Amoxicillin

Poor Nuch has been suffering with a chest infection for over three weeks. She had a similar infection two years ago and new exactly what she needed. So she booked an appointment to see her doctor. She waited and waited in the waiting room. So when she finally came face to face with the doctor, to save time, she said "I have a chest infection and I want you to describe me Moxilin". He said "Whoa there! I will do the diagnosis!!" He then examined her and said "You have a chest infection and I will prescribe for you amoxicillin (antibiotics).

English Elms

Seven Sisters in Tottenham, long gone, except for their names, were English Elms.
Others stood at the edge of farms, twinned with the shape of clouds, like green rhymes;
or cupped the beads of rain in their leaf palms; or glowered, grim giants, warning of storms.
Ours is a world without them.........to whom the artists came, time upon time, scumbling, paint on their fingers and thumbs; and the woodcutters, who knew the elm was a coffin's deadly aim; and boys, with ball, bat, stumps for a game; and nursing ewes and lambs,calm under English elms.......
great, masterpiece trees who were overwhelmed.

Appeal for Donations

It is such a pity that with all the scientific advancement achieved by the human race there are still starving children all around us. Malnurished and underweight these poor little things need your help to thrive and flourish. This newly arrived little bundle of joy is desperately in need of any donation you can give, however small. The picture tells you all you need to know. Her little life hangs by a thread. A thread attached to your bank account. Time is short, every minute that ticks by without your support puts her little life in ever greater danger, so please give generously. Her future is now in your hands. Please make cheques and postal orders payable to Eric Wayman. On behalf of this tiny scrap of humanity I thank you from the bottom of my heart. The more you give then the greater will be your sense of satisfaction that you have given life where life was fading, and hope where hope was ebbing.
Eric J Wayman, Benefactor; Charity No. 0900 123 123

Baby Hester

So the minute I Blog to say I have no picture of Baby Hester than one mysteriously arrives out of the ether. A Wayman nose a Patsy mouth and a Pixie ear!!! Oh how she blossomed!!!!!!!

There's been a complaint

So there was this sort of complaint I received. Not by email or comment or anything. No it was face to face. Well OK it wasn't a complaint; more a question. The main thrust of which was concerning my last Blog which was ostensibly about Hester yet posted a picture of Moo-Moo. No. I have not lost my marbles and I can appreciate the difference between daughter and grand-daughter. If I had a picture of Hester as a baby on my computer then I would have happily posted it without a further thought. To be honest I didn't think too much about it when I Blogged it, and I obviously didn't think any old picture of any old (sorry) young baby would do. So I didn't have access to what I really needed. But ....and I know this is a huge BUT!!! The baby pics of Moo-Moo are totally interchangeable with those of baby-Hester. To me they are both magical and made of star-dust!!!!!!So go ahead, get a psychiatrist to establish why I posted a pic of Moo-Moo. So go ahead!! Look at me quizzically. I'm not mad. I know the difference between fact and fantasy.

Hester

Hester was the most gorgeous little baby. She just smelled of clean wheat-flakes and farina and baby-milk and turned our lives upside down. Her little presence somehow there in our world was counterpoint to magic and dare I say the supernatural!! She just arrived, apparently out of nowhere, there, her stark presence, loud and bawling......pink, beautiful charming and alarming!!

Disinterconnected pseudo-intellectual thoughts.

Firstly!! Big Shout out for Joc and Dave for doing the Christmas Dinner again this year. Huge effort on their part and much enjoyed by us all. All my presents were exceptional!!!!! Including the balloon-powered helicopter from Sue Stops. The Carol Ann Duffy recent collection of poems totally gob-smacking and wonderful!!! She says in it "Dumb was as good as dead!!! Better to utter!!!!!!" And there you have it Blog-fans. Huge green light to keep blogging even though I might sound occassionally like a one-trick-pony with my atheist rantings. Interconnectedly was another present which was the George Harrison documentry by Martin Scorsese called Living in the Material world. I've just watched all three and a half hours of it. Beautiful George shines bright out of this DVD and I was quite emotionally involved with his love of life and his passions and humanity. He was a seeker after the truth and he did not have enemies. His search for truth led him down some shady paths of obscurantism towards Hari Krishna, Karma, Rama whilst avoiding the Dalai Lhama. But he was a good man. Not the kind of guy who might throw a couple of bags of coal into the back of his car without it being noticed.

