All in all I’m rather glad to see the end of 2023, despite being too old to wish my life away!
I blogged about my right shoulder injury in July, when I published my paintings from the Isles of Scilly and Lake District trips. By mid- year I was managing to do some sketching and painting as my shoulder injury moderated. The problem was, it was healing broken, still painful and uncomfortable. I finally get the operation on 19 September; an arthroscopic rotator cuff repair. This stopped my art endeavours and anything else needing my right arm, completely but at leat the prognosis is for a full recovery.
To make matters worse, I thought I’d be clever and get the shingles jab as soon after my 70th birthday as possible. The leaflet with the vaccine listed a 1 in 10,000 chance of causing shingles. Yes, far from being one in a million, I am only 1 in 10,000.
I managed to get enough material together for the annual calendar using the paintings I did mid year, and have added in some earlier work. I did some paintings when we visited Rosedale in August, but the time we went to Askrigg in October I was 1 week post op and just glad to have got there. I haven’t done any publishable art for too long now.
A paintings from the annual trip to Rosedale in August
Here is a view of the place we stay, the improbably named Bell End Farm. It goes back, we had school trips to Farndale and I memermber the levity when a hiking expedition took us past this placec
