Day 11
Today is our final trip to the quarry to collect red earth. It seems the perpetual shovelling of soil into fluorescent shopping bags has come to an end, a task that neither Jonathan or I are likely to miss. On our way back we pass by ploughed fields where crops have just been sown. The lines and colours are all too familiar. Back at the chalet there is more tearing clumps of earth from the ground and more hurling them onto the by now monumental pile.
It is very easy to get lost in your thoughts up here. I marvel at the fact that I have had face-to-face conversations of any substance with only two people for ten days. This is fairly remarkable for me as I live and work in London where even the studio is a sociable place, what with people dropping round to procrastinate and drink tea under the thin guise of discussing work.
In the evening, I go with Helen and Jonathan to a birthday dinner at their local friend Rudy’s. Rudy is a wonderfully charismatic German philosopher with an extremely long dinner table. All the twenty odd guests have brought their own dish and course after course of fish terrine, quiches, salads, pies and a colossal prune flan arrive at the table. I am bursting at the seams after half way through the lovely meal. It’s great to put faces to names and meet some of my current neighbours in St Louis, all of whom are very welcoming and will stop by to see the installation.
Rona Smith
