I was thrilled today to have been an inspiration to a bunch of small people. We, a bunch of and a couple of individual ones too I like to think….

This is Greg – remember the announcement of his birth and that tiny face? Well, he’s now about ready to crawl and was feeling a bit chipper in his brand new PJs – no more baby-gros, he’s on to big boy’s stuff now! He was watching me, watching him and shuffling about like a good ‘un! I’m going to claim that as inspiring……but then again, it’s not great claim as I reckon at this age, pretty much anything that moves is inspiring. That’s one of the two individual chaps.

The other one (very much an individual) is, of course, Greg’s bro – he’s been demanding that I use his drawing pad to draw first Rosie, then Archie, then – well, all manner of things…..each drawing was then excitedly and summarily scrawled over with a thick black marker and another thing gleefully asked for! I was happy to oblige and happy to participate in this game – I think I inspired him a tiny bit too – even if it was only to learn to draw better than Linda.

Finally, another really cool thing. Mind you, it’s not as good as communicating with Fin and Greg – that’s about as rewarding as it gets. One of my pbase pics was used in a creative writing class for seven-year-olds and you should have seen the stuff they came out with – it was all ‘dungeons and dragons’, fire and ice stuff. Amazing. I can’t tell you what an honour it is to have fired up the imaginations of so many youngsters. I read through their efforts and was amazed at their writing.

Weirdly though, I know so many adults with absolutely NO imagination whatsoever that I am now worried that somewhere along the way, it gets knocked out of them – I wonder if that’s the school system, or dreary lives that causes the imagination to run away, never to be seen again?

I stupidly left behind the photocopies of the work of this little class but I know it’ll be safe for me to return to tomorrow.

Hee hee – imagine ME being inspiring to a bunch of children? How weird and fabulous is that? It’s inspired me to learn more about being a child…..from an adult’s point of view if you see what I mean – I’ve never been exposed to (through my own bad judgement really) seeing the world through the eyes of children. It’s quite an eye-opener.

Last year, we were starting the decorating process, making nice the cottage after it'd been ripped apart to put in basic amenities by builders.