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| Up to the tiptop of Ty Isaf and the studio of Clive Hicks-Jenkins |
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| Aberystwyth flower steps. |
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| The pheasants take the stairs at Ty Issaf. |
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| Steps to Jack's world. "Throw my frisbee?" |
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| From garden lawn to paddock, past a Meri Wells tutelary spirit. At Ty Isaf. |
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| Castell Powis stairs. |
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| Peacocks take and fan the stairs at Castell Powis. |
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| I dragged the jet-lagged Dave Bonta to meet penpal-and-novelist Clare Dudman at Castell Powis. Sunny. Lots of glare. Not Welshy weather... except for the chilliness in the air. |
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| Correspondents meet in the flesh, hurrah! Lovely, that feeling of already knowing and being known... |
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| Clare treated me and Dave to a lovely lunch at Lady Somebody or Other's Tea Shop at Castell Powis. Lady Hyacinth? Lady Heliotrope? Lady Bluebell? With my luck, it was Lady Forget-me-not. |
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| And today I want to give Clare an award, the coveted Stars-and-Garters of Indefatigability for outstanding bravery and peristence in the worthy cause of book-flogging. In tireless service to her latest book, one year old now, she did 35 events last year, traveling around the UK and chatting with the general populace (or maybe the not-so-general populace) about A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees (Seren.) You ought to buy it, you know... That would make me happy. I hope they love her, those fellows at Seren. |
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| Everything at Castell Powis is "wonderfully rich and stately," as Diana Wynne Jones once said about a fierce old lady. Castell Powis is just such an old lady, imperious and also bountiful, wealthy enough to behave in the way Mother Nature does-- as profuse and indulgent as a sea of bluebells in the Welsh woods. Here is Clare with a world of wisteria, that languorous flower. Just looking at her, I feel all Lady Wisteria-ish, wistful and droopy and wishing for another tea party in the sun. |
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| Close by was a little table with the words DRINK ME written on the table in gold letters. At Castell Powis, near Welshpool, Powys, Wales. |
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| A tiny, tiny house belonging to little Alis and her family at Ceinws-- but who could live in a house so small? |
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| Clive Hicks Jenkins invites me to climb up and pass through a portal between two worlds-- one of them inhabited by strange beings. At Meri Wells's house. |
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| "'One side of what? The other side of what?' thought Alice to herself." In this case, it is one side of the portal. |
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| The other side of the portal. |
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| Dave Bonta, as curious as Alice (or Alis) at a tiny portal in the "amorphous shrubbery." Castell Powis. |
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| Look at that Bonta-tongue! (Click for a closer inspection...) Here I think Dave must be a Green Man, vomiting the vegetative world, as the Green Man does so often in medieval church carvings. |
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| Dave snug in the portal, content between worlds. |