OK he was a multi-millionaire and wouldn't have needed to.

The picture this time, by the way, shows some different galaxy formations. 1999 estmate was that there are approx. 125 billion galaxies in the known universe. Each containing 100 billion stars. I'll leave it to you to work out how many stars there are (no-one can guess how many planets) And God is intersted in our lives and listens to our prayers, in all the different languages and at all times day or night on our miniscule spec of star-dust. Merry Christmas!!

YOU GOTTA REAP JUST WHAT YOU SOW

I never really understood the reap-what-you-sow expression. I have a vague notion. All my Blog-Fans know my stance on the supernatural and this also must encompass superstition in all it's forms. I said to my sister Pat that we have been so lucky not to go to many funerals. Most family and friends are still with us. She hushed me immediately and admonished me for goading the gods and "tempting fate!!". Last year, when I was down to my last couple of hundred quid and really struggling I still continued to give £2 to the homeless Rumanian Big Issue seller. Thinking that if my life was shit how much worse was it for that poor bugger. I had a property that I could sell, I could sell my Maltby's etc. Cash-flow wasn't good but I did have alternatives. In spite of my atheism and my solid grounding in all things real and provable there was this little voice in my mind telling me to still give because I'm gonna reap what I sow.
At my last exhibition a woman came along when I was not there and she loved my sculptures. She was friends with David and Fran and wanted to know if I had more to choose from in Leechpool. She had an unusual name. Houri Gharmian. So I googled it just to see. Turns out that she is an Iranian refugee and Socialist Alliance candidate for Easton and single mother (to boot!!)
And she is a poet and photographer. I emailed her and said that if she liked one of these sculptures, which I have ceased to make now anyway, she could have one. Go to the workshop in Clifton and choose your favourite, I will tell David and Fran.
She emailed me back to say that she would be more comfortable if we could do a swap. My sculpture for a photo that she would take for me. As it was autumn she suggested an autumn theme. So here I am reaping. I end up with this gorgeous photo of Russian Vine falling across an old building.
I don't want to sound holier than thou but I can't help thinking that it's better to give £2 to some poor bastard selling Big Issue in the rain than to nick bags of coal from a Tesco forecourt. You know how I think and feel. There is no God to watch either of us. But how do you feel at night when you blow out the candle? As you gently replay your day whilst waiting for sleep to overtake you. Do you feel cunning and clever? Satisfied that the world is a better place with you in it. Or satisfied that maybe the world would be a better place with more people like you in it???.
Merry Christmas to all my Blog-Fans and a BIG THANK YOU to those few of you ask for more when I don't Blog for a while. You know who you are.

I LOVE CHRISTMAS

My beautiful grand-daughter will grow up reading stories and I hope she will have a rich and lifelong relationship with the imaginary. But I will not try to train her out of the natural instinct to look for truth.
I love Christmas. The fact that I know that Christianity's origins lie more in Paul of Tarsus's mental illness and the emperer Constantine's political savvy than in the existence of the divine has no bearing on my ability to embrace this age-old festival of giving, family and feasting.
Jesus can be real................in the imaginary world!!!!
A child could tell you that!!

RATHER SAD

Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola have been doing research now for a number of years on closeted non-believing clergy. It's extremely sad to read about these poor people who are trapped inside the clergy. It's their livelihood, it's their living, all their friends are of the in-group.

And when they contemplate telling thier wives about what they really think.................they can't do it. Not only have they been encouraging their "flock" to believe, but they have been complicit with wives, friends and fellow clergy to do likewise. The path to the predicament is the desire to lead the good life, to help other people, the tragic trap is baited with goodness itself.

UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN

And behold a child was born in the Far East and even in these days of emails and internet, news seeps through in tiny nuggets of precious information. Evidently little Moo-Moo has been told not to touch the Christmas Tree. Up against her it is huge and tactile and foreign and amazing and not surprisingly she is drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Her curiosity stimulated, her imagination fired!!!! What's a kid supposed to do??? Ducks gotta swim! Geese gotta fly!

