You, most roguish of sycamores
shall not escape the fate of your siblings
mown dead with the first spring growth
of the recovering lawn.
The sanctuary of the hedge
no longer available
when you looked above the parapet,
were spotted and now lie sawn.
You shall not be remembered.
This morning I had the first hangover in quite some time. It was the morning after the book launch party. A long shower, a couple of pills and a bit more kip has sorted it and I am now on the way to London for a meeting feeling remarkably ok considering. I don’t think it was excessive intake of alcohol that was the problem. I was on lager shandy for most of the night. Adrenaline fuelled nervous tension told my brain to keep off the hard stuff early on but I guess that’s why I had a hangover – I was tired.
I’m sat on the train opposite a really attractive girl. This is a problem because I want to look at her but I don’t want her to think I’m looking at her. I need to have some shades on:) It’s ok. I have iron will. Not really – am burying myself in the laptop to take my mind elsewhere.
We are now approaching Grantham. It’s something one has to do when travelling to London. I could take an alternative route but Grantham isn’t that bad. It hasn’t got much going for it but it is harmless enough. Its only real significance today is that they will be coming round taking food orders after we have stopped at Grantham and so it is what is standing between me and a bacon sandwich. It’s just after 11am so it is more of a brunch than breakfast but that is fine. The downside is that it is a British Rail Bacon sandwich and as such just about meets the minimum trading standards requirements to be called a bacon sandwich. Also the only thing that the tea has going for it is that it is wet. I’m an ungrateful miseryguts I know but life is short you know. Why settle for second best?
It’s all about attitude. It’s also all about very interesting limestone rock formations I have just noticed in a cutting south of Grantham. Not totally sure about the limestone bit but in the absence of knowing any other suitable rock type it’s all you’re getting. Interesting rock formations are good. Other good and interesting things are available but for the moment that is all you’re getting.
Sheep are also interesting, and woolly, most of the time. They also taste nice when barbecued, ideally butterfly roasted after marinating in Delia Smith’s apricot bbq marinade. At least I think it was Delia. Might not have been her but frankly I don’t really care. It’s nice marinade. Now as these words spill onto the electronic page it does occur to me that the word marinating looks wrong. It feels as if it should be marinading to stay in keeping with marinade. However marinading shows up as a spelling mistake using Microsoft Word so it obviously can’t be right. Marinate as opposed to marinade also doesn’t sound right. Of course the difference here is verb and noun but the architects of the English language were treading a dangerous path here. They walked right up to the mirror of incompetence, stared it in the face for a few short seconds and then took a step back. It was a close run thing but they just about got away with it.
Now I’m not saying it is easy creating a language. There are an awful lot of words to invent. It takes real experts to come up with discombobulate or transubstantiation, to pluck but two classics out of nowhere. You can replace those with your own favourites. Anyone could come up with easy words such as lorry or sand. Languages are clearly created by teams of people with different skill levels and experience. For example you wouldn’t throw a new starter into a project to come up with albatross or equine. These are not massively difficult words that require your best brains but they aren’t what I’d call the low hanging fruit. I’d say you’d have to have a good five years’ experience before being given that kind of word to handle. At least two anyway, unless you were on some kind of graduate fast track and had already been on industrial placement during your time at university.
I’d say you definitely needed to be graduate calibre to get the job though, whether you had had any previous experience or not. At least in this day and age. When laying down the foundations of a whole culture it takes talent. I doubt that Shakespeare went to university but he was the exception not the rule. Plus it wasn’t so much the done thing in his day. Not like today where people get degrees in bricklaying and advance trench digging. There’s more to digging a trench than you’d think you know. A lot of physics involved, and geology, thinking back to the limestone cutting. It used to be that trench digging was pretty back breaking work. Not these days. Your newly graduated trench-digger is a pretty fussy individual. He or she insists on using their own hydraulic digger. It’s a bit like having a company car but different. In some parts of the world they even come air-conditioned. I imagine, though I have to fess up that I made that bit up. It’s just that it is an obvious progression.
