Day 1: Opening the Door (1 May 2010)

Their gate is open, their door is unlocked.

I can dust their table and sweep their floors and lift down their tea-cups. I can look at the changing colours of the same sea when I stand at their windows.

Day 2: Reading Poems at the Burton Gallery, Bideford (2 May 2010)

Mary Stella Edwards and Judith Ackland at Bucks Mills.

In 1924, Mary Stella Edwards wrote 'The Dancing Star for J.A.'

Suddenly in the quietest places,
When the first star swims up fair,
Threading the bare twigs' delicate laces,
I shall be there....

I will set your feet to follow the dancing
Feet of the beckoning star,
Tune your ears to notes entrancing,
Hollow and far.

They will call us out to the starlit spaces,
And brief as a bright dream done,
Swift from the ash-wood's quietest places,
We shall be gone.

She was 26 years old, and Judith was 31.

Day 3: The Portable Writing Desk (May 3 2010)

The portable writing desk is supporting the white shelves above. They have come away from the wall. I opened the drawers and looked inside. One by one. This was the first.

Day 4: Judith Ackland Reading (4 May 2010)

Spent all this bright day down on the beach. Am filled with the never-ending sound of the rolling waves.

Day 5: Fulmars (5 May 2010)

15 years before Mary Stella Edwards was born and 11 years before the birth of Judith Ackland the only British colony of fulmars was on the remote island of St Kilda, 200km from mainland Scotland. Since that time they have spread right around the coasts.

There is a small colony of fulmars nesting on the face of the ruined limekilns just below the Cabin. They came in from the sea to raise their young. They will stay until the summer begins. Fulmars live long lives, regularly reaching 30 years or more.

I looked for them today, waiting to film their stiff straight- winged wheeling flight.

Day 6: Going Upstairs (rain), 6 May 2010

Soft, persistant rain all day so I climbed the stairs to think about 'a mere projection of the glow within' (MSE, 1969) and found a miniature barometer on the wall.

Rain From The West

The rain that bows the flowering grasses,

Leaving a crystal on each bending blade,

Has stroked for milesthe sea's grey ridges

And dints the shore-pools with its speckled shade.

Who knows what flowers and seeds of summer

May rise from this far-carried alien rain -

Which drops may nourish them and which, drawn skyward,

Will, wind-impelled, drive on to fall again.

Out of the west it comes, but to me...

It seems a local rain, meant for these grasses -

For me, whose sun its cloud can never spoil.

Mary Stella Edwards (1963)

Day 7: The Linen Cupboard (7 May 2010)

I opened up the linen cupboard, took out armfuls and hung all around the room to air.

Then I changed the cover of the white bed.

I searched through all the unfolded pile of linen until I found that one that you loved the best.