The last time we met I was already on my way to early retirement and back to my first love – art. 2017 saw me starting as a full time student at our local art school. Just before the final show I got a mail “we have a thousand children on the outpatient waiting list. do you think you can come back?” So I worked part time until last summer, some 49 years in clinical practice.

Applying for show space in a gallery right after art school is a bit like applying for that very first SHO job after house jobs but at the same time marketing yourself on Facebook and Instagram, No discrete brass plaques in the art world. So far I have had 2 shows and published 2 illustrated articles. The photo is from a publicity shoot.

Two of my three children are working within health, one as a school health visitor, one as a vet but the third is a process engineer based in Kristiansund, the first place we lived in Norway. He cleans North sea gas which he then sells to England of all places. He hasn’t quite escaped from health entirely, his partner is an anaesthetist. I feel life has gone a full circle when I think of my children, where they live and their jobs.

They have given us 6 grandchildren, 4 of which live locally. their ages are spread between 15 months and 15 years so we enjoy the full spectrum of childhood to adolescence when we are with them. I am a dab hand at drawing dinosaurs now.

Do you remember the mantra from our geriatric block at Ryhope hospital? the consultant said “if you do not find 3 or more things wrong with anyone over 65 you have not done a good enough job”. My wife Anne and I have our 3 things but are still going strong. See you all soon.

P. S. Oh! and I’m a lumberjack ….on Wednesdays  as a member of “Stavanger Foresters” (Stavanger skogs laug), a volunteer group of 20 pensioners who help maintain the woods in the middle of the town. I should found a photograph of me wearing “corr blimey trousers and a corr blimey hat”.