The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work

I have done nothing much but sleep over the past two days. But our son is now here and our daughter is enjoying the self-imposed mystery of a sleepover over at a friend's house. As I write, I can hear the artist gently urge our son to sleep. When not sleeping I have been loosely reassembling my thoughts - old and stiff playing cards drifting down a fast-moving mountain stream come to mind - while leafing through my notes and cards in my hardback notebook. It frustrates me that the artist had not been in touch with the gallery when they were making their various attempts to contact her, only because I had made provisions for that. But this is also her unique strength. She is so seeped in art itself she has no time to fathom its curricular business. However, we must now wait for the woman who came round to return from her holiday and this will not happen for over a week. When I sleep I am like a runway, across and upon which are landed planes of every hue. I have been back to the war zone. There is the plane of reason, the one of visuals, the jet of fury, the hot air balloon of comic self-indulgence. I will be returning to the war zone - the first trip was just a taster - and already I feel in touch with a different world. War, I hate to say it, can also bring out the best in people. The artist looked well when I collected her and the children from the station. She looked rested - from all the hard work and successful but tiring mothering. I sat facing them in the back of the taxi as the city became our backdrop and the road our good route back home. Strange without a close protection team. In our children's eyes are many corridors and I love each one. Now, as three candles burn without grief in the fireplace, and my fingers pound the keyboard, I am aware of the work I must now do in order to make good things happen. I am aware of the broken hearts and minds. The artist is best at making good things happen through hard work. She just doesn't like reading emails from prospective galleries. It is an intrinsic and undeserved and very beautiful fear of failure.