Stuff I've Been Doing

I haven’t done one of these Stuff I’ve Been Doing posts for a while. Partly because I keep forgetting, and partly because I always assume nobody is interested in the mundane day-to-day aspects of my life.

But then I remember that most of what I write is about exactly that. And the previous Stuff I’ve Been Doing posts have ended up being surprisingly popular.

So here’s a quick update on what I’ve been up to recently, including giant rats, tennis, dodgy swimming locations, books, television and, as usual, some cringey guitar playing.

In case you missed last week’s announcement, the latest anthology edition of my Substack posts is out now in paperback and ebook. This one covers all the stories published between November last year and early May this year.

Doing…

I don’t think I’d ever been to the opening preview night of an art exhibition before last week. I’ve now been to two.

The first was the exhibit of final pieces for the year-long Art Foundation course that Layla has just finished.

Having predominantly focused on drawings and paintings until recently, Layla decided to try something a little different for her final piece.

So she created two human-sized rat sculptures.

I think they are incredible (and more than a little disturbing).

Here is the text that accompanies the piece….

I asked Layla what she planned to do with these rats now that the exhibition is finished.

“I’ll just take them to the tip,” she said.

We can’t let that happen. Far too much time, effort and talent went into these sculptures to simply throw them away.

But there’s also no room for them in our house to either display or store them (as much as we’d love to have two human-sized rats staring at us every evening while we watch television 🤔). If you have any ideas of where these rats could find a new loving home, please let me know.

Layla then had the opportunity to exhibit for a week at another local gallery, so we went to the preview night of that one too. The giant rats were not invited this time.