On my way home from work a wonderful moment occurred. I was flicking around the radio channels in the car and found someone talking about ‘Lamont said….’. I got pretty excited because I only know of one person called Lamont and that’s Lamont Dozier from H-D-H. It was them, all three of them, talking about those wonderful heady days of Motown when they were writing songs everyday and artists such as Smokey Robinson and The Four Tops were recording them. Oh how their stories brought me right back into a time when I was so excited to be discovering all the lush tunes they’d written and loving every last heart-wrenching lyric.

There is nothing I would have liked more than to ask these three magical men for their autographs and just be humble and look at them. I can’t describe how important all of those songs have been in the formation of my music taste and in my life generally. I would give anything for five minutes of their time so I could tell them how much I am in awe of their huge talent and how my heart leaps with joy when I hear the opening bars of one of their songs.

I can’t think of a single genre of music that I love more than the Tamla Motown classics and do you know what? When I got home I looked through my collection and they’re all gone. Every last one – I seem to have no vinyl or CD copies of any of that stuff. I can’t believe it. I’m going onto Amazon after I finish this to buy everything I can lay my hands on (in the cyber-sense).

I’d been thinking about trying another Vettriano tribute and I’d noticed he frequently paints women on chairs with their legs crossed…..and I heard him on a radio interview a couple of weeks ago when he talked about how he finds the act of putting on lipstick really erotic and he loves to watch women do it. I can’t excite David in this way because he doesn’t like lippy much and he’s completely against my kittens.

On the way from a trip to a client back to the office, I stopped at my sister’s house for a cup of tea and she commented on the fact that I was dressed up and the last few times she’s seen me I was in my Spurs shirt. I thought about the style of my dress (very 60s) and the kittens (also very 60s) and the music and decided I had to do a spoof 60s style pic and for me that fits really well with the Vettriano style.

David said ‘but your pics aren’t copies of any of his works’ and I said ‘that’s the point’ – I’m not trying to copy, simply to do something in the style of.

I’d had this idea some time ago but didn’t think I’d have the patience to make it work. I was ticked off yesterday by a number of people for not having enough faith in myself so I decided to push myself, borrowed the wide angle and had a go. It’s not really how I visualised it but it’s close enough.