Anne and David have named the baby Poppy! YAY!

I have uploaded the photos David sent to my Flickr account - but under Friends and Family only, which should cover most interested parties.

She's cute huh?

Tags: baby

It is safe to say this evening was one of the best fun and adrenaline inducing evenings I have had in a looooong time. People LIKED my art work! YAYAYAYAYAYAY.

I don't know where to start - it is far too late to even try to get my thoughts in order now - but it was gooood and such a buzz.

Thank you to all the people who came to support me - I really appreciate it. If you didn't make it yet, I will be back there in the next while and can meet up with you!

Tags: HND, Photography

Yesterday was the final hand in day in college. We have been there for three years now. It is kinda sad but also a massive relief.

It is hard to think about not being with these people again but there are a couple I will more than likely stay in touch with. Love them or hate them - they have become "family" in that time. I will miss the support and craic of the tutors terribly too.

I can safely say that doing that course changed my life. I am a completely different person to the one who sat in the Lecture Theatre on the first day back in September 2004, nervous and hating every second and wondering if there was any way I could quietly slip out without causing a fuss.

It's a massive relief because I have put my life on hold over the past two months in order to get this last project done. It has eclipsed my family life and my work life - I have done no proper work for ages which, obviously isn't helping to pay the bills and the children are also voicing relief that tonight will be the last night of it all. Of course we have gained the Bailey Dog in that time so I have been a lot more physically active with the children, going for loads of walks with them but they are fed up hearing that I am busy and need to work at the laptop every time they look at me. I have promised that there will be a break from that for a while.

Tonight sees the culmination of all that work. We are having an opening night at a local gallery of ALL the students' work from both the 2nd Year Full Time and our 3rd Year Part Time courses. It will be exciting to see everyone's work finally up on the walls. Judging by what I saw when I called over to the gallery yesterday some of the photography is top notch and I'm in good company.

Lots of people I know are coming to the exhibition and I am really looking forward to seeing them all. Jessica is being allowed to stay up past her bed time in order to visit - the children are mighty excited about going!

So, all in all, yesterday was a great hand in day - full of highs and then a few high-ers!

I was finally sitting down to some tea last night just about nine when I got a text photo from my brother - I AM AN AUNTY!!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY

Anne had a HOME BIRTH and produced a whopping 8lb 9oz baby girl - as yet un-named - will update when that changes - but I understand about not having names ready. It took us three weeks to name our David. Jessica I THINK was longer! You have to live with a baby to see what they are - you can't just slap any old name on them!

I had a quick phone call with the proud father this morning getting all the details out of him. I have to say that MIDWIVES RULE. I think that midwives are the most important people in the world and also the most undervalued! It sounds like both David and Anne gained so much from the home birth and that the midwives they had all to themselves were an integral part of that experience.

The 29th May seems to have been a good day for everyone then!

Tags: baby, HND, Final Hand In

I am just back from Nanna's where we go, as you know, every Saturday. While the kids took the dog out the back I sat chatting to Papa. He was telling me about a radio program he had been listening to earlier. It had some guest speaker on it talking about his MISTRESSES (plural!). He commented that before he had come on air he had looked up a dictionary to find the definition of the word "mistress". Either someone phoned in, or someone in the studio then told him that they knew the definition.

"First there is a Master. Then there is a Mattress. And the Mistress comes in between."

I raised an eyebrow at that and giggled, wondering if Papa had retold THAT story in front of Nanna.

THEN he delivered the punch line.

"I think that is an instance of when the word is spelled c. u. m. not c. o. m. e. You know?"

The last he heard was my "Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala," as I ran screaming from the room with my fingers in my ears.

Tags: Roy

Here's a wee quick entry for you about Jessica. This would be about the girl who is so clever she manages to work out she needs a stepping stone in the garden so as not to get her socks dirty on the soil when fetching a doggy-toy out of the way so I can photograph my new "garden art" but not clever enough not to be running around in her socks soles in the first place. This photo has been on my phone for a wee while now and I couldn't resist uploading it tonight.

We went for yet another walk around The Quarry this evening. I took the kids and the lad from next door before Iain came home. It is a fantastic place - loads for me to photograph, lots of secret places for the kids to explore, acres of ground for Bailey to run around and of course, by default, a Health and Safety nightmare with long forgotten items lurking beneath the undergrowth and two treacherously deep areas of water which, as they have swans on them are now referred to as *lakes* in our house.

