Rupert has recently discovered a stretch of the river Windrush near his home which is just about as perfect a stretch of river anywhere. It’s narrow, fast-flowing with lovely unkempt wild banks filled with reeds, grasses, flowers, overhanging willows and rafts of vegetation, alive with birds, insects and fish.

It's also alive with these hideous monsters:

…American signal crayfish, one hundred and thirty of which he and two of his friends extracted from a 15 metre section of the river earlier today. They are a pest and a menace, decimating our native species of river-dwellers. Thankfully they are edible and his mates took them home to cook up into a feast.

I wanted to see if we could catch a brown trout, an endemic species. To me, if the salmon is the king of fish, then the brownie is the crown prince. So this evening, we took to the riverbank among the reeds, wrens and kingfishers and dropped in a few maggots…

Almost immediately we got a bite! A chublet, and another, and another, then a slightly bigger one…

Then the line screamed and Rupes hooked a fighter! A rainbow trout! Ok they're not endemic, but the rainbows in this river are wild and not artificially fattened. We admired its gorgeous colours and gently released it.

It was wonderful to catch a wild Windrush rainbow, but it wasn’t what I wanted - a brownie.

And then it happened! We were jumping up and down on the bank before we’d even landed it. We thrilled at its red and black spots and beautiful iridescent sulphur-coloured belly before letting it go:

Yesterday we spent the day at the Latitude festival, which we’d very kindly been given guest passes for.

I’m not a big fan of multi-stage festivals as I find the constant moving around between stages pretty annoying, but Latitude has a very chilled ambience. I’m ashamed to say we weren’t that interested in most of the music; we had primarily come to see Julian Cope. Julian wasn't on until the early evening, so we spent the day hanging out with Cope-loving friends near the comedy tent.

We couldn't get inside the tent to see Russell Howard (he's the young blonde Bristolian man on 'Mock the Week') so tried to hear what we could from the speakers outside but were a little bit too far back and his voice was drowned out by music from one of the other stages. Learning from this experience we got a lot nearer the tent and one of the big outdoor tellies and waited for Ross Noble to take the stage – inside the tent was already packed and way too hot!

OK, so I'm predisposed to love anyone that does BBC Radio 4's 'Just a minute', but from the start Geordie stand-up Ross Noble was brilliant. He continued to be brilliant and at the end he got even brillianter!

We're a nation that prides itself on creativity, humour and love of language, making this man a jewel our crown. He lets his mind go in ways I wouldn't dare! He makes it up as he goes along allowing one absurd idea to morph into another. He talked about wormholes, Jesus, whalesong, Red Bull, vegetarians and wind chimes and was fascinated with his dual audience – those inside and those outside the comedy tent. He ended by conducting his two audiences taking it in turns, line by line, to sing Bohemian Rhapsody, after which he got his entire audience of more than 2,000 people to spontaneous run down the hill from the comedy tent with him in front, towards to veggie pie shop in a giant 'conga'-style riot.

What other festival goers, who hadn’t been at Ross's performance, thought as they witnessed us chanting “No-ble! No-ble! No-ble!” as he crowd surfed, can only be wondered at.

And so to Julian Cope who we’d driven all this way to see. Even after all these years, and all the Cope gigs we’ve seen, you never know what you're going to get. This was surely the oddest of them all.

It started badly; he was due on stage at 7.25, going off at 8.10pm. Behind the makeshift black curtain held up across the stage to increase the drama of a 'reveal' of Cope’s eventual arrival, we could just make out people running around with cables, plugging stuff in, trying to get things working. Time ticked on. The crowd got twitchy, there was slow-hand clapping and some unkind comments, as if the delay was Cope’s fault, which it wasn’t. Stagetime at festivals is crucial. The previous act had finished late, so even if Julian had started on time the whole thing would have run late. The Latitude technicians struggled. The technical hitch meant he couldn’t start playing until just after 8pm.

He had ten songs on the set list, but in the end all we got were two new songs, 'Come the revolution' and the fabulously entitled 'All the Blowing Themselves Up Motherf*ckers (Will Realise the Minute They Die That They Were Suckers)', 'Sleeping gas' and a dramatic rant…

The first two songs went down well, the long delay forgotten by the crowd of the curious and cult followers. Then came 'Sleeping gas', during which he sacrificed a bass guitar to the gods. Smashing up a guitar on stage maybe an old cliché, but done well it still has power and Julian did it well.