Pick and shovel, digger, air-conditioned digger. Works for me. If I was going to be a trench laying engineer (for that should be the job title) I’d want my own digger and a radio and an internet connection. The digger should be able to steer itself using satnav so I could spend most of the time during boring jobs surfing tinterweb. The 3rd Law would ensure the time flew by so I could be getting paid whilst whiling away the time on Twitter or Facebook or whatever the latest trendy platform is.
Not Facebook. The stream doesn’t move quickly enough for me on Facebook. Twitter is more like it. Quick fire 140 characters bang bang bang with no commas. You don’t see commas on twitter very often as it’s a waste of a character nowotimean? I thought about writing a whole book using abbreviations or tweets but I assume someone has already done it. Doesn’t mean I couldn’t do it better but for the moment I have too much on my plate. Got a few of ‘em spinning, work plates and play plates. Don‘t want any of dem plates crashing noisily to the floor making everyone look up and at me to see what all the noise is about, nosiree. Bob.
I added that Bob as an afterthought. I assume it comes with a capital B and isn’t meant to be the type of bob that a ball does when floating in water and is pushed downwards by someone’s hand to watch it bob up again. Usually done by kids whiling away their long summer holidays not being able to think of anything more interesting to do. Bobbing, in this scenario is more interesting than doing large jigsaws because bobbing can take place outside which during the summer months, even in the UK, can be a very pleasant place to be. I offer no other alternatives to long vacation boredom here. Think of your own! I’m not your dad. Even if I was I’d probably still tell you to go outside and play or give Fred a call and see if he wants a knockabout with a footy. I’m not ringing him for you. You’re old enough to do it yourself.
I don’t know about you but personally I am always glad when the football season is over. It’s a sure fire sign that winter is over and summer is on its way. Only problem is these days the season seems to finish later and later and then start again sooner than feels right. What’s the point of the football season starting before the cricket season is over? Mid September is about right. The ground is starting to get softer and the days cooler. You don’t want to be playing football when it’s too hot, I’m telling you.
At least the cricket season has started before the end of the football season. It is the true sign of the arrival of summer even though every year we always have a bit of a laugh because there they are in their whites out in the middle wearing several layers because it is so wet and cold.
You don’t find many Freds around these days. I think I only know one and he lives in Canada which is a big country with big swings in its seasons. Canadian winters are long and I’d probably be happy to wait until the summer to play football, not that I am particularly a football fan. In Canada it would be acceptable for the football and cricket seasons to totally coincide. That is my definitive position on the subject. Full stop. And emphatic full stop in fact.
Can’t get any more emphatic than that. Think dramatic pause where everyone stops doing whatever they are doing and wonder what’s going to happen next. I have to tell you I don’t know myself. Whatever comes out comes out. I have no control over it. Drivel, impressive deep thinking, the lot. Thinking about it the deep thinking bit seems fairly unlikely but you never know do you? Eh? You will have to keep reading just in case the next page contains the most impressive, amusing and original stuff you’ve ever read in your short, sweet life. Note I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here and assuming that you have actually had a good life, thus far at least. Don’t read anything into the “short” bit. Everyone’s life is short in the great geological timeline scheme of things.
The more we drill into it it may be seen that the 3rd law gets everywhere, permeates every aspect of our lives. That’s the long and the short of it 🙂
3rd Law Part 23 here
3rd Law Part 25 ere
How easy it is to self publish online and the part played by the internet in it all: promotion using social media, online resources for taking advanced orders for the book and the use of print on demand sites to provide merchandising such as tshirts, mugs and bags.
The story behind how I started, how I started publishing under a pseudonym and then changed to my own name. Why I self published & how many people write poetry. I also read a couple of poems including “Swine Flu” and “A Night of Deep Reflection” and discuss how I find ideas.
