"..it's just a step to the left.."

Have just got back from speaking at the school assembly where I am to start art sessions next week. I'd been invited to introduce myself and the project to the children. I took along my trusty self potrait which I put on show at the front of the hall...the children thought it was a photograph and looked at me as if I was some sort of alien from outer space when I told them it was one of my drawings.

I always find it very moving looking into the assembled eyes of so many children..so much potential,so much to discover..As I stood there I felt ( very irrationally !!) that I should be appologising for being just me..that actually I am falable and full of self doubt, and that I'm just doing what I know and do best and that in my mind it's not enough..that elsewhere people are starving and being killed and I think I can justify myself by drawing pretty pictures.

I came away and looked at the many towering cranes that dominate the Derby City skyline..and in the grey drizzle,I though about the fact that they were building the City of tomorrow..my tomorow, the children's tomorrow to live in..all we can do is build the buildings and open the doors and hope that the little lives of today will walk in and live and so what if they change the wall paper or even knock it down one day to build something else..We are charged with teaching them to dance,to make the right steps and leave good footprints.

Tonight ladies and gentlemen, we will go to our first Salsa class..