OK, so that reality where I was doing the Bucks Art weeks and then I could spend the whole summer painting and lying in the shade drinking iced tea thinking creative thoughts turned out, predictably, to belong to some other parallel dimension.
The two weeks themselves – which were fun but proved that people want my paintings about as much as they want stone axes, or tapioca pudding – led right into another whole thicket of admin, end-of-term trips, job applications and feedback surveys, overtime and shopping. Plus the weather is freakishly un-British, it hasn’t rained for weeks and it’s too hot out there for the paint and for me.
And now I’ve been offered another event, off the back of an email I sent months ago and had almost forgotten. It’s great, it will be something different and it’s in a really nice place, but suddenly there are emails saying things like ‘so, if you could just send us a copy of your public liability insurance details…’ an entirely reasonable thing to ask for, but one which involved a big chunk of time reading policy details on websites in the hope of spotting one that I could afford but which might actually save me from jail. Fun. Next up, display stands…