On Saturday I will travel west, the car laden with everything I need for setting up my exhibition early next week. I am looking forward to spending time on the west coast again. I have been lucky enough to have spent a fair amount of time there this year; sailing, walking on the beautiful beaches and taking lots of photographs. Last year, I had an exhibition in the same venue. I had many fascinating conversations with tourists, locals and quite a few folk who, like myself, feel 'semi-local' to the area. We have some connection, often going back a generation or sometimes several generations. I met many folk who had holidayed in the area as children and were now returning with their own offspring. There was often the impression that they wanted to share the wildness of the place, its unspoilt nature, how things are affected much more by the weather and the tides than by the stock market, or celebrities or the latest video on Youtube. The weather and the tides are real; and you can see them, feel them, hear them. Quite a number of people I spoke to had been seasonal visitors for many years and had taken the plunge and made a permanent move to the area. Some stay on forever, some don't. I suppose the ones who don't, I didn't meet. For some people, the long, dark winters with their relentless winds and grey, dreich days, can prove too dispiriting. Sometimes, as people move into older age, they don't want to live eighty miles from the nearest hospital. As with everything in life, there are pros and cons. Others say it is easy to save money, as there are not many shops in which to spend it. I'm sure I will have many more interesting conversations with visitors this year; I am always fascinated by where people have come from. Last year I met a gentleman from Virginia, who showed me a pocketful of sea glass he had collected on the shore that morning. 
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It's that time of year again. I am preparing for an exhibition of my paintings, to be held in the GALE centre in Gairloch, Wester Ross. The same place where I held my Local Letterboxes exhibition last year. It is a lovely place; specially designed to be energy efficient - lots of wood and glass and light. There are huge floor to ceiling windows along the front which look out over the sea towards Skye. Not just towards Skye, you can see the north end of the island. I took some photographs of the building last year, which you can see above. I'm not quite sure that whoever put the sign together in the top middle photograph had fully thought through what the finished article would look like. Perhaps I am just being childish. Not that that is such a bad thing.
I am busy framing paintings, deciding which paintings to reproduce as prints, mounting work, putting together new sets of greetings cards and generally gathering my work together. It has given me a good chance to review what I have done in the past year. I realise I have probably not been as focused as I might have been. I start out with good intentions - to paint a series of boats, or buildings, or birds. And I end up with a smattering of each, a few birds, a few sheds and houses, some more boats. Perhaps that doesn't matter. This year's exhibition is entitled "Inspired by Scotland", so all of these subjects can happily be included. It's an eclectic mix. It will be interesting to see what people think. Today was my Mum's birthday. Is my Mum's birthday. Used to be my Mum's birthday. Now that she is no longer alive, is it still her birthday? I suppose so. I try not to mind as dates like this occur. In my rational head I think - it's just another day. The sun is shining, it's warm outside, summer is here. But my subconscious, that powerful thing that lurks and prowls and pounces, catching me unawares, tells me otherwise. I feel sluggish, unmotivated, tired. Sad. And that is OK, I think. For today. Here is the poem I wrote to thank my Mum; she never saw it. I read it at her funeral, a bit more than three years ago.
Thank you for making sure I wasn’t afraid of the dentist for letting me eat Farley's rusks until I left home and sometimes even after that for wishing me a good day, each and every time I set off for school for breakfast things laid out the night before and spare clothes taken everywhere for beds never left unmade for baking in the afternoons with the afternoon play on Radio 4 for homemade soup and casserole, Swedish meatballs, and meat loaf, stuffed marrow (which I never liked) and mushrooms a la grecque, for lemon sponge, queen of puddings, chocolate meringue, pavlova and Norwegian trifle for ancient recipes for Christmas cake and plum pudding which will carry on for a long while yet for making me write thank you letters and teaching the art of keeping in touch for following us on our adventures with a picnic and your book for taking care of me, even as I tried to take care of mine for giving me the chance to do so many things for letting me go and welcoming me back again. Last September, I very quickly put together a collection of ten short and very short stories and self-published them via Blurb.com. I had previously used this method for putting books of photos together, but had never tried my hand at a book containing only text. I should know by now that doing something too hastily is not a great idea. But there is a balance between being a perfectionist and getting things done. Sometimes it is necessary just to get on and make things even if they are imperfect. Often we learn more by making mistakes than by doing something exactly right. And to be honest, how often does the latter happen? Not very often, in my experience.
What I am trying to say, in rather a roundabout way, is that there were mistakes in the first edition of my short story book. As someone who has edited scientific journals and biological text books with razor-sharp precision (or so I like to think) in the past, I should be ashamed of myself. But funnily enough, I am not. For once, I just got on and put the book together. Yes, there were a few places where words got chopped in half at the ends of lines. Yes, horror of horrors, the font size changed from one story to the next, at one point (but not within a story, now that would be unforgivable). Yes, there was a slight inconsistency in the use of "'cause" and "'cos". But no-one complained. At least not to me. I don't think the tiny wandering apostrophes spoiled anyone's reading enjoyment - I do hope not. Since there is still a perfectionist lying dormant, mostly, within me, I have recently edited the book, taking on board the very useful notes and comments from a very helpful friend at my art class. Thank you, May. So, the second edition is now available, either via Blurb, or directly here, from my website, or, coming soon, from Amazon (for Kindle). And if you spot any errors - please do let me know and I'll keep notes for the third edition.  I could put it off no longer. The idea that had been fermenting in the back of my head for a significant period of time had come to fruition. Although if it was fermenting it should surely by now be an alcoholic beverage. Never mind the detail. I had an idea, ages ago. As you already know, I live in northeast Scotland. The referendum about whether or not Scotland should become independent from the rest of the UK is happening this year. On 18th September, to be precise.
Travelling around the country, I've noticed signs in windows, declaring the inhabitants' voting intentions. Personally, I never do this. Declare my intentions. It's an inherited trait; my parents never told each other how they were voting, in anything from local to general elections. Sometimes I haven't decided until I read the ballot paper. Sometimes I have. I don't believe it's anyone else's business. So I have been intrigued to see the signs in house windows. Playing on my own extremely indecisive nature, I thought it would be fun to create a painting incorporating the sense of history, along with the possibility that different members of one household are likely to have different opinions. A recent trip to Perthshire provided me with the source material; a photograph which I took of a quintessentially Scottish house. A large house in the country, true, but a sandstone one and typical of the area. The rest of the task involved putting pencil to paper, brush into water, into watercolour and a fair bit of time. I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labours. Now for the next task; to decide on a title. |
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