Someone said that painting up there that I did a few days back looked rather like the scars on my eye. That really wasn’t what I was painting and that was not the intenttion but they kind of do. iddi paint my eyer toda but no time to photograph it now…

I did touch on it previously in few places recently, especially in terms of the More Cake show, those of you who know me, know I have had ongoing eye problems for many years, I have had most of my life, I lost vision completely in one eye years ago after a whole load of failed operations to try and fix things at Moorfields Eye Hospital. That was back in my late teenage years. I’ve been living with poor vision in my “good” eye ever since then (no I’m not being aloof when I walk past you, I just can’t see you! You almost need to bump into me before I know you’re there unless you say something). So I’ve lived with one just about working eye poor vision and lines everywhere and not going out when my contact lens won’t allow me (can’t see a thing without my contact lens in, can’t see my hand in front of my face). Car headlights are a nightmare (especially the new ones!), flashing bike lights even more so, and then there’s the moon looking like Mickey Mouse with those big ears that the moon has, or seeing five sets of traffic lights when everyone else says there’s only one. I’ve scraped by for years, got in to fights with Marilyn Manson about it (he said I was steeling his look!), never been able to drive, not a hope in hell of reading a plate) and well you know, is that the right bus?  The hope was I would just get away with it for the rest of my life, alas, late last year my not very good “good” eye suddenly started getting worse and this year it has seriously declined to a point where we have now decided it is worth risking an operation to try and at least stop further decline. So tomorrow I go into Moorfields Eye hospital (again) for an operation on my “good” eye and as I only have one vaguely working eye, well if it goes wrong, and they did say there would be no problems last time and that didn’t go brilliantly, so it could go wrong again, well if it all goes wrong yet again well…

I did go to the Tate last Sunday to look at J.M.W Turner’s later work, nothing else but that late work in that one room, just walk in there, spend half an hour just in that one room of later work and have conversations with those paintings just in case I don’t get to do it again.  i do often just go to look at those paintings in that one room. It was temping to go look at more but no, I just wanted those late pieces in my head. I don’t know, let’s see what tomorrow brings, everything is way up in the air and over there right now and my head is as foggy as my vision currently is and I’m wondering if I should risk it or should I stick with what I have, I mean I can still paint, I can still type this, I did walk to the Tate last Sunday, nearly got hit by a bike or two but I did, I mean should I say no? Should I say this will do? That it isn’t worth the risk? Should I say I have a cold and get it postponed, buy myself three months of thinking time?  Will it go wrong again? Watch this space (or maybe don’t)