It is only about a mile away from our house and I pity anyone walking their dog up and down the lanes around the village when this place is so close to us. On the other hand - if EVERYONE went there, very soon the land owners would clamp down and our own fun would be spoiled.

Let me remind you a little about Jessica. This is the child who LOVES extreme sports. I mean - she couldn't get enough of swings and play grounds and see saws when she was tiny. Such a difference between her and David who hated anything quite so exciting. Only last week Iain and I were commenting on how fearless she was and how cool she is trying thing out at the age of 7 which David still isn't keen on doing.

Now let me tell you about the massive heap of black rubble at the quarry, which Iain told the kids was a lava flow and they believed him ( I think he believed it himself!) and they now have to climb every time they go there. David and Jack, with their longer legs, made it up in no time this evening, Bailey was up and down several times but Jessica chose a less than obvious route and ended up getting stuck three quarters of the way up. And stuck she remained. And "Stuck" she cried. I watched from below because I am not all that unlikely not to get stuck myself.

I once got stuck three quarters of the way up (or in reality: one quarter of the way DOWN) abseiling down a very tall cliff in a village in the South West of Scotland. (You know I just searched the internet there to find out if it was Kippford or Portpatrick but I still can't remember and sure, it doesn't matter much because no one reading this was there with me and no one can contradict me - so let's go with Portpatrick huh?)

When I say stuck, I mean stuck. I took a panic attack and could not move. There were people above me waiting for their go, there were people below me coaxing me down. It wasn't helping much. I was stuck. what part of stuck didn't they understand? They rope was slipping ever so slowly through my fingers - they have never told me that I needed to keep a grip on the rope! The longer I stayed still the less secure I was and the less secure I was the more I clung to the cliff edge with my toes through the soles of my boots!

I was there so long that seagulls started to nest in my coat hood.

Eventually one of the guys underneath decided that he would have to climb up, which he did. By the time he got to me I was in floods of tears and couldn't see where I was going any more so that helped enormously. I always felt so guilty that I made him climb all the way up there to rescue me both from a "risking his personal safety" aspect and a "please don't think of me as a girly girl now" way.

Anyway, that little story is to illustrate that I knew exactly how Jessica felt. She was standing still, clinging to the face of the lava flow with her toes and finger nails and the more she stood still the more she started to slide. Someone was going to have to help her out and although Bailey was able to lick her tears away he couldn't coax her down. Finally I had to climb up, without ropes, may I add, to her aid.

We have finally finally found something that shook Jessica. I assure you there isn't much that will!

After her wee scare we continued around the quarry to look for fossils. Jessica quizzed me as to what "fossils" actually are and I was gratified that she was impressed that my answers matched those of Daddy from a previous Q&A session. Obviously we have both been watching the same Sky programs! She found a stone that had markings on it (from then on anything that had a mark at all on it was a fossil by the way!) . She traced over it with her finger and pointed out that this was a fossil of the "cartoon character in The Pink Panther". I thought "Yea Yea" but in fact - when I looked at it closely it was the spitting image of Inspector Jacques Clouseau! She was right!

Right now the quarry is the number one place for entertainment - it has been a big hit and Iain and I are dreading when it is no longer available to us - dude - we may have to drive TWO miles to the local park then!

The more astute among you may recognise my new Garden Art and may even call it something along the lines of "a load of old off-cuts from a couple of railway sleepers" but it is ART and I am going to charge THOUSANDS for this!

Tags: Jessica, The Quarry, Garden, Family

You may, or may not have noticed that I haven't done a long entry for a while. That is for various reasons. 1. I don't have time to sit for an hour and tap away, sharing nonsense. 2. I don't read all of the long entries YOU do, so why should you read mine? 3. It has been a long time since I have been able to do a ramble elsewhere - I am out of practice.

I apologise in advance for the length of this one. S'my blog. And I didn't get much sleep last night.

Last week I sacrificed a precious work day to take Nanna (we all call her Nanna - it's easier that way!) to the hospital for radiotherapy. She has to go five times a week for either five or seven weeks - I can't remember. The check up itself took less than 20 minutes but as is the way of these things, it took a full day away from normal life to go and collect her, drive to the hospital, find a parking space, wait in the um waiting area and then do every thing in reverse when she was finished. Papa is doing his best to take her every day but he had his own hospital appointment that day and we didn't think it was fair to make him drive the double journey.

