Well it has turned into 2017 and its time for an update. So much for my regular updates. I appear to be somewhat tardy in my dedication to this blogging business.

2017 and a new year, the E17 art trail occurs this year, I turn 70, and I’m trying to have a one person show, don’t laugh.

In the Arts Trail I will be having all my mobiles hanging from the ceiling of Gnome House in the Inky Cuttle fish studio. One of the mobiles will feature Swifts, as part of the wetlands swift project.

St Barnabus will be hosting a participation scheme on a theme of building bridges, part of the campaign for migrants and against racism. It’s one to get involved in, a participation event, and put your engineering and architectural skills to the test.

Mitre Studios will also be open at some point, I’m not sure what will be there, but it will include working progress, both prints and sculptures.

At some point I will be thinking about having a party what with me turning 70 and the Russian revolution 100. But I don’t know when, possibly at the end of August or September.

I was also tying to put on and open exhibition on a theme of “windmills and bridges”, to help commemorate Frank Brangwyn’s 150th birthday. But as it seems impossible to hire the Winns Gallery, good old LBWF, I don’t know if that will happen. For those of you that don’t know about Brangwyn, an apprentice to Morris, he was one of the 3 people who set up the William Morris Gallery, or to give it its full title “The William Morris Gallery and Brangwyn Gift’. The other two were Haygate Mackmurdo, a friend of Morris, and Walter Spradberry, a local artist and the driving force to setting the place up.

The current exhibition at the WMG features Brangwyn and his relationship to the art of Japan, not to be missed.

On the one person show front I have booked Pictorem for August. I’m glad 2016 has gone, but only for a very personal reason.

Well its official, if there was any doubt, the mouse the cat brought into the kitchen six weeks ago is a rat. I lost it in the night it arrived behind the refrigerator, it was too late and I was too tired to move the fridge to get it out, and anyway the cat, having brought it in, was showing interest, so I assumed it would catch it before morning.

Should have know better, when the cat dropped the thing it turned on the cat and she backed off, since then the cat has only had an observation role, leaving the thing to eat the cat food in peace. At first I thought it was a large mouse, but it must have been an immature adult rat. It was discovering the stockpiles of dried cat food in the kitchen units that made me realise it was a rat not a mouse. That explained why the mousetraps didn’t work, I put down 8 of them, it had become too big to fit into them. It spends its time mainly under the floor oards with sorties to the back of the fridge, where it is closer to the bowl of dried cat food.

Coming home late on Friday night expecting to find a plate of food on the table, I found the kitchen to be in great disarray. The fridge had been pulled out and bit of wood and hoovers were being waved about, blocking access and attempting to impede the rats exit to its domicile under the floor boards, to no avail. It’s still there now, I think I can hear it quietly laughing, but we have to step up our action the thing has to go.

If I cannot catch it by the end of next week I’m going to have to attempt to kill it, I don’t want to do that really, after all it is the cats fault it’s in the house in the first place, not the rats.

On the up side it appears to be chocolate week, not that it will make much difference in my consumption, it just give it an excuse.