If you look carefully at the picture you should see the Christmas puddings (from our Xmas crackers) nestling in the twiggery and branches of our tree. We have had our fun winding them up and racing them so they have been put out to retirement. Just like old greyhounds. And donkeys. And some old men!

Life is back to normal: dinner at friends

Fabulous dinner at friends last night. 'If you could invite ten people, alive or dead, to dine at your table, who would you ask?' was a question posed. I personally would like to have Jesus, to ask him who he thought his Dad was; Princess Diana to ask if she knew who bumped her off; and Claudia Winkleman because she seems such fun. Mr A suggested Mao Tse Tung but was rather put off when it was pointed out that he wouldn't be able to understand him. And Bart Simpson was ruled out for obvious reasons, i.e. he wasn't real. As it was, the people actually sitting around the table couldn't be bettered: four artists and their spouses lead to a lot of jollity, deridery and good almost-clean fun!

The weather-enforced confinement is finally over but it has taught Mr A and me something. We discovered, during that imprisonment, that we were amazingly compatible, which, although having being married for 56 years, has come as a pleasant surprise. So we did make the right choice, we both contentedly sighed as we sipped our cocoa. That last bit was made up - we don't drink cocoa.

Was beginning to think agoraphobia, due to the surprisingly enjoyable weather-related confinement, had set in but no, with nerry a glance back I skipped outdoors and into the passenger seat of our snow-released car. It is now I must apologise to my regular blog readers, for it has been pointed out to me that bottoms seem to feature a worrying amount. But, despite that observation, I have to report that somehow the melting snow had seeped through the car door and into the cushion residing on the passenger seat - on which, of course, I sat down. Without mentioning the b word again, it is sufficeth to say a part of my anatomy became wet. Anyway, after flinging said cushion over my shoulder onto the backseat, though clipping the headrest first sending it obliquely into my husband's head (which didn't go down well), I located a plastic bag and sat on that for the journey that my derring-do husband accomplished with expertise, our slushy icy sideroads still being somewhat hazardous.

We had ventured into town a) for me to keep my appointment with my very nice hairdresser who keeps my hair trimmed in good order (I would say 'very nice' even if I hadn't given her my blog address thus knowing there was a good chance she would read it); b) to return the slanket (blanket with sleeves)given as a present, because it is so vast you could hide a herd of elephants in it; c} for husband to change the M & S trousers I had given him because I had got the inches and cms mixed up and he had never ever been that shape.

Sent my lovely sister-in-law a card to express the whole family's relief that her hip operation had been a success. Hip hip hooray. The old ones are always the best.

In the item below, written this morning, I was devoid of words of wisdom to pass on, but now inspiration has hit me and I am passing on a tip to help with oil painting.

If your paint is too thickly applied, lie newspaper over it to remove paint and then re-establish.

However, if you are out in the fields, quietly painting a landscape, and you realise your picture is a gungy mess, you can do no better than Freda (the protagonist in my novel The Pig and I). In her determination to create a masterpiece, she bravely slides her bare bottom over her overly painted mess, thus creating a painting of subtle beauty. This selfless act was inspired by her pet pig, Hermione, who, a few months earlier, had knocked her portrait of the local mayor off her easel and then sat on it, leaving a gross imprint of the mayor's face on the pig's backside and a work of art on the canvas. This set Freda on the path to success in the portrait painting world. A lesson to all of us.

On reflection, the newspaper method is best.

'My mouse is playing up,' I groaned.

My husband vacantly dragged his eyes from Jamie's Dinners, looking slightly concerned. 'What's wrong with it?' he asked, knowing he had to respond since reading Men are from Mars Women are from Venus.

'I have to push really hard on the left side to get it to do anything.'

His attention was now definitely off the lasagne recipe he'd been studying. 'Is that what you do?' he asked, looking amazed.

'Yes, and now I have to roll it around the mouse mat like mad as well.'

Now Jamie's lasagne recipe wasn't even being covertly glanced at. 'You havc a special mat for it!'