It wasn't an unpleasant experience to be honest. We get along very well usually and had plenty to talk about in the car and I had a magazine (Mac Format - of COURSE :P ) for when she wasn't beside me. For the most part I itched to take photos of the architecture and the (impressive) art work but felt it wasn't quite the right thing to do in the circumstances!

We have had it very easy with her "illness". Iain and I weren't involved with the earth-shattering-breaking-of-the-news like, maybe, Lesley was. By the time we were told about the cancer Nanna and Papa had dealt with it fairly well. Everyone was always very positive about it and although it shook us for a while it was easy to be up-beat about it. We kept saying phrases to reassure ourselves like "this is the best kind of cancer to have" and "very high success rate." There was never really any doubt in my mind that she was ever going to die because of this. Either that was because it was true or she was very good at putting a spin on things - who will ever know?

Back in the waiting room, it was filled with people with very much the same kind of get on with life attitude as us. There were granny's (I am indicating their age here - not that they had grand children around them), there were mummys (who DID have children with them, there were women and men. Thankfully I didn't get the impression there were any young people waiting - perhaps they have their own *day* or maybe even a completely different hospital.

There were partners waiting while their partner was in at the machines. There were whole families waiting for one member to be called. There were single people with no support, waiting on their own.

There were magazine readers, book readers, crossword puzzlers, into-space-starers and one very fine crocheter with the most gorgeous lacy baby shawl which was drawing a lot of admiration from the non-crocheters in the audience and much respect from the crocheters.

There was chat and animation. No one seemed upset. I suppose after five days a week for a couple of weeks, you tend to get used to the routine. Bearing in mind there are eight machines running side by side in this hospital, there were lots of people waiting. I was kind of glad at the atmosphere. Like, who wants to be around sick and moping people? The whole thing gave me a general wash-over of acceptance of cancer. There was no one wailing at their mis-fortune - so it can't be all bad huh? Perhaps they can work miracles in this place?

Part of the procedure is the person receiving the radiotherapy has to drink lots of water. There are water machines available but most people had their plastic bottles to sip from. Of course this means there has to be lots of toilets available and as we were leaving Nanna nipped in to a much smaller waiting room and used the single toilet there. As I waited I phoned Iain to let him know how she had been getting on and to inquire after his own surgery, he had been to have two teeth removed and was back at work complete with stitches and mouthfuls of blood.

We talked for the duration of the pee and I looked around the much smaller room with only three couples in it. The closest to me, with their backs to the reception area were a couple in their early 40s. They were sitting side by side holding hands between them in white-knuckle fashion. The lady was crying silent tears, tripping down her cheeks. The man was ashen faced. They stared ahead meeting no one else's gaze. I was able to observe them for a moment or two because they weren't aware of me - I was outside of their ken.

As I finished the call and sat down to wait for Nanna, the guy turned to his partner, clutched her hand even more tightly and said out loud "I love you." She didn't look up. She nodded twice and more tears fell.

All in all it was a dramatic thirty or so seconds for me. People WEREN'T coping. I had just been in the wrong waiting room.

This WAS a blog in itself. It was all written in my head ready on Wednesday night. But it never got typed out. Then a couple of things happened - one of them was someone else's blog. I have no idea what her name is but I know all about her life. I know her two boys' names, where she lives, what her job is, all about her landlords, her recent trip to London. She doesn't know I read her (in a "she doesn't know I exist" way), I can't remember where I picked her blog up. Sometimes it is riveting sometimes it is thought provoking. Sometimes it is as boring as my own life.

Last week she wrote about saying "I love you." She had done a little Google research about how many times people say this to each other. Some said 15 times per day. Some said they hadn't said it enough and now it was too late. She wondered if saying it too much diluted the real meaning.

She got me to thinking about how much I say it. Not as much as I ought to. Not as much as I would like to. Does it take a personal disaster to force you into saying it? What is it in us that makes it difficult to say this to another person? Who defines who you are ALLOWED to say it to? Why is it sociably unacceptable to say it to some people in your life? Why do we hide behind euphemisms and symbolism instead of saying outright? We refer to it in passing but don't tend to say it straight. Why can't we just say three words in a row without having to dress them down to something we think the other person can handle. Why do we *heart* people instead of *loving* them?

I find people unable to accept me saying it to them without making them think I need it said in return. I don't. I am just telling you how I feel. That isn't a prompt for you to tell me how YOU feel. I am not pushing you in to feeling the same way I do. It isn't necessarily an equal thing anyway - who says it has to be? Who cares if I love you more than you love me - WHO has the right to judge how much is 'too much"?

