Catching up with myself at Last !!

I really don't feel much up to doing anything much at the moment, mainly because of being at the whim of my shooting nerve pain in my left leg. It's re-asserted itself these past few days and it's very hard going. Even making it difficult to get to sleep or to rest on my sofa which I need to do on and off throughout the day because of the chronic back pain.

Oh it's just bloody awful, I don't even seem to be able to cry tears somehow with the pain, which is kind of weird but perhaps that is a consequence of the medication I am on.

I often wonder whether i should talk about this kind of stuff on here but then it is supposed to be a kind of diary not a Billy Butlin's Holiday camp, for gawds sake!!.

I went to one of those places one time. I was sixteen at the time and such things were a new phenomenon in Ireland, in those days. It was "naff" in a way and I knew it but at the same time because I bumped into this girl on the train on the way up there (we were both "with our families ugh ") and we ended up becoming good friends and having a few laughs together which made it more bearable. That's another story altogether. I am still in touch with her T.. She lives in Cork with her husband and three grown up daughters and even has some grandchildren now. Makes you feel so old.

Not that I need those kind of reminders because with this spinal malfunction I have had, for going on 17 years now, I feel like about 25-30 years older than I am anyway.

This past week I have been going through the final stages of sorting out our boxes of stuff from our "house relocation" from London which is almost a year ago now.

The garage (my studio, from here on in) is almost completed and soon C. will be bringing down the very heavy etching press from it's temporary location in the upstairs office.

He has put up a lot of sturdy shelving on the walls here and has stored quite an amount of art items such as canvases and what not, up in the garage attic which is a smallish space but certainly pretty useful for these items to be out of the way.

I will take some photos of the space at some point to show what it is like in here.

One of the very best things is the big table/work surface on the center of the studio which is made from two old doors. You could have six people sitting round it for a meal - which gives an indication of it's size.

The little image with this post is one of a group of small prints that I sent to the Christmas exhibition at Peacock Printmakers Workshop in Aberdeen. I sent them off almost three weeks ago now and the exhibition will be open to the public by now. I had imagined that I might get myself up to Aberdeen for the opening of the show but the friend ( probable hostess) who resides there is gone away off to Africa for a few weeks and so that put an end to that.
I have visited there previously before TB moved back there, and so I feel an affinity with the place. The print workshop is actually within the Peacock Visual Arts Centre.