Blog ( February 07 | March 07 | April 07 )

Roy Keane. And My Hole In One! And Trade 7. (Trade 7)

Trade 7 had been brewing for months.

I had seen Lynda Cookson's announcement somewhere in cyberspace last September, telling the world she was open to the idea of bartering away some of her paintings. So I responded, and although Lynda was highly enthusiastic about my project, she wasn't suitably excited by the items I had up for a trade at that time.

Well, we kept in touch. And some time in later I sent Lynda a sneak preview of metal Tyrannosaurus rex "Tommy Cooper Rex" which was being "rustled up" by Sean for Trade 6. Actually, I sent a photo of my land lady Kate's light grey version, to which Lynda replied with, and I quote...

"I love the dinosaur!!!"

So, a trade was looking on the cards.

We just needed to wait for T C Rex, as Lynda calls him, to be finished.

And we also needed to sort out what I would be receiving for him...

Lynda wanted me to take an assortment of her original art works, and I was free to choose which ones. This was a great offer I felt I couldn't refuse.

So I ended up selecting five pieces, and I asked Lynda to personally select another one herself, which she kindly did, and we ended up agreeing on these...

• "Porgy and Bess" - two paintings of humanised pigs! from Lynda's popular Piggies collection.
• "It Happened Centre Stage" - and I still don't know what happened! but I think it was something bad... my personal favourite, don't ask me why.
• "Long Fish Oil Print One" - this is a monoprint, personally chosen by Lynda.
• "Bubble Invasion" - a super cool Limited Edition giclee print, Number 1 of 50.
• "Lilac Buds" - for which Lynda has since generously posted me a frame.

We were ready to do the trade as soon as T C Rex was ready, and, with impressively good timing, the star of the show was delivered to me days before Lynda was due to be staying near my neck of the woods in Ireland.

Lynda lives in the west of Ireland, in Connemara by a lake. I can think of worse places in the world to reside in. Lots of them. She lives near a village called Cong, where The Quiet Man starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara was filmed, which gives me the perfect excuse to tell you about my hole in one there!

And this really is a true story. And unembellished.

You can ask my brother Kevin. He was there! And occasionally he is honest.

We were teenagers, on a family holiday, staying in a farmhouse next to the Ashford Castle's golf course. You see, it is so upmarket it is just called Ashford Castle, not something more informative like Ashford Castle Hotel. And it was good enough for President Ronald Reagan, and royalty and superstars. Anyhow, every time we looked over the wall, we couldn't see anyone playing the course - what a waste, we thought.

So, one perfectly calm sunny day we hopped over the wall with our golf clubs, and got ready to play at the first tee we found, a par three with a shamrock-shaped bunker in front of the green. That's a short hole, reachable in one shot, in case you didn't know, I think it was 126 yards...

Well, I hadn't hit a ball for must-have-been over a year. I stepped up, and somehow hit the ball straight into the hole.

No bounce.

What are the chances of that?

Then before we could play another hole, this guy arrived on a tractor and asked us if we were resident. We said something not entirely true like "no, but they said in the village we could play". And that was the end of that.

Where was I?

Oh, now I have to tell you about my other hole in one! Yes, there really was another one! But I'll spare you.

So that's the end of my hole in one recollections - I promise.

For now.

I bet you are thinking I must be an exceptional golfer now, maybe even a pro!

OK, so I prepared T C Rex for the trip to his new home...

At Manchester Airport, where baffled-looking queueing passengers asked me some far out questions like "is it a dog?", they treated T C Rex as "Special Baggage". I put him on the special baggage conveyor belt, and the smiling X-ray guy called me across - he wanted to show me the psychedelic dinosaur skeleton on his screen! Distressingly, he wouldn't permit me to take a pic to show y'all - I was gutted! I was looking at a fantastic work of art - I might just have to invest in one of those X-ray machines...

And then going though security, RedBack was nearly confiscated. Very nearly. More about that another time.

With special baggage T C Rex travelling 3rd class down below with the regular baggage, me and RedBack enjoyed the view of downtown Cork City on approach to Cork Airport...

Pretty soon, T C Rex had arrived safely in Kinsale, looking a little fragile though...

We had the luxury of not just one, but two official photographers on assignment for this trade - Lynda's husband Alan, and my daughter.

Alan snapped T C Rex surmising what might have happened centre stage...

And this one by my daughter is of me and Lynda - or Lynda and I as my English teacher would have corrected me, or I - on the morning of Sunday, February 4th, 2007, at Actons Hotel in Kinsale, doing Trade 7 (and Lynda was even delighted it was number 7!)...

