Lino print
Actual image 60 x 40 cm
Limited edition of 100
No mount
No frame
Hand burnished on quality cartridge paper
 
I remember years ago enjoying the stories  R K Narayan wrote about a fictitious town in Southern India. Malgudi:
“It was a town created from his own experience, his childhood, his upbringing. The people in it were people he met every day. He thus created a place which every Indian could relate to.”
It was this notion which led me to stand in the middle of the road, near the Traquair Arms, puzzling on how take in the spire of St Joseph`s church (it`s Gothic, Scooby Doo architecture), Lee Penn, the busy road junction and, importantly, No 1 Peebles Road; the coffee shop.
This was my first lino cut for many years; since becoming a dad really. My tools were blunt, my technique rusty.
I`m not by nature a “storyteller”  in the sitting-down-and-telling-people-an-anecdote sense. However, through making pictures I had a strong wish to celebrate the comings and goings in and around a town I love and which I strongly associate with the childhood of our children.
The cafe sits on a corner, at a road junction which is like the confluence of 3 rivers. Echoing the confluence of three real rivers at Innerleithen: the Quair, Leithen Water and the Tweed.
Being a mountainbiking town, rescue helicopters have been a regular presence. And, in the spirit of Malgudi, I added local friends and acquaintances: Hedley assisting the Mountain Rescue in his beloved Landy, Mike and Jennifer taking their greyhound Luke for a walk. Looking up startled at the great, clattering machine flying overhead.