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2006

On Sunday, 13th March, in the Town Hall, Loughborough, there will be an auction of artworks, prints and signed books to raise money for the ongoing work of the Tsunami appeal. There is a website linked to the auction and I have signed books and a print included in the auction, but the many other wonderful things can be seen online here.

March did not start out to well. One of my publishers forgot to put my books in for a major children's book award, and the gallery that I have shown with for years decided that they wanted to cut down on their artists, that they had sold so much of my work that they probably wouldn't be able to sell anymore, and so asked me to come and take away my work and have stopped representing me. Added to this the fact that I spent the start of World Book Day unblocking my drains with drain rods from the local hardware store and very fetching marigold gloves, and the continuing ongoing saga of the cover for Can You See A Little Bear, all made me feel very special. Such a romantic life.

Drains dealt with more successfully than publishers, I headed off for the Rhondda Valley with a map.

Navigation has never been a strong point for me and as I headed over the hills from Bridgend, and the road got narrower I began to worry. Driving over cattle grids with frozen waterfalls ahead I thought of friends spending World Book Day in major London galleries, riding on crowded underground trains, and I knew where I would rather be.

First stop was Triorci Library, where I painted for a group of children filled to the brim with questions about illustrating and read stories and showed the children sketch books and dummy books and proofs for Can You See a Little Bear.

The children were brilliant, although slightly disconcerted when I started to tell them about the way some paints were made. They were OK with the blues, when I showed them some Lapis Lazuli, but a bit unsure when I went on to tell them about Egyptian Brown, made from ground up mummies, or bodies of young boys.

The next day Ceri Roberts, the wonderful librarian who had invited me to the Rhondda, and myself were given strict instructions by the cleaning lady of Penrhiwceiber library not to make a mess! With 30 or more children involved in a session to make a mural for the library this seemed an impossible feat, but the children again were amazing. I read them stories and drew pictures of whales and we talked of whales and paint and allsorts and they drew and painted and cut and stuck and worked so well. Half an hour after the session was finished we all had to be dragged away from each other to the next event in Pontypridd Library.

At Pontypridd the children had dressed for World Book day. Again they were full of questions and watched as I painted a tiger for their school.

I don't know how the children felt about the whole event, but I had a great time. The Rhondda Valley is a beautiful place, where steep mountains descend to rows of tight packed terraced houses, and wild countryside and rugged urban landscape meet with nothing in between. Silver birch trees clung to mountainsides and longtailed tits flitted through the trees with backdrops of pitwheels and chimney stacks. The hotel was full of photographs of miners and women waiting at pit heads for news of pit disasters. In some ways a place the rest of Britain would seem to want to forget, but this is the place my ancestors came from as economic migrants to Birmingham and the Black Country, to work new mines.

As I drove away, back over the curious mountain roads by which I had entered the maze of tight valley settlements and looked back there was snow over distant mountains, and the sun and clouds were dappling the valley. This is a place I want to go back to. Thank you Ceri, for inviting me.

Next stop was Carmarthen where the staff at Ottakars had invited me in for the day to work with local school children and talk to some of the students from the college. In the morning I read stories to the children and talked about painting and again read them Can You See a Little Bear. The reaction to this book from all the children I have read it to has been great. They love joining in to the point where by the end they read it to me, and looking for the bear and all the characters in the book. In the afternoon I painted again while the children watched and asked questions.

All in all it was good to get away and the enthusiasm of the children and teachers and staff in the bookshop was a great tonic so I came home with far more enthusiasm than I left home with. So thanks to Jo and Abi and all the staff at Ottakars in Carmarthen, especially the stock room man, who left to become a standup comedian. Thanks for the loan of the mug and good luck, may the gods of laughter shine on you.

Back to work this week with so many things to do that the first thing I did was make a list. Been looking for it ever since. One of the things to do was a rough or two for Shalom House Hospice Trust. They had asked me to do a Christmas card to raise money for the local hospice that is hoping to open this year in St Davids. So far this is the rough, and I will post a picture of the card when the artwork is done, sometime in the next few weeks.

You may think it is too early to think of Christmas, but it takes time to do the design, get the cards printed and packed and do some marketing. And the older I get the more I find the minutes, hours and days slip through my fingers and before you know where you are spring has turned into summer and the days are getting shorter. Oh dear, definitely time to go and paint..........

The week of 14 March was uneventful on the publishing front but exciting in other ways.

We bought a harp on Monday. Hannah, aged 10 is learning harp at school and I fell for the beauty of the instruments. And Maurice the cat fell also, into what is now known in the family as The Black Pit of Despair. Just like a kitten he followed his shadow and managed to get stuck in a space underneath my neighbours stone steps on one of his holiday cottages. Bella (the dog) found him as he cried out in the dark from his stone prison where he was trapped and after a worried and sleepless night I panicked when I saw in the daylight the place he had fallen into. Surrounded by solid stone and with no way out other than through a wall made of stone. Fortunately for me I had good fairness, with tools, and my neighbour who was only too willing for us to knock a hole in an airbrick and free the kitten. So Maurice the cat now has eight lives left, and I have potentially a good story in "Maurice and the black pit of despair". Many thanks to Ffion ( who in a week has gone from being rescued by the lifeboat to rescuing a kitten) and Al who wielded the hammer and chisel, Mr. Griffiths for his help and concern, and John who let us knock a hole in his house. The hole Maurice fell into is now blocked with a large lump of stone and he is looking for other, hopefully less dangerous ways, of becoming the centre of attention.

In all the excitement I did manage to get some painting done (the artwork for the Shalom Christmas card) as well as launching into the roughs for a new book, Singing to The Sun, written by Vivian French and to be published by Egmont. The design sprang out of the hymn, The Holly and the Ivy, "and the holly bears a berry as red as any blood". I have always wondered what a "holly bear" looks like.

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