Back To The Drawing Board

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"




It is a question most kids hate, especially when asked by relatives they see only once in a blue moon who also comment on how much the child has grown whether they have or not.

I never minded this question. I always had a list of answers that changed like the weather and anyway, no one who asks this question is actually remotely interested in whether you want to be a doctor or a drop out , a lawyer or a layabout any more than they want to guess whether you will reach six feet in height. This individual just wishes to appear interested in your mother's main raison d'etre as she watches from the shadows to make sure you kept your promise and didn't turn the other cheek when clasped to an invevitably ample bossom and embarrassingly kissed in front of your family.

My replies to Aunts and Uncles, real and courtesy holders of the title, included a vet, a nurse, a hairdresser, a ballerina, and actress a horse riding intsructor.... and a masseuse....I have to admit that I added the last one when I became a teenager just to see the reaction it got.

Silence was pretty common.

As it was, I did none of these things, at least not for money!

I have been a dancer, a teaching assisant, a fitness instructor, a "girl friday" for a publishing company, a clerk in two different major retail banks and also a milking assistant on a dairy farm....but none of these jobs have lasted long and the role I have undertaken on and off since leaving school is that of an Artist.....and I suppose it goes to show that however far you run, you can never get away from yourself.

What was the point again ~ "What do you want to be when you grow up?"...I should have simply said:~

"MYSELF."

I quit the last "proper job" I had in the summer at " The World's Local Bank" to return to my place behind the easel, a location which has always suited me better than behind a PC or a counter.

When I first squeezed out the oil paints on my palette again, they evoked a feeling of confidence, a certainty that in THIS role at least, I am on top of my game instead of being at the bottom of the pile as I have always seemed to be in an office environment.




Armed with a good number of pre~Christmas enquiries, I have begun work again and this will be a diary of my experiences....

Watch this space !