Hi Y’all. Randy’s the name. I’m from Alabama. Doin the United Kingdom to discover ma roots. I’m jest here fra long weekend so gotta cram as much in as a caine. Ma great great granddaddy was from Brace bridge Heath so soon as I got off the plane in London I jumped in a cab and came straight up. Caint be that far I thought. Well let me tell you your English taxi drivers charge a mint. Cost me a few hundred of your British Pounds but I’m here now I guess. Stayin at The White Hart Hotel.
I asked the girl behind the desk the way to Brace bridge and she very kindly gave me a map. Best way is to jump in a cab she said. I said after my first experience with cabs in your country I ain’t taking another one so I said I’ll walk. Caint be that far. Never walked anywhere before but my mind was made up.
It sure was jest a little bit further than I bargained for but ah got there in the end. Up Can wick Hill and then hang a right until I got to Can wick avey new. When I got there it was nearly midday and I was getting jest a little bit peckish. Ok mighty peckish if I’m goin to be totally truthfull. I got the the end of Can wick avey new and what did a see but a Homestead. A good ole ornery homestead jest like they used to have in Alabama. What’s more that Homestead did good plain Amurucain food. Steaks, burgers, BBQ chicken. Why it sure as heck reminded me of home and ma granny’s cookin.
If I had to pick a fault it would only be that there were no grits on the menu. I asked the waitress and she looked at me as if I was from another planet so I didn’t push the issue. I would also have been nice to have unlimited refills because the glass my coke came in was pretty small but I figured after the grits incident I’d better hold ma tongue.
After lunch I spent a wonderful 15 minutes walking around. I found that the place used to be a mental hospital. Maybe ma great great granddaddy was a doctor? Weel I finished Brace bridge Heath and headed back to the Homestead to ask them to call me a cab, I done enough walking for another year.
I’m home now, Back in Birmingham, Alabamy that is. The hotel told me to catch a train. I guess after seeing Brace bridge I didn’t have much time for anywhere else. I spent the rest of the trip resting in my room and in the hotel restaurant. I guess some day I’ll have to come back and see your Cathedral and Castle.
Have a nice day y’all.
Randy.
I’m sure you will have noticed that when it is nice weather everyone is happier. Obvious statement I know but I felt like stating the obvious. It’s just that it is such a morning. It’s not only us surfers that are happy. The boids are too. I also felt like slipping into the vernacular of the East coast of the USA. It’s all based on gangster movies seen as a kid. I’m sure the old black and white movies are better than the stuff they have on today. Simpler. Ahh the good old days.
They should have a channel on TV that just shows repeats of black and white movies. They probably do – it’s probably called BBC2 or something 🙂 Sorry if that was being disrespectful to BBC 2. That’s just what it was like when I was a kid. It’s almost certainly not like that any more. Bound to be filled with good stuff.
I dunno really. I watched the snooker on BB2 the other day. Maybe it just plays snooker matches. There is a lesson here and that is one needs to have a better set of statistical data in order to be able to determine what sort of stuff a TV channel puts out. If you left it to me I might tell you that BBC2 just showed old episodes of I Love Lucy and Snooker. I’m exaggerating somewhat here for dramatic effect but you know what I mean.
I used to like I Love Lucy when I was a kid. Showing my age a bit here innit but hey. This post is of the moment and the small print of the 3rd Law states that in reality the time goes quickly principle applies to most aspects of life except when you are having to sit through a really boring church service or lecture or similar.
I remember we once went to the wedding of a friend in the South of England and it turned out to be the deeply religious full monty high church jobbie. After the third hour we were all preparing to slit our wrists when I plucked up the courage to go outside. I stood in front of the window of TV shop and watched Beckham curl in a free kick from an unlikely distance from goal to get England through the qualifiers and into the world cup.
