Mountain lake landscape in a diamond on a calf

You will not believe the weather up here. For three days the cloud sat on the col like a wet sheet, and Mr Ashworth swore at his theodolite every morning. Then yesterday it lifted all at once, the way a lid comes off a pan. The mountains stood there with their snow still on, and the lake beneath them went so still that the pines stood upside down in it. I have been trying to draw it properly for you, but my hand keeps stippling where it should be sketching. Every dot takes a breath.

Ashworth wants the survey sheet cut in a diamond, because the board at Keswick had only diamond frames left, which is typical. So I have spent a week pricking the sky with a fine nib and the hills with a finer one, until my wrist aches and my eyes water. The water I did last. Horizontal strokes, one under another, crowding closer as they reach the shore. He says it looks like a ledger page. I think it looks like someone breathing out.

Last night I climbed the moraine alone with the lamp. The lake had gone black, and the cloud had folded itself over the peaks like a cloth over a cage. A single bird called from the pines and then stopped, and I stood there not writing anything down, which I have not done since I was nine. When I came back, Ashworth had left a note on my stool: Leave the last cloud undone. You will know when.

I have not finished it. There is one cloud on the right, pale as paper, with nothing inside it yet. I think I am waiting for the wind to decide where it goes. Write back and tell me what the weather is doing in Hull.