PORTFOLIO II

PORTFOLIO II

It's been about three years now since Portfolio I. 

Time to update

Here's a selection of work I've been making recently: there's a mix of drawings, sculpture, hand worked gates, photographs and some sticks of furniture too

Literally! 

Some of the furniture is rustic, as they say, and some of the wood I've used has had the minimum of intervention from the way that it grew, out there in the outdoors before it changed from branch into table leg or into the rail or style for a gate

I work out doors, most of the time, up the hill above Hay-on-Wye on the Herefordshire-Powys border

I'm a caretaker, a factotum in fact for the guy that owns a farm up there with a raggle taggle collection of ruins and houses and converted barns

I fix things for him, up there on the hill, and I look after the grounds. It's a beautiful place, full of birdsong and silence

a while back now, I had a project to build a wall around the tank that stores the water from the spring

It was to be dry stone and I was humming and hawing about the amount of material that I'd have to hoof on the steeply sided bank where we were perched

Naturally, he says, It doesn't have to be very thick, a single skin'd do. That'd save a lot of to and fro 

And of course I'd given him an old fashioned look. I'd rate the chances of my constructing a two metre high wall a single stone wide as slim. In the extreme. I raise an eyebrow as eloquently as I can and on my insistance we decide to do it the traditional way. Double skin with tie stones and a bit of mortar on the inside, where no-one'll see it

I get the job done and a little while later head off to Sweden, and find myself in the middle of the forest there. Of course, the first wall we encouter is this one, a perfectly balanced and perfectly venerable single skinned wall. Look closely now! And wonder who it was that balanced these stones 

I thought about the making process, confronted now with the evidence of 

being wrong 

and wonder how this applies to the stuff that I've already made, as well of course as the stuff that I will make in the maybe of the future: of the assumptions I've made and will make about the impossibility of this or that in the light of my now demonstrably slip shod way of assessing impossibility
  I muse about this lesson as I meander around Sweden, and resolve to do better next time, and to try not to discount a way of doing merely on the grounds that it appears, at first glance, to be impossible. 

Some  drawings then, to start with

I enjoy drawing although my stuff always seems to come out looking a little like the before board of a painting by numbers kit. I find it impossible to make it come out any other way. I wonder how to apply the notion of the impossible we do at once to drawing, to changing one's style. I'd like to do mysterious, deep drawings with more to them than meets the eye but this is what there is for now


It's all very well to have a notion for another way of working, and another again to put that notion into practice. This is in a National Park in Sweden, an attempt to simplify the overwhelming complexity of the canopy and understorey of the forest, and to present it in a way, as the poet Charles Bukowski might have said that just makes sense

And this one, this one that's a little Hopper-esque and Nighthawk is also from Sweden. I enjoy sketching quickly, without worrying too much about isometrics, and wonder if this is one way, for me, of breaking the habit of painting by numbers. It's a cafe of some sort, and I like the way some of the counter anxiety we may have about ordering stuff at bars comes across. Not that it's me, out there in the picture, but I sympathise with everyone who's ever tried to attract the eye of a harried waiter, or a busy barman
 
This is the last Swedish one on here. I love the way the sketch offers an invitation to transport the viewer from the edge of the garden to the edge of the forest, by crossing a simple style. I wonder if this is one way to do the impossible in a drawing? To offer an invitation. To offer the magic of transport and delight

And this one of course is in colour. I called it Iron Oak with captive rock as the ochre coloured boulder in the middle appeared to have been surrounded by the oaks, as if they'd corralled it, taken it prisoner. I over-layed a photograph of the scene on top of the drawing - another attempt to look  a little less painting by numbers - and used it in a short travelogue that I wrote recently Around and about in Alcazaba, set on the slopes of Mulhassein, the highest mountain in mainland Spain, and indeed, the whole of the Iberian perninsular

Last one! I love the simplicity of the lines here: Marsh Cotton, Bilbury and the Sugarloaf Mountain, with a playfulness of clouds above them, to boot. I took a sketch book high up in the hills for this, and dashed of half a dozen or so of hillside, hill and sky.  This is the one that appeals to me the most, having made the best job maybe, of translating three dimensions into two. Of most eloquently representing the irrepressibility of Bilbury, the gracefullness of Marsh Cotten and the majesty of mountains where they meet the sky. Is that right? Eloquence, for a drawing? 