But at some point during the song, the Latitude technical people started turning OFF the instruments' feed to the PA, presumably to get him off stage as time was ticking on – he’d already been on stage for… ooh, 15 minutes… But this is Julian Cope and he had a message to get across, a rational, powerful uncompromising message; a heartfelt plea to live for NOW and not save yourself for an invisible sky god. 'Sleeping gas' ranted into 'Reynard' and he continued his lecture about Blakian desire and restraint while trying to start 'Pristeen' and urging the crowd to 'Tell your grandchildren that people like me existed!' ... or something.

Suddenly it was over. Less than 30 minutes after he’d started and through a series of events totally out of Julian's control, his performance left even a small group of us loyal (some might say 'hardcore') fans, who thought we'd seen him do it all before, speechless. It was extraordinary!

This ‘Uncut’ article is accurate when it says: "…while Cope often talks about his music being necessarily confrontational, he rarely takes that music to an audience that isn't immensely tolerant of his digressions." He dared to do it.

As Martha Wainwright took to the stage (she got all her allotted stage time), a few us sat outside trying to understand the spectacle we’d just witnessed. Yes, I felt disappointment that Julian hadn’t been allowed to play and perhaps woo some new fans, but I also felt delight and pride to be fan of someone so uncompromisingly honest.

The evening ended with wonderful, arse-shakingly good vibes from blind Malian couple Amadou & Mariam whose Afro-pop rhythms got right into my soul and inspired me to get hold of their album 'Dimanche a Bamako'.

What a day! As this Uncut review says, Cope and Noble were definitely the two best things to see. I'd agree with that.

Send me your comments.

Photos: Moth Clark

Two years ago at the British Grand Prix, we saw Lewis Hamilton win the GP2 in commanding style. Today in atrocious conditions, we saw him win the F1 race even more commandingly!

I wanted a wet race, as they are often so unpredictable, so I was delighted as showers kept coming in. He overtook Koveleinen at Stowe corner to take the lead – right in front of us…

…and for the next 56 laps I (and 90,000 others) willed him to maintain that lead. He did, thanks to great tyre choices and superlative driving.

The crowd went CRAZY for their new hero! Here’s the report on the BBC website and some nice photos, also on the Beeb’s website.

Photos: Moth Clark

Neolithic and bronze age ancient monuments have been destroyed down the ages. Medieval farmers cleared them from fields, christians tore them down for being pagan, and now they are neglected and damaged by modern farming practices. We seem only to value the Aveburys and Stonehenges.

But the story I want to tell you is a beacon of hope for our ancient past.

The Devil’s Quoits at Stanton Harcourt (just down the road from where I live) was once the eighth largest stone circle of the hundreds we have in Britain, part of a huge ritual complex. Down the centuries it was deliberately trashed as the work of the devil, its stones raided for building material. At the end of the 19th century only three stones still stood in their original positions at the Quoits. And in 1940, when Winston Churchill ordered the building of a wartime airbase whose runway cut straight through the monument, it seemed as if, after 5,000 years, it was game over for the Quoits. After the war, the airfield became a gravel quarry and now it’s the county landfill site. But the Quoits is a site that refuses to die.

Excavations in the 1990s (I think) revealed some of the original stones and the positions where they once stood. And visionary plans were made to rebuild the stone circle and its remarkable henge (a bank and ditch). For the past seven years, I have been watching the work progress steadily and slowly.

I watched as the massive henge earthwork was rebuilt in March 2002:

I watched as some of the original stones were piled up in November 2003

I watched when in October 2005 some of the original stones were moved into position:

… and new stones were erected to replace lost ones.

And last month, I watched as freshly dug post holes appeared…

My kids live about 800ms away from the site and take their dog for walks around the bottom of the lake next to which the Quoits stand every day. On Wednesday afternoon Cleo walked Jas up to the Quoits and was surprised to see men working at the site and that as far as she could see, all the stones were up!

So yesterday me and Rupe took Jas for a walk and found this:

A complete stone circle! As well as the stones going up, the henge had been mown and looked all 'coifed' and magnificent, and the hundreds of rabbits I saw last month were all gone.

