I’ve noticed that the act of cutting always helps me think. I do some good thinking when I cut up wood to make harps too.

When you’re waiting for something, time has a way of slowing right down. Those weeks I was at my sister Jo’s house time went slower than a snail with very bad rheumatism. I wished I could have pressed the fast-forward button on time and got myself back to my Harp Barn, but Jo said I was not well enough and anyway the barn wasn’t ready yet, so waiting was my only choice. I did not like waiting. Not at all. I was twitchy.

The day is a bright, bold one. The trees are stirring the air with their branches and ragged white clouds are racing each other across the sky. The sun is blasting everything with color: greens ranging from emerald to sage to lime; even the old brown shreds of bracken are rich with auburn and burnished copper. As I watch from the window the landscape becomes wilder and hillier and sheepier. I feel that simultaneously I am becoming Dannier. And I realize that Exmoor is more than my home. Much more. Exmoor, in a way, is me. It is where I can do my harpmaking and where I can be my absolute self, and those two things are very bound up in each other.