Yin yang with pine forest and ocean waves

We pulled into Scarrow Bay on Tuesday with the wind already grabbing at the tarpaulins, and I have spent four days on the big wheel with a brush so fine my thumb has gone numb. Old Teddy wanted the whole thing done before the Saturday crowds, so I worked from the grey dawn until the gulls started fighting over the chip papers.

He had only one request. Half the wheel was to be the pines from the valley where we wintered, roots pushed out over the wood like knuckles on a fist, and the other half the sea as it looks off the headland in a squall, teal and blue curling round a black hollow. Between them he wanted the halves to swap sides, a dark sun sitting in the pines and a dark pool sitting in the water, each with its own small dot. I painted the dot in the sea last, a tan circle no bigger than a button, and Teddy stood behind me and said nothing for a long time.

Then he spun the wheel, and the pointer ticked round through the trees and into the surf, and he tapped the little dot with his pipe. 'Balance,' he said, 'is knowing which bit of you is the forest and which is the tide.' I told him that sounded like something off a tin of tea. He laughed so hard he had to sit on a lobster crate. I am writing this from the caravan with the sea loud through the window and my hands still smelling of turps. The wheel stays up till Sunday. Come and spin it if you dare.

Love, Ivy