We paused by the biggest of the original stones – it was thrilling to see it back up again, looking just like in the 1882 photo by Henry Taunt.

I took a photo, as the shadows looked remarkably similar to that in Taunt’s picture.

As we were leaving, two blokes wearing florescent yellow jackets and hard hats from the portakabin at the dump approached us. They had seen us as we walked round the top of the bank. One wore a tie and had clean hands (obviously the site manager) and the other wore a sweaty T-shirt, big shit-kicking boots and had dirty hands (obviously a workman). They asked what we were doing there as there is no public access. I told them the dog gets walked up there every day as we only live 'over there' points towards the village. I enthused about the stones and how excited we were to see the stones go up.

The man in the tie gently told me off for being there: “there’s no public access” (which I knew, but dog-walkers, bird-watchers and small boys wanting to make dens can’t be kept down). He also told me that once it was open, they planned to limit access to it with a fence “like at Stonehenge”, he said, to stop people walking all over it, wearing it down and to prevent rabbits recolonising it and denuding it. “Like hell that’s going to happen” I thought. He said that all the rabbits had been gassed last week and they were keen to keep them off – they were damaging the ditch and bank very badly, which I could see for myself.

I asked the man with the dirty hands if he was part of the team who put the stones up. He was! He said it felt pretty special to be part of it, which I thought was nice.

To my knowledge this complete reconstruction of a site using what is left of the original stones, plus some new ones, is unique. Interesting that it's not English Heritage, the so-called guardians of our past, who have made it happen, but the painstaking excavation and enthusiasm of both Oxford Archaeology working with site owner Hanson. Congratulations to them for having the vision to plan it and resurrect it! Bloody marvellous.

Please remember the Devil’s Quoits are on private property. An official opening is planned for August or September, apparently and ‘official’ access to the site will be from the top of the lake by the recycling centre.

One hundred and fifty years ago today a paper was presented to the Linnean society at Burlington House in London, jointly authored by naturalists Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin entitled ‘On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection’.

Darwin actually developed his idea of evolution through natural selection years before but didn’t publish for fear of a being branded a heretic. It was only when Wallace wrote to him from Malaya where he was doing fieldwork, telling him he’d had an idea about how species came about that Darwin realised that unless he published, Wallace would get the glory. So they published the paper together.

A year later, in 1859, Darwin would publish ‘On the Origin of Species’, a book which has changed the world.

Professor Richard Dawkins calls Darwinism (and I include Wallace in that term) ‘the most important idea to occur to the human mind.’ I think he’s right, for as well as the brilliant and simple observations it makes, it has allowed us to think freely without the fear of persecution by people who believe in the invisible sky gods.

You probably already know that I am not superstitious in any way; I do not believe in gods, faerie folk, Santa Claus, the soul, the flying spaghetti monster, an afterlife or indeed any of that stuff. And while I do not pretend to understand electricity, gravity, light, radio waves, kinetic energy or other natural forces, I accept that these things are scientifically proven and are measurable, repeatable phenomena. So I was momentarily thrown into a spin on Sunday while enjoying a day out among the menhirs at Avebury with some fellow stone-huggers, when a dowsing rod moved in my hand.

My friend Hamish had brought his dowsing rods with him. I watched as he gripped them firmly, held them out in front of him and walked towards a megalith. As he approached the stone they swung apart; the right one swinging to the right, the left one swinging left, as if moved by an unseen force. Blimey! That's a bit WOOOO!

I was curious to understand. I asked if I could have a go.

I was in safe hands with Hamish; he wasn’t going to try to lure me into a yogurt-weaving commune to gaze at crystals and worship invisible tree-spirits. He couldn’t explain his 'gift' (a word we both giggled about) and remained rational, even skeptical about the whole thing."I just do it" he said, “my mum could do it, but my sister can't".

He showed me how to hold them, and I started walking. Nothing happened. I approached the stone in the same way as he had. Nothing. He took the rods back and paced along a line which bisected a 'well-known line of energy' (apparently). The rods moved for him! So I tried. But got nothing again. I really wanted the rods to move for me. I mean really, really, REALLY! I tried to clear my mind, relax, close my eyes, breathe deeply... But it didn't work. Perhaps my deep-seated cynicism and lack of faith over-rode any 'really-wanting-something-to-happen' vibes.

