Completing another portrait.

Matthew; acrylic on card

The portrait of Matthew is now finished. He and Rosie are coming over in a couple of weeks, so I will present it to him then. I'm gradually progressing through all the children, and hope to do one of Ben next. He too has said he will come over when Matthew's here to meet up, but I'm not a very fast worker, so not sure if it will get finished before then.

Everyone gets junk email and scam mail, usually from a poor widow in Nigeria who want help in repatriating her dear dead husband's unclaimed millions, but for the first time, I've been sent the same time of scam request, but as a letter. The weird thing was, there have been almost 40 identical letters addressed to me, but each with a different street number, though the name and postcode remained the same. Whoever sent them clearly doesn't appreciate that the houses on our road only go up to number five, and number 4 wasn't built anyway, so the larger number of the addresses on the letters don't even exist. The first batch came yesterday, but today another batch of 14 arrived. The postman just thrust them into Ann's hand and said, "more letters from your mysterious friend!"

I have started to reread my Terry Pratchett books. When we ran the antique shop unit, I bought a whole box full of first editions, some of which were signed and are now of some value. There are a few gaps, but I want to start from the earliest volumes with "The Colour of Magic" which is missing. I have sent for it from Abbe Books. A first edition is hugely expensive,  but even a second hand hard cover is costing about £14, but I like the feel of the large hard backs, so I shall splash out rather than just buy a cheap paperback version.

I have spent the afternoon assembling a new barbeque. The only times I've cooked a barbeque, guests were badly poisoned on both occassions, but the boys are coming over on Saturday with two friends and they will cook this one. I dragged out our old barbeque which has been stored outside for many years but it was very rusty, hence the new one.