looking through windows at whats important

I was living in America when I got my first computer. I remember it was late 1994, was the very first pentium, and it ran Windows 3.1! It had a 9.6 modem, and gave me the opportunity to sample the delights of the web, totally different to todays experience. I had a day off mid-week, and I was listening to some Christy Moore. I'd come across a website set up by some ex-pats, (following a search on the then mighty search engine Altavista), and it provided lots of links to 'home', so I was browsing, when I saw a link to a site devoted to Liverpool. I was downloading a picture of the Albert Dock (line by line), when one of my favourite tracks, Nancy Spain, started to play. It's always been an emotive song for me, but this time, overcome by the emotion of seeing my home town, the emotions spilled over into tears. I'd been living in the States for almost 7 years by that time, and not once had I ever experienced homesickness that induced this response. I phoned people, had lots of visitors, got sent soz-mix, Marigold stock and malt loaf regularly, and had too many  English and Irish friends out there to make me miss home. But that day, miss home I did. I must have played Nancy Spain 5 or 6 times,  all the while stirring at a place that was home, a picture, on a screen, an image so powerful that I cried for what must have been 10-15 minutes.
The photo above was taken through the velux I put in the old roof section of my workshop. Being an old roof, I decided to strip the whole thing off, and start again, and I wondered at the time if I'd done the right thing! Same with the rear wall of the old brick section of the workshop, that too had a hole knocked in it, a lintel installed, and a window that looks out on the most fantasic of views. There's a picture of that in a previous blog. The workshop is still not fully complete.....well they never are, are they.....but the hard work  has been done, (at the cost of finishing the house, and much to the annoyance of the wife I may add) and it's going to be a nice little home for my future as an artist. I've planned the extension already, and I'll break the news if and when I get my first 5 figure Commission!  I figure I can get the Cathedral view in the velux I put in that section.

This picture I took of the Dock on my birthday 7 years ago, a reflection in the Pan Am bars window, is not  too dis-similar to the photo I viewed online when I was in the States, Liverbirds aloft the Dock, though that was a straightforward shot. I used it recently for my publicity pics for the Exhibition I had at the Albert Dock, and I've made some business cards for my art from it. Funnily enough, I'm listening to Christy Moore once again, and the track I've played a few times this evening is 'The Voyage'. Sums up really what we've been through, and both reminds and excites me of the Journey I'm undertaking with my Art.