I read a story that a student of graphics told on his blog, his lecturer had drawn on the board an apple and under it written ‘an apple’, then explained that one needed only the drawing or the word but not both, to have both was an insult to the purchaser. In theory this is interesting and challenging for a student but in practice do we a consumers feel insulted?

Happiness is a state into which one can fall or rise and is measurable in degrees of warmth. I have fallen into happiness with this image, measurable on a scale of warmth comparible to a hotwater bottle on a cold night. I don’t know why it feels good but it does, the same way that when I stare at a wall of blue I feel calm.

A new category thanks to my technology patron and help desk guru… who is dragging me dazed and confused out of the last century and tempting me by way of an ibook into the future, and I must record for the blog the future feels rather pleasing.

There is a short space of time on most mornings when I sit in the waiting room at the railway station, people are dull with sleep and fall weary into the plastic chairs around the egdes of the room, they read and doze and sit uncommonly still.

Friendships are rarely formed in the bustle of commuting, infact more likely is the emergence of profound dislike. This non-couple sat back-to-back, side-by-side, in perfect disharmony, shunning each other like electrodes circumnavigating an oderous atom. She nosed dived into reading matter and nudged an uncomfortable amount of space in his direction, he starred out of the window, stiff with anger, seething at her continual state of existance.

Cowslips are one of my favorite plants, they are delicate and beautiful, strong and invasive, perfect. They pop up in the path and around the brickwork at the edge of the herb boarder out the back of the house. Wild and free they set their roots without question, knowing that they are within their rights to wander as they like unchecked about the garden.

It is a short walk from the back gate near The Fountain pub to the Sacrists Gate on the High Street which takes in the Priory House, South Door, Canonry House and the East facade. The images run top left [1], top right [2] and so on through to the image on the left which is the East facade [5]. Above is a secret garden, my curiosity just couldn’t be controlled, hiding in the dark shadow of a yew tree I stuck the camera through a small hole in the gate to see what lay beyond.

I bought a painting by Terry Whybrow several years ago, it was my first serious painting purchase, one of only a very few I have made. The one below is not the one in our frontroom but it is similar. Terry paints still life though I believe he sees it as abstract, the shapes, their relationships, the tonal variation, it is abstract, a study in blue with yellow, but we are comfortable with the figurative content. Should we be comfortable with art?. Some art needs to brings us comfort, just as some should prompt us to think, to question and to act.