Now: Sculpture: I've completed four pieces since portfolio I, all in wood: Two in oak, one in apple and there's one in Sycamore too. I like working in wood. I like the connection of my stuff to the infinity of all the other wooden sculptures that there've ever been that havn't survived and have been destroyed by insects or razed by fire or given in somehow to the ravages of decay. It makes it more plausible for me, working away in the workshop, knowing that the likely impermanence of my particular chunk of time eating wood, the one I'm working on, is, in fact, part of an important hidden element of art history, and is likely to go to the same place - wherever that is - as the early pre-cursers of, say, the totem pole have gone, somewhere that isn't immediately accessible, and indeed, may never be

This is the most totemic of the pieces I've made: Empty head. The title is borrowed from a Minor White photo, and apart from the nod of this empty head toward figurativism it's simply a celebration of form, and the beauty of oak, and the grain hidden in there until the chisel, plane or router comes to find it. 

For years now I've been captivated by Henry Moore's 1953 work:Three Standing Figures in the sculpture garden at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and

suspected that this piece of work was indebted to it. However, when I finally got around to digging out my original photo from the Guggenheim I was surprised how I'd misremembered it, Moore's work I mean, and how Empty Head had maybe evolved in my head, and that this distillation had produced something inspired by Three Standing Figures, but something that also stood alone, as something new

 
This is the piece from the apple tree that blew down in a storm in the orchard where I live near Talgarth in the Brecon Beacons. It was still anchored in the ground after the storm, albeit at a rakish angle, and therefore easy enough to plank with a chainsaw. The finished piece, Blades of Grass, works for me because although the two pieces of the work now share a plinth, they are no longer one thing

and the way they lean toward each other speaks to me of a need that we maybe all have, to connect.

It reminds me of Forsters Howards End character Helen Schlegel advising us to live in fragments no longer


This piece is in oak, untitled as yet, 

and this next piece is in Sycamore. The Sycamore tree in the garden here was decreed to be tresspassing too close to the house, and it was decided that a third of it should be removed. I did the job with my brother Dave, and we took care to save the main bole of the removed limb. Someone told me that the finished piece reminded them of a spinal column, and I like this idea. The spinal column of a tree, the backbone that keeps it safe

It stands at about 2 metres tall and the removed material reveals an inner column, completely square, curving up through the structure.I havn't been able to think of a title for this one either

This is the place where I work, up the hill above Hay on Wye. A collection of photographs, showing the context of the smattering of dwellings up there

This wide shot here sets the scene:  It's what they told us was called was an establishing shot when I studied photojournalism at Cardiff a couple of decades ago

It's a hill farm, more or less, the highest hill farm here or hereabouts and it retains, on account of this loftyness, a remote feel to this day

To access the place there's an extremely steep and unmade track to negotiate. There's a hairpin bend above a steeply sided ravine to navigate, along with a ford to cross. The ford can be hairy in winter. 

The farmstead is at the end of an 'unnamed track' and therefore receives no casual vehicular traffic. It's name derives from the name of a village, although it must be a contender for one of the smallest villages in Herefordshire. 

I try to imagine the self sufficiency of the people that dwelt here, back in the day, and their isolation from the rest of the world.

The track is too steep for a pony and trap. I guess that, then, way back then when they must have used mules or donkeys to bring back the supplies that they wouldn't have been able to make, or grow, or barter the amount of effort the life-style would have demanded would be: tough. 

A different order of magnitude tougher than we can imagine. It's wet up here in the winter, and the red red Herefordshire clay turns into the muddiest mud imaginable, making pedestrian progress sticky, in places, and slippy in others

I was having a bonfire in the photo above. There must have been a temperature inversion going on as the smoke from the bonfire rattled off down the dell toward Hay and was, in fact, waiting for me in a hollow near Cussop when I eventually made my way home- a lonely cloud of bonfire smoke, identifiable from it's smell, with nowhere to go. 

The farm up here doesn't catch the sun in winter. You can see the sun, on the hillside, but most of the buildings remain in the shade from November to March. I often wondered about this, 

as the damp tresspassed in my bones or water into the soles of my boots,
about this seeming choice to site a dwelling with zero winter sunlight
 
Eventually, a chance conversation with a character well versed in rural lore set me straight

They wern't so bothered about the sun, see, he said, or words to that effect. It was the shelter that they craved. Freedom from wild wind and driving rain. Then, back then whenever it was, when whoever it was started to clear the forest for the sheep.

