“lightly-dark”: a word to describe the light occurring at the edge of darkness after a cold clear day. Invented by me (aged 11) walking home in a beautiful under-related Lancashire landscape of the countryside, in the evening.*
Margaret Cockcroft (aged 96)

Perhaps most awe-inspiring of all, our brain allows us to imagine.**
Jonah Paquette

An eleven year old
Margaret Cockcroft
noticed something in such a deep way that
she had to bear witness to it with
a new word
(and all words are made up words).
Quentin Blake’s illustrating work underlines
that it needn’t be a word, but
could be a picture that bears witness to
something he has seen:
I like to explore the different possibilities
of some relationship or someone’s behaviour.
Whether I am inventing a set of situations
or working to an existing story,
the business s one of imagination.
I suppose where no story exists,
I am implying that there is one somewhere.^
All of this sets me to wondering whether
there is something that
you see in such a deep way that
you have to bear witness to it in
new words or new pictures.

*Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks;
**Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck;
^Jenny Uglow’s The Quentin Blake Book.