After working 8 months at web, I've been able to take 3 paid days leave plus my normal 2 days off from my working week so I got 5 days off altogether. Oooh, So, this is how we came to be on the night train to Huangshan. Hard sleepers. Well, there’s a first time for everything. The journey (14 hours) took the train through places that reminded me of what it is like to travel again and although my mind wandered to another time an other worlds, my body moved on and I moved forwards with it leaving Suzhou well behind. [View Full Entry]

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Burnt Norton - Eliot. Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind... I have carried this poem with [View Full Entry]

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I was living in the old Hutongs when the first summer storm hit. It came without warning forcing me to run down the lane in between the old houses towards home trying to dodge the drops of rain the size of old English pennies, rain falling in curtains from the rippled black tiled roof, rain in huge dirty puddles to jump over. The local people were used to me by then and waved or smiled as I ran by. The lane had been dug up for the ‘restoration programme ’ which was evident everywhere but the life around didn’t stop - [View Full Entry]

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My life is a work in progress. If I think it is on track, someone or something else changes it. If I am trackless, a route appears. We live and learn. I find myself in the coins in his collection, in the bells around Lao Wang’s dog’s necks, in the mirror in Cai Gen Lin’s shop, in Song Song’s bed, in the opening of a door to a new home, in the reflected rainbows across the walls from the ancient crystals that Mr Beddoes gave me over 15 years ago, in the polaroids of friends, in the lanes, by the wells, [View Full Entry]

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Down by the river, every day, between 5.30am and 6.30am, there is a dog party in the shade under the Magnolia trees. Here is where I met Tina for the second time. There is also a gramps and his granddaughter, walking in single file, each holding one end of a long stick with a hook on which I find later is to collect plastic bottles from far flung places for recycling. There are also joggers and people exercising. Here also, under the 6 laned road bridge and the gathering pollution, the Kung Fu group is well under way by 6am practicing [View Full Entry]

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4th May Shanghai is hot but still relaxing to visit even though I only had 3 hours sleep the night before. I still cannot sleep sometimes. I saunter up Haui Hai Lu in search of Snaps - a place I know will process and print 120 roll film. As I lazily take in the buildings, I miss the shop and have to backtrack. It's behind an insignificant door with a key pad and buzzer. Unless you know about it, you won’t ever find it, there are no signs or indication of it being there. I press in the numbers over and [View Full Entry]

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29 April Winter Yesterday, i gave him a gift. he sat by me, turned the old clay bowl around in his hands and explained the blue characters written around winter telling a list but also expressing a feeling - early sunrise, go, look, willow, evening, down, cloudy, ask, smoke, rest, nothing, money, go, red sunrise. and the air was calm and i felt close to him but only looked and didn't touch. i didn't want to touch, just wired in and pleased to know that I could still feel this way again was enough. now, he isn’t here. I sit outside [View Full Entry]

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Today Maggie took me to Luzhi to visit the old town and to see her shop. It was a really lovely girls day out with some very funny, quiet, cute and acutely aware moments. Luzhi is a small water town which is still in Suzhou but takes about 40minutes to get there. Maggie picked me up in her large Chevrolet - the second time I’ve been driven in a car in 9 months. Luzhi is like Tongli but more real with more people living in the old part and less tourist attractions so I liked it. I don't like the water [View Full Entry]

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9.23am - I’m going to catch the bullet train bound for Shanghai. It’s fast. I want to check out the Old French Concession area for two reasons. The first is that there is an exhibition with a Bill Viola piece that I want to see and secondly, I’m thinking of moving to Shanghai and I’m going to check out the areas with galleries in to try to get a snap shot sense of the place and how it instinctively feels. Somehow, I’d forgotten what it’s like to catch a train in China. I forgot about the pushing, shoving, huddling, surging and [View Full Entry]

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It has taken me 45 years to find my favourite word. On asking a friend, many years ago what his favourite word was, he said ‘humility’. This friend always inspired me with his complete fullness whilst seeming that he lived in total emptiness，through his silence. He will not remember that he once told me that this was his favourite word. I remember his art books lined neatly across his dirty floor, no home on a shelf but finding homes in themselves, in his hands, through his eyes and thoughts - no need for a dead shelf. I once wrote him a [View Full Entry]

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