I muse about this, as a now seasoned stalwart of shade, and have, since then, appreciated the sunless shelter that this location offers. Sometimes, as I watch the wind shepherding cold hard rain away from here and on toward Hay I think of the bonfire smoke tumbling down the hill, escaping to a colder climate at a lower altitude. I feel a calmness up here on the hill, as well as a connection to a century spanning continuum of artisans that have worked here, who, as Dylan suggests in metaphor, have been given: shelter from the storm
There are traces of the people that live here, in these photos, but the winner, in terms of  impact on a landscape is surely the Spring here up the hill above Hay.

The winters linger, but the Spring, when it finally arrives, is as virile as a March hare. Energy crackles in the hedge. Songbirds are strident in their effort to attract attention. Ferns unfurl like time lapse photography.




It's this sense of the exuberance of Spring that I hope these photos achieve.

And now I'm at gates: these've all been built for the place up the hill, and most of them are built from timber that originated there too


This is the first one I made. It incorporates a natural cleft in the branch to supply the strength of the brace. It's in ash, with the bark removed for fear of rot minded beetles, and is treated with tung oil. I hope it'll last a while. I'll wait and see.

The next two are in oak: Apple tree gate is from green oak from Cilfiegan Sawmill near Usk.

It's for an orchard we are planning on some re-claimed ground. Here's a detail picture of the
apples on the top.

The components of the second gate were rough hewn from a huge oak that came down in a storm last year. I rough cut with a chain saw before finishing with a power plane before I put the individual pieces through a bench planer. One of the joys of working with green, as opposed to dried oak is in it's ease of working. The chips fly off like bits of carrot in a food processor. I feel like a master craftsperson with razor sharp tools. This gate is constructed entirely from wood, without a drop of glue or metal

There's a sketch here of the previous gate in thia location that had fallen into dis-repair.

It was a close board affair and blocked any view as to what might lie beyond. Like the stile in the Swedish drawing the new gate now offers an invitation,  and I'm looking forward to how this invitation will appeal once the oak boards have silvered up, and in the springtime to boot

And lastly: here's one in Holly and Oak. It's by  a huge and venerable oak tree and leads to a door set in the tree itself. Golly. Fairies and little folk abound up here, or so local legend has it. The door in the tree opens outward, like that of the dolls house, and reveals some fairy furniture

And this of course is the gate itself, crisp against the driven snow

Now then: On the off-chance that anyone has got this far this is the last section. Lovely. 

Furniture

There's some fitted cupboards to start: all in oak and with attention to detail in the shape of saw tooth adjustment for the shelves

and an intriguing space saving detail for hanging in the wardrobe


 



And here's a table and chair in Holly, mainly. The seat for the stool along with the table top are reclaims and all the wood is jointed  with a Veritas power tenon cutter,
 something not unlike a giant pencil sharpener

 This is the last pic: an occasional piece with two secret compartments.

The first one's shown in the photo, but the second one . . . Shhh. I can't tell you where this one is. Well, not over the internet at any rate. If you need to know, or indeed, if you'd like to commision a piece or work, my details, as they say, are in my bio. Contact me! I'll see what I can do to make the impossible possible for your project

Wildwalk. The Haute Route 800.

 
   
   
 

Wildwalk

 

By Drew Zachary

It took a long time to cook, but here it is:  
Wildwalk. An account of my jaunt across the high Pyrenees in 2014 and a delve here and there into the nature of mountain lore.

Click on 'book preview' after the link above. It's free on-line!

These pictures are from the book itself, which is, as they say, lavishly illustrated

The book is also for sale as a hard copy

and if anyone's interested then a click on the shopping trolley icon after a click on the link above will get you started on the money-go-round

A childrens story.

The Tree that went for a Walk.

by Zachary Twoshoes

Her name is 'Summer', perhaps because she was born on mid-summer's day, exactly five years ago from today. Summer has curly fair hair, the sort that ties itself into ringlets, and she likes to wear dungarees and a summer hat when she plays in the garden.

At the bottom of the garden there's a beautiful beech tree. It has wonderful branches that reach right down to the ground. The branches have arranged themselves almost as steps,

spiralling around the tree. Summer can climb to near the top of the tree, and doesn't ever feel frightened.

I shall call you 'Emily' says Summer, with her arms around one of the beech tree's highest branches, and rests her cheek against its smooth bark. She can hear the sound of leaves rustling, answering her, and it's a friendly sound.

