Draft

A very rough frame from the draft of my graphic short story I am currently working on. It's based on the stories told to me by an East End sailor.

Birds of prey

Today I went to the Hawk Conservancy Centre near Andover. What an amazing place! There are vultures that fly so close over your head that you have to duck several times, black kites circling above you and catching food catapulted to them, and bald eagles swooping from the horizon back to their handlers just when they step into place. You get to hold a barn owl. Up close, barn owls look like bread rolls with poppy seeds on. And briefly, you get to hold food out for a harris hawk, which lands on your glove to eat. And also they did a duck race.

I can't imagine a better day out!

Characters

A few drawings from my sketchbook for a children's book I'm working on- which may have to be put on hold so I can do the summer project.

Highlands drawings

Drawings from my brilliant summer holiday in the North-West Highlands. The freshwater lochs are full of wild waterlilies and the sea lochs are lined with rusty orange seaweed and the occasional seal.

Floating in Space

I heard the artist Tomas Saraceno talk at a symposium on the future. He spoke a mile a minute and digressed a thousand times. One of his tales was of going to a special place in South America, a beach where the sand is always covered by a thin film of water. And you walk on the water and the sky is reflected perfectly. On a clear night the stars are out in their millions and you are floating through space. These are his photographs, part of his installation for the 2010 biennale, the images are called Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space.

Tonight is the annual Perseid meteor shower. Clear skies are forecast and there will be up to a hundred shooting stars an hour at the peak, 11pm tonight. Even in cites, ten shooting stars are bright enough to be seen. We are seeing this because the earth is passing through the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet. Here it is last year, seen from Jordan.