for friends everywhere

And so another Christmas Eve is upon us. Did we get all that we had hoped to accomplish done, make everything as perfect as we had envisioned or perhaps cut back, refine, rediscover those simpler things that we had lost sight of? As we celebrate over the next few days our hope is, as always, for a most excellent coming year for everyone – Best Wishes for Health and Happiness –  the rest is just icing on the cake!

This fortnight’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge theme – Wishes – is simple, it is whatever you want it to be. “What are your wishes for the coming year?” – Peace on earth, good will to men, more fun, more sun, more hours in the day like way back when, less noise, no batteries in toys, clear sailing or a new adventure …  We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, some great entries and the guidelines for this fortnight’s challenge can be found here. Need more info or want to browse past themes? Have a look at HOW DOES THIS WORK.

Ronald searle – never a path untrodden

Some of our earliest memories involve art – the back studio where a big work was always in progress, inky-smelling magazines with weird abstract sculptures highlighted on the thick pages, compilations of odd cartoonists work, the seemingly constant to and fro of scraggly painters, artists models, ad execs, copy-writers and their hangers on coming into the house always, it seemed, around supper time and staying late into the night. Long past our bed-time we would steal into the living room, ducking dangling cigarette ash and navigate between the elbows and cocktail glasses to the coffee table piled high with Horizons and New Yorkers. A small, pyjama-clad child with an armload of magazines wasn’t of much interest and didn’t warrant much more than a raised eyebrow.

It is no wonder that we have wound up here with such childhood influences. Perhaps if the pages turned by the glow of a flashlight had been filled with the wonders of Arctic exploration, the miracles of science or how to rebuild the engine on a ’55 Chevy, life would have been considerably different. Not to say that those things don’t fascinate us but they don’t inform our daily work nor have they become as integral, in the long run, to the way we see the world. The choices we made along the way made us veer off on tangents, brought us back to the main or sent us off on wild goose chases but this fortnight’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge theme – Paths – reminds us that we were set on the road to who we have become far further back than we might like to think.

Across the Bored noticed last week that everyone today seems to be going somewhere in a hurry – “Where do the paths lead in your world?” – Round in circles, up steep hills, through the countryside or urban jungle, away from family, back into a lover’s arms, down the road to perdition or happily forward into the future …  We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, some great entries and the guidelines for this fortnight’s challenge can be found here. Need more info or want to browse past themes? Have a look at HOW DOES THIS WORK.