pete mcgovern

Just scanning the opening of the auto-biography by artist Tirzah Garwood, 'Long Live Great Bardfield & Love to You All' , there is a you-must-buy-me-immediately winning line; 'In 1904, my sister Margaret, a very ugly baby with a large nose, was born'. A memoir penned while dying of cancer of the spine, and yet which she described as, 'the happiest year of my life', and written for her family's entertainment. I am sure the progeny of said sister would have heartily enjoyed such avenging wit.

The biggest tree (TBC) in the world is at my local park. It's ticked away amongst a bunch of less enormous grove-dwellers and seems to be often overlooked. It is so tall that it touches the moon when the orbit takes it directly overhead and touches its toppermost branches. The rustling of those branches scraping over the cratered lunar surface is unlike any other sound. Moon beetles take their opportunity and head earthward, returning a month later with news from above/below, and leaves as evidence. Today it was zero degrees and the tree was cordoned off with security fences. Signs declared storm damage. I have half expected the eventual end of the tallest tree since first discovering it a year or two after moving around here.  Local park risk assessments were always likely to end its ascent toward other solar bodies. Maybe that time has now come. Meanwhile a wood pigeon has taken to perching, solitary, on the corner of a neighbour's roof, surveying the feathers below of its pa...

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"Fulbeck, the flat, windswept, intensively farmed landscape of Lincolnshire."  (1981)

Thanks to UNESCO City of Design Dundee & V&A Scotland

Thanks to UNESCO City of Design Dundee & V&A Scotland