'Well, you can do it on the desk top but it isn't so good,' I explained, trying in vain to sound patient.

'Oh, the computer mouse. Do we have any fresh rosemary, thyme or bayleaves in the house?'

'They're all in pots on the decking hiding under melting blankets of snow,' I anapped, although I shouldn't have. Tonight's dinner is going to be good.

Yesterday, I rashly wrote that I would write a helpful hint each day. But already I've dried up. Any ideas would be welcomed.

WHAT NEXT? SAID THE SNOWY OWL, rather grumpily. What next indeed!! It's more like living in Narnia than the UK - but with central heating and no bad people or lions.

My Nearly-New-Year Resolution is to include a helpful hint in my random musings. Today's is for artists and is about mixing greys.
1. Cadmium orange + blue (not cobalt)
2. Ultramarine + Alazarin crimson + cadmium yellow OR yellow ochre
3. As 2 but use cerulean blue for a cooler grey
4. Cobalt + Light red for a warm grey
5. Ultramarine + burnt umber
6. Cerulean blue + permanent rose for a silvery grey

Having displayed the group sculpture below, I now can't resist showing off my d and g-d's giant octopus which is spreadeagled on their table-tennis table as if trying to flatten it. If it really could iron out the curves and waves in the wood surface the whole family would have to alter their well-practised ping-pong shots because we've all got used to the ball shooting off at weird angles. But there you go. Good and bad. Ying and yang. Full cream and skimmed.

It is snowy white, plump, firm, yet malleable - no, not my bum as one might think, but the free sculpting material that has dropped down from the sky. My daughter and granddaughter have been at it again (see Sophie the snow woman in a previous item) and proved that my artistic DNA has permeated down through the generations and my living has not been in vain.

Still snowed in! Have had to cancel the Tuesday portrait session, so the 21 talented artists who usually show up to portray the sitter in whatever medium they choose will have to do a self-portrait or get their spouse or dog or cat to sit. A pity tortoises have hibernated, because they would clearly be best, a cross between an animal portrait and a still life.

Talking of tortoises, reminds me that years ago when we had three of them - this is a very sad true story - when we lifted them out of the snug straw and crumpled paper in their normal hibernating box, they looked rather glassy eyed. All three of them. After tucking them back in for a few days, they still looked the same. Not sure if they were dead or alive, I buried them up to their wizened old necks under a bush hoping that if they were alive they would scrabble out. But each time I bent down to check on them it was the same. Three inert tortoise heads with glazed eyes stared blindly back at me. See, I told you it was sad.

Today I am languishing indoors thinking up another good invention which is how to program ones car go from A to B by itself, so that you can have a kip as you travel along. Until the finer details of that one have been sorted out, the picture above shows another idea for the advanced life drawing group: the trampoline session.

Another day of imprisonment due to yet more snow. I'm quite getting to like it. No need to get dressed or washed. Just placidly sitting thinking up good inventions. Currently, I'm trying to work out how to make road surfaces turn red to warn a crossing pedestrian when a dangerously close vehicle is approaching.

In the meantime, I'm displaying a painting of another good idea for an advanced life drawing group. This one is the skateboard session.

During this long period of enforced imprisonment due to the ice and snow, I am thinking up new inventions: outer-space solar generators, virtual hairdressers, etc. But while my fevered brain works out the finer details, I am displaying a painting of one of my previous ideas for advanced life drawing sessions, this being the parachute jump one.

How deep is the snow?

How deep is the snow? I wondered, unable to venture out for a second day for fear of falling and thus, on account of extreme age, breaking into a smithereen of bones. I dug out some welly boots and, armed with a ruler, stepped outside, dragging my feet through the thick virgin snow on the tundra decking. Reaching the table I lunged my ruler vertically down into the the deep blanket lying on top of it. 23 cms was the answer. I then bent and jabbed the said ruler several times into the cold squeaky whiteness around my feet. 23 cms also. It was then that I noticed that I was wearing a long woollen skirt which had become thickly coated with great blobs of glue-like snow.

