Private Journal of the Current Archivist

Selected Entries

August 12th

Arrival.

I came for quiet. The house sits alone on the moors, stone darkened by centuries of weather. There is no immediate neighbour. No passing traffic. Just beautiful isolation.

In retirement I shall continue to write, as is my passion. But no deadlines to meet. No calls or emails to fend off. Just peace.

Tonight the wind presses against the outer walls as if testing them. The place feels a little cold in though it is August. Outside, it is pitch black. Tomorrow I must hang curtains!

Perhaps I shall light a fire.

This old house needs awakening again.

August 15th

We are settling together well this house and I. It is starting to feel like home. The views from the windows still disorient me somewhat but the twenty minute drive to the local village for supplies reassured me that I am hardly on the moon!

The nights are pitch black here. The light from my torch is suffocated by the darkness when I let Piper out for his last run. Our daytime walks are long and mainly damp but satisfying for us both.

Retirement here will suit me well..

August 21st

The fields look softer in the evening here.

Not golden exactly, more washed. The grasses lean as though something large has just passed through them, though nothing ever seems to. I have begun painting from the upstairs window because the angle flattens the land into something almost theatrical.

Today I worked on the far horizon. Just a simple line. Trees in the distance. A suggestion of boundary. The sky took most of the canvas. I let it breathe.

It was only when I stepped back, brush still in hand, that I noticed the interruption. A vertical mark just beneath the tree line. Very small. Darker than the rest. Barely a stroke, really.

At first I assumed it was the underpainting showing through. I leaned closer. It wasn’t. The pigment sat on top, deliberate. Opaque.

It looked like a person.

Ridiculous, of course. Not a detailed figure. No limbs. No face. Just a narrowing at the top and widening at the base. Perspective can do that. The mind is eager to assign form. I tried to remember placing it there but I couldn't. I lose myself when painting. Time slides. I have found entire sections completed before with no clear memory of layering them.

I considered removing it. Instead I softened the edges slightly. Now it looks like a fence post.

Or a person very far away.

It gives the horizon scale. I will leave it.

August 30th

Today was such a beautiful day that Piper and I walked the moors a little further than usual. I was craving the fresh air. I have been getting occasional headaches over the last couple of weeks. The house feels heavy, like the air is sucking the moisture from my brain.

When we returned I realised something curious.

There was no post anywhere near the spot where I had painted one. I stood for quite some time looking across the fields trying to place it again. Nothing.

How very odd.

I made sweet tea and went straight to the spare room which is rapidly turning into a little studio. I feel compelled to paint all the time. Is this the source of my headaches?

Sept 6th

It is already the first week of September and I realise the only writing I have done since arriving is in this journal. Painting the view from the back bedroom window has become a compulsion I cannot seem to break.

On every small canvas there is the same small mark, in exactly the same place as in the very first painting I did here. I do not recall ever painting it in, and when I notice it I paint over it immediately. Annoyingly it never covers very well. ~~I considered burning the painting.~~I am beginning to wonder if the dampness here is affecting the consistency of the oil paints?

Autumn is arriving quickly. The dampness seems to be part and parcel of life out here on the moor. In the mornings the land is shrouded in a thin mizzle of mist and rain. Piper will only go as far as the end of our little garden until it lifts sometime in the late morning.

The house feels hemmed in when the mist sits low. With no view beyond the garden wall I find myself doing chores, preparing food or reading to pass the time.

I shall admit here that this house feels rather daunting on some days. At times I feel as though it drains my energy until the mist lifts and Piper and I escape into the sunshine.

Sept 9th

Today I discovered a large crack running down the plaster of the pantry wall. I cannot imagine how I missed it before. The whole house was made sound and decorated before I moved in, at quite an expense, so I am none too pleased.

Cheap wall cladding perhaps? Or the constant damp working its way through the stone.

The prospect of getting in touch with the builders is tiresome. Phone signal here is atrocious at best and the rural broadband intermittent. I am not sure I want them back here anyway. It would feel oddly intrusive.

For now I shall simply keep an eye on it.

Sept 12th

Last night I frightened myself somewhat.

I let Piper out just before bed as I always do. It was late and I was writing at the kitchen table with the back door slightly ajar when he began to bark quite wildly. I was seriously alarmed and jumped up to call him in.

When the night is not clear it is as black as pitch here. An impenetrable darkness that seems to smother everything. I could just make out dark shapes at the bottom of the garden. I grabbed the torch but could still see nothing, he was just barking at something out on the dark moor. He would not obey me and come in so I went out, grabbed him by the collar and charged back inside.

I was shaking a little and for the first time since I moved here I felt vulnerable out here alone.

This morning as I write this I' feel silly. It was probably simply a rabbit.

He's never really bothered about them before?

Sept 16th

I need to go to town for oil paint and more canvas. I’ve been painting on cardboard torn from empty packing boxes. I have never been so proliferate with my art, it must be all this fresh air and quiet!

I do keep putting off going though I’m not sure why? The village doesn’t stock such things and the town is only eight miles away. It is like I am reluctant to leave the house unless it’s to remain on the moors.

But I have a list of things:

Canvas/heavy paper

Oil paint – Lamp black, Payne’s grey, Burnt umber

2 extra large door bolts

4 60W light bulbs/ candles

Strong torch for spare plus batteries

Wall filler for pantry

I shall finish my cup of tea and go now!

Sept 18th

I believe it was a hare that made piper bark the other night. I saw him this morning at the end of the garden, just staring at the house. I had no idea that hares were so big! A very strong urge to paint him came over me so I grabbed my phone and took a photograph to work from.

It has given me an idea. I shall go out on the moors and take some photos of the horizon from various viewpoints.

I need to have a closer look at something.

Sept 19th

I have to admit to being confused and a little uneasy. This afternoon I took Piper and my camera and we went bounding over the moor. The heather is fading to a dark purple and the bracken is turning a rich red and copper. It was cool and breezy and the clouds moved swiftly across the sky. It was such a beautiful afternoon and I took several photos of the horizon on our way back.

After tea I loaded them onto my laptop and it was as I suspected. There, very near to the horizon was the little black mark on every one. Too far away to see by the naked eye and too tiny to enlarge to anything more than blurred pixels.

So when I paint from the window am I unconsciously registering this tiny little speck in the distance? It has now appeared on three of my paintings? What on earth can it be?