40 + 30
Am I doing a re-enactment?… To mark it’s passing.
When I was 40… Lasted a long, long time.
I took my mother to the Turkish baths in Harrogate. How it hung loose in places… Is that what happens?”
My body… Other times sad… Cry right now. Loss… Desirability… Excitement… Used to be more exciting.
Mortality - the other word… Being around them, listening to their stuff…Talk about my mortality.
The older body… responsibility.
I was feeling inadequate. I felt a little bit intimidated. But then, I just kind of got into it… 
There was a loch there. The weather was sunny and hot. There were reeds. I’ve always enjoyed nude swimming.
I got to spend quite a lot of time in the loch.
A photograph of my grandmother… the same song that was later played at my father’s funeral. “I wish I knew …how it feels… to be free…”
Trusting… It was intense… cuts both ways. There were some people that were really irri-it-ating.
Painful stuff came up. The performance about my grandmother. I was in tears during that.
I would paint my body…large sheet of paper…painted quickly. Very quickly. Yellow, yellow mostly… Cheap paint.
Big brushes… felt pleasant… can’t remember.
A good feeling. The weather was warm. It was summer. I was young.
Moved my buttocks against the corner of the paper. Movements were instinctive. 
It wasn’t an audience as such. Performing for myself.
Don’t know what to do about the head. How to fill that empty shape. I wasn’t happy about the head.
Sometimes I feel pessimistic. “What’s the point of getting out of bed?
Too long farting around with it… Hanging in houses that I’ve lived in ever since.
Hesitate to say wisdom… Funny as I do now… Things seem funny.
Body painting a marker.
I’m still alive. Friends dead. Friends dead, sad to say… Can’t hear…can’t hear…can’t hear clearly.
"Open the boot. Shut the boot. Open the boot. Shut the boot. I am 70. I am 30.
"Open the boot. Shut the boot. Open the boot. Shut the boot. Put Teddy in. Take Teddy out. Put Teddy in. Take Teddy out. Open the boot. Shut the boot. I am 30.
"Open the boot. Shut the boot. Put Teddy in. Take Teddy out. I am 62, I am 5. I am 70!" 
40 + 30 was performed on 18th January, 2020, at Savings Bank, Glasgow, featuring Kate Clayton and MVBrown. Photography by Nathalie McGowan.