Getting Back on the Horse

Hello Bloggees!

I am back.

Obviously Christmas takes its toll on routine and an ability to sit down and find the time to write and this year just as I had put away the Christmas tree and dusted all the corners in anticipation of starting a fresh batch of work in the new year, I was struck down with tendonitis.

It is hard being a hypochondriac when you have the constitution of an ox and I have struggled to be ill for many a long year. Even my little hormonal imbalance is practically completely non-eventful and as much as I talk it up the symptoms are almost non-existent and the side effects of the medication go almost unnoticed and now, to add insult to injury, my doctor has taken me off the medication all together and everything seems to have fallen into place for the first time in my whole life it would seem.

So when I got the first twinge in my shoulder I stoically decided to avoid it and bravely self-medicated with alcohol (in my opinion the most useful legal drug in the world) and went down to our local bar to take photos of a band for whom I have been designing a poster. Every time I turned my huge and heavy SLR on its vertical side I felt a terrible tearing, but decided to ignore it and simply topped up my alcohol levels to counteract the pain. I figured all would be well in the morning after a good night’s sleep.

How wrong I was! Eight o’clock in the morning saw me crawling down to the ‘Urgencias’ after a pretty sleepless night. I got an injection of something and some tablets which turned out to be pretty useless and spent the next week battling with pain and various painkillers until finally I had to take myself off to the big hospital in Malaga for proper diagnosis and treatment.

Anyway, to cut a long story short – Which is never really my intention – I was out of action for a further couple of weeks with my arm in a sling and just trying to sleep and get better. Sitting at the computer was painful, so even writing emails and, of course, my blog was not possible. And then when all the drama was over I had so much catching up to do on all sorts of mundane things including cleaning the house and changing the bed linen that blogging and everything else creative has just taken a back seat.

So that is my excuse for this year. But I think I tend to lose the run of things at Christmas time anyway. When you work from home and do not have any deadlines it is hard sometimes to get your foot back on the accelerator after any significant down-time. But now I feel almost fully fit again and even went for my first forest walk last Sunday, which was a real head-clearer. I am jogging again too and am starting to feel stronger and fitter by the minute. And now my Victor is coming home on Sunday as well and we have so much to do I think that the next week will pass in a blur.

Which it has! And of course another excuse not to finish writing this and posting it. So now I will. Not too many profound thoughts here this time and a very late start to the New Year for me. But at least now I have begun again…..

Getting back on the Horse and a Happy Christmas

Well, lots of things have been achieved and lots of things have been wrapped up in the past few weeks.

Unfortunately my head has gone into a complete spin since my exhibition and actually doing anything has been rather difficult. Add to that 'Party Season' and hardly a night goes by that we are not celebrating something or other - this of course involves copious amounts of wine and food! Nothing wrong with the food, but the wine does tend to take its toll.

The exhibition went very well I thought. Perhaps not in terms of sale, although there are still a couple of promises which may or may not come in over the next week, but in terms of putting myself out there and actually organising the event it was excellent. In the end it was not so difficult to do everything. I could have pushed it a little bit more by putting an announcement into the local paper but I really wanted to keep it a bit low key. I felt it was more of a practice for when we move to Spain, there I can set up a small gallery at home and have a steady stream of exhibitions throughout the year with a constantly changing display. A lot of work I know, but if I wish to sell ....

On the day all the visitors were friends and neighbours so it turned into a very nice party, both to celebrate my exhibition, but also as a sort of going away party also. I liked that, because it was much more relaxing than having to deal with strangers and massive crowds! Although I know there was never much hope of the crowds - the arts are typically low key unless you are Damien Hirst or someone like that.

So, I now need to get back on the horse. I have been a bit lazy and a bit anticlimaxed and a bit preoccupied with other things that needed to be done as we wind up our time here in Stavanger. But now I am somewhat organised I must try to write my blog again every day. It is a shame to let it lapse, but as I have tried to explain it is part of how I operate creatively too.

Therefore, I will now raise a toast to a Happy Christmas, a new start in the New Year, an intention to write my blog regularly and the start of a new body of work from my Studio also in the New Year.

And I also raise a toast to all readers of my blog and wish all of you the best for Christmas and the New Year!

P.S. by the way really Vic and myself are blissfully happy together still. I swear the above photo was staged!!