And mixed with this sound, Summer hears her mother calling. 'It's teatime' her mother says, and Summer slips down quietly from her hideaway in the Beech tree, runs across the garden and into the house. There are crumpets, with butter and raspberry jam, and Summers' Mum

has spread the jam into heart shapes in the middle of each crumpet. They eat them, sitting together at the table and looking into the garden.

The next day is a Sunday, and straightaway after breakfast Summer heads toward the beech tree. She climbs up to her safe place in Emily, and now it's as if there's a cradle there for her, in the branches, and she settles into the safety of them, and whispers to Emily. 'Sometimes I feel sad', she whispers, 'because my friend, Crystal, had to leave, and I don't know why, and I don't know where she's gone'.

And this time, when Summer listens to Emily's leaves rustling, she thinks that she can hear words in the wind, and Emily's saying, 'Tell me, so that I can help you'. So Summer tells the tree everything, about how Crystal left, about how she misses her, that she doesn't have such fun without her.

And Emily's leaves rustle, and the sounds that they make speak to Summer, and she hears Emily say, 'I can help you. I can take you to Crystal, to show her to you, so that you don't have to feel sad any more, because you'll know that she is happy'.

And Summer trusts Emily, and asks her to take her to Crystal, so that they can see that she is happy.

Emily cradles Summer in her branches, and rocks her until she's asleep, and then, very slowly, Emily starts to walk.

It's unusual for a tree to be able to walk, even in dreams, but Emily is an unusual tree, and she moves with the slow slide of a snail, which is so gentle that it doesn't wake Summer, as

she sleeps in the cradle of the branches.

Emily crosses the road, to ask the Chestnut Tree where they can find Crystal.

The Chestnut Tree gives Emily careful directions, and some roast chestnuts. 'Summer might like to nibble these later', thinks Emily, as she slides silently through the night, following the Chestnut's directions to the park by the Blackberry Brambles.

Summer awakes in the middle of her dreams, and, after she's had the chestnuts for breakfast, she plays in the park, staying close to Emily, so that she's sure she won't get lost.

And now a man with legs that seem as long as hedges is walking in the park, and Emily and Summer watch as he sits carefully on the bench by the pond. He opens his bag, and arranges a piece of pumpkin pie, a potato salad, and a jar of pickles on his knees, on a red and white striped handkerchief. His legs are so long that his picnic is at just the right height, as if he's sitting at a table.

And now his phone rings, and as he pats his pockets, looking for it, his hat falls off his head. It's dark brown, with a rim like a wheel, and it rolls along the path, toward the pond in the middle of the park.

Summer can see that the man doesn't know what to do, now that his picnic is so perfectly arranged on his knees, and his hat is rolling towards the pond. She nudges Emily, and Emily waves her branches carefully, and makes a breeze blow, and the breeze catches the hat, and

picks it up, and makes it sail back through the air, until it lands, gently, back on the head of the man with legs that seem as long as hedges.

He looks surprised, and Emily and Summer can hear him talking into the phone, telling the tale about how his hat fell off, and a breeze caught it, and blew it back onto his head.

Summer smiles, she's thrilled by Emily's magic.

And now Emily is whispering to an Ash Tree that is by their side in the park. Summer can hear the rustle of their leaves. The Ash Tree gives Emily a key, and tells her how to find a Lime Tree

that lives in the curve of the hill, next to the Whispering Wood.

And, after thanking the Ash Tree, Emily and Summer set off, to find the Lime Tree.

And when they arrive Emily gives the Lime Tree the key that the Ash Tree has given her, and

the Lime Tree gives Summer a leaf, the shape of a heart.

'This is where we'll be able to see Crystal', says Emily to Summer, wrapping Summer tightly it

her branches so that she won't feel frightened.

Summer looks through the branches, and through a dreamy window in a little redbrick house

she can see Crystal playing in her bedroom.

Summer lets go of the heart shaped leaf, and it floats slowly downward. Emily waves her

branches, softly, and the breeze from the branches catches the leaf, carrying it through the

open window toward Crystal.

Crystal reaches out, and gently takes hold of the leaf, and holds it close to her heart, and

looks up toward Summer, and smiles, then waves, and then carries on playing.

Summer can see that Crystal's happy, and, now that she knows Crystal's happy, she knows that she can be happy too. She holds tight to Emily, and whispers, 'Thank you', into a hollow in

Emily's bark.

