Our daughter Amelia looking at Plum Island Sound, in Ipswich Massachusetts.  She later lost the hat she is wearing.  It was a good hat.  This picture is now all we have to remember it by.

This is Pip, the young African-American deckhand in Moby Dick.  He has just realised Ahab is a maniac, violent death is a real possibility, and he is stuck in this impossible situation for the next three years.  Yes, three years!  And he is just a kid.  This is why we have child labour laws.  The picture was inspired by John Huston’s film; a perfectly composed masterpiece in every shot.

Went to a friend’s place recently and she kept bees.  They were so business-like, commuting back and forth from the hive.  It looked like a little airport, solely serviced by Tiger Air, except the planes were frequent and on time.

I tried painting some clouds.  It just wasn’t working.  So I got some beeswax, rubbed it straight onto the surface of the painting and rubbed like mad.  It gave a deep burnished shine and depth to the thing.   It really gave me a buzz.  The bees’ efforts fully warranted a gilt frame.  Thank you worker bees, you’re the bees’ knees.

Robots are designed to be cute, so you won’t feel so bad when one comes and takes your job.  Apparently it is common to attempt to design them to resemble babies, so eliciting a ‘goo gaa’ reaction as you receive your redundancy pay.  However, I have had a close look at robots and can only conclude that roboticists must have ugly babies.

Went to the TarraWarra Museum of Art.  The art was great and the building was even better.  As they didn’t appear to have any postcards of the building, I made my own.  Fortunately, there was a sculpture exhibition on, so I did not have to do a painting of a painting.

The best thing about going away on holidays is coming home.  Well almost.  As we walked up to the front door, I was seized by the need to render the house in acrylics.  I didn’t even wait to unpack or wash.  When I stood back and looked at this picture, I realised how much our house looks like a shed.  Then it occurred to me: we live in a shed.