Saints and Strolling clouds

Twig the cat's first birthday - hard to believe we have racked up a year of sleepless nights, throwing paper balls

and waking to find a small furry body in bed nibbling toes... It seems a world away now; last year we were living on Arran and spending all our waking hours working in a seafood restaurant (apart from those spent as above).

Finished up the varnishing of the pictures for Leith in advance of

taking to the framers tomorrow; the last one - now called 'Strolling Clouds' (told you it was a cloud day yesterday) responded to the paint over varnish repair, so I can now complete the definitive painters' 'stone, scissor, paper'. Biro beats acrylic paint, but varnish beats biro. That still doesn't work though, does it? Acrylic paint would have to beat varnish - maybe that's why no-one messes with the original template, and the mimes would be pretty tricky too. Back

to the drawing board - ha ha.

Now blogging while dinner cooks - nothing, I believe, like fiddling while Rome burns, but you never know. Tonght's offering is

a variant of something we came up with last week ; Satay burgers. Last weeks were of the pork variety, but having come across some reduced chicken m

ince yesterday, we are chicken burgering. To the mince Stu mushed some curry power and chilli powder, fried off finely chopped onion and garlic (left to cool down) shoogle of the gloopy soy sauce, a teaspoon of peanut butter and a big spoon of Jimmy's Satay sauce. We find the Jimmy's in our Chinese supermarket and love it madly, but it is quite heavy on the shrimp paste,

so I accept that it may be an aquired taste; substitute a less shrimpy satay sauce if desired (please not Loyd Grossman's though, don't encourage him!)

The mix can now be burgered in a cunning manner; take one lid of burger sized container (round) and line with cling film, leaving overhang. Squish burger mix well into lid, cover with the rest of the cling film so burger is all happy and wrapped and fridge to set. Do I have to say 'remove from cling film before grilling/frying?... We

put them

in nice toasted pitta breads with dressed salad; you may do as you please - heathen wheaty buns allowed and hell, even chips at a push.

Agonising to the last as to which picture to frame up; I have some personal favourites which fall into the 'only a mother (creator?) could love them' bracket. 'Icarus Down' falls into the category; a personal view of the fall from the sun - I love that story an

d I'm sure it won't be the last time I attempt it. Thing is, though, I worry that my house will one day be some kind of weird shrine to these fo

ibles of my imagination, and future anthropologists will raise eyebrows over the strange ambition to create such follies. If I tell you that I have a three by four foot painting of St Blaise hovering over the sea behind the spare room bed, you begin to get the idea.

But what if... someone out there actually agrees with me? Loves St Blaise and wants to take him home and hang him on their exquisite barn

conversion wall? Is it better to leave them hiding in their corners or to reveal them in their glory and risk the raising of many eyebrows in a not good way...