2754. The artist at work…

We had Arron for the day today and he brought with him some canvasses to paint on after I suggested that he might like to try doing some painting.

He drew his image on a piece of paper and then when he was happy with it he pencilled it out on the canvas.

He used mainly water colours but we did add some texture to the sky with white acrylic.

He loved every minute of doing this and he was so proud of his finished painting of a dog. It took him about an hour to complete and he concentrated really well!

We had our inspection visit but we are no further forward with having a Ukrainian refugee to stay with us. Apparently no people have been settled through the super sponsor scheme in this area and a few hundred of them have been sent to hotels in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Once in the hotels most have said that they do not want to go to a more rural area. It is likely that unless we are prepared to pursue arranging someone for ourselves that we won’t get anyone through this scheme. We have spoken about it and decided not to pursue the idea of contacting someone directly ourselves as the whole point of the super sponsor scheme was to avoid us having to apply for visas etc. and do all the paperwork ourselves. We have left our offer open for the time being but have indicated that if we are no further forward by November we will probably, and reluctantly, withdraw from the scheme. We are so disappointed with how this has gone as the idea of the scheme seemed a sound one but as ever actually implementing it seems to be beyond the capacity of our council. We will see what happens over the next few months and if someone is matched with us then we will offer the room to them. It is frustrating but there’s little else we can do at the moment. We had hoped for better news but at least it means that we won’t have to re-arrange any holidays at the moment and no need to organise storage for all the stuff in our spare room!