gentle morning by katharine eastman

Yes thank you yesterday was a nice day and I am sure the poor old creaking Bandcamp machinery was grateful to have a day off and not have to take on board a load more of my "issues" - a friend recently told me that anyone who makes music as compulsively/OTT-ly as I do has "issues" and should see a psychotherapist and put myself right at last. Oh I don't know. I am a dreadful procrastinator and I will no doubt put that off like I put off everything else.

And when I am not making music I am usually either sleeping (of course) or watching films or reading (not much of that going on lately though) or painting (same) or walking - and yesterday's walk was lovely - of course! - the sun never went in from the moment I stepped off the bus on the edge of the New Forest, right up until the sunset I think. It was pretty much a repeat of last week's walk except this time I didn't need the map and so I seemed to do it in half the time - and to repeat something like that so soon might've made it feel stale, but as I say, the sunshine, the maplessness, the butterflies, the smell of the may, the mood of the people - not that I met many.

It helped that I caught the 6-50am bus. So, for example, I was walking again between Beaulieu and Bucklers Hard when most people were having breakfast. On a typical sunny weekend, you will pass about 6000 people on that 30-minute stretch. Yesterday, that lovely weekday early-morning, I passed just one person - a woman walking her dog and obviously just drifting off from her yacht in the boatyard to do her dogly duty.

And Bucklers Hard itself was deserted. No one. That's (apparently) like walking around Barcelona and not seeing anyone. Butterflies - I saw three peacocks, two male brimstones, a male orange tip and two small whites - ie butterflies that were small and white, so they might've been female orange tips or something else, everything is a blur. But the highlight was a fast happy confident Giant Woodwasp, just as I was entering Lymington, beside the golf course. She flew in circles and then settled and allowed me to get quite close.

They look like hornets but they're much bigger - even bigger than a queen hornet - and they're harmless. So are hornets really. They are naturally very docile. In my previous house during some years we'd have a hornets nest out in the garden somewhere - we never changed anything, trees were allowed to die and slowly fall to pieces and at a certain stage they'd be perfect for a queen hornet at this time of year to feel at home in a hollow and build a nest - how could anyone want to harm these things, or change anything much ?

I suppose my music is a perfect reflection of my attitude to everything - something small and quiet is started and allowed to happen and sometimes it's quite good. This album probably sounds exactly the same as the last one - it'd be strange if it didn't, I am still the same person and still do the simple-best that I can at any one time, which is only ever one thing, though tomorrow it might be another thing, but let's get this one out the way now, and then I must go off to a bookclub meeting about a book I haven't read, it's such a quiet life.

recorded this morning, photo yesterday