Tired, Excited, Fat, Single And Inspired

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my most well known image of Jesus sitting on the Tube being ignored by everyone, but not You
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Oh All Of The Above And More

• Tired. I am very pleased about this  I don't sleep very much, and have never really enjoyed sleep as a way of spending the time, but I do love to be quiet and on my own at the end of the day.  Now, after setting aside time to wind down, I am stunned to find myself feeling sleepy.  "I will just," I say to myself  after lunch with a sweet innocence that shows that I am easily fooled, "close my eyes for five minutes and then I will be fine".  A couple of hours later, sweet yet enormously tall 14 Year Old Warrior Child gives me a peck on the cheek and tells me that he was wondering if I could perhaps make him another meal.  "I know you were not dead," he says with a reassuring smile and a hand on his heart, "because you sounded like a tractor reversing."  "I don't snore!" I say, and then realise with panic, I am old.  I am 50.  This is what old people do and I had better make sure Bill Nighy snores too or we will never get along.  So today, finally, the night before New Years Eve, I am going to have an early night because I want to sleep.  Well how about that.  I am normal.  And, I will be partying tomorrow night, so that needs careful consideration.

• Excited.  I have been unable to process my thoughts this last while, despite having much to do.  I work best with a goal in mind, and though I had started all my various projects in 2010 with a Goal In Mind, I seemed to have forgotten what it was.  It seemed that everything that I had chosen to do had become atomised and vague and worryingly disjointed.  I was unable to think clearly, and felt that I was bobbing about on a proverbial sea of half formed ideas of my own making.  Well, Deus Ex Machina!  Twice!  Two things have happened to excite me into feeling on top of the world again.  1.)  Thanks to my very splendid friend Alex I am cycling 60 miles for charity on the 10 of July.  This has given me a reason to get the goddam bike out and move.  I can't tell you how excited I am about being in training again for something, and how important it makes me feel.  "Ha!" I cry from my bike as I cycle through Bognor to the Infinity Beyhond, "I'm in Training!  Watch me go!  How about that!  Jealous?  Thought so."  2.) Today, at last, I visited Arty Man's studio and we finally got the project of him making a film of the A Graceful Death exhibition and story, onto paper.  We talked it through and planned how it might look, and who to interview and thought about how to make it work.  How exciting is that?  Good Heavens.  I have a Project and it is Good and Arty Man is an excellent film maker.  The world is our oyster.  We intend to take it to the Edinburgh Festival for 2012. Oh Hollywood, you are next.

• Fat.  This is best summed up as a Mental Attitude Leading to a Wobbly Tummy with the following account.  On Boxing Day, about 20 of us went to a lunch at my brother's flat in Brighton.  I love my family, a walk by the sea was planned, and lots of presents.  But I had inside knowledge that there would be at least 50 mince pies and gallons of custard for after the walk.  I spent Christmas night, Boxing Day morning, all the journey to Brighton, the lunch, the presents, the walk and all social contact willing the moment to arrive when the mince pies and custard were brought out.  I could barely contain myself when they came out of the oven - and watched with anguish as we were handed one each on a plate and custard politely and sparingly added afterwards from a jug that was carried from person to person by a Custard Moniter. I ate mine in a single gulp and looked around me, bereft.   My sister in law, who understands me, asked if I would like another and I said with a barely suppressed mince-pie-lust, "Get Me At Least Four", which she did.  Beckoning over the Custard Moniter I said, "Cover all four so that they can't be seen.  I want the mince pies submerged, you hear me, submerged." Sister in Law let me finish hers too, so if she was not already married I would have married her then and there. I have found too, that I think nothing of four chocolate biscuits after each meal and my jeans are getting tight.  I am not yet Fat as such, but by this time next week I will  be well on the way to Porky. So imagine the delight with which I signed up for the 60 mile charity bike ride.  That will sort the Wobbly Bits out, I thought.  Deus, indeed, ex Machina.

• Single.  Well, being single means I can get Wobbly of Tum and see how long the hairs on my legs can grow.  I can go to bed without cleaning my teeth and in the morning get dressed over my pyjamas, and no one will know.  Or care.  Being single is not so bad.  I will just see what happens.  You never know, I may meet a Custard and Mince Pie Manufacturer and all will be fine.

• Inspired. Inspired!  Inspired as never before, to go to bed to actually sleep (oooh), to make a film and to train for a mammoth bike ride.  To stop eating too much and to become fit and sleek (ish), and to not care one whit about being single.  To be Inspired to do all the other things I have on the go - the Rocking Rev Rachel's portrait, an Angel for a lovely local friend, putting on the A Graceful Death exhibition in Manchester in February and in Birmingham in November and maybe other places in between. To paint a portrait of the very enigmatic Bella who was my inspiration at University and who has been forced to sit for me again, to go to Dublin with the Amazing Eileen to stay with our Darling Dublin Friend and her husband, the Nicest Man In Ireland...  (pause for breath)....  To go to Majorca with the Glorious Clarissa, to go to Norway, to go to Edinburgh, Birmingham, France, the Moon...

But let us see.  First things first.  An early night and one - maybe just one - mince pie....