I was disappointed. But strangely also quite pleased that here was 'proof' that I – a spirit-free, faithless, rational cynic – couldn't dowse, whatever dowsing is.

I thought about it a lot as the afternoon progressed. There was one way that I could test something about dowsing...

A year ago we scattered some of my friend Bec's ashes at Avebury, among the gnarled roots of the huge beech trees growing on the south of the henge, a place she loved so much. Perhaps I could dowse for Bec! There is no doubt about how much I loved her and how much I now miss her. Those things are real to me. Maybe the power of love and of the human mind would work?

I suggested it to Hamish. "Let’s try it" he enthused. As we approached the trees, we tried dowsing up to the nearest huge stone, 'The Chair', but the same thing happened: when Hamish approached the rods swerved, but with me, nothing. I tried it with eyes closed, concentrating hard. But still nothing.

We reached the trees and I took the dowsing rods. I walked along the chalk path by the trees and nothing happened. I tried again. Hamish said "talk to her". I called her name: "Bec, show me where you are" I said, remembering exactly where we scattered her ashes, "remember where we put you?" To my utter astonishment, the rod in my right hand swerved sharply to the right, pointing at exactly the place where we scattered her ashes! (The rod in my left hand stayed put, but then my left hand is normally quite useless for anything requiring dexterity or co-ordination.) I took a couple of steps backwards and the rod moved again, continuing to fix its point on the place where we put her ashes.

I wanted to test what had happened – could I repeat this phenomenon? So I walked down the path from the other direction, closing my eyes, thinking of Bec, remembering all the truly magical times we spent at Avebury. Again I called out "Bec, show me where you are, you old tart!" and again the rod in my right hand swerved sharply and to point definitively towards her resting place.

I've been thinking about what happened and while I can't explain it rationally, I do know that love and the power of the human mind to influence events is so-far scientifically unmeasurable (as far as I'm aware- please correct me if I'm wrong.)

So do I 'believe' in the soul, an afterlife, spirits of the dead remaining in this world? Well no. A rod in my hand spontaneously pointing on its own at the resting place of my dead friend proves nothing whatsoever.

Perhaps through the power of the human psyche, dowsing simply proves what you want to prove or shows what you want to find.

Here's a photo that Bec took in 1991 of one of the places where she would eventually be laid to rest.

Send me your comments.

Last night at the NEC arena in Birmingham, Moth and I had the good fortune to be right at the front at a Santana gig. And I mean right at the front, pressed against the crash barrier there he was, the ‘legendary’ guitarist Carlos Santana:

Carlos and his band play an extraordinary and original latino blues-based hard rock which sometimes morphs into jazz fusion. As a massive fan of percussion I love the fact that Santana uses three drummers and includes plenty of tambourine, maracas, notched scrapey gourds (I’m sure they have proper name but I don’t know what that is), whistles, tinkly bells, shakers and cowbell.

And soaring around in the middle of it all is the sound of Carlos’s gorgeous guitar.

We saw Santana play two years ago but were back in the 14th row, so didn’t feel the total immersion of being at the front and having nothing in your field of vision but the band, and that huge HUGE sound. (I’m struggling to hear much through my left ear today.)

I remember when I first heard his double live album Moonflower back in the late 70s, I thought it was the most exciting, emotional and beautiful music I’d ever heard. I still think so. And while his music has progressed in the past 35 years, you can still feel that Moonflower magic in shows. They obviously enjoy playing so much. When Carlos says “it’s a privilege to play for you tonight” you know he means it. The band smiled and danced their way through two and half vigorous hours on stage, with no break. Thankfully the guy vigorously playing the tiger-striped congas – Raoul – has arms like tree trunks to get him through such a marathon.

The keyboard player (who was right in front of us) Chester Thompson, and I shared a couple of smiles throughout the evening. He’s played with Carlos for decades.

The set included many old favourites, opening with the pumping sing-a long riff of ‘Jingo’ and moving on through ‘Oye Como Va’, ‘Soul sacrifice’, ‘No one to depend on’, ‘Black Magic Woman/Gypsy queen’, ‘Foo foo’ and his more recent hits ‘Smooth’ and ‘Maria, Maria’.

It was a joyous performance which is still ringing in my ears!