I probably already know you love me. If I needed you to tell me I would have asked for you to tell me it first. Sometimes I will do that. I am more than happy to say it to you and not hear it in return - in fact - I don't really believe it as much if you do reply quickly with it. When you say it, I am not looking for a response I am looking for a declaration.

I so totally understood it when Ryan said "Thank you" to Marissa's "I love you." That made total sense to me.

I see that it is difficult for people to hear. I see that it makes them uncomfortable. People just don't know how to accept love from someone else. Who says you have to be in the very close family structure for someone else to love you?

Personally, I do feel uncomfortable when it is said too much - I do feel too much dilutes it - but in the same vein as above - who am I to say how much is too much?

Getting back to family. I found to my great shock that it is AGES since I told my children I love them. When David was a baby I used to whisper it in his ear while he was sleeping for fear he (or anyone else) would hear me and think I was nuts. When he was a toddler he used to run into the room and throw his arms around me with such passion you knew I was the only person in his world he would ever love to that extreme, except Daddy. And Nanna. And Papa. Oh hell he loved everyone. He was such a lovey dovey child. He was an adorable child and we were incredibly close.

Jessica wasn't quite the same child. She didn't require the same from me. I think we kinda got out of the way of saying it to each other. A couple of weeks ago I broke the accidental radio silence on the subject with her and dealt her MY euphemism.

"I DO love you, you know."

She looked at me with that Jessica look. The one that you just know she has smelled bullshit and is going to call you on it.

"What? You mean you LOVE ME? Why don't you just say you love me?"

I considered it a second and returned with "I love you." It was actually suddenly very hard to say.

She nodded and said "Yea yea yea' and walked off on me - left standing there, feeling naked (and in the middle of a bad Beatles' video).

I am always aware and concerned that my blog portrays me in a bad light as a mother. Oh god - that is a whole other blog in itself - where would that one lead to? Perhaps I am a bad mother in your eyes. It doesn't matter what you think - I fiercely love my children.

I love the way David is so clever and Jessica so wise and straight to the point with things. I love that David has a normal boyish sense of humour and that Jessica is funny in a much more surprising way. I actually love the fact that they have the intelligence to wind me up. I love that they are getting older and more independent and able to form good friendships. I love that Jessica ALWAYS wants to hold my hand and love the feel of her folding my fingers round her hand more securely when I let the grip go a little. I love that David chooses when he wants to hold my hand - it is less acceptable to him now to be seen holding his mummy's hand. I love the look of them both when I go in to their rooms at night to make sure they are still breathing and see thumbs hanging out of mouths and bums in the air or books still in the grasp of a couple of fingers or music blaring out of earphones dangling from the side of the bed or Jessica having slipped on her bathing costume to sleep in. I never said I didn't have strange children.

That same girl wrote a while back that she considers herself to be a bad mother - she wasn't looking for validation - she was stating a fact. I don't think I am a particularly good mother - when I was a child ALL I wanted to do was grow up, get married and have children. But it is like looking at a rock star and wishing you had their
life - there are things they would say they don't like even though, in your eyes, they have the dream you always wanted. It is hard work being a mother. A lot harder than I ever imagined. I am not able to cope with some of it. I see myself very similar to my own mother more and more every day and if you have bothered reading this far you are probably aware of how THAT whole merry-go-round turned out and how scary that is for me to recognise.

I am not able to cope with the constant constant constant pushing of my limits. David is very hard work. What am I supposed to do - I can't smack him - for more than one reason. He is almost as tall as me - thankfully he will never be as heavy but even so, it is a long time since I was able to physically lift him up and remove him from the situation like you are told to. He knows which buttons to push to wind me up and does so with such relish. Both of my children have pointed out to me within recent weeks that they enjoy winding me up. Jessica went as far as to say it is her job. Perhaps it is. Perhaps I am getting back what I sowed. But I can't cope with it.

I have found the better parent in this relationship by far is Iain. He demands more respect than I ever received and gets it. The children do NOT play him up the way they do me. Is it not better to let him take over the role that I should have had. It is common knowledge that the children do not play me up as much when they are glad to see me. If I take myself off to do things on my own - they appreciate me more when I am with them. Is it not better to learn from my mother's mistakes, know when to accept defeat, keep the family together by changing roles and "living to fight another day" rather than everything going badly wrong?

That is my take on it. Hands up if you think I am a bad mother.

