Sleepy

All I have wanted to do all week is sleep, but sadly there's been no room for an early night. Too Much To Do.

This picture hangs above my bed, as it has hung over every bed I've had for the past 8 years or so. It's a portrait of me, at about 9 years old, drawn by my mother. Mum had a real talent for drawing people. When the family was too busy or restless to sit still for her to sketch, she would draw from photographs. One day she drew Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop, a famous Australian who was a Japanese prisoner of war, from a photo on a book jacket. Pleased with her work, she said she had a mind to offer it to a newspaper for use in his obituary when he died. The next day the news announced Weary Dunlop's death and I think Mum always felt a bit guilty, as though she might have had something to do with it. She never did submit the drawing.