Edinburgh

Our return journey home from Edinburgh. Well, after a very successful event, the day came to pack up and the long drive home. We had a great time, met many people. One person, Chris Rattray, he was part of the team that organised the show, he was also a first class sculptor. Every day when he was sat at the reception desk, he was working with a large lump of red clay, working this into a figure sitting on a stump. This took several days to finish, it was something he was doing between talking to people coming into the exhibition. He had finished it by the time we were due to leave. on the base of this sculpture he had engraved the words. Time for a wee fag, Edinburgh 92, Chris Rattray. It was himself, sitting on that stump rolling a cigarette. Audrey was so taken by this, asking him what he was going to do with it." Nothing " he said, Audrey jumped in with, " Oh, it`s beautiful, can I have it". He was only going to squash it down and hand the lump of clay back to a potter that gave it to him at the start. " Yes", you can have it, but it`s not dry and I don`t know how you will manage to get it home." Audrey nursed that figure all the way home. It was on the floor of our car, in front of Audrey`s seat, I was driving and Audrey held the clay figure still for all those hundreds of mile back. We carefully took it straight in the house at home and put it in a safe place to dry out. After about a year, I was telling a potter friend of mine about our trip and this sculpted figure, it was the sort of work he himself done. He said he would fire and bronze it for us. He done a great job, and we still have jimmy to this day. That`s what we names the figure.