I'm still here - am I not?

Remember the poem about the swimmer? "He's not waving but drowning."

"She's not a bad mother, she's just doing her best."

And by the way - if you read THIS far - I am probably fairly fond of you. Technically.

OMG! Did anyone else see Ross tonight with Janice Dickinson tonight? I really wanted to be in bed but could not drag myself away from the tv. Seriously - what was she on? What was the line? "What does she do to relax?" Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. And then Blink some more!

Unfortunately, I had just taken a mouthful of tea when the two boys came on stage and she stormed back on and JR tried to shut the doors on her - I actually sprayed the whole laptop screen with it when I couldn't hold it in any longer.

If you didn't see it you HAVE to make sure you catch the repeat. I reckon they will be playing this one for a long time!

There is nothing much to say about this one other than tell you I sat with my jaw dropped for the last half of it.

Warning: There is a small amount of normal language scattered among the swear words!

It's the way the narrator goes from shock to jubilation to shocked shock and then just turns to pure jubilant shock from 1.21minutes onward that make me giggle - in a shocked way.

You owe it to yourself to watch this at least three times - the first time you wont notice the scenes over Belfast, the Birkenhead boat going out or how fecking high up you are and no there is no way I am ever going up there now with a photography tour you must be out of your head!

Some time ago, the children and I began to visit the library on a Saturday morning before going to Nanna's at lunch time. If you know me in real life, you will know how difficult it is to get the children to organise themselves enough to go to Nanna's never mind the extra trip to the library before hand. This added more hassle in trying to find the three books each among the trillions of non-library books and several times we arrived with a couple missing or having to *get them out again*. I learned the embarrassing way that there is no fine for overdue children's books.

Finally, I gave an ultimatum. If they didn't have the books ready and didn't go with a happy heart I was NOT going to make the effort to go to the (rather fantastically wonderful, beautifully purpose built) local library. It is for that reason that I feel guilty enough to pop the odd "children's charts" books in to the trolley at Tesco. As fast as I can buy them, David has them read. He is in to MI5 and Spy type books but will have a look at anything I bring back for him.

I have been encouraging him to blog his thoughts on the books he reads and I promised him that we could read a book *together* and then compare what we thought of it. I bought "The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas" with this in mind. You will never read David's thoughts on the book because he announced to me the other day that he "couldn't be arsed" writing it and I found myself somewhere between *outraged* and thinking *that's ma boy*.

I finished reading it in the bath tonight. It took me three baths to read it so it isn't all that long. It is about the friendship between two boys who meet and sit talking on either side of a wire fence every afternoon for a year. It doesn't take a genius to work out what it is about and when it was set through listening to the story of the life of the boy who lives in the house with his family on one side and who thinks the place is called Out-With and calls his Father's boss the Fury.

However, not once is any word used other than the two above, the fact there are soldiers and a Commandant and after a while a place called Berlin is mentioned and finally the boy is told by his sister that the people on the other side of the fence are Jews but he doesn't really understand what that means. He is only a ten year old.

The book finished with a twist. Other reviewers will tell you that they didn't see it coming but I did. Other reviewers will tell you it is fabulously written but I never once forgot that it was written for children. I kept thinking "Is this the way books are written for children - it has been so long I can't remember now". I was wishing the whole way through that there would be more to it in a "the children wont get this but here is a wee bit for grown ups thrown in" way.

Immediately I finished it I asked David to tell me what he thought of it. I wanted him to tell me that he understood all the references and hoped at the same time that he would know nothing of it. I wanted to get his interpretation on the ending. I wanted him to tell me when it was set and how it all fitted in.

I was in for a surprise. It had all gone over his head. He had totally misunderstood the ending, knew nothing about where it was set and nothing about the time it was set in.

I have read someone else saying that you shouldn't read it until you are 12 so I will put it away until he is in big school. I purposely didn't fill in the blanks for him. I left it as a nice little story about the friendship between two boys who were there for each other, holding hands, in the final couple of pages.

Children grow up too fast these days. This history lesson can wait for another time.

I have just been informed that a trip to see my niece/nephew when he/she arrives would cost the equivalent of two family trips to Burger King or a couple of visits to Starbucks.

It may be time to lock down this journal so incriminating information can not be stored and cast up to me when deemed necessary by brothers who want to guilt-trip!

Mind you - a nice relaxing trip away for a weekend away from screaming kids might be a nice break . . . with a new-born. Huh uh. We'll see.

