It does happen a lot, that by accident or a happy chance something works out better than it might have. This is just as well as lot of the time I have only a vague idea of what is going on. I ‘ve learned to relax and stick to the basics.

Take yesterday for instance. I was to meet someone who wanted to come back to my house and see some paintings. It was not one of my better italian speaking days and I got a little confused , though to be fair the whole situation was confusing. A lot of the paintings the client was interested in which were on Instagram had been sold. I am always happy to do another similar and there was a lot of discussion at cross purposes until eventually we settled on something completely different. So I wrote that down. And we walked into town and checked out the possible view. I arranged to send a photo of which part of the view I planned to paint. And we parted.

So this morning I set off to take some good reference photos at about 8.30. Unfortunately I hadn’t realised that the sun would be in my face and it would have been a waste of time if I hadnt met a guy who knew what I was doing and when I said I would come back later when the shop I was to include was open….he told me that it shut years ago. He then told me what it used to sell and suddenly a whole lot of stuff that I had not really understood made sense. Now I know why I am doing this particular scene and why there was talk of scooters and apes’.

Having returned to the scene this afternoon I was able to get some good photos with lots of blue sky.

And while I was there I saw that the “Painter of Pisticci” exhibition was open. I didn’t know that either. Maybe I will go and have another look round or even take a friend.

Now I have sent a cheerful confident message to my client and am ok to go.

Little things like that happen all the time here. I am waiting for another client who phoned earlier and wants me to paint …something🤔

There is a small part of me thinks that if I learned to speak very good italian that life would not be nearly so interesting……..but I expect that is just another excuse…….