Send me your comments.

Photos: Moth Clark

I'm currently thinking a lot about Charles Darwin and have recently read a marvellous biography about him (‘Darwin’, Adrian Desmond & James Moore (1991) ISBN 0-7181-3430-3) which puts his life and work into a wider historical context.

With my interest in birds, I was particularly intrigued to learn about his experiments with breeding fancy pigeons to try to understand how species mutate, evolve and develop into unique forms. With all the wonderful columbidae (that’s pigeons and doves) which visit our garden to feast on goodies on our bird table, I was moved to think about painting something in celebration of his genius work. This is especially pertinent right now as next year marks the 200th anniversary of the great man’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

I wanted to make a picture that shows different forms of columbidae, both wild and domesticated, rising in a triumphal spiral; almost a triumph against the insidious blight of 'creationism'.

I chose a green pigeon from Africa, a racing pigeon, a fancy fantail and a collared dove. It took me ages to source the subjects, adapt the reference material to suit my composition and then get it ‘right’. In my mind the birds had to interconnect on the paper to get across the feeling of a single evolutionary line. And they had to touch the edges of the picture, as if breaking out, representing an unconfined evolutionary continuum. (Blimey, that sounds a bit poncey, but I hope you get what I mean.)

Then I put them against a ground of gold metal leaf – a reference to religious iconography which often uses a lot of gold to ‘big up’ the holiness of the deity.

Anyway, I hope you like Darwin’s doves. I’m really pleased with it. It looks much better in 'the flesh' as it's really hard to photograph or scan images with metal leaf. See what you think:

… and more paintings on a Darwinian theme are taking shape in my mind. Watch this space!

Send me your comments.

A few of my regular eagle-eyed readers have noticed that in recent blogs I have not allowed 'comments' to be made, which is true. The truth is I am fed up of getting hammered with dodgy automated spam promoting pornographic material. There seems to be no way of stopping this happening with the software I use for blogging. It’s a real shame because I love it when people respond to stuff I post.

Instead, if you’d like to comment on something I post, simply email me and I’ll add them to the bottom of the relevant post. I’ve had lots of comments in the past which have really got me thinking harder about stuff, which is great.

I obviously reserve the right – as proprietor and bill payer of this website – to moderate comments.

Send me your comments.

Four years ago this month we went to Orkney for midsummer to enjoy its astonishingly rich archaeological heritage. One of the most amazing Bronze Age sites we saw was the Tomb of the Eagles , discovered by farmer Ron Simison, 50 years ago. Here he is on the right, pictured with my friend Hob on left. I heard today that Ron, now aged 86, was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday honours last week for services to archaeology.

When we visited the tomb, he was the one who gave us the guided tour. My notes, made at the time said: "Softly spoken, witty, knowledgeable and, refreshingly without a care for diplomacy, he launched into his fascinating spiel. He showed us quern stones and tools he'd found and described everyday Bronze Age practices based on what he'd dug up here. We all thought Ron was a wonderful, admirable man. I felt quite starstruck to have met him, actually."

If it weren't for Ron, the Tomb of the Eagles would probably be undiscovered and certainly unexcavated. This man is not only a hero, he is knowledgable, entrepreneurial, pioneering and exceptionally witty. Never was an award more richly deserved. Congratulations to Ron.

A family of great tits has recently been visiting our garden, which is copiously supplied with bird food.

I counted three fledglings and their parents, all whizzing about the place. The fledglings are just learning to use the peanut feeders, but still beg for food from their hard-working mum and dad.

Watching them has been a delight! They’ve even managed not to be intimidated by the starlings, doves and jackdaws who visit our tiny garden.

It’s been more than seven weeks since my son broke his wrist and ankle and so not able to go fishing.

With his casts just off, though he is still walking with a crutch and has mild pain in his wrist, he was determined that last night we would go to the lake and ‘bother some fish’, as Moth puts it. (Moth doesn’t approve of fish-bothering so stayed at home and watched some Euro footie - the Portugal game looked fab)

There is so much to enjoy at the lake at this time of year. The yellow flags are in full bloom and the floating pads of waterliles are about to burst into flower. They provide lots of cover for little fish and therefore attract bigger fish.

A shoal of roach with a few small perch danced around just under the surface near to the peg where Rupert set up his rod. They were not interested in feeding though.

