anagama sunday

Sunday

second morning at Spring Meadow, and rather exciting for Tilda. the van is a good viewpoint for wildlife watching, especially when a small lurcher has been allowed the privilege of an early morning cuddle. first there was an innocent little bunny, neat and bright eyed, cropping grass. then there was a big hare, bold as brass, all ginger whiskers and big black-tipped ears. madam found that too much to bear, adrenalin kicked in, and she got the shakes. I did half an hour’s yoga practice outside in the sunshine, hoping that she would calm down. unfortunately when I took them out for a run, goodness gracious, there was a ginger cat outside. I wasn’t expecting it, the dogs weren’t expecting it, and the cat certainly wasn’t; it ran for its life puffed up like a marmoset. there are plenty of trees here, so it was perfectly safe. In fact, if a cat stopped and just swore at these two they would be stopped in their tracks.

the remains of the Christmas tree farm make a charming fairy-tale wood, Hansel and Gretel must be just around the corner. there are groups of thirty-year-old Norway spruce trees with their tiered feathery branches reaching out over the ground, and grass rides between them edged by false brome grass. it has silky ribbon-like bright green leaves and fine narrow spikey flower-heads, and everywhere amongst it are blue thumbs of bugle.

I found one lesser spotted orchid in one of the smaller rides. a thrush is still delivering his liquid song morning and evening, buzzards mew and crows croak above, families of long-tailed tits swoop around in the top branches, and there are hares and rabbits everywhere. in the dusk of the first evening we found a beautiful white horse with flowing mane and tail in the small paddock next to the camp. Tilda was horrified at this ghostly apparition, but luckily Millie was not bothered by her barking and came to the fence for an offering of clover heads. at daylight the next morning she had mysteriously disappeared.

yesterday we had all the hard work of unpacking pots from their boxes, sorting them out, and packing the kiln; we didn’t finish until past nine in the evening. Svend’s pot only just fitted; Gas lowered the floor, (it is sand on earth) dragged the pot into the kiln on a rug, then positioned it on a piece of shelf by clasping in between his legs as he sat on the kiln floor and raising it the half inch of spare space there was, while I shoved the shelf under it. then he was somewhat stuck as there wasn’t room to get his leg and his head out from behind it.

two students from the Czech Republic, Lukas and Pavla, spent the whole day splitting whole chunks of tree trunk down into small wedges with Gas’s petrol driven wood-splitter, slept in the summer house and were back off to London to their respective jobs this morning. Vicki Covacic, a local young potter who also has fired with Nic Collins, was here most of the weekend; she and Gas helped me set up the awning on Friday night, and then her work was part of the kiln load – she is coming back to help in the evenings during the week, and then staying from Thursday night on.

today is much more relaxed; first thing Gas built up the front of the kiln and the fire-mouths, and lit a small fire in front of the kiln to start warming it up. he made an exquisite miniature log cabin style structure of sticks finely split by Ko (an amateur potter and box-maker with experience of firing in Japan, who drove up from Finchley this morning to help) filled in with waste from the log-splitter to start the fire, with the kiln god and a pot of yellow wild flowers sitting on the kiln top above.

after two hours of keeping this small fire going the warm air began to be drawn through the kiln and smoke appeared from the chimney, although the wind blew down the hill and through the kiln shed so that the person in charge of the fire got a good smoking, and during my evening shift I couldn’t sit next to it.