Painting by numbers IV, the continuuing adventures of oil

It is only now that I am beginning to truly understand how oil paint messes you up, screws you up, sends you a little bit cuckoo....

It is bad enough dealing with the heat of the day, okay it's hot for me - old Limey. I am limiting my coffee intake and making sure I drink enough water. Keeping hydrated helps. Fruit and veg are eaten without question. Today spent the whole shift on the boom or man lift or whatever they are called in Blighty, I have no idea. Felt like a kid again driving that thing, like a kid at the fairground driving his very first dodgem car. Brilliant. Up and down and round the trees including two magnificent Garry Oaks at Thunderbird School. What a wonderful name for a school. The playground minus the wee ones takes me back to attendance at the Hyde, NW9. Tea break I sit with my co-worker on a bench adjacent to a silent slide and other assorted apparatus. 15 mins up we get back to it painting the flashing and manoeuvering the boom.

The day drags slowly by but we make it amusing laughing at the helicopter dragging a huge banner advert. Nothing exciting but a bank advert - how lame we conclude. Uncle Sam, not the US variety, keeps us amused with his lack of techno prowess and mad capers. Our respect for him though remains steadfast - the fastest brush in the west! Finally I leave the site and head to Rupert skytrain station and two stops later I am at Commercial Drive. I buy a new bus pass for August, pick up some groceries including bulgar and fennel tea at the Dollar grocery store before picking up a medium roast coffee and carrot cake at JJ Bean - that old favourite. I find the bench at McLean and sit and sip my coffee, swig water, eat the carrot cake, finish my coffee, swig more water and more, slice up an orange into six segments and eat. Drink more water, and hey presto what's this? I feel alert.

I walk to the book shop and buy a book on vegetarianism but for its info on legumes principally. No intention of dropping meat and certainly not fish and eggs.

Stone Roses on random, crank it, shower..............................................