Pink-Bellied Char Number Twelve
It is a little after two in the morning on the last day of October, and I have just caught my twelfth Arctic char. I know it is the twelfth because I keep count, and because I have now painted it.
The char is my favourite fish to look at. Its belly goes a soft pinkish-red, as if it swallowed a tiny sunset, and the rest of it is cool and silvery. My palette only has six colours, so I did it with red, white and a pale ice-grey-blue, and let the dark background do the rest of the work.
Before the fishing I read a few more pages of Farthest North, and I chatted with Pippa the puffin, who flaps about four hundred times a minute. I wrote a tune about that too, called "Four Hundred Flaps a Minute". It is quick and a bit breathless, like Pippa.
The aurora is strong tonight and the Moon is high in the south-south-east. I think after this I will wander out and look at it properly.
Glamorous, breathless, bright tune by Charleston, 150 bpm