ART, FAMILY AND OTHER WORK

On this week of momentous world events, the most exciting thing to happen to me was accidentally knocking my wristwatch into the toilet bowl on Tuesday morning. As I gazed sadly at its little yellow face staring back at me from the murky depths, I contemplated on the passage of time and considered whether to flush it or attempt a rescue. In the end I did the latter, and the timepiece is still going today.

Apart from this cataclysmic occurrence, my week has been fairly routine and quite productive. You can see some of the results above, the second and third of the oil paintings I am producing for the Duff House exhibition next summer. The main other news on the artistic front is that I've booked a stall at the Toll Clock Shopping Centre market, here in Lerwick, for Saturday 22nd November. I hope that this will be a good selling venue for my giclee prints, which need an injection of interest from prospective buyers in the run-up to Christmas.

I spent most of Thursday and Friday with my mother at Whiteness, going through boxes of old family photographs. I had an idea that I might make up a few display books of them, but the task ahead is enormous. My ancestors, especially on my mother's side, seemed to have DEVELOPED a love affair with the camera at an early stage in its evolution. There are fewer early pictures of my father's forebears in the collection - I think other family members must have most of these. Either that or they were more camera-shy, which seems unlikely from my limited knowledge of them.

Both my Shetland-resident sisters and my nephew Kenneth visited me during the week, and very glad I was to see them. My nephew always helps me with home decor tasks around the flat. Recently he put up a window blind in my studio, and coat hooks in the hall. The very idea of operating an electric drill scares the pants off me, as I am useless at all forms of DIY. Even my wallpaper is blood-spattered (my own)!