Good Friday 10th April 10.00am I receive a call from my sister-in-law in the UK, Monique. Our mutual sister-in-law has lost her brother to covid. He lived in the UK. I have never met him but my husband remembers him from his childhood as a keen fisherman and full of exuberance. He did not leave…
DetailsThursday 9th April 3.00pm I head into the shed to look for petrol so I can mow the lawn. There’s a little bird flitting about in the shed. Its wings make the most darling beating sound as it flies across and back, clearly very bothered by my entry. I see, to my delight, that it…
DetailsWednesday 8th April 8.00am There’s a plum tree in our garden. It has little white blossoms on it. In a few months it will be groaning with plums. I don’t what variety: I know they’re purple, and wasps like them, a lot. I stand up to sketch them in the early morning sunshine, and Reuben…
DetailsTuesday 7th April 8.00am I bring Paddy (18) a cup of tea in bed. This has happened every morning since the lockdown began, as he hasn’t been getting up for school. Like me, Paddy is an early riser, so the cup of tea is just the job to help him get up and at ’em…
DetailsMonday 6th April 10.00am I am rather overcome by the beech tree buds of yesterday’s sketch, and I feel the need to sketch some more. There is something so delicate and perfect about the buds of trees and I can’t believe it has taken me this long to seek them out as subjects. The beech…
DetailsSunday 5th April 3.00pm I spend a blissful hour in the garden sketching a beech tree. It is strong, with a powerful trunk and wood that look solid as can be. When we bought the field that would become our garden, there was nothing on it but grass and one very put-upon looking tree at…
DetailsSaturday 4th April 1.00pm The new Lockdown Blog is here! New name, new theme! I overhear my husband Marcel telling his mum Erika (91) that Ró is writing a Living in Lockdown blog. And he didn’t share this much cooler name with me before now because…? So I have a new name, and a new…
DetailsFriday 3rd April 4pm Liv (15) comes to me in my studio with her embroidered piece of denim. We have a pact, that if she makes an entire face mask on her own from start to finish, she can get creative with clothing (either hacking up things she doesn’t like, or making things from scratch)…
DetailsThursday 2nd April 5.49am Birdsong fills the air outside my window. It is passionate and comes right from little feathery hearts, and it is a glorious sound. When you’re up at that hour you really feel like you’re on top of your life. I decide it’s my cue to get up. What a wonderfully productive…
DetailsWednesday 1st April The days run into each other. They are full of online news, sewing, cooking, baking, writing, walking, sketching…and, luckily, picking up a small hairy white dog and giving him lots of hugs. He is roughly the size of a baby when they’re still very portable, so it’s the work of an instant…
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