A Study in Sunlight

WITH golden sunlight pouring on to my Cornish balcony, and twinkling on the flat calm of Falmouth harbour, I felt compelled to offer an artistic interpretation of glorious springtime in the far west.

This painting, rendered in acrylic and gel pens (a pound a packet from you know where), is meant to capture the uplifting spirit of the season, with daffodils set against my study window.

Rather than include a soulless computer on my desktop, I've opted for my much-loved Corona portable typewriter, built circa 1925, with its echoes of Ring Lardner, Damon Runyon and Ernest Hemingway.

In fact, it was on typewriters of this vintage that I learned my trade, hammering out stories, gossip and features for the Northampton Chronicle and Echo back in the early 1960s, when the office machines were even then well over 40 years old.

Generations of ham-fisted reporters picked out prose on these indestructible artefacts, which eventually went into the skip during the 1980s, when computers began to rule our lives.

Anyway, enough of that. Drink in the fortifying sunlight while it lasts.