Running Out Of Steam

Today I am slow like my computer. I have nearly finished the painting for the secret presentation, I only need to paint some coats of arms, a dark toblerone and some fishing tackle. Yes, it's that kind of painting. The other Jesus on the Tube is sitting waiting for me to continue, and the family who commissioned it gave Alan and I supper last weekend. They are the nicest people, and on top of all that the food was brilliant. So when this painting is presented on Sunday, and I can tell you who it is for, I will have a day off to have tea with my lovely friend Olivia and discuss her latest book (if I didn't paint, I would want to be Olivia and write like she does). Then on Tuesday I will do the Jesus on the Tube.

It is rainy and windy today. Everything takes me a long time to do. I will drive Daughter to Brighton today and have dinner with her tonight. 15 year old son is in Portsmouth till whenever. 12 year old son is with a friend who is so like him in character I dread to think of what they will get up to.

I feel like lying in the sun in the hammock, except it is raining. I feel like being soft and gentle and I probably am today. And slow.

Michael Copeman died on Christmas Eve aged 88. He was an old family friend, he paid for one of my boys to be privately educated. He was a treasure and a gentleman, a wonderful man. Never married, no children, last of his line. Fabulously wealthy. Sothebys are starting the auction soon of his estate, and there are two paintings I have always wanted. It makes me sad I shall never have them, I am not in this league - auctions at Sothebys. I wish Michael had had a psychic sixth sense and bequeathed them to me. They are portraits of his Mother and Aunt when they were young. I knew Michael's mother too. The portraits show such young and healthy society girls, painted with care, gentleness and the kind of painterly quality that I envy. Oh they are beautiful. I would need about three thousand pounds to even start the bidding. Why does Michael have to lose these paintings which wouldn't mean anything like as much to someone who didn't know him, or his mother? Sob. I want them. Sob. Michael should lean down from Heaven and pluck them from Sotheby's tonight, and have them in my studio waiting for me in the morning. He should also leave a little ghostly note to tell Sotheby's what he has done and not to worry. However, this is a little lesson in how life is not fair. Or perhaps life does not play by my rules.

I don't think I can paint today so I will go and take daughter to Brighton early.