Back indoors, the welly boots refused to leave my feet and, during the struggle that ensued, seemingly more snow was delivered onto our carpet than was lying on our entire back garden. Eventually the welly boot tussle was won and I mooched off to change my skirt and put on my indoor boots - worn all winter to stop chilblains - but it never works. I then rooted around to find a proper ruler which I measured against the snow-measuring one and found that the snow was 9 inches deep. When I told my husband he just nodded and smiled. Through this agreeable response I realised he hadn't heard a word and that his ears were plugged into the cricket. 'Looks like we'll lose,' he groaned, 'the three worst batsmen are left and there are two sessions to go.'

'Just two sessions,' I scoffed, guessing that a session might conceivably be longer than an over. 'Of course our three worst batsmen can hold out - it will be a draw.'

And it was a draw. Respect!!

'Nine inches,' he said later, 'are you sure?!

It may just have been a coincidence that he was looking down at his flies area as he spoke. I often find that the time-lag that occurs between me speaking and he responding quite often leads to misunderstandings. 'Yes, that's 23cms.' I said.

'That's about it,' he replied.

As if to prove that art and woman's lib genes are inherited, my daughter and granddaughter created a fetching snow-woman and coloured her with powder paint.

Clearing up the meaning of my blog name

For anyone interested, Artistricky It is not Art is Tricky as some people have deduced (although, of course, art is quite often very tricky). It is Artist Ricky, me being an artist. And me once being known as Ricky until many years ago my then-young husband put the kaibosh on it by saying it sounded as if I was a floozy, thus displeasing me but pleasing my dear mother who thought it sounded as if I had rickets. I had liked the friendly warmth of Ricky, compared with the rather hard-edged sound of Erica, but, there we go, girls let men get the better of them when they are young. So Ricky went out the window - until now.

A stranger from Oz and other things

Wednesday 30th December 2009

Yesterday had a phone call from someone called Jilly. Jilly Cooper the famous novelist ringing me about my comic novels?! I thought, in desperate hope. But no, it was Jilly Searle an Australian lady who explained she was a friend of Jill and Geoff Sparks, our very old Australian friends, 'Old' in both senses of the word, i.e. we've known them for years and they are knocking on a bit. Though not as much as us I hasten to add in case they read this. 'I arrived from Oz yesterday,' this Jilly Searle said, 'and I leave on Sunday, so can we meet up?' 'How about tomorrow?' I recklessly replied, adding 'but how will we know you?' 'I shall carry an outstanding turquoise bag,' she said. 'And my husband looks like Father Christmas,' I offered, so be sure, in case more than one person carried an outstanding turquoise bag

'Perhaps she's an imposter,' we worried. But, no worries mate, we met up with the outstanding turquoise handbag (which was actually beautiful and I hankered after it) and Jilly Searle at Woods on the Pantiles, Tunbridge Wells, and straight away knew she was dinky di straight. She knew more about our family than possibly we did and we spent a very pleasant hour conversing with this glamorous, very nice lady who was in Tunbridge Wells because her partner, the man she will marry next year, is playing Captain Hook in the Peter Pan pantomime in TW. Those pantomimes are blooming good, so I was impressed. And even more so to learn that he is the actor who plays Alf in 'Home and Away'.

After we had said our fond farewells, we mooched back to Sainsbury's car park in the pouring rain to fill in time eating sandwiches in our car, doing a cryptic crossword and filling up with petrol (the car that is, not us) before going to collect two of my paintings that hadn't sold and couldn't be picked up before 2.30pm. Miles out into the country which ensured a few spats between the driver, Morry, and me in deciding the right lane to turn. Anyway we got there.

When we arrived home, our daughter Janice came round with the balance of my Christmas present - a wonderful-looking book on Science mysteries that I'm dying to read and which arrived late from Amazon despite her paying extra on postage, plus a huge bunch of red and white tulips with notes from the children thanking us for a good Christmas. So, that was a lovely surprise and despite the fog, greyness and drizzle, we've had a very satisfying day. Except that my pictures didn't sell. Humph.

