I’m on holidays at the moment, this means my activities for the last week has largely consisted of meeting friends and family. When my time has not been spent catching up with people I have not seen in a long time, it’s been constructively spent following the sun’s march across the sky in order to get maximum exposure for minimum effort.

Into this action-packed schedule I have still managed to squeeze in a bit of reading. As some of you might remember, a while ago I decided to reread and try to paint some of the Brothers Grimm fairytales. Today, whilst gently swinging in the hammock, it was the story of Briar Rose that caught my attention. After I read it I decided to do a first rough.

This will be developed into a proper painting when I get back to Ireland. It will hopefully be on display alongside Rapunzel and a couple of other bits and pieces at the Midleton food and drink festival in Midleton, Co. Cork on the 10th of September, but that is a completely different story.

For now let’s just remind ourselfs of the moral of Briar Rose story.

If you are a king throwing a party, with only twelve gold-plates and there are thirteen fairies in the kingdom, the sensible thing to do is to commission a thirteenth plate (or borrow of the neighbouring king, they are bound to have some). It is false economy to annoy a fairy in order to save on a gold-plate.

Shifting a full castles worth of briars and a century of accumulated dust must be a devil and will rack up the manhours something incredible.