Well, time for a new blog, I think. This week, I have family arriving - always good to see my cousin Christine and her hubby Peter, but there's a nasty little part of my brain which resents any interruption to what I'm doing. I shall get over this: they're intending to buy me lunch: always helps. Since retiring from a voluntary job which took huge amounts of time and thought (you wouldn't necessarily think that of a Secretary of a political party's local constituency: but it's true) I have been filling sketchbooks, and taking on paintings in all media. I have finished an oil (I think I have, anyway), and am keen to start on another (even though I have no idea where I shall keep either of them...). So the relatives arrive on Tuesday; tomorrow therefore: a) get out of bed - not a favourite activity; b) Breakfast; c) bath; d) TRY at least to tidy the flat a bit so it doesn't look as if a bomb went off in it; e) make pastry for a fruit pie before the fruit goes off, and bake it; f) make something for dinner - or just eat the pie; g) do the washing up...... It's the hiatus that's the trouble - otherwise I would neither tidy the flat nor worry much about the washing up. I'd start my new painting, having spent an hour or three choosing what to paint; and lurch into the next day, refresh the palette for the next opus, and move on. It's said that artists tend to be obsessive, hermit-like, unsociable, keep themselves to themselves: well this is why - we need lots of emotional space, and pressures on time decrease it. So now you know. We're not anti-social - we're just focussed on what, to us, matters. But yes, you can still buy me lunch. Don't stint - I can be marvellous company in return for a feed.