Big carp leapt and breeched in the lake’s margins under the trees - perhaps bullying smaller fish or marking territory.

In the trees, I saw robins, blue tits, pigeons, doves and heard many other species which I just couldn’t identify. On BBC’s Springwatch the other night I saw Simon King identifying a load of birds just from their song . “Oh, listen to that; that’s a redstart” he said casually to camera. Bastard. I’d like to be able to do that.

In an ideal world Rupert would have like to have caught a carp, but was happy to settle for a fish - any fish; just to feel the pull of one on the line was going to be enough. Despite plenty of nibbles, knocks and bites, Rupert’s only landed fish proved to be this small silver bream, which we were both happy with.

We got back from Sardinia at the end of last week after nine fascinating days. From my point of view there's plenty to see and do. We did a good deal of stone-hugging; ancient monuments litter the mountainous landscape. Here's me at Li Lolghi tomba di giganti:

And this is Coddhu Vecchju:

But rather than bore you pictures of the zillions of monuments we visited which you can read about here, I'll tell you about the marvellous things you can see in the remote places where they are located. In late May, the grasses are tall, lush and green and filled with flowers:

How lovely is this?!

…and of course with all those blooms the place is crawling with birds and insects:

Darwin would have had a ball collecting all the beetles we saw.

I lost count of the different varieties of grasses I saw…

…but I was most inspired by the delicate beauty of the quaking grass:

Chunky or what!

And with Sardinia being so hot and rocky, it was no surprise to find that the lizards ruled:

We saw hundreds of these.

The soundtrack to our travels was the constant birdsong – I've never heard anything like it. The nightingales especially made a big impression on me. Never saw one though.

And of none of that interests you, you can always get your teeth into some teenagers:

I love doing Artweeks and showing my pictures to people who are so enthusiastic about them. And I love welcoming all kinds of people into our home. But by late Sunday afternoon of the second weekend I am utterly exhausted. It was a very successful Artweeks with more than 230 people coming to see my work.

I’m not at all sentimental about letting my work go usually, but I was quite sorry to say goodbye to this painting “Not everything is black and white”: It has been widely admired for the past three years but now it has a new home in Buckinghamshire with a lover of equines. My daughter, who like me is slightly obsessed by zebras, was gutted to see it had found a buyer. Now I am plotting a new painting of stripey equines - this time featuring a quagga.

Indeed, now I have sold a few pictures I can start painting again, as I have a little more space on my walls to hang them. Expect paintings on a Darwinian theme to emerge…

If you came to Artweeks, thank you so much for coming. It’s your ‘wows’ and affirmations that my work is worth looking at that keeps me painting.

If you were one of those people who expressed an interest in commissioning a picture from me, I paint them in the order I receive the requests in, so get in touch soon.

We had more than 80 visitors last weekend to my exhibition of paintings, part of Artweeks festival, who loved what they saw. The show continues this coming weekend: Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 May 2007, from 12 noon to 6pm at 18 Newland Close, Eynsham, OX29 4LE, six miles west of Oxford. Check out what’s on offer here.

From my visitors’ book, Kenny Harris wrote: “A stunning collection of work” and Penny Noel said: “Your hares are something!” (I presume that means she likes them…)

Colin B said: “It’s fantastic, Jane, you are one TALENTED chick! What really gets me about your work is the warmth and love in them with no little technical ability.”

With so many other artists in Eynsham showing their work at the same time there's plenty to see in our lovely village apart from my stuff. But come and have a cuppa with us anyway...

Pictured: 'White Horse Hare', which suprisingly to me is still available. I predicted this would be sold on the first day - I think it's so pretty! - but then I am the worst judge of my own work.

Last year Iain Chater, a British winemaker who runs Domaine Chater a vineyard in the south of France, commissioned me to make a painting suitable to use elements from on his 2007 wine labels.

Yesterday evening, on the eve of my Artweeks exhibition, which opens at 12noon today, Iain arrived my house with our mutual friend Annie and her family for an exclusive preview of my pictures and his wine, complete with my painting on his labels.

We enthusiastically opened the very first two bottles - one rose, one sauvignon blanc – to be quaffed in England and got stuck in. Iain’s wines are absolutely bloody marvellous: delicious, crisp, fruity, dry and light. We made a toast to the success of our respective creativities in 2008. Cheers Iain!

