chriswoodartist

Today I managed to clear two thirds of my desk. Then over the course of the afternoon, various items reappeared. Life and death is what artists deal with every day and here we have a bowl of quinces that are well past their sell by date. I did a watercolour of them when they were in better knick and I thought I’d capture them again before they started to smell worse than they already do !
This has been a crazy week so far and distractions are hitting me from every direction.

Yesterday, I wasted a lot of time ! Firstly, I had two things in the post on Sunday – good and not so good. One was a notification that I had been awarded £100 heating allowance – which seems generous but last year I didn’t get anything – so that equates to £50 for last year and £50 for this year. The contents of the second letter was a £50 parking fine for parking outside my house. I should state that I pay £30 a year for a parking permit which expired at 12.00pm 24.9.25. I renewed the permit online 09.09.25 and I screen shot the iPad message thanking me for renewing my permit. The NTo as it’s called (notice to owner) stated that I was booked at 01.06 on 24.9.25 which seemed bizarre ! Needless to say I was fuming most of the morning and my anxiety levels hit an all time high ! I sent an online appeal on Sunday and yesterday morning I phoned to clarify whether I had a valid permit and “express my concerns”. I was told yes I did have a valid permit, which I already knew and that there had been a glitch with the hand held device that the parking warden used. So to cut a long story short the lovely lady at the Council said she would scrub the parking ticket and good to her word she sent a letter of apology. I love technology but it’s far from infallible.
I calmed down in the afternoon and waged war on my WordPress website, which is undergoing a major overhaul and it’s far from straightforward. anxiety levels hit that high again by lunchtime as the WordPress app doesn’t seem to get on with Safari or my iPad -so it’s a struggle to do anything. The AI helps out as best it can and I have watched several incomprehensible online tutorials which assume everybody has a new laptop ! At least my lovely daughter lent me her blue tooth keyboard so I can use the backspace button to delete all the mistakes I keep making !

I will continue for now but may end up finding someone who knows what they are doing !
That aside the tidying up continues and tonight I will attempt to draw those rotting quinces !
Bye 4 Now