This was the watercolour for a later painting I did for my Mum and Dad to celebrate all the happy times we have had on Gower. We first came when I was a kid… staying in an orange and brown, canvas tent, soggy with rain, long grass. The old Mark 1 land-rover parked alongside, my dad in sandals because he forgot any other shoes. The barrel of cider parked on the table. Laughter in the waves…..

I miss my Dad but looking at this picture his gentle voice echos in my mind…..and the years fall away……I am sat beside him on the sofa. ‘Crazy’ the white and tabby cat Tracey Emin gifted to me as a student is stretched across his lap, they are inseparable….. I left him with them when I was homeless……..Dad loved him so much, he stayed…………We sit in silence together which is fine…………..

……..falling back in time, sat in the same spot watching the Original Star Trek, in glorious colour on our new white Triniton TV. ……he told me I could stay up to watch…….Mum clatters in the kitchen in disapproval….

………Then I am watching him glass-blow, the flame orange and blue as he slowly turns the glass in his fingers…..he has allowed me into the small back garden workshop……. I wish he would teach me, but know he thinks I am not patient enough, and he is tired of doing it now. The white asbestos the company he worked for had him use when he began, is hidden in his lungs, it will pull a huge price in a few years…

………it is dusk, on a summers eve, he stands at my shoulder guiding me through learning to steer the family boat down the inky canal, bats darting ahead….we glide together.

……..waking from a measles fever, he smiles at me from where he sat watching over me by my bedside. “You will be ok now”. I know I am safe and loved.

We walk from the Midlands hospital, knowing now the asbestos is now reveled…. bringing his time with us to and end. He smiles at me, those wonderful eyes still gentle…..and tells me ‘I am grateful, I have been expecting it for years….I am in my 80’s, I can’t complain”……..