Cowal Art

Every year, the artists of Cowal stage an "Open Studios" event, which until the current situation has involved opening their studios - or houses - to the public on given days to display and hopefully sell their art. This year, it is taking place in a few public venues, one of which is the Burgh Hall in Dunoon, just down the road from where I live, and this year, for the first time, I have a tiny stake in the event. My extra photo shows a general view of the hall at lunchtime today; the main blip is of my friend Paddy Allen, who is a talented artist with a wonderful eye for minute details in nature - she creates intricate and delicate paintings of a flower, or a piece of bark, or a shell with a whisper of seaweed attached. She is also the artist who created the cover painting for my collected poems, and asked me if she could put some next to the original painting for her display - you can see them in the photo. So far she's sold a couple, and I had the fun of being able to tell another artist whom I met there that yes, I was the poet whose work she'd just been reading. Doesn't happen often, that kind of thing, so it was pleasing.

The rest of the day felt as crowded as usual: Pilates, catching up with yesterday's paper (mostly politics, on both sides of the Pond), a walk because the sun came out, a couple of phone calls because I'd just found we had two messages on the phone that I'd not noticed. And I had to make a loaf for tomorrow morning ... and then dinner was late and now I'm blipping late and midnight has just struck on multiple clocks. Our Pilates teacher has bought an essential oils air purifier thing that she lit for part of the class; I was glad when she put it off halfway because it made me want to cough - and coughing is the one thing I'm conscious of trying very hard not to do these days!

I was going to philosophise about something quite different, but at this hour of the night I'm only fit for straightforward journalling. Thank you to all who have been handing me stars recently - don't think I haven't noticed!