Summer and Emily stay at the Whispering Wood for a while, and then they set off for home,

sliding carefully through the moonlight, to return to Summer's house and her snuggly bed.

Portfolio

Ken Dickinson

A selection of interiors, furniture, objects, photos & writings.

Interiors

Kitchen Space, Regency Flat, Brighton.

I love the way rooms work and I love their potential to work differently, after a spot of re-configuration. I love the bit in the middle too, especially if I'm working for someone I care about.

The space above is my sister's kitchen in a fantastic flat on the seafront in Brighton.

I removed the door to allow the table to be moved away from the stove, and built the work station and open cupboard to facilitate the feeling of a family room, as opposed to one that's there solely for cooking and eating.

The  bold palette of colours, with their sidewaysey stripes added a Regency air and was a simple solution to provide an warmer, more relaxed feel in what was previously a sometimes shadowey and gloomsome space.

Mid summer sun working well with the stained glass window.

 

 

 

 

 The bathroom above was designed around a 1970s Avocado tub. I love the challenge of incorporating the past with the present to send it into the future, and by removing the box work from around the bath, painting the exterior bronze and adding some outlandish aubergine feet, I felt happy to design the rest of the bathroom with the knowledge that there was a solid style direction to follow.

With thanks to Alex Beleshenko for help

 with the glass

I developed this style direction into a submarine theme, and incorporated custom-bent copper pipework for the shower rail and used a ship's porthole to borrow light from the attic above using a complicated combination of light tubes and mirrors. The sash window was completely re-furbished, and ran up and down like a train, just, maybe, as God had intended.

I based the design for the window on an photographic image of a seated sculpture I'd taken years previously, where I imagined the birds flying around the sculpture in the photo as the sculptures' thoughts, as representations of the chaos or creativity that exists, albeit invisibly, as a force field around us all.

 

Adjacent study and kitchen, Swansea.

The spaces above incorporate a couple of items of furniture as important parts of the design. The sentry box display cabinet was constructed with mdf and hardboard laminate to achieve the curves at the top as well as providing the rebates to house the shelves themselves. It originally incorporated a filing cabinet below, but the digital revolution had it's way with that.

Round, rolling, friction free and fun doors are incorporated in this catering sized stainless steel kitchen unit. Roll either of the end ones to open and to pick up the middle one en route. They'll stay in the open position until nudged, when they'll obligingly see-saw back into the closed position, via a system of rollers and weighted handles. The middle one also opens independantly. There's a You Tube clip here.

The kitchen also incorporated a starry LED ceiling, and an original 'English Rose' Cabinet, built after the war by the guys that had made the Spitfire. Coloured Jenga blocks form the counter top edging and there's also a cantilevered surface that folds away to reveal a pull out ironing board.

  

Furniture

The chair below is reclaimed from a skip and extended with MDF panels. I've extended a few chairs and a couple of tables and this is definitely my favorite. I like to sit at stool height and I like to build from a starting point of re-claimed materials. I also like the eccentricity of this piece, with it's single arm. The desk and shelves behind are irregularly curved and the support is a smoothed beech branch from the woods.

Extended chair and lobby work station

I like to start with a hand drawn and coloured sketch before committing to accurate measurements and final computer generated designs for bespoke fitted furniture. This sketch worked through the elements of the brief to incorporate a period piece of furniture within a larger set of bookshelves. There were conditions regarding fixings and no fastenings were allowed near the period piece itself, and in theory at least, it can simply slide out from the wall. Some decorative scrolling and the incorporation of inset wooden balls into the centre of the shelves attempts to marry the two styles into one piece of furniture.

 

The ball detailing can be seen here in the inset photographs.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

A three piece modular clock. 

Rearrangable in a variety of configuraions. Ceramic.

Boxing Hares. Constructed in multi layed OSB to create a feeling of energy and movement, the look that you get maybe from a photograph of movement via stroboscopic flash. The finished pieces were coated in the plastic component of GRP, and are aging well. They're planted with climbing hydrangea, that I hope will soften them over time.

Dancing Oak, Aldermaston Manor, 1986.

I painted this large fallen branch in emulsion paint as part of a sculpture project in the grounds of the Manor House at Aldermaston in Berkshire, in the mid Eighties. It's from a once giant oak tree now in the very last stages of its life, the tree itself remaining only as a huge hollow with a few twiggy beards here and there. This is one of a few huge segments of its fallen crown slowly disapearing around it. They say that an Oak tree takes two hundred years to grow, two hundred years to be, and two hundred years to die. I like this intervention in the death of a tree, to celebrate its form, and to mark one aspect of its longevity. The inset image shows a couple of other pieces of work from the project, and gives some idea of the scale of Dancing Oak.

