A few minutes before we got married we bought a set of antique plates. A little while later I dropped one and was reminded of a previous relationship. She, the woman in question, was standing in the kitchen throwing plates on to the floor. I thought that only happened in films. But I was wrong!

I bought this loaf, painted it Virgin Mary blue and placed a small plastic fireman (the one Regina gave me) with raised axe beside it. I suppose it’s a bit obvious how to read this?

I bought a loaf and painted it to resemble a landscape with gently rolling hills and a valley dissecting it: Drumlin country, from the Irish word droimnín (“littlest ridge”), an elongated hill in the shape of an inverted spoon or half-buried egg. This loaf landscape amused me so I topped it off with a small plastic sheep dog. Here Boy.

There is more to the word than meets the eye, but I am not going to spell it out. I made this little sculptural please and had it manufactured in an edition that remains unlimited. I sent it off to the Tate Modern and sold it again and again. I thought this would go on forever. Well, I suppose nothing goes on forever.

I found this painting palette (originally rectangular) and cut it to shape. The unintentional and unresolved daubs are, I think, more interesting, more expressive, than the finished painting, which of course I never saw.

I unravelled a coat hanger as one does, twisted it, saw a face and drilled out enough lead from my pencil to attach the twisted wire. I felt better then. Well, for a while. That’s what artists do isn’t it.

On my birthday, my big day, I received a golden envelope in the post, which I kept and used as a template for making this folded lead envelope. I should have sent this with a heavy note inside. Instead I placed a printed card inside that read:
Good news will come to you from far away, but of course I never sent it!

I bought a second hand book: The Art of East Asia from a shop in Limerick. It fell open at a page with a photograph of the Golden Rock in Myanmar.
I immediately knew I had to go there. So I went!
I walked for five hours with a father and his two young daughters atop the mountain ridge. They showed me the way until I could see the Golden Rock.
When I turned around there they were — gone.

The act of painting these nuts and bolts had a zen like quality.
I thought I could go on painting them forever, and then have a major exhibition in some prestigious art gallery.

I heard a story on the radio about asylum seekers who had been asphyxiated in an airtight articulated container. That night we went to see a film about asylum seekers who were shot dead as they emerged from a similar container. The next day I received in the post a miniature articulated truck. I fabricated a small wooden coffin and attached it to the truck.