My young friend and I met for the first time in months in the castle cafe. (She's 30, but any friend 30 and younger is now "my young friend".) In between the last time and now there have been illnesses, weddings, a 40th birthday party, holidays, midsummer concerts and plays at the castle, and art-making. She was wilting in the heat—20 degrees really, but in fairness she was hungover after a rake of strawberry daiquiris at last night's table quiz—and I was lethargic, rising only to take photos of ragwort, wild sunflowers, rosebay willowherb and other otherwise unwanted or overlooked plants that have somehow found their home, their refuge and oasis, here in the castle cafe's garden.

It was a wee breather, our hour, and I knew once I left, I'd have to return to my to-do list that's been ever-growing since returning from holiday. Already Alvor felt like a strange dream, in which people, even dogs, moved slowly in a shimmering heat and my only ambition was to get a ice cream or coffee, or draw a tree or the facade of a house in my tiny notebook.

I had forgotten how much I like drawing. At first I'm shit, unable to decide what to focus on. And then I make a decision: here is the next line, and another one, and finally something begins to take shape, this moment, this point in time and space, when the light hits an object just so, and your reality becomes transcribed, however imperfectly, on a page. What is drawing but a method, like diary-writing, of paying attention?

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