Show Time

I can announce that the first of my panels went up in Aylesbury's Great Western Street last week. I went down at the weekend to have a look. My reaction to seeing a piece of my work slapped five metres high and about thirty six metres long across a public space was essentially English: I found myself doing a sort of dance. You have to understand that this wasn't an American-style high-five air-punching victory dance, it was a sort of hopping shuffle on and off the kerb born of the profound desire for there not to be a fuss. I was pleased; it did and indeed does look pretty damn good (you can check it out on my web site), but it was all a bit much really and could I now be excused to have a cup of tea and a sit down? It turned out that I wasn't to be excused until my husband had taken many, many photographs. It was minus five that day and my embarrassed squirming had turned into a hypothermia avoiding jig before he'd finally finished.

I've been back a few times for a better look and have reached the point of being able to flirt with the idea that it's a fairly big achievement. It's a bit hard to see the art at the moment to be honest: the panels have a blue protective film over their surface and the whole thing is surrounded by scaffolding and a fence covered in strict warnings about hard hats, steel toecaps and who to call with the remaining digits of your right hand in the event of an accident.

It's great to see a whole section in one piece. Anyone who has, like me, spent happy hours with Airfix kits will understand that there's magic in the moment when seemingly entirely unconnected parts of a model all come together (for some reason I had a thing about making bi-planes when I was young, I made lots extremely badly and never painted any, littering my bedroom with pale blue-grey plastic debris). However, there are still gaps and an unfinished section to complete. I met the site manager Derek who is responsible for overseeing the installation of all my panels in Aylesbury and he was extremely keen for the work to progress. He was very nice about it, but I get the message: there's a few dozen men in reflective vests awaiting my finished work and sooner would be better than later love!