Colouring in

Colouring in is really only for kids, which is a real shame because they are not very good at it. Not that I'm much better, for some reason arts and crafts have remained outside of my realm of capabilities for years. My dad used to joke I was better at graphic design, which I guess was a nice way to tell me that the money box I made him shaped like a giraffe head wasn't very good.

Why shape a money box like a giraffe head you may be wondering, and rightly so, but the truth is it's the only thing I can draw, well that and stick people. Anyway, the reason I am talking about colouring in is because I got invited to a place called Clay Art. Now Clay Art is, and I may be over-simplifying here, colouring in for grown ups. You go to this lovely restaurant, have lovely wine and eat lovely food, but on top of that you do lovely colouring in of clay figurines.

Please don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea, I'm pro Clay Art I promise you, what I can't get my head around is what you would do with it once you are finished? Essentially you get to take home the thing you just made, but the nice thing about doing it when you are a kid is you get to go home and show your slightly crap piece of glued together art to someone who is guaranteed to pretend to like it.

Maybe this is coming from a place of shame, my arts and crafts skills are embarrassingly bad. Maybe I'm the only one imagining a multi-coloured, badly painted, clay squirrel sitting on my mantelpiece and all of you out there would make something deserving of display. I always remember being about five years old at folds school and being told to go outside and find a stone to turn into a paper weight for fathers day. I was walking along and I saw a rather large rock locking up to me shaped exactly (and I mean exactly) like snoopy's head. I painted it white, with a little black nose and eyes, and gave it a well defined red bowtie. I was so proud to give it to my dad on fathers day and he convincingly told me he loved it.

About two years ago I went to visit my dad at his office and there sitting on his desk was a stone paper weight. When I went to check it out, it was covered in all these different covered paint blobs, all white and red and black and squishy and it took me a moment to realize that this in fact was the paper weight I had given him all those years ago. I immediately asked what had happened to it, and he told me that it had always looked the same, assumedly meaning it had looked like that when I'd given it him.

Yeah, I wasn't happy, I had been sure I had created a perfect stone replica of the cartoon dog, apparently becoming the next Van Gogh just wasn't written in the stars.

And on that I will leave you. If I do end up going to Clay Art I will let you know what it is like, but to be honest I'm pretty sure I will skip it. There is a chance I will be heading to sewing lessons in the upcoming weeks, the girls have convinced me into it. All I have to do now is learn to play the lute and wear petticoats and I'll be ready for tea with Marie Antoinette.

Kisses for everyone

Meryl

PS: After looking for pictures of Snoopy I now realize he does not wear a bow-tie, my five year old self was such a fool.