the dolphins

In the summer of 2006, I came to Ménéac with my friend James, who was to spend 3 weeks with me before heading off to Greece to make a fresh start there. I was to spend 5 weeks here, and with help from James, would be 'decorating' this house to make it more to my taste. Well, it didn't quite work out like that, and within days, walls started coming down, wires were exposed, rotten wood went to the tip, the cellar floor was excavated. By the end of week 3, it was all too much for me, and the scale of what I'd taken on got to me. James suggested I dig out the bathroom mosaic tiles he'd rescued from a skip in Sheffield a couple of years earlier, and start a mosaic like I'd always planned to. It was one of the best things he ever did for me. It gave me enthusiasm again, and a goal for the bathroom, which by now had been reduced in size with a stud wall and new door that I'd put up. I decided on a large panel for the side of the bath - a bit ambitious for a beginner, but I liked the idea. I sketched out a design of an underwater scene, but when my new friend Bruno saw it, he suggested I put dolphins on instead of the fish I'd drawn. So that was how the design evolved.

2006 was a gorgeous summer, and I spent many happy afternoons in the yard behind the house, chopping and cracking small tiles into bits. James stayed for 3 months, I came backwards and forwards from Sheffield all summer, and Bruno dropped by most days to see the progress. Everyone had their favourite dolphin, including Patrick, my neighbour. James and I both came back to Ménéac at New Year, but the mosaic remained untouched as the kitchen floor came first.

It wasn't until summer 2007 that it was finished, along with a smaller one I started in Sheffield to go with it. Tiling and decorating the bathroom was my goal that summer, and I'd already decided that the panels were too good to be put on the side of the bath, so that is how they came to be on the walls. Incredibly, I managed to get them up there all on my own one boiling hot saturday lunchtime as a wedding party was coming out of the church. I hated the job of grouting them, and swore I would never do another mosaic as detailed as that again! And I also made up my mind to come here to live.