Poor little Moo-Moo!!!

Another little nugget. She now has increased vocabulary!!! She can say Cat. She can say Car. AND she can now bring Big Teddy when asked. Ask for Big Teddy you get Big Teddy!!!! Not the football or anything else. Sorry...........I know you're thinking to yourself that a puppy could do that. I have to ask you. Where do puppy's go, intellectually, form here. Well....not very far!! Moo-Moo by contrast sits on her own unique little launch pad. 5 4 3 2 1 ....ignition.....stand by.

HONESTY

One of my best mates came to Leechpool Thursday. Hadn't seen him for a while so it was great to catch up on news. I won't mention his name. He doesn't read this blog anyway so I can write freely. On arrival he said that he had hurt his back loading bags of coal into the back of his car. He buys them from a petrol filling station. He then said that what he likes to do is go in and pay for two bags and then go outside and if he parks the car the right way round he can chuck on a few extra bags without them knowing. I said what about the security cameras and he said that he had thought of that and no-one would know how many bags he had paid for in the shop.

I must confess to slight shock and discomfort at being told this. I rather wish that he hadn't told me. We were all horrified by the looting and rioting last August. People helping themselves once a shop window had been broken and I can't help condemning this act by a friend of mine who was apparently proud enough of his dishonesty to sort of boast about it to me as though I might admire him for it.

I obviously still class him as my friend and he has many qualities but there was something about the episode that I found a little distasteful.

Think of a number

In my school playground there was occasionally a bright spark who would say "Think of a number" "Don't tell me what it is". He or she would then ask you to double it, divide by 2 and then take away the number you first thought of etc etc etc I'm sure you have all been subjected to this kind of stuff.
Think of the year in which you were born. Don't worry about the century. For me 1950. Just call it 50.
Then add your age this year. In my case 61 (Dec 18th Gentle reminder)
So for me 50 and 61 make 111. The funny thing is that yours, whoever you are, however old you are or whenever you were born; yours will be 111 also!!! It's called....................Maths.

Red-Cross Food Parcel

When Hester was at Oxford it felt to me like she was very, very far away. We didn't phone much, she had her life her friends her world. Sometimes when I missed her maybe a little more than other times, I used to leave my Clifton workshop and go around the local shops, especially Stoneground, and I used to buy little treats and toys, maybe a finger puppet or nuttall bar or whatever and I would put as many little offerings into a small card-board box, tape it up and post it off to her. I always imagined the box arriving at the porter's lodge next to the two huge wooden gates at the entrance to Wadham. Obviously I always put the name and address and post-code on the box, but one time I remember just putting "The Most Beautiful Girl in Wadham College" OXFORD, plus no doubt the post code. OK by then the porters needless to say recognised the regular box and fragile tape. But Hey!!!!!! Actually she WAS the most beautiful girl in Wadham. The truth was written on the box!!!
For Christmas I air-mailed a similar box. A chocolate snowman and santa, a little nut-meg grater, Christmas card with robin on, some little books, a toy mobile phone a harmonica and a gift for Chris. Moo is having trouble mastering the harmonica and evidently is following Hester round the apartment getting her to play it for her.

Dance To Your Daddy

I really wanted to Blog the video of Moo-Moo dancing, but the technology escapes my grasp!!. On the day I got the dancing Vid I immediately posted it to all my friends. It was so special, so life-enhancing, so magical that I had to share it with everyone I could!!! Out went my emails and Dot next door waxed lyrical the next morning; saying how wonderful it was and what about that curly hair!!! One email came back as a REPLY from our very good friend Madge. She made no reference to the dancing Vid but just said that her 93 yr old Mom had died in California and that she would fly out and contact me on her return......Gulp!

It's sad when anyone dies. One irreplaceable human-being steps off and another steps on. Little Moo-Moo now comes forward to strut and fret her hour upon the stage while Madge's Mom will be heard no more. Helen, was lovely. Patsy and I met her. She was bright, lively, funny yet now gone and at 93 who can complain?

Moo-Moo's dancing Vid and Helen's passing is something that I see as both glorious. A wonderful fulfilled life followed, hopefully by another. Let's hope!!! Brother and Sisters. Let's Hope!!!!!!!