Since then I’ve learnt not to wait the three hours. I just get up and leave straight away life’s too short when you live by the 3rd Law. This included the time I was a guest speaker on a business cruise aboard the Aurora Cruise Liner. The life of a guest speaker aboard these liners is highly cushy. In four days I did two talks and moderated three workshops and had the rest of the time to myself doing what one does on cruise liners – gazing out to the blue horizon from my outside stateroom balcony, relaxing on a deck lounger by the pool etc etc.
During the welcome reception on the first night I sat at the bar next to some guy from the Chartered Institue of PR. We exchanged business cards. He was their Director of Business Development or some similar lofty role. Once he saw who I was, ie not someone on board for the PR conference, he instantly lost interest in me and his eyes started to wander around the room. That’s cool I thought to myself and toddled off to spend half an hour having a very entertaining chat with Geoff Miller, Chairman of the England Cricket Selectors (that’s how I roll).
A couple of days later I had had enough of sitting round the pool so I took a gander at what conference talks were on and decided to go to a potentially interesting hour hearing about up to the minute PR methods. I have very broad interests really. It turned out that the talk was being given to my PR friend of the first night. I chose a spot bang in the middle and near the front and settled in ready to learn. What came out was the most boring lot of drivel I have ever heard. This guy patronised the audience with a very poorly delivered lecture on very basic PR principles. I was offended but gave him 15 minutes before standing up in front of everyone and walking out.
Later I was having a coffee and over heard some women talking about a lecture they had been to and how they had given it a low score on the feedback form. I asked whether they were talking about the PR guy and they were! 🙂 Saying I had walked out on it they said that they had all wanted to do but were too embarrassed. I hope that guy has improved his public speaking or stopped doing it!
I do have other similar stories but I’ll keep them for slow news day.
It’s a funny aspect of nice weather that I never seem to play golf in it. I play in the winter wrapped up in umpteen layers but when the sun comes out and it looks as if it is perfect for the golf course a kid always comes along and demands my time. I can’t complain. It’s the 3rd Law again. The kid will be gone soon enough and I will spend my days playing golf and wishing I could get my handicap down and regretting not spending enough time playing when I was younger.
Only joking really. If I didn’t play golf what would we do with that space in the utility room where the clubs are currently kept!?
The only problem with nice weather is that one’s mind turns to barbecues. “Woa boy how is that a problem” I hear you say. Ok I know where you are coming from but barbecues mean lots of chilled beers, great food eaten in the outdoors followed by sitting around the firepit (for yes, our BBQ is also a firepit) drinking brandy until the sun goes down and you go indoors to watch the snooker on BBC2.
Hmm, on further examination you are right. It is not a problem. We have a good garden for barbecues. There is always a choice between sun and shade somewhere. We havea deck at the bottom of the garden that doesn’t get used all that much though it is nice to sit there and have lunch in the shade on a hot summer’s day. There is also a space for a hot tub. It is currently occupied by a “play house”. It’s a huge two storey thing that was a great idea when the kids were really small but has only been used to store garden furniture for the last few years.
There are only three things stopping us from getting a hot tub. The first is that they are expensive. Secondly it wouldn’t get used that much and thirdly where would we keep the garden furniture? We could wait until the kids have all left home even though they would no doubt complain that it would have been nice to have the hot tub available for teenage parties. We don’t want no teenager parties around here, wrecking the joint.
We had a marquee in the garden for our daughter Hannah’s eighteenth. She had a joint bash with her lifelong buddy Lois. It was quite a bit of fun exploring the options. Lois’ dad Steve and I ended up having beers in the pubs that we checked out as venues. Funnily enough there weren’t many places in Lincoln that would take an eighteenth birthday party. None. Not even the rugby club!!!!
In the end we did it ourselves and it worked out really well. A hundred or so kids turned up in their glad rags. They were only allowed in the house to go to the downstairs loo and to the bar which was in the conservatory. Boy have drinking habits changed since I was a kid. It didn’t take us very long to run out of vodka which seemed to be all they drank. We had to have two restocking runs to Tesco.
