Category: Uncategorized (Page 15 of 20)

There is a gentle white fluff upon my head, a sign that spring is coming, and my hair is growing back.

For those of you that do not know I was rushed into hospital last July, for what turned out to be a form of cancer called a “large B cell lymphoma”, starting in my lymph nodes it had spread to my liver, lung and bones. The treatment was a double dose of chemotherapy consisting of, days on a drip, and injections in the spine, and it appears to have been successful, the final scan in a week or so will reveal all. A big thanks to all the staff concerned at Whipps Cross and St Barts. I’m still not 100%, I have no stamina and I loose concentration easily, but I’m getting there, there will be some remedial treatment required on my spine and a cataract to remove from one eye. The irony in all this is that the lymphoma was probably caused by the the radio therapy I had to treat a Hodgkins lymphoma thirty years ago.

So apologies for the blog, www.stolen-image.co.uk , not changing much and the comments not being mediated and the similarly with my facebook site, martin.adams.1610 , which was going to be a refection of the blog but turned into a life line with my friends, bless you all.

But spring is on the way, it must be I’ve started to cut some lino, hooray! I cannot wait till my strength and stamina are back and I am in the studio again, I have five prints ready to commit to paper and several other projects by the way of mobiles and sculpture to get on with. Unfortunately this will all be mediated by work on my garden and flat, which I moved into just before illness struck and the settling in got interrupted.

But watch this space

Here are some thoughts on the Olympics. Titled “This is illegal”, “Crawling through loopholes” and “Jumping through hoops”, I’ve tried to look at the modern Olympics and what lays behind them. They are not all about the athlete overcoming all odds and winning through, they have been distorted by the vast amounts of money involved in putting them on.“This is illegal”, well technically unlawful I believe, the reproduction of the Olympic logo will cause buss loads of lawyers to appear at your door. It is a trademark, and trade means money, so you have to pay to use it.And money is what “Crawling through loopholes” is all about. The Olympics is big, very big, business. From the securing of the building site with the security staff imposing bans on, legal, photography of the site, to the siting of antiaircraft missiles on the roofs of flats a lot of money is being spent to protect a building bonanza that has destroyed peoples homes, allotments and open spaces. Nothing is allowed to get in the way of money being made, and that goes for the sponsors as well, they have absolute, exclusive, rights to market their wares. So much pressure is put on athletes to win some turn to drugs, the easy option to get onto the gravy train.But some find themselves “Jumping through hoops” to participate in their sport. From Jessie Owens who humiliated the Nazis in 1936 but was a virtual outcast at home in a segregated USA that later athletes protested about and were banned from all subsequent competition, transsexual athletes who do not fit the regulations, countries that are banned from appearing, through to the poverty that inhibits success yet acts as a spur.