Mandala and flower thigh tattoos

The big wheel went up on Tuesday and the wind has not let go of it since. I am writing from the back of the Cakewalk caravan with a jar of turpentine at my elbow and cold diesel smell coming under the door. You will want to know whether Mr Vallance paid for the gilding. He did, in the end, though he counted the notes twice and handed them over one at a time like a man feeding a pony.

The commission was the centre panel of the galloper, the one that faces the sea. Vallance wanted a sun, and not the cheerful sort children draw. He wanted rays that go wavy at the edges, like heat coming off a road, in grey and black so they would look good under the lamps at night. So I have been ringing it in fine lines, one at a time, with a brush I bought off a sailmaker in Ramsgate because the ones from the art shop kept splaying. Above it, on the canopy, I put a peony the size of a dinner plate, its petals shaded from the middle outwards so it seems to open when the light moves.

Yesterday a girl stood by the rail for an hour watching me work. She had a halved coconut in her hands, the milk long gone, and she turned it over and over as if someone had told her to keep her fingers busy. She asked whether the sun knew it was being painted. I said it would find out soon enough, when the fair opened.

I am leaving the lowest ray unfinished. Vallance thinks it is a mistake. I have decided it is the part the sun keeps for itself.

Love to Mam, and tell her the peony is better than the one on her hat.

Pearl