Penguins - why not!

My Art facebook page is Buchan Birds and Beasts. ( One day it will title my web site......) ( when I get to grips with it.)

In the main that is what I draw and paint.  The birds and beasts are what I see every day.  I watch sea birds from the Stevenson Tea Room in the Lighthouse Museum.

 
And as I drive there and to I see the beasts in the fields.

From the Shedudio I watch the garden birds.

 
 Not many penguins.

As many of you know my husband, the Dawn Patroller, also loves the birds (particularly) and will take photographs of the beasts (with my voice in his head, on and on, I must be able to see the eyes......), is not a bad photographer and tramps aroond and aboot so doing.

My physical disability limits me from door to car, car to door and a seat at the other side.  
So to have him is one big bonus, (in many areas I hasten to add.)

Recently asked to paint  -  a Penguin - I looked to the DP.  Not exactly Buchan but in Scotland, where Buchan is, is also Edinburgh Zoo.  To which he had gone with the grandchildren.  Possibly to see a Panda..... But he also saw Penguins!

One happy customer.  

Now once I become inspired I do tend to get stuck in a groove.  So more followed.

And more

 Ok, not from Edinburgh. These were from the Antarctic. Just happened to have a friend who has just returned.....

And more fromEdinburgh

 Macaroni Penguin.

So when I was asked to paint another Penguin.......

"Nae bother."

First day out of sick bed - down to my framers.  (He just made me laugh and nearly choke.  Something about someone wanting a painting of .......)

Who is reading your blog?

You just never know do you?

Some weeks back I was contacted by a researcher from the......

Who told me they had been reading my blog and really liked it.  Could they speak to me on the telephone?  As I had just realised I had yet another chest infection I asked for them to leave it a week.  Ha ha.  Four weeks later I realise I am not about to die, not just yet, but in betweenst I manage to speak to another researcher and found myself agreeing to be interviewed.  

A documentary is being made about the Independence vote in Scotland.  As someone passionate about the North East and an incomer to boot I am an 'angle' . Well there you go.

The lead person, presenter or whatever they are really called is that intrepid rambler, among many other achievements, finalist in Celebrity Master Chef, a Loose Woman, ex editor of the Independent , etc. etc. Janet Street Porter, who is tramping Scotland and finding out what the ordinary people think about Scottish Independence.

So today I tootled off to the Lighthouse Museum and met the team.  Naturellement the Lighthouse Museum was my idea, what better place to a) get some publicity, and b) how photogenic!

 So here we have, two camera persons, one I think was also a director, a sound man, a researcher and an assistant researcher, who also looked after JSPs handbag.  NO make up person, I fully expected the works, a make over, apparently Oil of Olay my usual wrinkle filler was fine...  

Now the sound man.. You have this thing you drop down your cleavage, the top bit is stuck inside the top of your frock or whatever and the bottom is stuck into a square effort which is latched onto your rear waist band.  At one point I had to go to the loo and the sound man was very concerned I would drop the square effort in the loo.  I assured him I wouldn't and then got very worried he had the sound on, he assured me he hadn't.

After a lot of sound checks, light checks, researchers pretending to be me and JSP we were finally off. 

When asked a question, none of which I was expecting, there was no rehearsal, I have a tendency to look above, away from the questioner, this indicates I am thinking....They didnt like that, I had to look at Janet.  Then she was told she hadnt asked enough questions so we had to do it again anyway.  But we got there in the end.

I have to say that having met and talked, not just in the interview , to Janet Street Porter that I really liked her.  She is what you see.  And she is really pretty..... huh.  She is sitting down in the photo as she actually is about twice my height.

So there you go.  The documentary should be out at the end of May and may be throughout the UK, not just Scotland.  I will let you know.

So! Who  is reading your blog?

 

My week and not doing what I have been told to.

Monday was at the doctors confirming my diagnosis of having pleurisy.  Antibiotics prescribed and told to TAKE THINGS EASY.

So, I sat down, and exercised the few remaining active brain cells.

Preparing work sheets for Kids Activity Mornings, and finding my new printer spends a lot of time thinking about it before realising it is a printer and not a clockwork toy on the blink.

So that brought me to Wednesday morning.  Now I just HAD to go into Art group as we are preparing for NEOS (North East Open Studios), which isnt til September, but it will probably take us that long to prepare.  We are registered and paid up now, gulp.  Our exhibition at the Lighthouse Museum has to come down next Tuesday and after announcing that I was met with a wall of deadly silence.  So next Tuesday I will have a car full of other peoples precious art work......

Collapsed Wednesday Afternoon.

Thursday Morning our Kids Activity Mornings Volunteer group met at the Lighthouse and sorted out final preparations.  Somehow I have ended up with more work for the clockwork toy.

Some of us stayed for lunch.

Half way through I noticed more and more people coming in to the cafe.  Only two people working.  So I went downstairs to the admission/shop desk and the person working there went up to assist in the cafe.  I didnt leave til 3p.m. It was manic, and not even Easter yet. (and I didnt finish my lunch.)

Yesterday was my official volunteering stint at the Lighthouse.  People piling in to the cafe, but schools now broken up, so all our secondary school staff were in.  
A coach load from  Shetland then arrived and went to have their soup and sandwich in the Audio Visual Theatre.  
Host of German tourists.
English tourists.
Scottish tourists.
Tours up the lighthouse on the hour, full, all afternoon.
And they all descended on the shop like locusts.................

At 3.30p.m. I was carried out to my car and finally did what I was told, and went home.

My day off.

Okay?

Yesterday I was doing my stint on the front desk at the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses.

Great excitement as the newly transformed cafe was re-opened.  

The fancy pieces, cakes, sitting on the counter are to be in a table top glass fridge.  Which was delivered yesterday, and we all had great fun unpacking it  and taking it upstairs to the cafe, only to find it sounded like a plane coming into land. So may have to be replaced.....Teething problems.

The kitchen is behind the wall and is much more spacious and crammed with fridges, cookers, grills, griddles.  

The art work on the walls is from Keith Allardyce, photographer.  

And the biscuits are from 'Aunty Moira' who provides the cafe with the most mouthwatering cakes, (fly pieces) and biscuits.

And at last we have a Cappuccino maker.  Yum.