My day job was always mortuary work - I worked as an anatomical pathology technician (post mortems, meeting bereaved relatives) before becoming manager of Northampton General Hospital Mortuary for many years.
However, my obsession has always been art and creativity, particularly music, painting, literature and film.
As well as writing (many short stories and the seemingly ubiquitous unpublished novel), a handful of live music shenanigans and a career's worth of studio music written and performed by me under various guises (Canopy Ravens, Union Galactic, The Wig Museum, all available out there in the wilds of the internet), I've enjoyed oil painting for many years.
The abstracts, mostly dreadful, all rot away in a shunned corner of the house, but in terms of figurative art, I managed to achieve a reasonable standard that resulted in numerous commissions over the years, mostly of pets, occasionally landscapes.
Now I've taken early retirement at the ripe old age of 52, I've noticed a disturbing phenomenon that assails me at random moments: the past, present and future seem to stretch out pleasurably and contract violently at the same time, coalescing into an breathtakingly terrifying 'now' of pure zen horror.
This quickly provokes new and sometimes irrational plans. Consequently, I have chosen to abandon all musical and literary ambitions, at least for the moment, and concentrate solely on improving as a oil painter.