They all left dutifully at the stroke of midnight which is the time the parents turn into pumpkins and leave glass slippers strewn all over the place. There was only one casualty, a kid from round the corner who kept imploring me not to tell his mum that he had been slightly unwell and spent half the night with his head in the bin I had set aside for recycling bottles. It wouldn’t have taken his mum long to find out I thought.
I think they had a great eighteenth. She’d better not be expecting a 21st though 🙂 Nice quiet family affair maybe. My 50th was a good do. It was in December and we had a beach party and barbecue. We’re on that theme again. Barbecues. On that occasion I got some students in from the local catering college to run the BBQ, the bar and dish out the nosh. It was a great night, from what I can remember. We drank a barrel of Timothy Taylors’ Landlord.
That was some time ago now though the 3rd Law says it feels like yesterday. Got to cram thing into this life. Get on with it.
Looking up from this bit of writing just now I notice a tweet from Beverly Racecourse in my twitter stream. What a wonderful name for a girl. Mr & Mrs Racecourse and their daughter Beverly have just arrived in town and are looking for some entertainment. Any takers? Who’s up for it? Come on now, don’t be shy, give it a try.
The trouble is what keeps the Racecourse family entertained might not be your or my cup of tea (not completely sure of the grammar there). They might in fact like to spend their evening playing whist and drinking copious quantities of tea whereas the rest of us might want to go off and play bingo. I only chose bingo as an example. It is unlikely that I would want to “go off and play bingo” though I don’t object to a few hands whilst out and about at the seaside. Do they play “hands” of bingo? Might be cards. Anyway it doesn’t matter, the principle is the same.
I have been known to have a game of bowls, of the crown green variety. It’s a young man’s sport regardless of what they say. Better than ten pin bowling at which I am pleased to say I am completely useless. My position is that if you are good at ten pin bowling there is something wrong with you. Especially if you have your own bowling shirt, ball and bag. I am sorry but that is how I feel.
There’s something quite cathartic about writing that down. It’s off my chest now. I already feel better. Mind you I wouldn’t want you to go around thinking that I have been worried about the bowling thing because I haven’t. It does put me in a certain camp. Those who think like I think. I may be wrong but I think I am in the majority. Please don’t take this as me picking on minorities. I would take the same view for all sorts of cults to a greater or lesser degree especially ones that make you wear fancy clothes and carry round shaped bags.
Funny how stuff just comes out like that though. That’s the beauty of it all. Things. Life. Stuff. Tinternet.
Part 22 here
Part 24 here
I have to be honest with you I know absolutely nothing about Branston Old Hall. Nowt, niet, dim byd o gwbl – that last bit was in Welsh in case you are wondering. I wouldn’t want you to think that Welsh was ever natively spoken in the area because I’m not sure it ever was. However I am Welsh and there has clearly been some population movement from the West of the British Isles into the general Lincoln area at some point in history.
One might ask what therefore qualifies me to write a piece for Lincoln AtoZ on the subject. Well here’s the rub. They didn’t say I ever had to have been there though something in the deepest recesses of my memory banks tells me I might have been there for a wedding once but how do you expect me to remember the details. It was a wedding for goodness sake. They all pretty much fade into one and it has been some considerable time since I actually went to one.
Apart from my own wedding the one I do specifically remember was that of Ian and Michelle Reid. The do was somewhere between Lincoln and Scunthorpe – we got there on a coach. The reason I specifically remember it was because our table was supposed to have eight people but only four made it to the “breakfast”. One couple that to leave with their little boy because she went into labour in the church and another person had to bow out because she had the flu.
So there we were on a table for eight but with only four people present. We all had two bread rolls, two starters, two glasses of champagne, two puddings and best of all, knowing their friends well, the bride and groom had very generously laid on six bottles of wine for the table. It was made even better by the fact that one of the people on our table was driving!!! What a night. I’m surprised I remember it at all.
