For five or more days now, I have been watching the geese migrate.

At near enough 6.15 everyday over Powfoot – geese have passed over in noisy waves.

With the passing of the geese so too have arrived the frosts and cold mornings – trips are being made out to collect things.

My studio is full of conkers, acorns, and various seed pods – gathered, hoarded, cast, and a growing number of ‘copies’. Concrete is becoming a material of choice, contrasted with whiteness – the kiln has had a new plug fitted and is now ready to go, just as soon as my moulds dry out and my objects are ready! Ceramic fir cones are due to join the others. I feel somewhat like a creature stock-piling for the winter, collecting moulds to see me through the winter!

The notion of shrines are once again taking a notion within my work, miniature-wall-mountable-installations, enclosing, boxing in, containing.

‘And the wind shall say: “Here were a decent godless people,

Their only monument the asphalt road

And a thousand lost golf balls.” ‘

(From T.S. Eliot’s Choruses from the Rock, Part III 1934).

I was sent this a while ago and find that it has, for one reason or another stuck just a little. It seems like it might resonate a little with some of my work and am considering a piece based on the short section. Not having read the rest of the piece, I like the abstract-ness of this, although that may be lost in finally reading the whole thing. I think golf balls will be next on my casting list…