'Through this door'

It's a slow process, three short lines of poetry in a couple of days! I am always anxious  at the beginning of every mosaic until enough is done to see what things will look like. Things have not quite progressed enough to get a really good idea, but enough to want to rush on with it and get more done. I am sure I won't be feeling like that on the last few lines of the poem on the lower sections of the stone. I have not been able to clean off my finger prints and general mess from the tiles as the cement had not fully dried. I should be able to give it a good scrub in the morning, this will help see what things are looking like.

The first line



The first three lines, it then goes around the stone in a spiral

 'Through this door'. Is very evocative as I mentioned Lesness Abbey where I used to go as a child. The ruins were not so impressive as they had more formal public space around them, which diluted their effect somehow. There were woods nearby as well which were exciting too, so the whole Abbey Ruins thing was woods, public gardens and the Abbey Dungeons. They were not really dungeons, but any room below ground level is going to be one when your ten. There was also a door in a stone wall that I remember quite clearly. Not a main entrance doorway like the one at Strata Florida, just abit more of a regular door (stone archway though) in a flinty rocky wall.  

Strange really as the poet whose work I am transcribing (Gwyneth Lewis) remembers Strata Florida as a young girl, in the same way as I remember my Abbey Ruins. I think I will have re-visit them when I can. Take photos even do some drawings! 

I did walk through the Abbey and get really lost in those woods there one night when I was silly enough to walk home thinking it would be a short cut (I had had a couple of larger shandies) and was totally lost for ages. When I did get home it was time to get up! must have been in the early eighties.  

My 'Through this Door' memory - Lesness Abbey
(courtesy the Internet)