A little life so bursting with potential, her charisma at this early stage enthralls all who meet her.

GO MOO GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

World's most useless creature.

Who is David Thomas???No idea!!! I hate people who have two first names like George Michael and Michael George!!. I can never remember their names let alone what they stand for. David Thomas has just been allowed to publish the most astonishing article in an international newspaper condemning one of the world's most sublimely evolved creatures. The Giant Panda. He describes it as the most useless creature on earth. Well, sorry here, I take extreme umbridge and would proclaim that David Thomas can equally be described as being totally superfluous to world's needs. A soft bellied, ultra-protected, potential alpha male bully sounding off at great length about a creature thousands of miles removed from his ambit of understanding. For all you know Mr Thomas David the giant panda may just have found the perfect way to survive the vissisitudes of modern life. You Mr Thomas are bound up in the red- in-tooth-and-claw of fight-for-survival among the fittest. There could well be another way to survival. It could involve quiet contemplation by eating bamboo shoots and being quiet enough to consider just what our existence means. So don't denegrate the panda for it's apparent lethargy, it's apparent lack of aggression, it's lack of libido. It may well survive where all else fails!!!!!

Pho Lin Giant Bhudda

I've been told that I should stick to cricket. In other words. I know about cricket, I can analyse cricket and am informed enough to make considered remarks about cricket. There are millions of people on this planet who are Bhuddists. They do not consider Jesus to be their possible saviour, they do not consider him from day to day, they don't think that his alleged sayings

bring any relevance to their lives on a daily basis and the same is true of the even more numerous Hindus. The number of people here in Caldicot, Portskewett and Chepstow who brazenly wear a cross around their neck astounds me. If it were true, then it would be true!!! Everyone would know and there would need to be no arguement. My religion is the right one, yours is sadly misinformed! When God revealed himself in a backward, illiterate, uneducated, ignorant, part of the middle-east. He by contrast did not reveal himself to the Australian aborigine, the hordes of India and the more advanced Chinese, not the native Americans or the eskimos, and not the starving and still starving people of Africa. No, just some tribal, nomadic peoples who happened to have a number of messiahs roaming around, enough for the few who could write to start proliferating a few rumours. It's enough to make a cat laugh!!!!! And yet I am surrounded by people wearing the silly stupid cross.

BUNTY CARDBOARD CUT-OUT DOLL

In the old days, before my-little-pony and cabbage patch dolls you could buy the most amazing presents for little girls. Sometimes they came free with a copy of Bunty or Trixie or whatever the girl's comic was called or sometimes they were available in soft-cover booklet form. It consisted of cartoon drawing of a little girl. Semi realistic on a card page. There were already some cuts around her shape so it was easy to pop her out of the page and with the aid of some specially additional bits of cardboard under her feet you could stand her up. She was naked apart from a very sensible pair of pink knickers and maybe some socks. But more, much more than this, there was pages and pages of different clothes. All in the same pop-out style but with little tabs attached, so you could put the clothes on the little doll by bending back the little tabs hence securing said item to said mannequin.

I can't remember Hester ever dressing a little doll with little costumes such as I have just described. But if you look at the above pictures you will see that she is more than making up for her lost child-hood now. At last, at last in the grand fullness of time she can now give vent to all those passions those desires those creative exuberances.........she now has the little doll maybe she always craved for.....she can now dress her in the most fabulously personal idiosyncratic style, restrained only by the limits of her own uninhibited imagination.

As a father I feel the guilt. It was after all my job to allow all this stuff freedom of expression in Hester's child-hood. I obviously got the dolls and the clothes all wrong. The role-play was never played out. Patsy and I never dressed her up as a halloween witch or a santa claus. We just wanted her to be herself. Poor Hester. Instead of releasing all these fantasies in infancy, they are all there now. She now as a full-grown adult now with her card-board cut-out Moo-Moo and me here now bashing my head on this desk and trying to think what should I have done different. Where did I go wrong?????????

CREATIVITY

Not only have I been commissioned to paint some portraits recently but Simon Drew and The Bristol Guild have both asked me to produce some work for their on-going exhibitions.