'Slim slow slider'

I had to leave our visitors Eileen and her two children, Kirsty and Freddie, who have been playing playing the Bananagrams game with Helena this morning, ably supported by their friend Bomble. In fact they finished their game just before I had to leave and they wandered on foot down into town, which turned out to be a very wet move, as the heavens opened and absolutely tipped down on them, as Helena told me later.

I had an appointment with the health centre nurse to do some tests which surprisingly took nearly an hour but the results revealed no nasty surprises. By 1-30pm I managed to get to my next appointment with Andrew W., who yesterday invited me for a light lunch in exchange for some help with photography. He has to have pictures of some of his sculptures to be used in the catalogue for the Stroud Open Studios event in the summer.

Andrew is a renowned local artist and I have blipped him a couple of times before and told his story. But it is worth mentioning that we have known each other since we met at school when we were fourteen back in the early 60s and have stayed in contact ever since. The Open Studios are an important annual event for local artists as it means that their work can be seen by a much wider range of people than normal and the artist can control the environment where and how their work is displayed. since Andrew lives in the centre of Stroud, it should mean that he gets a lot of visitors and hopefully may sales.

I am a little disappointed with the results of my pictures as the light was a bit limited and I am tempted to go back and try again with some proper lights rather than a combination of distant daylight and a couple of domestic lamps. Andrew calls this sculpture 'Slim slow slider', which I recognised as being taken from the title of a track from one of my favourite albums of all time, 'Astral Weeks' by Van Morrison. It is about two and half feet in length.