I was very pleased with this little sketch, rarely I show them to the people I draw, but in this case I showed it to Trev, he looked at it, his honest and gently passive expression flickering like a digital channel on a windy night, and then he uttered ‘I didn’t think I was that fat’. I guess I just have to live with the fact that the punters are the sharpest of art critics… who cares what Brian Sewell thinks but Trev’s concerns will always resonate whenever I stray to this page in my sketchbook or foolishly offer up my scribbles for appreciation.

People watching is possibly my favorite sport. As a teenager out with my Dad I was heavily pained by the tedious art but as I have aged I have grown to need increasingly large doses of people watching in my life. Leaving home early on a weekend morning, sofaman still in bed, I scuttle off into town to CostaCoffee which is the best viewing position if I can secure one of the tall stools and a table to myself. The activity is so deeply private and self indulgent that any intrusion is likely to trigger a disproportionately grumpy response. Its expected, an eccentric artist courts the dangers of such encounters, I owe it to the community, it develops tales and gossip, whispers and wonder. I have already been accused of being the local artist that sits in the coffee shops, with enough exposure I could be enshrined in local history.

The plan is to tidy up this garden a bit over the next few weeks and hopefully the weather will be as lovely as it has been today. The mad Pampas monster needs a haircut and the rugrat ramblers need thinning out, its looking a bit unkempt and unloved at present. I have started by digging over last years potato plot and constructing the beginnings of a climbing frame for the peas and beans. Will I grow courgettes this year? maybe, the little yellow ones raw in salad are outstanding and something you cannot buy on the high street or any local farmers market round here.

Matching websites but different work? the paintings of Elaine Pamphilon and the sculpture of Chris Marvel have similarities even though they are in such different media. The naive structures, scratches in the surfaces and shapes have strong visuals links, Pamphilon’s landscapes are primative and have echos of 1930s painting from St Ives, her influences are without disguise, Marvels hand is guided by prehistory and by the whispers of mythology. I am drawn to both equally, but as beautiful and as mysterious as they are what future does an artist have that is so significantly influenced by style and subject?

As I haven’t, as yet, ventured back to On Chesil Beach, though I have scratched my way through the unchallenging pages of Judy Rumbold’s Reasons Not to Move to the Country, I decided to buy Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, sofaman remarked that it would be grim, possibly, but I felt compelled. It has been faithfully at my side since Saturday morning, but reading such quiet well clipped monotone perfection is not so easy when you go away for the weekend to a vintage race meeting. I took myself off for breakfast in the circuit canteen but the television was screaming out Spungpants Squarebob [or some similarly odd arrangement of random words], they turned it off for me, but then a friend arrived and we took up conversation, Plath didn’t get a look in. Eventually, breakfast over I retired to the car but the weather was so cold I couldn’t hold the book still. I gave up. Late last night I made a significant journey into the pages and very fine they are too, I am drawn into the weave of the words, her voice is personal but cold, magical and sad, I fear what I might find, Plath is letting me peak into her little box of secrets and I just can’t help myself.

Camping in the midlands at an Easter that is earlier than it has been since the last ice-age seems to have promted the weather to turn, how stupid are we to think it wouldn’t. The East Anglian skies have been galloping southerly like the charge of the Light Brigade, the low dark raining drifts of Nibus Nasticus soaking the already saturated fields and overflowing dykes. To add pain to rain snow is forecast, this morning, as a taster, in the relatively calm High Street from the bookshop I witnessed a Christmas scene, the white flakes falling in quantity, landing lightly and vapourising on the wet street and on the backs of damp shoppers. Now, post lunch, the sky is blue and slower, but the wind is still a crazy tormented element intent on turning me into a mad psycho, I hate it and it brings out in me the worst of snappy sharp tongued expletives. Poor man on the sofa sneeks quietly off hoping the wind would calm or at least, I suspect, that it would blow me away. We are still hoping the weather will turn out nice, that the Met Office got it wrong and Spring will push on through and the daisies of the World spontaneously and strangely flower in time for ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’, and John Wayne can seemingly utter ‘Truely he is the son of God, for he hath brought sun where there was rain’. Happy Easter.

Inspired by Cakeadoodledo, cupcake heaven in devon, I decided to make some customised cupcakes for the Easter weekend. Some are just party style or pink girly affairs, others are sporting the racing numbers for friends at the VMCCs first meeting of the year on Easter Sunday, my favorites are the chocolate mounds with a clutch of eggs. The recipe can be found at Nigella.com: 125g each of s.r.flour, caster suger and soft butter, 2 eggs and a splash of vanilla extract. Whizz it all up in a food processor, then slacken it off with a splash of milk, added as the processor is on pulse until you have a cake batter of dropping consistency. Cook in muffin or mini-cupcakes cases at 180 for 10-20 mins depending on the size. It is a bomb proof recipe but read the details at Nigella. My only tragedy was the old processor wasn’t up to the beating of the slightly too hard butter and a violent shudder too many finally caused it to spit out a stud and splinter off a significant shard of plastic… still I only dream of a KitchenAid.

Sculptor Celia Smith lives and works in the South West of England, she creates 3D drawings of birds. Its the kind of art that should be promoted in my opinion as she builds her creatures out of recycled material. Much to the embarressment of her husband she has been known to stop the car abruptly and salvage springs from a dumped matress at the roadside, now thats dedication.

Early Saturday morning before meeting up for a morning of coffee, cakes and chat with a friend I parked up in Ely High Street for a quick sketch, sadly it is riddled with error, I entirely failed to see and record the large gateway to the cathedral on the right. The light in the early morning, especially in the Winter, is as beautiful as any evening, sharp, clean, low, it rationalises tonal variation into two camps, light and dark, there are few midtones, no gentle changes or subtle details. I could record the scene with a few dark strokes, vertical and horizontal, simplifying the content to a minimum like a Haiku poem.