You know the theory there are different ways of learning - by doing, by seeing and by listening - you know all that malarkey? Well I haven't really worked out what way I learn - other than sometimes it can be fairly slow and if you are trying to teach me something you may have a thick skin, loads of patience and some ear plugs. I have a feeling David is going to be the same way.

My darling daughter Jessica on the other hand is a child genius I tell ya! She is now size 1 shoe size - the size that the powers that be decide children ought to be able to tie their own shoe laces and stop making velcro'd shoes so readily available. Oh, yes, they are out there but they are harder to find.

Yesterday in Tesco's Jessica fell in love with a pink pair of trainers. She had to have them (although she HAD to try on size 3, then 2 and THEN 1 before I could persuade her that was the size for her). They fitted ok but I had to tie them up for her. Big pink laces. I explained to her that she would need to learn how to tie them herself because I wasn't going to be able to do them every time. She nodded and I braced myself for weeks of screaming and frustration from her. Cos, that is what we had from David. He had a terrible time learning how to tie his shoe laces.

So, back in the kitchen and she decided it was time to learn - in the middle of me having my tea. It is actually pretty difficult to teach someone how to tie shoelaces because it is a thing you do without thinking. So I showed her once, twice and three times. There was no moaning, no trace of tears and nothing but enthusiasm.

Today she wanted to know if I knew about "double knots" oh god she is on to the hard stuff already - where will it end? I showed her on one shoe and she had a go on the other . . . then I realised that she had already tied her shoes herself and HAD been all day.

She is either a quick learner or I have turned in to a superb teacher! Take your pick - either way *I* am smug!

I want this.

Can you believe how cheap it is getting?

You think it will ever be in a £5 sale?

Yes, I know. I already have all the books and have read them all already at least once and most of the comments I have read from people who have bought this say "so lovely I am afraid to read them in case I spoil the pages" but I'd still very much like this. . .

I made a phone call the other day to my friend Siobhan to ask her to come to the studio to see what I had done so far for the project. She wasn't in and there was no answering machine. About an hour later she rang me back - returning the call - but not having a clue who she was ringing. It took a second or two for her to tune in to who she was talking to - not expecting a call from me combined with a very sore ear, made for a confused Siobhan.

Later that night I received an email from her which ended:
P.S. did I tell you earlier that when you rang I thought you said you were Stevenson Cummins [ a local estate agents ] , I thought some one had sold my house with out me knowing, not that there'd be a big market, but I like it, at least enough not to be homeless.

At least not enough to be homeless!

Kinda reminds you of the Suuuuuuusan post I made a while back huh?

Drunk chick #1: laughing hysterically: Okay, let's come up with a code word to say every time we see one of them. Something really random, like... shoelace.
Drunk chick #2: Julius?
Drunk chick #1: still laughing: No, shoelace. Shoelace!
Drunk chick #2: Okay. Julius. Look! There's a Julius!

Today is the 1st of May. I have until the 25th to pull off my final project for college. Once that is done the HND will be finished. This is the FINAL. That's IT. am trying not to think about not seeing everyone again - the exhibition is paramount until the nervous breakdown that will come after it. But - in that time I have so much to do it is overwhelming.

I have to do more research - the research that should have been done in February but I left til now.

I have a workbook to write up. Yup - some of it is done already - but not enough.

I have final photos to touch up.

I have an installation to make out of railway sleepers. Using a chain saw that refused to be hired out last night and when we borrowed one from Dawn's Dad IT refused to work.

I have to ask permission from the gallery to put railway sleepers on their wall - not sure how that is going to go. . .

I have to organise promotional literature to be put on display at the exhibition. The problem is that this stuff is so expensive it is actually better to think bigger and use this as an excuse to get promotional stuff printed for my business - stuff to use in work as well as for the exhibition. The problem there is - that is a completely different kettle of fish and I now have to think about photos other than the ones I am using for the project - arrrrrghhhh . ..

IF the sleepers thing works I then have to organise the photos to be printed up with acrylics - if they don't then they have to be printed a different way - and then framing organised - there are a lot of IFS still.

Oh, and I have to organise a list of names and addresses to give to the gallery to send out invitations to friends and family who would like to attend. I think I have everyone covered now - if I haven't asked you for your post code recently then you may not be on the list - so feel free to ask to be included.

In the meantime, if it ain't involved with the final project then it ain't important - so please forgive me if I disappear for a while. See you on the other side. . .