A Great British Summer

A Great British Summer

I am one of those people that others HATE. I own a touring caravan! And I absolutely LOVE it 😀.  My little family has just arrived back home after a Two week break, one week in Woolacombe, one week in Somerset, both beautiful places – we have so much beauty in the UK, next year we are considering Weymouth and already planning and looking at suitable locations to stay. Its been such a lovely summer so far, and whilst we are not quite ‘normal’, it’s been fantastic to see kids playing out again, families enjoying get-togethers, businesses booming and I don’t know about you, but I could sense an invisible tension in the air over the last 18 months that seems to have lessened- not gone – but it feels less. I sincerely hope that we can continue this safely.

I’ve found owning a caravan a bit like my job/career. It’s all in the planning. You can’t just hook a caravan up to any car and off you go, there is so much more to it – like the weight of both your towing vehicle and your van, your licence, the suitability of driving on certain roads to your destination. And then you have to plan for maintenance, how the van is ‘ran’ from the inside out. producing art is no different, particularly as I attend lots of conventions etc, I can’t just rock up with any old pieces and hope for the best, I plan the sizes, what aesthetic suits the event, any famous connections, the footfall so that I have enough stock. Generally (Pre Covid) I was planning up to 2 years in advance, but literally, EVERYTHING I had booked was cancelled and are still being cancelled and moved now, I literally cannot plan for events past April 2022. But like I mentioned in my last mail, I adapted and my planning skills meant that I could make some pretty major changes quite quickly. Plans for physical events became plans for virtual events, plans for pieces of work that needed supplies that were no longer available in the UK became plans to try new paints or supplies I had tucked away. The more you plan, the better you become.

Whilst the diary is quite scarce, you can see this page my pre-planned events/attendances.