Mike came to help me carve out Henry yesterday. It was a great afternoon out in the sunshine at the Folk in Gloucester, spot of lunch then a chip or two carving stone. You find out a lot about people if you walk or carve together. I had no idea that Mike was an expert in packing a suitcase, but then I wouldn’t. He’s a legend in his own lunchtime back home where he has the ultimate knack of packing. perhaps he should be called a Packing Knacker. No.

This is his first time carving and to be honest he made a pretty good job of it. Three of us crowded around a stone mouse was fun, Jim our expert hinting at what one might do next, and me art directing with cheese in mind. How to get cheese into the picture was on my mind, after all we want Henry to be happy.

We plan more chipping next week. In a sort of quid pro quo I’m going to help Jim with another creative endeavour, this time a book of his, which features a cat. We are sort of carving out a career for ourselves….a sort of cat and mouse game.