PROGRESS REPORT No. WHATEVER!

Satisfactory and steady progress makes for a boring narrative, but it's all I have to report from the last seven days. Just think how few people would watch the likes of Eastenders (I never have, by the way!) if the characters in this soap opera got on with each other, and it wasn't a strange fractious fairyland in which everyone is either at or up everyone else!

Alas, all I have to report is maintained progress on the artwork front. I have started two new "stock" works, without many preconceived ideas about their subject-matter, apart from their probably being landscapes. I should have the second of the tall ships paintings finished this incoming week. I have ordered a bespoke canvas from Jackson's for my latest commissioned painting, the dimensions of which are to be 16 x 36 inches, rather an odd shape, but it's what my customer (who is always ultimately right!) specified. I couldn't find an off-the-peg canvas of the desired shape in any of my catalogues, so I was forced down the bespoke route. I hope my client is still keen when she is presented with the canvas bill!

The website upgrade is also progressing, but too slowly for my liking. There is an awful lot of work to do, in order to make this the quality site which my web designer and I would like it to be. I'm not confident enough to predict a launch month, let alone a date - hopefully during 2010 sometime!

In the meantime, the old set-up is still there at http://tait-gallery.co.uk

Some of my family were caught up in the foul weather which has plagued much of mainland Britain this week, but all have reached their destinations in one piece. My niece Elanor has been doing a Scottish tour with Camerata, a group selected from the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, and they were performing at Queen's Cross church in Aberdeen on Tuesday. My brother, who is a member of that congregation, reported a brilliantly performed concert attended by a disappointingly small audience - perhaps they could have done with a more effective publicity agent! The group were due to perform at Edinburgh the following night, to whence Elanor's mother and father (my sister Angela and brother-in-law Nigel) were travelling, one from Saudi Arabia and the other from North Wales. My mother was relieved to hear, on Friday evening, that they had all got home to Gwynedd safely afterwards.

Talking of my mother, she is off to the Bonnie Isle tomorrow, for a week's respite care in the Fernlea Centre in Whalsay. The weather forecast is none too promising for the half-hour ferry crossing to the island, but I hope she'll be OK. She took a liking to the centre on her last, more hastily-organised "holiday" there in late January, and she is looking forward to the experience.

I am hoping for an equally and boringly progressive seven days ahead, at the end of which I hope to have another new painting to show you. I wish you good things for your week too.