You're invited to read one of my short horror stories, Make Do and Mend , which was published in Flash Fiction Magazine yesterday. It's attracting some very lovely comments below it, also. Read it for FREE here: Flash Fiction Magazine 4.09.19 This is the second short story I've had published with this online magazine this year. You can read Whatsername  here: Flash Fiction Magazine 02.18.19

Bride of Dreams by Adele Cosgrove-Bray; oil on canvas; 2019. My most recent oil painting, Bride of Dreams , is a radical departure from the seascapes and shoreline landscapes which I've been creating over the last two or three years. While  Bride of Dreams  depicts a domestic interior, it also has a strong narrative quality and is laced with symbolism. I won't explain this symbolism to others; I'll leave each viewer to interpret it for themselves. The bride was modelled by Rose Mairs, and the drawings for this came from a themed session for the Oxton life drawing group which I attend. Rose won the photography section of last year's Williamson Art Gallery's Open Exhibition. The cat, Bob, belongs to Janine Pinion, who won the painting section of the same exhibition. I enjoyed a lovely narrowboat cruise along the Shropshire Union Canal recently, on a day which turned out to be the hottest on record. Top speed seemed to be 3 mph, which made a refreshing change

If you're a poet or someone who enjoys poetry, and in the Wirral area, then here's a forthcoming event for you. Technically, National Poetry Day will be held on the 3rd October, but this event will be held a day earlier to fit around other activity events within the venue. This open mic event will run from 3pm till 4.15pm, in the lovely surroundings of the Chatterbox Tea Room within Oxton Grange Care Home, 51 - 53 Bidston Road, Oxton, Wirral, CH43 6UJ. The venue is located half way along Bidston Road, offers full disabled access, and has a car park to the front of the building. Several buses service Bidston Road from Claughton or Birkenhead, and there are bus stops very close to the home.

Five cygnets with their parents, Birkenhead Park, June 2019. Regular visitors to Birkenhead Park, here in Wirral, have been thrilled with the successful hatching of five cygnets, which all seem to be healthy. Their proud parents are keeping a sharp watch over their silvery-grey brood, who seem to be growing by the day. I also saw two newly-hatched coots, and a mallard who was chirping orders to her flock of tiny brown balls of fluff, seven or eight in number. I tried photographing them but they were too small and too far away for my geriatric Kodak. (Click on photos to see images larger). Canada geese with two goslings - feeling outshone by the swans, maybe? I did some painting; nothing artistic, though, more a case of putting a coat of paint on the chunky edging stone with runs around the front of our house. I've used Wilko's  Summer Rain , so it matches our front door. It looks a lot like chalk paint but is much more practical. Colour-wise it's hard to descr

Birkenhead Park Visitor Centre, 7th April 2019, by Adele Cosgrove-Bray. My ongoing series of sketches in the park continues unabated, as is evident. On a few recent sketches I've added some simple washes of watercolour to bring another dimension to the scenes. I've long grown accustomed to sketching in public, and the few people who've passed any comment have always been encouraging. I've even unintentionally captured a tiny bit of park history:- I drew this lovely arching tree in February this year, and since then its own weight has pulled its roots out from the ground. Probably due to safety concerns, it has been brutally cut back so it's now little more than a stump, and the horizontal section, with all its vertical branches, has been removed. Hopefully the tree will survive this harsh treatment. "How can walkies please, when every step's a wheeze?" by Adele Cosgrove-Bray. Portrait by Adele Cosgrove-Bray; chalk and charcoal

Sunset at the Beach by Adele Cosgrove-Bray; oil on canvas; 2019. I finished this oil painting just this afternoon. It's my largest painting to date; you can see it here, balanced tentatively on my wooden French box easel, which is marketed as being portable though it isn't really, not unless you're willing to carry an attache-case-size tonne weight which requires a master of origami to unfold its various extendable bits, and which is guaranteed to spill the entire contents of its storage drawers over the floor in the process. Light Approaches by Adele Cosgrove-Bray; watercolour; 2019. I've begun looking for an easel which is genuinely suited to painting outdoors. It needs to be light but not so light it'll blow over with the first breeze. It needs to be suitable for both oils and watercolours, i.e. it needs to be able to offer vertical, tilted and horizontal angles. It does not need to have integrated storage, as a bag is more useful anyway. Try fitting sa