My Artweeks exhibition starts tomorrow and thankfully everything’s ready. My show opens tomorrow and continues on Sunday 11, Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 May 2007 from 12 noon-6pm at my home, 18 Newland Close, Eynsham, OX29 4LE, just six miles west of Oxford.

Regular reader of this blog, Caroline Lee from Yorkshire, recently bought a set of these three drypoints: (left to right: Fox and perch, Hare and frog, and Coot and carp)

Caroline says: “I can't decide which picture I like the most - that's why I decided to get all three - but the hare is probably my favourite. I keep seeing more and more detail in them - now I'm looking at the fox, and now that is my favourite, and then I see the dragonfly and can't decide... I like them all.”

Come and check them out for yourself. And lots more, too! If you’re a fan of our native brown hare, then there’s plenty for you to enjoy…

I'm exhibiting my paintings, as part of Oxfordshire's visual arts festival, Artweeks, next Saturday 10, Sunday 11, Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 May 2007, from 12 noon-6pm at my home, 18 Newland Close, Eynsham, OX29 4LE, just six miles west of Oxford.

This is an open invitation for you to come and see my stuff. I'll be showing my colourful, vibrant watercolours and prints of the magic of the natural world: landscapes, birds and animals, stones, pebbles and sunflowers, and this year - by popular demand - lots of hares. Here’s a sneak preview.

Refreshments are available, access for the disabled is good (just one small step to negotiate – but we can help) and parking's dead easy.

There are tons of other artists in Eynsham exhibiting for Artweeks at the same time, so there's plenty to see in the village.

As Mike, Sarah and Laura Davis wrote in my visitors’ book: "We haven't been to any exhibition before where we liked almost everything!" So come along, join us for a cuppa and go 'ooh!' at the paintings. The door will be open for you at 12noon next Saturday.

We went to see Dutch prog rockers Focus again on Monday night – third time in a year. They’re that good. Just like some bands are big in Japan, Focus seem to be huge in Swindon. They always play to packed houses in that town, which usually include me, my husband Moth and son Rupert.

We had front row seats and we really looking forward to it. Unfortunately Rupert fell over as we were waiting outside the Arts Centre and hurt his ankle and wrist. Despite being unable to put any weight on his foot and in some pain, he wanted to stay to see his favourite Dutch masters play anyway. So we hauled him in to the auditorium. Dosed up on ibuprofen and with his foot elevated on the front of the stage, the band played (nearly) all his favourites which took his mind off the deep dull pain from his injuries.

I was sitting directly in front of Thijs van Leer, Focus’ founder member who plays the Hammond organ and flute and occasionally yodels.
Even after all these years he seems to enjoy what he does, playing the sweetest of tunes of his own composition, completely unselfconsciously with his crazy, often wordless, vocalisations.

Niels van der Steenhoven, the guitarist, is not an original member of the band which was formed before he was born. He plays effortlessly, almost calmly with none of the usual posturing you’d expect from a young man playing big swooping complex melodies in a progressive rock band. Indeed he seems almost embarrassed of his extreme talent.

I took Rupes to hospital yesterday morning. He broke his right ankle and his right scaphoid bone. Now he’s trussed up with two huge fibreglass casts. No fishing for him for while. He’ll just have to focus on the music.

Since we have almost daily put out seeds, nuts, bread and any other kitchen scraps in our little garden, we have enjoyed watching a succession of feathery and furry visitors.

All these species regularly come: goldfinch, greenfinch, chaffinch, robin, blackbird, collared dove, wood pigeon, jackdaw, magpie, blue tit, great tit, starling, dunnock and house sparrow. Nothing unusual or unique, but each one has its charms.

Blue tits are just so cute!

Collared doves used to be quite a rare sight, but there seem to be more about these days. They come every day and what pretty things they are.

We also get a gang of jackdaws. They usually swoop down within minutes of me putting another handful of food out. They have so much character, noisily squabbling, flapping and jumping around on top of the shed.

And recently Mr and Mrs Nuts, a pair of acrobatic and charming grey squirrels have started coming.

There’s no ignoring why Mr Nuts gets his name – and it’s not because of his favourite snack. Viewers of a prudish disposition may want to look away now: