Dreamtime...

I wonder if this ever happens to you: it doesn't often happen to me, that's for sure.... I didn't sleep too well last night, as sometimes I don't; possibly the roast pork lay rather heavy. So when I woke up in the early-ish hours, had my cup of tea, took the day's drugs, I thought - blow this, I thought: I'm going back to bed. And so I did, and got in a couple of hours sleep. And I dreamed about painting - and for once, two separate ideas came to me: and as soon as I woke up, I staggered blearily to a sketch-book and got them down before I forgot (I've done THAT before). Having looked at them when fully awake - I think they might work; so that's the painting I'm now working on, plus two more in the planning; normally, I have to cast around among sketchbooks and photographs and have no ideas at all beyond current work. All I've got to do now is paint it, which does sometimes seem like the easy part by comparison with wondering what to paint. So there we are - my practical suggestion therefore is: have roast pork for dinner, sleep badly, and go back to bed for a couple of hours in the morning. Oh and cheese - I had cheese; now that might have helped .... give it a go!

My wine comes from a) Laithwaite's/Sunday Times Wine Club, b) Giordano - and as perhaps you suspected, Alan, a bottle had accompanied my dinner: a rather splendid Australian Shiraz Durif called The Barrel Bandit - 2015. Whether, Sylvia, salmon steak would have worked - I'm rather partial to salmon steak - I don't know: it didn't, last time I had it. Oh and the cheeses were double Gloucester, and Stilton. And I smoked a Havana cigar afterwards. Oh, and gin and tonic preceding ... (I don't do this sort of thing every day: just at weekends...) Now I've given you all the help I possibly can, and feel the rest is up to you.