  Photographs

Under a Quickthorn Sky

 

 

 

I enjoy interventions in photography. I like the mixed media feel that the intervention, once photographed in juxtaposition to the original photo, lends to the photo itself. The original image above, prior to the intervention of the quickthorn flowers, speaks to me of solitude. Of a journey, a pilgramage, or a transition. It's one of the last photographs I took of my mother before she died.  We were walking in the Pennines in the North of England and when we stopped for a rest we noticed little snow flakes gathered on our coats, looking like those magnified photos of symmetry that you see in school science books. I remember us both being entranced, and it made the day. Years later, I wanted an image of Mum for the wall, something to remind me of her, evocatively. I played with the quickthorn flowers in an attempt to represent the magic snowflakes, and loved the way the two components of the composite harmonised. Like the words chosen for a poem create a meaning beyond their literal sense, the elements of this composite image, that of  a journey and the beauty of moment take on a larger meaning. I think that there's feelings of care, the care of the universe, and purpose, the purpose of the journey, contained within the final  image.

I love aspects of Reportage Wedding Photography, and in this photo I love the juxtaposition of action and portrait. As the groom sparks up the genuine Trotters Independant Trading  mobile for the drive to the church, his still pyjamed son looks to the camera like the cover boy of Mad magazine. I love the straightforward documentry role that the camera can play, and I love portraiture. I've had the pleasure of having had two portraits selected for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Award and have loved the previews for these exhibitions at the NPG, hobnobbing around the exhibition with free wine.

 

Photography for me has always been about telling stories with pictures. I photographed the top image of this set of three through the letter box of an old church hall near Cwmbrwlla, Swansea. It wasn't possible to make out much detail through the gloom of the letter box with the naked eye, but the camera took this in its' stride and the revealed interior intrigued me in the way that only forbidden places can. Bright white poo and feathers from the pigeons in the rafters above carpeted this long abandoned workshop, speaking of  the way time passes, about how the human environment changes without the presence of humanity.

A few years later there was an awesome arsonic fire in the church next door and the workshop lost most of its own roof in the tragedy. I was mooching about looking for photos when the owner turned up. He told me his tale. How he'd bought what was then the church hall in the 50s to use as a workshop and how it had latterly been used as a store for the evangelical kit that the church used to take round various Christian Outreach ventures. The word 'word' in the final photo was all that was left from a display that had quoted the Biblical book of John:  'In the beginning was the Word'.

I took his photo as we mused about this. How that all that now remained amidst the ruin was the the word 'word', that, according to Biblical John at any rate, had been there since the begining of time.

 

  Writings

The two pieces above are extracts from larger works, an illustrated short story about love and a poetically annotated set of pictures from Rasquera, Catalunya, Spain.

And there's a link here to a children's story, A Cake and a Cat called Forget-me-not.

A Childrens story

 

A Cake and a Cat called Forget-me-not.

 by

Zachary Twoshoes

Henry and Irene live next door to each other, in two little houses on a hill, just around the corner from here.  They've been friends ever since Irene locked herself out of her house, and Henry helped her, and now they often spend their weekends together, so that it's not so far, from Saturday to Sunday.

Henry's eyebrows are the lowest you've ever seen. They're so low that you can't even see his eyes, and this makes him look as puzzled as a jigsaw that's still in it's box. Henry has marvellous ideas for inventions, but, because he always looks so puzzled, nobody listens to him.

Sometimes this makes Henry sad.

Irene has a heart shaped face, with a mouth like a rosebud. She doesn't like to wear her glasses, because she thinks that they make her eyes look a little too large.

She loves to bake cakes and has delicious ideas about the ingredients, but, sometimes, the cakes taste quite, well, quite surprising. The last one she'd made, with raspberries and raindrops, had smelt of seaweed, and tasted like a tomato.

Henry has a clockwork cat, called Forget-me-not, & Forget-me-not suggests that since the sun is shining, as well as the moon, they should call for Irene, and go together, to Ring-a-bell River, and watch the fish play.

