worth of work, concentrating on monthly sections that form a body of research that will keep me going for another couple of years afterwards maybe. If I was sat around the Arts Council table I would think that’s good value for money wouldn’t you? 

I’m not giving any hints yet, because it’s not fully formed. But it has grown from the work I am already doing, from the trip to my childhood home I had earlier in the year with Bill Laybourne and his recording equipment, and from my constant fascination with the twigs… 

Watch this space as they say!