It is another beautiful day today...and the sun is out again, (it was a little overcast this morning.

I have been up in my studio today, there was a bit of a barney this afternoon. One of the stallholders accused a traveller/gypsy of stealing from another stall and foolishly started a shouting match, using very abusive and degrading language.....before he knew where he was, items were flying at his head. He was very foolish in his words....by the time the security staff arrived, all they could do was keep the peace...the stallholder if he pressed any charges was leaving himself open to a lawsuit for abusive and racial assault, added to the fact he had physically grabbed and manhandled a teenage girl, leaving himself open to a counter charge of assault!
I am not surprised, some of the stallholders forget they are not a law unto themselves...our traveller families travel in large groups...and are not afraid to react with violence, and often are a law unto themselves, in that they are extremely difficult to track down if charged with an offence, living a nomadic life and often dozens of 'family' members have the same name, serving a warrant is almost impossible.

My brother Dominic arrives into Dublin tommorrow evening, along with my niece Laura, all the way from Melbourne, Australia. They are arriving to lovely warm weather, this is our best summer for a long time with near record temperatures. I have a brown lawn...all the grass is dead and burnt! I have been watering my pot plants and a little on my shrubs etc. but the lawn can be re-seeded and will come back but I am aware of water shortages down the road, we have had no rain and water levels have gone from high to normal in a matter of 3 weeks, they could be low within a week at this rate. It is very noticable when you are fishing on the lakes. Last week we were scraping rocks that were over a meter deep a week before!
I tied a few "fish food" dry flies today, little scruffy dry/emerger patterns for use in bright sunny and calm conditions....I think I'll be needing them next week!
I will be fishing a competition on wednesday...not particularly seriously but all the same I like to have the means to do well. I was at my bench (fly-tying bench) in the studio tying away and before I really realised it I had tied 2 dozen.
They all look good too, the fish-food look is a nondescript fly that could be half-a-dozen different insects, and sits lightly in the surface, representing either a hatching insect, a drowning insect, or even a landblown beetle....in other words it looks like food to any fish looking up at the surface and can often catch the opportunist feeder out of no-where when there is no particular rise or hatch on.
As you may gather, I'm not really painting at the moment...otherwise I'd be to busy to tie flies!


I need to get focused.

on painting, not fishing.