Nearly 3 weeks in to 2016, and I don't have a finished painting to show for it. My excuses are many and various - I rather reluctantly let go of the holiday period: did a lot of cooking; ditto eating; possibly a drinkypoo or two (dozen); in fact, I think most of my creative impulses have gone into making pastry - even a cake: one of those can't-fail fruit cakes; well, it didn't fail, but only because I realized what a lot of rubbish the recipe, from a newspaper, was.... I could have made bricks with that recipe if I'd followed it to the letter. Anyway: I didn't, and it was good, and I'm sorry, it's all gone now. Artistically, though there are those who claim cooking is artistic (mine is more utilitarian than aesthetic, frankly), I produced a couple of sketches, a bit of writing, but I didn't so much as dirty a paint-brush. Now, this is not the professional way to go. As many have said, the professional doesn't wait for inspiration, he works regular hours. This has never really been the way I created, unless I was working to a commission; then, I can knuckle down with the best of them. But I haven't had a commission for a while now - I don't actually go looking for them any more (but if you've got the money, I've got the time and inclination....). And so, like the amateur whom some affect to scorn, I paint when I feel like it; I wait to be inspired - or just interested. I have lost almost entirely the urge to paint for the sake of it - it's true that Constable said "paint a sky a day"; and perhaps he really did, all through his painting life. But I've done that - still can't paint a sky like Constable (you need scale, quite apart from anything else, if you have a yen to do that: it's no good working on an 8" by 10" canvas if you're after a Constable sky; it just won't work); I've done it, and my thirst to do it again has been slaked. In all honesty, I expect it will return - we all go through phases, and I'm in a non-productive one at the moment, coincident with retiring from a number of activities in which I was much involved. I've wound down a bit - like an old watch; and like an old watch, I can always be wound up again. Things are in train, but moving slowly - an article which I expected to appear months ago hasn't yet been published; I haven't yet pushed on with getting my e-book published on actual paper; I've kept my good friend Pratim Das supplied with monthly articles for his online magazine, Coloured Canvas, though .... so creative death has not yet spread to all extremities. The pension, however, has removed the pressing physical need to sell - I've been accepted as a member of the National Association of Painters in Acrylic, and somehow this has been a rounding-off; I COULD, in other words, stop now; pack it in; say I'm fully retired. But I'm only 65. We have painters pushing 90 on POL. Alan Owen produces at least a video demo every week on YouTube, at around 81. I no longer work with the NHS, after nearly 20 years - I can't spend all my time watching old films, cooking and eating, doing a little bit of journalism when I feel like it. So, like Fu Manchu, the world shall hear from me again. I'm just wondering if, now the competitive edge is a thing of the past and I am not called upon to work to order - partly because I've backed out of that little bit of limelight I ever cultivated - my work will improve now the pressure has gone. We'll see. I have a painting on the easel now, at last: and if it fails it'll be no disaster. Fingers crossed, then.....