Thunderstruck

It could have been a very awful start to the day.

We had to drive the Gilded Palace of Sin away from 'End of the Road' to Caerfilthy for 10am Monday morning. Which meant that we had to get up at stupid O Clock to get it back. I decided to be public spirted and empty the - ahem - waste tank into the huge vats supplied on site. I unlocked the door to the waste container and still had the key in my hand when I was about to empty our container. Through the early morning haze I could just picture the key falling into the vat, and Gareth my gig Kemosabe standing in front of me saying: "I don't care how you get it back Floyd, just get it back." So in a rare moment of sense I put the key in my pocket and that part of my morning was uneventful, thankfully.

Sometimes I wake up the morning and the realisation of what I've got in store makes me groan inwardly. After getting back to Cardiff safely I had to drag myself, coughing and spitting for a 90 minute run which I'd missed the day before. I dragged myself around but it weren't pretty.

Aside from the washing the other thing on my dance card was hanging an exhibition in the Waterloo Teagardens. I got the exhibition booked around March time, so with everything going on it sorta crept up on me. Having said that I had spent the previous week selecting and refining the work which was going in. The great thing is now that since my return to painting in 2007 I have managed to build up a portfolio so I have choices. So there were pieces I left out, and even on the night I was hanging the work I took a painting which I didn't hang because the paintings which were up made sense with each other and had room to breathe in the space.

With the help of Jason Maybury, his car and Sian we hung the work and we had time to play around with the order. I had a firm idea how it should start and end but the middle could be a bit fluid. It's called a painting practice for a reason and from the stuff I'd been sent beforehand, and after visiting the space the week before I thought the work had to be hung in the same way that I'd done it in Baristas in April of this year. There were plastic wires hanging down from hooks which I had no idea what to do with. Now it would be easy and lazy to blame the early start for my fuckwittery, so my fuckwittery was a direct result of my early start.

I left the Tearoom happy with the exhibition only to be asked to rehang it using the plastic wire. I went back Thursday morning with a clear head and managed to sort it. The work looked better using the plastic wire, so you live and learn. I thought I had loads of time but the Tearoom was invaded at 9:15am by parents and young children, of course I was the actually interloper in this scenario and luckily I'd pretty much done what I had to do. Although...

I did have to do some fine tuning for the opening night on the Friday, but skinny of jean and smiley of face I was ready and what a great night it was! Around a dozen friends turned up and I was actually in the room for once when one of my paintings sold! My lovely friend Rob bought the 'Untitled' painting and I got to slap a red dot of loveliness on it! Brilliant!

Which set me up for the Cardiff 10k, which is really a training run for the Cardiff Half next month. This is only the second time I've done the 10k so it didn't surprise me as much at the turn out. I don't mean to look down my nose at it but in my head it doesn't carry as much weight as a Half or full marathon. Although the 10k is a good course with a  fast pace and on the day it was disco hot! My normally reliable Garmin didn't pick up the GPS so I couldn't run at my set pace, so I ran at a challenging but comfortable speed. It turned out to be pretty good and I finished at 48 minutes and change which I was pretty happy with.