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From Bill Dodd

Any accountant will tell you that January is the worst month of the year because of the 31st January deadline for tax filing and the propensity for some clients to delay getting their details together until the very last moment.

Not this year. Not that there hasn't been the usual 'tax' pressure but this is the first year I will ever have followed the 15 hour days with a holiday and it will be the first time ever in my life I will have had a 4 week holiday. Last time I told you I was planning a trip to India. It happens on 11th February and I've started the blog already so please take a look at http://off-for-an-indian.blogspot.com/ So when is a tax return not a tax return - when it's followed by a trip to India!

I managed to get a copy of 'The Last Modern - A Life of Herbert Read' recently. Sir Herbert Read was my mother's cousin and it is very nice to re-read an account of his life and remember particularly a family day we all spent together in 1960. I was very young and for some reason I was very interested in pursuing a lunchtime conversation about the 'meaning of evil'. Then somehow that got to the role and importance of art in the 2nd World War with which everyone seemed a lot more happy with possible exception of my father. He thought Churchill was a great artist and Sir Herbert could hardly restrain himself but the embrace of his understanding and knowingness is still vivid in my memory as is my father's eulogising of all things Churchill! I went to Kirbymoorside last weekend (where Sir Herbert was born) on a sort of magical mystery journey to the Star Inn, Helmsley to have birthday lunch. I didn't know I was going there, before I actually got there. I had a very strong desire to visit his grave and re-read the words that impressed me so when I first saw them as a young man - ' Poet, Anarchist and Author'.

Andy and I both knew and worked with Li Yuan-Chia during the period he established his famous Gallery at Banks, Nr Brampton in Cumbria. I was his accountant and what he referred to as 'you special advise'. So it was great to hear the programme about him, and the resurgence in his work, on Radio 4 recently. Both Andy and I wish the Li Yuan-chia Foundation well in their work and may Li rest in peace. He helped to further my education in many ways - one piece of STRONG advice was "You not like? Chop off!"

From Andy Christian

Bill and I have just been having fun working at designing some new promotional material which we will be able to individualise for each person we send it to. We decided against a mass email or a huge mailing and that it was time just to write to those people we felt might like us as advisers and who we would like as clients; no brainer perhaps.

I have just finished writing about Jos Tilson who has been showing at Galerie Besson in London’s Royal Arcade. Her work uses bare clay to evoke forgotten corners of Venice and Umbria. After reviewing the show I realised that one of my first published pieces of writing had been about her father, Alastair Morton, the weaver and abstract painter who set up the ground breaking Edinburgh Weavers. He commissioned many emergent artists to design fabrics. I also wrote about Ken Eastman whose show at the Marston Woo Gallery in London explored the imprint onto slabs of clay and the strata of building in clay ‘ribbons’. Marston Woo has a great stock of major pieces by established ceramicists and sculptors.

I have got some more writing to do for Ceramic Review who want a piece on the exciting work of Paul Scott. Nicola Werner, the potter, who I visited and wrote about before Christmas should also be appearing in that magazine in the near future.

Bearnes Hampton and Littlewood from Exeter are about to auction a substantive collection of the work of Sam Haile the surrealist painter and potter. I have helped his widow Marianne de Trey to put this together and written an introduction for the catalogue. His archive is now in the care of the University of Northumbria.

Bill made a very competitive fish pie for us when we were in Cumbria but did something very strange with the layers……..and there were NO PRAWNS in it! (ps from Bill, the additional layer was celeriac with fresh dill in the topping. And prawns? Don't talk to me about prawns... Ha!)