Samantha Wynne Rhydderch is from New Quay, West Wales. Her first volume, Stranded on Ithaca, was published in 1998 by Redbeck Press. Rockclimbing in Silk is due to be published by Seren next year. Murderers off Duty The whistle at four recalls my urge to paint. I rearrange the knives, disinfect the gradual tide of blood beneath my nails, check the bullet supply, then I'm away. My wife prepares the stencils - it's a chance to talk. The week's events thwart love, ferment as we diffuse the relentlessness of bells. Selections are the best part: choosing which to keep, which to leave. Anything small distorts the form of a blank wall. Colour reassures us and so I chose a mauve acanthus bud border to counteract disorder on the kitchen shelves. First you highlight the panels at forty-five degrees. Then mask this line with tracing paper to define its size. These last two years at Belsen have enhanced my attention span. Now I can cope with detail at closer quarters than before the war. In general I prefer ceramics: we're going to try the scalloped motif today; we thought the beaded husk garland with leaf tips might fit, but no, we've put four finials on the dado in the bathroom. The Renaissance Lion adorns the hall with a lyre panel border around the door. Above the bed, a cornucopia bow unfolds across an ermine field. I'm into Late Baroque and a spot of Rococo on and off. Gerda doesn't take to Gothic Arch variations much and so we hit on a lotus and papyrus chain for the skirting board. Anything with tassels does me in. No frills - straight paint - you have to exercise restraint in taste off duty. Farmyard Mirrors They will take you by surprise on backroads, bereft of dressing tables, lurching from hedges, rejected, astute, crucial at bends, luring tractors out of lanes, blotched with mildew. The glamour they once absorbed whole, glints tarnished. How they long to hold the glow inside a bedroom window, feel the heaviness of drawers, be polished, strung with necklaces, not nettles. Indisputable, ever-admiring at dusk, frowning at dawn, their loyalty always presumed upon. Such fall from grace would be unthinkable to those who carved their fluted legs, to the organdie runners pressed under a thick rectangle of glass, stains of L’Air du Temps official as the bindweed is now. How could the spectrum of reflection invite such a betrayal? Weather permitting the farmyard mirrors will survive two more decades of deterioration, deflection on location, before a recognition scene disappears forever.