I usually buy books for the allure of their colour and surface and
shape and size, sometimes its the title. Here it was the title. But it
wasn’t, as I first hoped, a transcript of the Dennis Potter play but
something else, Rosemary somebody. In the end this painting was
actually two paintings, two books put together. Slightly different in
size. I worked with the given printed motif of thistles.

I remember seeing Dennis Potter’s Blue Remembered Hills on telly when
I was around ten years old, and being blown away. It haunted me for
years. I realised the adults knew what we are up to, in the woods, and
the long grass, and down by the river. I thought “the game’s up.”

I was stung by nettles recently retrieving a football for Joseph. Such
an old feeling that I had forgotten. Ten minutes of torture. Here’s my
old friend in amongst the thistles and nettles and dandelions and
sticky wullie…we were skin and bone, me and you, and blonde. You cut a
figure like The little prince or maybe Oor Wullie. When I met you
recently you were more like an older Art Garfunkel, your wonderful
curls all but gone but your eyes were the same: piss-holes in the
snow.

An influence over time - by osmosis - has been a book I’ve bought many
times over and re-cycled a few times now - Island Years by Frank
Fraser Darling. Life with his family in the Treshnish and Summer
Isles.

Something of that book has crept in, and not just The Dutchmans Cap.