The Mists Descend. But I Have Three New Dresses So At Least I Am Looking Good.

http://www.antoniarolls.co.uk/ for my website

http://www.jesusonthetube.co.uk/ for my other website about Jesus on the Tube. Check it and see.

http://www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com/ for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings of the end of a life

antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com to email me

The Mists.  Descending.  But I Greet Them With A New Pink Dress So Who Is Boss Now, Eh?

The Mists Descend.  Here we have the Artist in her usual pink or red, posing like a shameless hussy with a significant wodge of dosh in the foreground.  She is aware that the Mists, those vague and oft avoided Feelings of Loss and Sadness, are settling around her.  However, she knows what side her bread is buttered, so to speak, and is shown here at a cafe in Brighton just about to eat the biggest fanciest veggie breakfast God ever invented.  Mists of Loss and Sadness, it is said, remove most peoples' appetites.  Not this one.  "Bring it on", she says through heavy sighs.  "And don't stint on the ketchup."

These Mists are all my own doing.  I said I would give myself time to feel all the loss and sadness surrounding Steve and Alan, and so I am.  Experiencing the Mists are long overdue.  I could not cope with the death of Steve so when Alan came to save me and my life, I didn't have to.  Now Alan has gone too, I need to get on with Unfinished Business and Let the Sadness Happen.  In Oxford though with the Glorious Clarissa, I bought three new hot pink and hot red sun dresses.  I may be Sad and Lost but I am Blazing With Colour and Fire. 

So, day to day, how are things?  I carry with me a slowness that has not been with me before.  The slowness tells me to just sit and look at whatever takes my fancy and stay there for days.  That however, would be difficult for most of us.  Not only because time is taken away from the mundane tasks that make our routines run with an enviable smoothness.  That matters, but there is more.  The more time spent sitting and gazing the harder it is to come back to life as we left it.  So I think if I were to Succumb To The Slowness, I may never start up again. I don't like nights.  I don't look forward to getting into bed, it has not that peace and relief I wish for after a hard day's work.  I have Time ahead.  All night, and when morning comes I don't want to have to get up and face the day. 

But.  Before you all call the ambulance, this is not all there is.  I expect many of you have this and worse, much of the time.  I have things to keep me going. 

• 
  
  13 Year Old Son wants to take up boxing.  This proves there is a life outside my tiny little orbit and that not everyone is longing to be Sad with me.
• 
  
  My Dear Brother No 1 ( I have three brothers. Number 1, Number 2 and Number 3) and his Lovely Girlfriend came to stay at the weekend.  They are deeply sympathetic and so we had a huge Indian Takeaway to prove it.  We put on the football and talked all the way through it and then watched the film It's Complicated.  Now I want to marry Steve Martin. 
• 
  
  I have joined a Campaigning Cycle Group.  I did it because I so enjoyed helping out at the Opening yesterday.  It is possible that I have joined a Militant Cycling Group, but  because there was lots of free cake and tea and the lady who is the Boss has such nice red hair, I thought "OOh!  There will be lots of Cycling Fun with these jolly folk."  But it may be only after we have abseiled into the local government planning office from helicopters and wearing Penguin Costumes that the jolly bike rides happen.  We will see. 
• 
  
  Sexy Polish Grandmother Who Speaks No English is Moving Out.  She has a job now somewhere else, and I am happy for her.  Her friend who came to tell me said they all loved me.  I told them I loved them too and we all looked deeply tearful and passionate for a moment before Sexy Grandmother's friends had to go home.
• 
  
  French Student goes back home in a week and a half.  It is time, I say, to Do The Kitchen.  Yes, it is time. When he has gone.
• 
  
  Work?  Today I paint Anne and Peter Snell for the A Graceful Death exhibition.  Peter died a few days after I went to photograph him.  He is so beautiful.  His dignity is evident and humbling. 
• 
  
  I am doing my new commission which is for a birthday present, so I will keep it vague until I get the go ahead to do other wise
• 
  
  I want to paint the Rev Rachel Mann as the Rock Chick Angel of the North!  She is so full of life and energy and such a visual treat.  Rachel knows this and is interested so Go Go Go Rachel. 
• 
  
  Tomorrow I take Costya the Teenage Overlord to a Reception in the Garden at Lambeth Palace.  The Archbishop of Canterbury whom I admire beyond imagining, will therefore meet Costya and I hope he will appreciate Costya's advice on What To Do Next in the Anglican Church.  The Archbishop has a Jesus on the Tube from me.  This is why I get invitations to the Palace now and again.  I think.  Can't be because of my blog.  Can it??

So.  Off to paint Anne and Peter Snell as Peter was dying.  No more mists for Peter then, but plenty of mists for Anne.  He was the love of her life and her mists must be pea soupers compared to mine. Onwards and Upwards then.