Christmas-every-thirteen-months idea

Yesterday morning Terry and Paul came with my birthday card and present, delayed for nine days by snow, ice, Christmas festivities and fatigue. It was very good to see them and the birthday present.

Here is a thought to help people, such as myself, who have birthdays near to, or actually on Christmas Day, and also to help people, again such as myself, who find that Christmas comes round too quickly. Why not have Christmas Day every thirteen months? As the actual birthday of Jesus isn't known, it wouldn't matter on that score. So next Christmas Day would be 25th January 2011, the following would be 25th February 2012, then 25th March 2013, etc. This would be a much fairer system for those poor unfortunates who have to more or less share their birthday celebration with that of that special Jewish child. If there were more than two followers of this blog (it comes up as three but one of them is accidentally me - don't ask me why or how, it's a mystery) we could run a Christmas-every-thirteen-months campaigne. But currently there are only two, so that's that.

Christmas 2009 is over

26th December 2009 late - that's the time, not me. I'm still here.

A great Christmas Eve. Manevolent lumps and bumps of snowy ice still abound in the roads around our high hill abode but they gradually petered out as we approached the Fairlight home of our nephew where he and his wife and sons' welcome was warm enough to melt a large snowman.

Great Christmas Day too. All the family bar one who isn't well. Mounds of presents and people filled every square inch of our space. Like Janice's chickens that turned into meercats when they encountered snow, we have all grown taller with longer necks to fit in. Some of us got down to a game of poker, the others watched Matilda on a DVD. Roald Dahl has a lot to answer for if the violence that was bombarding our ears was anything to go by.

http://artistricky.blogspot.com

23rd December 2009.
Yesterday, having written my first blog, I tried to email friends giving them a link to my fevered outpourings. However, despite kind help from a far-off friend, the link didn't work. She has emailed again, patiently spelling out in more detail how to set it up but I am too despondent to have a go yet. Instead, I made a creme caramel which is much more use.

It is raining, but lumpy ice still abounds. Humph!!

Woke up to a winter wonderland last Friday, 18th December - which happened to be my birthday. Very pretty, though not convenient.

Today is Tuesday 22nd and the winter snow and ice on display outside my windows now shines with a kind of evil menace in its sly gleam. 'If you haven't slipped up and broken your hip yet, you will soon you old person, you,' it seems to spark. And I know that at my age, if you fall down, even on something soft like your husband or your cat (if I had one, which I haven't), let alone unforgiving hard ice, your bones will more than likely break into pieces and then the medics will take you into hospital and you will never return. Not alive, that is. So, I'm taking no chances because, currently, I'm quite enjoying life (even though Strictly's now ended. Good old Chris. And, to be fair, good old Ricky too).

My dear husband has only recently unplugged his ears from listening to the South African test match commentary. Apparently it ended in a draw - so that was a waste of time then. I often plug my ears into the afternoon play or a science programme and, though we live together, we are in quite different worlds. Sometimes he watches some sport or other on TV, say snooker, then he overlays the picture with teletext results of, say, football, and in his ear he is listening to some other sport, probably rugby because they all overlap these days and there's never a single day when there's nothing on. Still, you can tell by the soft smile on his lips and the occasionally opened eyes that he's a very happy man. That's blokes for you.

Referring back to my birthday, my darling daughter, mindful of my accumulating years, trudged round in the snow with birthday greetings and present and was a warm colourful sight for my myopic dry eyes. And my equally darling son and his little son rang from where they live 100 miles away and sang quite beautifully and loud enough for my deaf old ears to hear. I'm pretty sure it was a rendition of Happy Birthday.

That's it for now. So much to look forward to, though not tonight's TV because there's nothing worth watching on. So I'll set to work making a chocolate mousse instead, for those who don't like Christmas pud. Which is most of them. Nine expected for lunch and fifteen later. If we all stand up straight we should just about fit in!