Anyway that wasn’t Branston Old Hall. A cursory glance using Google tells me Branston Old Hall was built in 1735 by Lord Vere Bertie. Sounds like a character from a Jeeves novel doesn’t he? After the Enclosure Act of 1765 he was the largest landowner in the area. His land stretched as far as the River Witham. That’s all you’re getting because frankly I’m not interested in doing any more research on this subject. Google it if you want. It’s easy enough.
Arrivederchi (lots of Italians around here innit? – population movement and all that)
No billboard just coffee table,
mostly words, laid bare,
open or not for interpretation,
initially free of stain, coffee or other.
posters
Mimsy Borogove I love your name and the visions it evokes. I see you in a 1920s dress with pearls and a headband dancing the twitterbug with other fun people in front of The Ritz House Orchestra. You drink cocktails and love to go to country house parties which you get to by cadging a lift in a friend’s convertible or by catching the 11.34 from Kings Cross station and arriving just in time to get changed for dinner. Your take your summer holidays in Cannes at a friends villa and are often to be seen at the casino or swimming in the sea or playing golf on the promontory overlooking the bay.
Although I love your name I have made no effort to look for you. I never want to meet you or see what you look like because I don’t want to be disappointed. I just happened to see your name once in my twitter stream. I don’t want to find that you aren’t what I imagined and neither do I want to find that you are exactly as envisioned but have nothing of interest whatsoever to say.
I will read your book when it comes out though if you let me know about it which will be difficult unless you find this post when searching for mentions of you using Google. Please leave a link:)
Hello, my name’s Rob Wilmot. Over several brandies, Tref persuaded me to take on the role of Art Correspondent on his blog, Philosopherontap. He and I are a bit alike, as we’ve both made our careers as technologists whilst at the same time allowing our artistic souls to surface occasionally.
So here I am. I thought long and hard about what to write as my first post, and I’ve settled for introducing myself via my artistic journey. A bit pretentious maybe… but authentic I hope.
When I was young I used to love the paintings of Constable – I vividly remember being transfixed by the ‘big canvases’ at the National Gallery. My outlook on life was pit village, working class narrow. There was no World Wide Web and I liked what my art teacher said I should pursue, which was the art of the traditional realist persuasion.
At the age of eighteen I focused my Art ‘A’ Level thesis on the work of John Constable. I recently dug it out to jog my memories for this post. It’s so naïve and sweet, but it does have some ‘gems’ in it which still ring true for me. With my limited resources – a local library (there was still no WWW) – I discovered other works by artists like Claude Lorrain, prominent three centuries prior to Constable, and was delighted to recognise the similarities in their perspective and composition. Both were literal landscape painters, though where Lorrain fixed mythical figures in his vistas, Constable added the exquisite normality of the child and the dog playing in the river. I learned the lesson that the new often borrowed from the old. It was through my exploration of Constable that I discovered Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and it was the intensity of his depiction of light and shadow that transfixed me. One of my favourite paintings of all time is Corot’s painting ‘The Cabassud House, Ville D’Avray’. Oddly, I can’t find it online but here’s a link to a similar painting of the same subject. For me this places the artist at the intersection between literal landscape and impressionism – a line almost, but not quite, crossed by Constable in his later paintings. Corot and Constable never met, but they both visited and painted scenes of the Forest of Fontainebleau.
In my early twenties I discovered the possibilities of multimedia. By serendipity rather than good judgement I landed on a course at the University of Bradford grandly entitled ‘Electronic Imaging and Media Communications’. This course was ‘new age’ – a science degree, but with a cohort selected from both arty and scientific candidates. It presented a melting pot of ideas and it was here that I discovered the work of Bill Viola on a field trip to an exhibition at the Albert Docks in Liverpool. His Audio Visual installations struck a deep chord with me: the perfect convergence of poetry, art and technology on a majestic scale. It was after this discovery that I created my first ‘real’ work of art – an interactive graphic novel based on a story I wrote about a scientist who digitally encodes his DNA and his consciousness. Having beamed these into space, they are picked up 26 years later by aliens who recreate the scientist from the digital patterns and return the doppelgänger to earth 54 years later.
