Elaine and I were taken up to the attic studio at Hill House when we were in Little Rissington a couple of weeks ago – and photographed by my eldest sister, Caroline. Although several people in the office didn’t like the Hawaiian shirt I happened to be wearing for the shoot, which I bought a couple of years back in San Francisco, I did.
I also like the heron’s skull, though I well remember its origins. When Gaia was small, she collected skeletons and skulls, and had quite a collection – including the skull of a dolphin with a bullet hole through it, which she had found in Baja California. It’s still here, in the summerhouse at the bottom of the garden.
And the heron’s skull brought back the following memory: Gaia coming back home from the foreshore of the Thames, a couple of blocks away, to ask me to come quick – and bring an axe. I did, to find a dead, and pretty rank, heron lying not far from the waterline. She asked me to remove its head, which I did with a few well-placed strokes of the axe, to the bewilderment of passers-by. Then we took the head home and immersed it in various concoctions, including bleach, to separate out the skull.
I’d love to have a 3D printer with which I could print out all sorts of skulls, including versions combining the skulls of different species. Watch this space!
One of the photos made me happier. Having been ticked off by my brother, Gray, for cutting my own hair for the last 35 years, on the basis that I should see a barber, on seeing several of the images I concluded that I hadn’t done too bad a job with what’s left.
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