Autumn Leaves

I wish I could say that the painting goes on apace, but it goes on. With the religious painting completed and safely delivered, the first of the nine Burns’ portraits has been begun, then rubbed out and restarted after a change of mind.  But I’ve got till July 2011 to complete the series, so there is hope yet for the other seven.  It seems a long time now since my brief flirtation with training at the Glasgow School of Art, but something must have stuck because I am enjoying this new, creative phase immensely.

My Edinburgh Festival appearance this year was at the Book Festival reading from ‘Glasgow by the way but’ for Gavin Macdougall, my publisher at Luath Press. September and October were taken up largely with the tour of ‘Greasepaint Monkey’, which began at Dumfries, took in St Andrews, Carlops and East Kilbride and culminated at Cumbernauld. The reaction was most encouraging and a lot of books were sold, but the important thing was discovering again the lengths that improvisation, admittedly based on a strong structure, can be a most exciting theatrical genre and give the audience and me some wonderful moments in the course of the performance. This was even more realised recently when I did a special matinee of ‘Conversation with Cairney’ Burns, Stevenson, McGonagall and me - at the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. I would say a good part of the ninety minutes was winged happily, a pleasure that the actor knows when the audience joins him in the flight. There is no better feeling for the professional actor than warming your hands in front of a warm audience.

Finally, I made the discovery that at the time of writing I have lived 29,457 days – that’s a lot of breakfasts! Maybe now I can get back to some writing.