Completely unrelated to Trade 7, I won an "Easter Duck" in a raffle on Friday. I had never won anything in a raffle before, and I think I won this time because I concentrated harder than usual when I picked the name Chloe, which later came up as the winning name.

Turns out Chloe is not just a duck, but, surprisingly a literate duck. Here she is with the eminent World Record Breaking Rubber Duck Number 5608, catching up on the Cork scene with the March 2007 issue of CORK Now...

On page 87 she spotted a photo of my identical twin brother, with Lynda Cookson!...

Incredibly, he is so identical to me he even has an identical name. And yes I did think about it, but I know it can't be me, because I am not an artist.

I didn't even know I had an identical twin brother up to now - thank you Cork NOW!

And that was supposed to be that, but...

I just got back from Cork, and on the plane I was in the presence of greatness - football, and particularly Manchester United, legend and Cork man and fearless free spirit Roy Keane was onboard, with his wife and kids. He was also onboard going over yesterday, but I was unaware. Tonight he was sat four rows behind me, reading the paper. I couldn't resist asking him if I could take a picture of him holding RedBack, the trading nothing bottle opener. He declined ("No man, sorry not today."), and I got out of his space, feeling a little guilty.

But a trade with Roy “Happiness is not being afraid.” and “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.” Keane, is something I still want to happen, I've thought about it before, so maybe one day, we'll see...

Posted by Andrew @ 11:59pm

To see what I traded the Lynda Cookson paintings "Porky & Bess" for, click here
To see what I traded the Lynda Cookson painting "Bubble Invasion" for, click here

To see how I got "Tommy Cooper Rex" the metal dinosaur,  click here

Back To The Future (Trade 6)

Now that my "in between jobs" adventure is over, it's about time I got back on the case, isn't it? First thing to do on my to do list is to report on Trade 6, which happened over five weeks ago. So here goes...

Except I don't actually have a to do list, but anyway...

Trade 6 had been lined up for a few months, and it came about after I asked my landlady Kate, who by the way charges me way way too much rent and has a sister in Poland called Ela who makes excellent soup and is very cool (happy now Ela?!!!!!), "where did you get that?". I was looking at her light grey metal dinosaur skeleton, which I thought looked pretty cool. She told me that Sean, a friend of hers, had made it for her, and hooked us up...

And the rest is history!

The End

Well OK, so I hooked up with Sean and explained this trading nothing thing, and asked him if he would like to make something for it...

...and he said "yes!" or it might even have been "yes!!!"

Now, Sean makes these things in his spare time. And he really doesn't make many at all, probably because he has better things to do when he isn't working, but also because he wants them to be that bit more special when he does make one.

Fast forward a few weeks and Sean had made not only another metal dinosaur skeleton for trading nothing, but also a metal spider. And he still intends to make a metal fly too.

The dinosaur, a Tyrannosaurus rex, ended up being painted textured black. That was after I had mulled over samples Sean had left with me and colour charts on the internet... and after all that, after weeks of deliberation, we decided to paint it black. Or rather both Sean and its future owner Lynda both expressed a preference for black, so they decided for me. Good job, because I might have made a horrible choice on my own, like bright orange or something.

Kate had chosen light grey for hers "to match the TV". Sorted.

But I did give this new creation an odd random name: Tommy Cooper Rex.

In case you haven't been following this story, I had agreed to trade Tommy Cooper Rex with artist and writer Lynda Cookson, before he even existed... that trade has also happened, more on that very soon!

So, with only Tommy Cooper Rex completed, Trade 6 Part 1 took place on January 18, 2007... but I'm going to scrub that one right here right now. It never happened, OK?

Soon after Stan the Spider was completed, and with Kate's metal fly standing in for the yet-to-be-made trading nothing metal fly, on February 1st, 2007 we did Trade 6 proper...

Notice Sean took the Evelyn Kharag painting "Krishna of Vrindavana"... in Trade 6 Part 1, which never happened, he had taken the painting "Lotus". But that didn't happen.

And this is oblivious Kate, who charges me way way way too much rent...

And finally, the only two in the world, discussing the pros and cons of mega-meteorites...

Posted by Andrew @ 12:06am

To see what I traded "Tommy Cooper Rex" the metal dinosaur skeleton for, click here
To see what I traded "Stan" the metal spider for, click here
To see what I traded "Ollie" the metal fly for, click here

To see how I got the Evelyn Kharag painting "Krishna of Vrindavana",  click here