The Cooler King

Fiddling While Rome Burns

Why oh Why does this happen, I think the word is procrastination. Suddenly other irrelevant things seem really interesting and I start messing about with random stuff and what really needs doing seems very unattractive!

I been drawing little stars and shuffling photos about, why? http://www.flickr.com//photos/rob-turner/sets/72157631984819828/show/

Tommorow I will have to start applying myself and prepare ‘The Cooler’ for a period of intense work. I will need to re-organise the layout in there. I need more table top workspace, I did make a 12 foot x 4 foot table once, and I need to get that back up and running.

I think I will have to change the system so I don’t spend time on my PC in what I call ‘the study’. I will have to base myself in the cooler with my phone and not keep walking in to get a biscuit, bacon sarnie, cup of tea, check emails, look at website stats, twitter, blogs etc. Keep the distractions of the internet out of the day. Base myself in the cooler and get on with it.

I have the time bomb which has been ticking for something like two years and I expect it to go off soon, but still no contract at the moment. But I do have sculptures and all sorts things to make for a sculpture trail in Winchester which includes some stained glass (its been so long since I made any windows I can hardly remember how to make them. Two boxes of glass, lead and tools, materials arrived today. It looks like mosaics for Caerphilly, and designs for Tonbridge. I have a booklet to produce, workshops to organize and even finished artwork to install. Its bonkers and I’ve been drawing little stars and shuffling photos. Accounts….a years worth to do. I have a second time bomb in Mid Wales, but I dont think that’s going to go off till next spring. Now is when I have regrets that I was not brave enough to train an apprentice or someone to help me. Scared to invest in someone who I thought would probably leave and I would never gain from my investment. Just a pipe dream, and never acted upon. I regret that now and face a fair spell of solitary in the cooler, though I will be working with a good friend in Hampshire.

So I have been down the builder’s merchant already and got some treated 3×2 for the ‘Road of Memories’. Regime change….and a making era starts in earnest today and I notice Rome may still burn as I am writing not making…….but I am publicly telling myself to get extract the digit.

The King: The Castle Builder and The Magician (cont).

The castle builder has contacted the magician today to say that the papers will be likely to be re-written this week. The magician had asked for the wording of the contract to be changed, so that any unexpected behavior by the magic due to unforeseen irregularities in the construction work done by the castle builders appointed men will not be the responsibility of the magician. And the magician has done as he was asked by the castle builder, and found someone prepared to pay the castle builder large amounts of money should the magic go wrong and behave strangely in the future, or the magic supplied by the magician turns out to be pinched or stolen from another magician without them knowing about it. The magician has agreed to pay one hundred and eighty four gold coins per year to the provider of this service in case his magic turns out to be stolen or behave in strange unexpected ways. This is the first time the magician has been unable to avoid this extra cost as previous patrons have withdrawn their requests, but the castle builder has insisted.

So things are close to actually exchanging magic for money about two years after the magician was asked to supply the magic in the first place. The magician is mentally preparing himself now to actually make this magic. This will require many months of careful work and will need a considerable amount of commitment and emotional investment to complete and install. These large commitments (under time deadlines) are the ones that the magician wonders if he still has the stamina to deliver.

The magician looked at the designs he made all that time ago and wondered if he would still be able to connect with the ideas he had back then? That is when he remembered that the built environment around the magic was not completed to the original idea. What was actually built was very different but the magic stayed the same. The magician remembered that this was a job and best not waste energy worrying about if this or if that, but just get on with it.