The Hills in the Distance and the Choppy Sea

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Wandering along the coastal paths, I stopped and seated myself upon a particular one. And from within my repose, I realised bodily, and boldly too, that I had forgotten precisely the position of our finances in relation to the overdraft limit and I was concerned about it. 

‘Oh shit,’ I said to a passing walker with his dog, ‘what will the mortgage people think about this? Will they consider me to be bad business? Am i in for a spanking or something like?’

The man looked at me. He was handsome in that pushing a shopping trolley across the car park kind of way. 

‘No,’ he said, and then he asked me what I was painting on that piece of mount board I had on the step ladder on the coastal path. 

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘this old thing. I am painting the hills in the distance and the choppy sea.’

The man looked to the hills in the distance, and the sea that did not look very choppy as far as he could see in the peaceful daylight, which was sone considerable distance, and then he looked at me directly, ‘There are hills in the distance, son, of that I cannot disagree. But the sea down there looks mighty calm to me.’

‘I know,’ I said, applying some white charcoal to bring out the waves, ‘but this is the artist’s impression. In fact, I think this was painted by ripping a page of a scene that looked relaxed out of a book I got off Acrylic Tony. But I messed it up to make it look like this.’

‘So you didn’t paint it just now?’

‘I rubbed the bit of white charcoal on it, yes,’ I said, ‘but I didn’t paint it now. Now please, the bloody wind keeps blowing off the charcoal waves and I’m not having that.’

At which point, I removed some Bristows Extra Strength hair spray. But it didn’t work very well to keep the white charcoal in place and actually removed it completely. 

‘There is nothing for it,’ I told the chap and his dog. ‘ I will have to go back to the garage that she calls a shed and apply it there and then take a picture.’

‘So it’s a picture that doesn’t quite exist in real life but it’s a picture on the internet.’

‘Aye, probably,’ I smiled and the red arrows did a fly past 

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