Childhood
Even as a child I could not bear to look at an empty wall or a blank sheet of paper, I just had to fill them up with drawings and paint.  This early photo of me shows me working my way around the classroom walls having completed the Assembly Hall and the Staff room.  My love of painting has never changed down the years.  When I'm not working on exhibitions or commissions I amuse my grandchildren Tallulah and Rowan, and myself by working on children's stories, and other things.  The work is ongoing - painting is what I do.

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Extract from -- "The Grandpas of Glenlosh" 
Tallulah and Rowan loved to visit their Grandpas in Ireland.  Grandma Wendy made lots of lovely cakes and Grandpa Richard painted lots of lovely paintings.  Swallows that had flown all the way from Africa chased butterflies through the pretty flowers that grew along the river banks.  Baby otters splashed and played in the deep pools of  the river as it made its way to the sea.  It was such a beautiful place to live that even the sheep looked happy and contented.  "Why is it always raining?" asked Rowan as drops of cold water trickled down his neck.

Once bittern
 "Taxidermy for beginners" was sought out again.  The book states that all one has to do to re-set a pose is to wrap soaking newspapers around the offending part, apply gentle pressure, and remould it to the desired position.  I started on the scrawny neck.  The process takes a few days to work but in time according to the book the part will become supple.  So there it stood in all its glory, wrapped in soggy newspaper tied up
with string and to crown it all, the head poking out giving me that look. A look that only a badly stuffed bittern can give.

Hooked on parrots
It started harmlessly enough I suppose when my parents bought me small cage birds; Zebra finches, Java Sparrows and the
like, cheap and cheerful little things but not very fulfilling.  Budgies came next, but even a child knows Budgies are just an inferior substitute for a parrot. There's no romance to Budgies, no sense of the exotic, lets face it you cannot imagine Wallace Beery doing his Long John Silver act hopping about and roaring, "them as dies will be the lucky ones," with a Budgie on his shoulder .

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