To Blog Or Not To Blog. To Blog.

http://www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com/ for updates on my exhibition coming up on the End Of A Life
http://www.antoniarolls.com/ for my painting website. Fun stuff for all.

To Blog or not to blog, if that is the question then it is simple. Blog. Blog a lot and blog regardless. I set myself the task of doing two blogs every second day so that both my readers (subtle) could have a day to digest the Theme of the Day. One blog, this one, is full of important happenings and thoughts in the life of a very well meaning artist and mother. The other is about the exhibition A Graceful Death which I am putting on soon. See link at the top of this entry. It is a serious blog about a serious subject and possibly charts the start of a new direction for my work. I will write more about that in the Graceful Death blog.

This blog is also serious, and I have found it makes all the difference to my working life. This is because I have to concentrate, have to be consistant, and have to make sense. You may not like what I write (but I know you do because you are loyal and patient) but you have to admit it makes sense. In that it is not Non sense. Or at least it is not gobbeldy gook.

It is Sunday night and I am sitting in my kitchen under a very noisy boiler writing this in advance of tomorrow, on Alan's laptop. I am very busy tomorrow and for the whole of next week and have been unutterably busy for the last week too. I am having to slot my blog in at the weekend, because I am just too too busy to do it on Monday. And I was too too busy to do it on Friday. And Saturday was so dreadfully busy too and so I am like those terribly important Doing Types who can hardly reply to a question because their important and urgent lists cover the whole of one wall. I would like to say all my hugely important busy-ness is about work, because then I would be obviously Into the Bigtime. My busy-ness however, is to do with friends coming to stay from Norway, and dinner parties, and tea with old friends, and taking 16 Year Old Son to the British Museum for the day. It is about being invited to birthday dinners and taking 13 Year Old Son to his football match where bless him, he froze to death and stopped being able to move because his laces came undone and he was too cold to do them up and too cool to ask for help. "Mummy would have done it for you" I cried as I put him into the car to thaw after the match. His look was withering. Not on your Nelly was the polite interpetation.

Steve's wonderful friends came over for a visit from Norway. They saw the paintings for the exhibition, and did not object. They have known Steve since he was 19. I knew Steve for 18 months. We went to lunch and a visit to Petworth, to my mother's house, and dear Eileen came too. Then I drove everyone to London for tea with 16 Year Old Son at my sister in law's house. 16 Year Old Son is very fond of the Norweigian Friends, who taught him to ski in Norway a year and a half ago. And so, later on when everyone had gone onto their next appointment, I stayed with a dear dear friend who always asks the most insightful questions. There is no pretending one is OK with this friend, she is far too perceptive and wise for that. I always come away feeling better for being with her. Saturday arrives and off to the British Museum with 16 Year Old Son, and a deadline to meet an old school friend who has flown over from Hong Kong with her husband (Husband? She is still 17. She can't have a husband). We have not met for 31 years, and I knew her instantly. Off then, to a dinner party with other old school friends (see how busy I am? See how a Blog just couldn't happen?)

A long drive home to Alan after my London dinner and a pot of tea and a chat when I get there and lo! It is 3am. 13 Year Old Son has to be at the football ground somewhere Vaguely Far Away by 10am so let us sleep, dear one, let us sleep.

Tomorrow I cycle to see a Community Centre that may have a room to rent out so that I can wow the public with Art Classes. Just the basics this time. Leave the inspirational stuff for later, just the basics to begin with. Jackson Pollack and Michaleangelo next month, Noddy and painting by numbers this month. At teatime, tea with a gracious old friend, who used to be the English teacher at my Jesuit boarding school, and lives in the next village. Tea with him is Real. Teapots, teacups, buttered toasted teacakes. I may overstay my welcome tomorrow, I feel it coming on.

So it goes. The rest of the week is more of the same. And in between all this, in between all this frantic to-ing and fro-ing, I will paint more angels and dying men, I will try to convince the press that this exhibition is worth taking seriously, I will see if St Barnabas House Hospice has space for the volunteering I want to do, and I will network and make new contacts and thus I will arrive at Nirvana.

Just worth a mention too, 19 Year Old Daughter texts me with updates on her movements and thoughts about 20 times a day, and 16 Year Old Son sends me lists of things I should do. 13 Year Old Son is in the middle of a Homework Sabotaging Exercise and needs some careful handling, and as his school play is coming up and he is Bill Sykes the baddie, he is more often in character than usual and needs some gentle guidance now and again. (We don't drink gin at the table dear, and please put away the cudgel, I am sure Bill would have put it in the cupboard when he came home. Along with the gin. Good boy.)