Last night we went to the funeral for the father of a young acquaintance, who had died of a heart attack. The four sons: skinny, curly-haired, and obviously shell-shocked. Afterwards we had drinks in the bar next door, where the county darts team, of which the young acquaintance is a member, were waiting in their matching satiny green jackets for the honour guard to start.

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The other day I finished an embroidery project. V commented, “Very vagina!” It’s supposed to be two chanterelles on a bed of moss. The moss is composed of hundreds of French knots in three shades of green, creating a 3-D effect. While making them, my right thumb developed a callus. I like it, a reminder that embroidery is after all craftwork, the labour of a body in and on time.

After I finished the project, I didn’t want to ever see it again. While listening to a podcast, I started another one, using a design based on a possibly Egyptian textile fragment from the sixth or seventh century, of a pomegranate tree. The pomegranate is a symbol of immortality; the fragment attains new life as inspiration.

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The days and nights pass in embroidery stitches, Magic Prague's dark urban scenes, Hellboy comics, wee sherry glasses of red wine, Irish lessons, neverending to-do lists, and waiting for my period to finally show the fuck up.

Meanwhile the weather is the main character in the lives of our small town: sunshine, rain, hail, wind, all in fifteen minutes. It re-directs imperatives with indifference to my scant time and limited reserves of patience. It lights up rooms and then casts them into shadows, changing our moods, from buoyant to dark and fraught and back again.

We could feel spring coming, though, in modest degrees: in the slight rise in temperature, the discreet buds on trees, the valiant celandine on a patch of grass. The rookery above the priest’s garden has been busy and raucous with nest-building, the pavement strewn with fallen twigs and moss, testimonies to the rook's own diligent craftwork. In the field beside the castle, above a trio of sleeping ewes, two horse chestnuts cast their green buds at the sky, offerings to whatever gods remain.

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