It can’t have been complete tosh as it seemed to catch the Zeitgeist of the coming of the home computer age, winning the IBM’s International Leonardo da Vinci Awards for multimedia. A proud moment for me: not because I won but because I got to meet Terry Pratchett, an up and coming author at the time. He was one of the judges and he made a special point of approaching me over drinks and nibbles to divulge that he’d voted for me because my work was ‘disruptive’. Well that’s been me ever since 🙂
I bypassed the likes of Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. I still to this day believe that their patron, Charles Saatchi, was the real artist persuading us that the ‘work’ of these conceptual artists was indeed worthy of being called art: The epitome of the emperor’s new clothes woven by the consummate brand man.
And then I discovered the World Wide Web… well it discovered me really, but that’s another story.
I began an online exploration and found the works of David Hockney, Lucian Freud, Marc Chagall, and Francis Bacon. I’ve been fortunate in that the second half of my life (so far) has taken me around the world and I’ve been able to stand inches from some of the great works of the artists I admire. I love to analyse brush strokes, to see paint in relief: the circle created by the impression of the baked bean can, and the fingerprints of the artist abandoning the brush for the freedom of skin on canvas.
My unplanned career in technology and business has more often than not steered me away from creating my own art. But in 1996 both worlds intersected when I had a chance epiphany at the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE). I was building a web based stock trading news and prices system for a client at the time and needed some pictures for the homepage. I wanted to capture the intensity and passion of the trading floor and the IPE was one of the last places in the UK that still used the ‘open outcry’ method of trading. Open outcry is the trading you’ve seem in films and TV where representatives of firms dress in distinctive, brightly-coloured, jackets and scream and shout at each other, waving their hands with frantic gestures to indicate the option to buy or sell. I spent a day there taking pictures but, as there were no digital cameras that could capture action based stills back then, we shot on standard film. Luckily I had a professional photographer who could get the right exposure for the lighting conditions of the vast trading floor, but I also took pictures with my bog standard Olympus Mju compact camera. After getting the snaps back from Boots, I found that many of the pictures had motion blur. One of the designers on my web team at the time commented that they we’re reminiscent of some of Francis Bacon’s work. Something in this caught my imagination and I rented a studio in Harrogate and got to work. Two months later I had created a series of large format triptychs using acrylic and oil paints on canvases that I had stretched with my own hands. An exhibition entitled “Oil on Canvas” (get it?) was staged in what was a bit of a blur, and to my amazement, everything sold (except two triptychs that I held back because I had fallen in love with them).
Several years later, I got and email out of the blue from the Chief Executive of the IPE. He was moving jobs and had not stopped thinking of my paintings since viewing them years before. After a private showing in London Docklands he persuaded me to part with one of my remaining triptychs. His name is Dr Richard Ward and he moved on to the role of Chief Executive, Lloyds of London. For many years my (now his) pictures hung in pride of place on the wall of his office at the top of the Lloyds building. They now hang in the study of his London home, apparently because he loves them so much. Other people have their work on their walls, but Richard is the only one who has made a point of telling me he would never part with them.
So there you have it, a potted history of me and the art that has helped shape the way I think and work. I continue to paint and take photos. Two of my children, Sam and Tom, will soon graduate from university as hard scientists: zoology and forensics respectively, though the artistic gene seems to have asserted dominance in my daughter, Grace. We sometimes paint together – though not nearly enough.
I’ll be posting reasonably frequently from now on …well that’s the plan anyway.
In the meantime, you can also follow my tweets @robwilmot and learn more about me on LinkedIn
And finally, as a way for me to get to know you, why don’t you use the comments area below to tell me about your favourite artist and how they have inspired you?