Time travel

What a trip since I last wrote this...

Having prepared the OIA conference, commissions and lecture so carefully, Claude Butler and I parted company rather unexpectedly on a steep and slippery slope, bruising brain, hips and pride and ruining my helmet.  What should have been my moment in the spotlight on a podium was spent having a torch shone into my eyes and ears by a very brisk nurse in the Bath hospital casualty ward.

Greatly restored by the calming and encouraging atmosphere of Perfect View by Monday I was on my way to Bristol ready to exchange contracts on St Andrew's Road and hoover the stairs for the last time.  But the buyer reduced his offer by £4,000 that day, effectively pulling out. It seems that he had been negotiating on two properties at once.  I will never know why but decided to go ahead with the move anyway. A pair of gentle giants steadily stacked their Luton so full that the mud flaps trailed along the ground as we wound across the Mendips.  All this piled into the cottage still rather full of Roy and his team fixing loft and replacing rotten windows

 

High Street...

Gathering another slew of boxes from Farnham was a chance to catch up with my sister Nikki and to make letters out of toast for my nieces' breakfasts before heading back to unpack. Frome at last has a cosy bedroom a working kitchen and rather draughty bathroom and most of the post seems to show up there finally.

But the rest is still in utter chaos as I wanted to get back to college, the important deadlines and exciting atmosphere - workshops with Bonnie Kemske on tactile sculptures, Peter Aldridge on Corning and the studio glass movement in America, Glenn Adamson on contemporary craft, Brigit Connolly on alternative approaches to writing.  

commission detail

Plus a commission for a gallery to be delivered this week, contributing to a new course at Bristol University introducing medical students to creative practice and setting up a new group to debate research culture in arts institutions across the UK and beyond. 

 

work in progress show

I have had another offer on the Bristol house, but it's clear that the Christmas break will delay everything by a couple of  months.  And then there will be an election with all the uncertainty that will bring. So I have been pursuing options of short term rentals for the house and garages - and a fire sale of the brick garage to tide me over.

desk in early morning sunshine

At least it's never dull! To bed...