Friday 22nd May Breakfast in the hotel dining room CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH I deserve this. I’m RELAXING. CRUNCH But it’s sliced white pan toast and fake blackcurrant jam. The first slice is hot but by the time I get to the next one a little time has elapsed and it’s bendy and cold. I smear…
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The publishing world was going through a massive change right around the time I was looking for a publisher, and for a long time I thought I was the problem. I was, but that wasn’t the whole story. After a very long time, I came to realise that I wasn’t the only problem – publishers…
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I’m cycling to the post office on Tuesday, Reuben riding shotgun in the basket in front, and I see what appears to be a black cat dead on the road. A close inspection reveals it to be a beautiful, sleek little otter. Apart from its eyes, which still register shock, it is completely unmarked, its…
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Join me in France this summer for a week that promises to be unforgettable. From 25th July to 1st August 2026, I will teach a one-week Urban Sketching course in ink and watercolour in the beautiful Clos Mirabel, a French manor house near the city of Pau in the far south of the country, in…
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I have been waiting for my illustration mojo to arrive since I was 12. Younger. I spent my: …and all throughout this time, I longed for my illustration mojo to stop dancing just out of my reach, so I could turn those tantalising glimpses into something I could grab and take hold of. Put onto…
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Hello dear readers, This is a very quick one to tell you that the postal rates are going up in Ireland next Tuesday 3rd February so if you’d like to purchase my little booklet Reuben and the Gastrobeasts, you have until this Saturday / Sunday to order at the current shipping cost. I already charge…
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My loyal and enthusiastic students generally trust me, so when I offered an illustration course last summer as an add-on to my weekly classes they joined in their dozens. Perhaps it helped that I wasn’t charging anything extra for it! Why wasn’t I charging? There were a couple of reasons. The result was a spectacular…
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Friday 19th December I have been fighting illness for two weeks. The occasion of my father’s funeral at the start of the month has seen people gathering from the West Indies, Canada, across Spain and France, the UK and much of Ireland. I myself have been carrying whatever germs I can back from the UK,…
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I heard something the other day that challenged my idea of ageing. It was one brief sentence on a podcast. “Many artists only hit their stride in their 70s, 80s and 90s.” It reminded me of something my friend Lorraine said, some 15 years ago, that women’s “time” only begins in their fifties. She put…
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Thank you all for responding to my last post about Fake George. You were all very kind and gracious about my gullibility. One or two people wondered what Fake George and his silly friend Adrian Bot wanted from me: I don’t really know. If it was an elaborate way to get me to pay Adrian…
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