A Slow Start, Wading Through Treacle

It is a slow start this morning. I woke at 6.30 and knew that last week it was 5.30 and felt cheated and went back to sleep. The intention as I drifted off to sleep last night was to wake to a new day full of possibilities and grab them one by one as they came up. I was to have got up early refreshed and glowing, gone for an effortless run and come home to have a sparse but healthy breakfast. I would then be so on top of the world that coming in and finishing the Ross Family Portrait with one hand tied behind my back would have been a doddle.

Here's how it really was. I woke early, went back to sleep. I overslept and woke oldest son in a panic. He said "I'm not stupid" when I told him we'd overslept and I wondered how "Get up dearest we have overslept" became to his ears "You are stupid". I took ages putting on my running stuff and thought when Son goes to get his bus I will go and do this impossible thing and run to the sea and back. I recalled times only a week or so ago when running to the sea and back was a delight and my newly slimmed body would (I felt) carry me to the Sahara and back. Was that real? Was I completely mad? This morning I felt that to stagger to the front door was enough and really all I was good for was a day in bed with dep fried chocolate and chips. However, Son who is not stupid came down and we left at the same time. I went one way and to his relief he went another. (Son is at the adolescent stage where he must not have a parent in his life, and was created fully formed aged 15 somewhere and has no need of any authority or family).

The run was OK! The run was not an ordeal. The ordeal is mental, I have too much on my mind, and the run helped me get some perspective. Oh joy. So on my return I showered, had breakfast and am now going to do the following on the Ross Family Portrait - bottles of beer and wine, glasses, barbeque foods, colourful bowls of fruit and crisps. Tomorrow I will do the materials on the the clothes and finally all the outlines and details and re do the people so that they stand out. I may do balloons and pot plants too. It is all possible.

Yesterday the unmatchable photographer Eileen Rafferty came to take photos of the new Jesus on the Tube and of me in the studio for an article that may come out in April about Steve and his death. I will make a separate entry about that soon.