Lucy Watson « This Hour

Dear Splotch,

Please be more manageable.

Well, I don’t exactly want to manage you, I mean, you’re a splotch. That seems a bit counter-productive to your nature, and purpose.

Maybe just be a little more purposeful in your splotchiness. Don’t just splotch it all over town. I know this Splotch does, but it’s a Miro Splotch, and it plays by its own rules. All the other splotches make room for that splotch. Maybe you need to be a more determined and dominating Splotch.

But I really don’t want you to be a more dominating Splotch. You’re domineering enough as it is and I like my meandering Squibbles – Squibbles are just as important as Splotches – and you know being domineering is just fine when you’re in a work of Art by Miro but do I really want a frickin huge splotch taking up my livingroom? Where are my Squibbles going to go?

Well, I might want that, it seems rather warm and I was looking for some kind of central heating system. But you don’t seem happy to stay there, you want to be everywhere – an enormous splotch invading every aspect of my life.

I think maybe you need to learn your place, Splotch. And then tell me what on Earth that might be. Because I do enjoy a good Splotch, my word! There are few things I enjoy more than a great Splotch. But you are a very big splotch, and while Miro is a frickin master at harmonising forces, me, I may need help.

Please be less Splotch, or more Splotch, or a more worthy Splotch for the amount of room you take up, or somehow show your true Splotchiness, or cover me with Splotch so I can’t object any more.

Take off your coat if you’re going to be staying a while, Splotch, let me see you a little better. Be patient. It may take a while for me to feel OK venturing out with you into the city, the snow just fell, it’s cold and, well, you’re a splotch. Be patient. Have some tea. I’ve had the flu, you know.

With Love,

Lucy.

Jack Frost

Dear Erica, Yes, yes, very much yes to that description of the digging and climbing. Also, was looking up Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, that I suspect might secretly be Jack Frost. Check it out: http://spacefellowship.com/news/art22797/highlighting-plumes-on-saturn-s-moon-enceladus.html It spews out plumes of watery ice! The moon obsession continues. But also, I was thinking about your question of what it would be like to be digging and climbing simultaneously. I think if Jack Frost, hovering above the world, was breathing out the winter wind and was given a trumpet to blow onto into instead of a landscape, and the trumpet froze and the cold air blew back into Jack Frost, and he and the trumpet broke apart in a series of muffled tinkling and clanging sounds trying to break free in the otherwise silent squeeze of space, that would be something like climbing and digging simultaneously.