Henry and Forget-me-not knock on Irene's door. She opens it wearing a yellow coat, and a purple hat. Her belt matches her eyes, which are a greeny-gold colour, the colour of the sea when the sun is setting. Irene is beautiful, and always has a tale to tell. Everyone listens to every word she says, even when she's whispering.

They walk over Remember-me Hill and down to the bridge at Ring-a-bell River. They stop here, resting their elbows on the edge of the bridge, and watch the fish play.

The fish are playing on their phones when an idea pops into Henry's head, like a pinball. One minute he's watching the fish play, and the next he's wondering why doors are square, instead of round. 'Because', he says, looking as puzzled as ever, 'if they were round, then they could just roll along, and they wouldn't get stuck, and Forget-me-not would be able to open them too, and could help me when I make tea'.

There's a silence, which goes on for a little too long, and, as Henry's expecting a reply, he says 'Pardon?', quite loudly. Irene's been thinking about baking, instead of listening to Henry, and hopes that Forget-me-not will say something.

But Forget-me-not's having a little cat-nap, so Irene says the first thing that pops into her head: 'Moonbeam cakes taste better, if you batter them with butter', she says, looking as beautiful as ever.

Henry very nearly says 'Pardon?' again, because Irene's moonbeam cake was the worst cake he'd ever eaten, and had smelt of rats, and tasted of sprouts.

Forget-me-not purrs, the sort of purr that cat's purr when they're not quite sure what to say, but want to seem friendly, and suggests that after they've said their good byes to the fish, they walk back home, and put the kettle on, and have a cup of tea.

They link arms, walk back over Remember-me Hill and settle around the table in Irene's kitchen. In the middle of the table, is a cake. 'It's a lemon cake', says Irene, proudly, 'made with real lemons, and rainbows'.

It's a pink colour at the bottom, green in the middle, and violet on top. Henry has a little taste, and Forget-me-not has a large mouthful. It tastes so peculiar that it makes Henry's eyes water and Forget-me-not's whiskers change from straight lines, into zigzags.

'Golly', says Henry, trying to be polite, 'What an unusual taste, for lemons.'  'And what an unusual taste for rainbows, too', splutters Forget-me-not, who's had to drink three cups of tea, one after the other, before being able to speak at all. Because the cake smells like bonfire night, and tastes of pickled eggs.

The taste of the cake takes up all the room in their heads, and they're quiet for a while. Forget-me-not is far too busy straightening his whiskers to say anything anyway, but in the middle of the quietness you can hear Irene say: 'I'm sure they were lemons, and rainbows, because I saw the labels on the jars, with my own eyes'. Henry burps, softly, and then says: 'Pardon?'.

There's another silence, as silent as the sound of a snowflake, landing on a toadstool, when a thought falls into Henry's head. He coughs, delicately, looking at Irene's shiny hair and her perfect outfit. 'I wonder', he says, 'I wonder if it's possible for a person that makes cakes to get the ingredients muddled, and, instead of lemons say, they put pickled eggs in, and maybe fireworks instead of rainbows?'  And then adds, quietly, 'Especially if that person is not wearing their glasses'.

Forget-me-not looks thoughtful, and then, all of a sudden, realises that when Henry says 'a person that makes cakes', he really means Irene, and this is why his whiskers are zigzagged, because instead of lemons, Irene chose pickled eggs, by mistake, and fireworks instead of rainbows, because she wasn't wearing her glasses.

Irene isn't really listening to Henry, and she starts to sing a little song, instead of replying, and doesn't stop until Forget-me-not holds up a paw:

'We should listen to Henry,' says Forget-me-not, firmly, 'because  this cake has made my zigzags quite whiskered, I mean, my whiskers quite zigzagged, and the muddles are ingredients. I mean, the ingredients are muddled. It has fireworks instead of rainbows, and pickled eggs in it, instead of lemons'.

Irene swallows, and has a little sip of tea, and Henry's so happy to be listened to, that, one after the other, his eyebrows slip slowly up his forehead, until he doesn't look puzzled any more, and you can that his eyes are shining.

'Let's make another cake' says Irene, and her eyes are shining too, 'and this time, I'll wear my glasses, and won't get the ingredients muddled'. 'And then', says Henry, smiling, 'we'll know what lemon cake really tastes like, when it's properly made with rainbows'.

Forget-me-not purrs, sounding surprised. Because, now he can see Henry's eyes, he can see that they're a beautiful greeny-gold colour, the colour of the sea when the sun is setting, exactly the same shade as Irene's.