Seven Spiders

Hi all,
I'll tell you about the painting above shortly, but before I do that I'd like to touch on the subject of writing. For those of you who are inquisitive I've put another story on my website for you to read at your leisure. If you are a writer use it as a benchmark to judge the quality of your own writing. It's one of my early but sad efforts and it fails to do the business. I suppose it's biggest problem is that it lacks focus, it isn't a story but it isn't an article either, so it's no wonder it came back quicker then a greased boomerang.

Anyway, it was a few years ago and one of my first attempts at writing funny stuff. When I read it back for the first time today I thought it was like my home town, only good in places. I qualify that by saying I live in Stafford and although the park is good, the hospital's reputation has been tarnished. To be honest though, it's better than it was.

If you go to my website you will see the story or monologue called "Seven Spiders Before You Die," please give it a whirl and let me know what you think. On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being as joyful as a squirrel with a nut alergy, whereas a 10 can only be achieved if you laugh so much that all the loose change falls out of your pockets.

Okay, let's get back to the painting that I opened the post with.
Last week my birthday came round again just like it does every year. Since suffering a heart attack I have mixed emotions about my birthdays and this year was no exception. Part of me was sad that another year had flown by and although I won't give my age away, I'm now closer to 60 than I am to 58. However, I can still rejoice in the fact that the aspirins are still doing their job and I've survived for another year.

Anyway, this year most of the presents I received were books so that's got to be a good thing, but what really cheered me up was a birthday card. It was painted especially for me by my second wife Terry and that is the painting at the top of this page. The remarkable thing is that she'd never done any art until she met me. I guess I must just ooze with inspiration, well that's what I like to call it.

It's a long story, but after my first wife scarpered for no apparent reason leaving me as lonely as a lighthouse, I was so desperate for company that I put an advert in the paper and Terry answered it. Like I said, she couldn't paint at the time but now she's knocking stuff out that's of gallery quality. In fact, I think she could give Van Gogh a run for his money and she's still got both of her ears.

If you want to see some more of her brilliant paintings and a few of my modest efforts, please take a look at our painting website.
Our paintings


I'll leave you with a portrait Terry painted of me from the photo as seen. I reckon it's pretty good, but what do you think?