I am lucky to have 600 words to write, it's possible to have none.

I am lucky, a lucky man. I have the luck of the Danish about me. You should hear what has happened to me recently. I shall tell you three pieces of luck that have blown my way. I believe they are blown, and drawn, and that movement can create a draught to draw.

Yesterday I had just been back from holiday for a day. I had been by Macphees for a fish supper which is magic enough, yet they seem to taste better if I eat while I is driving. I steer and with the other hand read my supper like Braille; feeling for the crunchiest bits of the fish, and choosing a nice complementary fat chip or getting a whole bouquet of

little ones; as you feel around As you fee|

the dish you start to really get to know your supper and can

around the place stashes of good bits and (“Sh you Start

Scout shop (there is only one) and buy as many as you like (many of which are now sponsored by the like of Woolworths and Compaq) and be instantly a God Scout) stuck onto the little man, and it was nice to see.

Technically those brackets within the other brackets were a first for me.*

Next piece of luck was closing the gates for a photographer in his car, forcing into a sudden slide the huge metal latch very hard across onto my finger and l was luckily holding a jumper over my arm which got into the workings and provided a padding to protect my finger; this jumper I only had with me because I had decided we should drive across town and go for it and get a colourful thing to wear instead of wearing just a pathy (not sic).

Third piece of luck was happening to stub my toe on a piece of sharp metal sticking out of some concrete in Barbados after my first morning of Yoga. This is a real mix this one: first I am lucky to be here, yet second I have already stubbed my other foot, third I was looking at another piece of sharp metal, thinking about stubbing my toe at the moment when I

remember positions of nice to really get to pushed my foot

pa'r'"9.5 ° ' ' yet The.b,""d know your through a stride uncertainty of the yield injects with the a bittersweet pang into the Supper and can

saliva gland . . . did I hit the place stashes ketchup . . . will I drop some. . of good bits

. anyway, I'm doing this as I

turn a corner and, in a bit of batter ecstasy-lapse, I let my cannaCoke fall over and spill on my small high dash.

So it was very lucky that I had an ornate Chinese spoon there and was able just to keep driving as I bailed cola out of the window. The amounts bailed were

unaH,but : ,cenanfly larger than No

Coke Bafled.Dash

wet, mind whet. Also on the dash was a Lego man and a scout badge for fire

raising. With the stickiness, the badge (which you are free to go into any

momentum of King Kung Fu and ripped three toes open.

The luck is that this was the worst foot injury I have ever had and on my only ever morning of Yoga, so I was able to breath my way through it and enjoy. More luck is that I almost never had a chance to stub my toes and recover because I nearly didn't make it out of the house; I was lying on the floor looking up at Racquel on the TV doing her positions, and the TV was too high and I'm straining to see her and I was lying on top of my own arms and was v.close to seizing up in a mid-faux-tantric- doublewank position.

’The luck of the Irish' must mean that although every nation is lucky it is best enjoyed when worn by the Irish who are all-singing all-dancing rascally-wag story-teller drinkers. They move, they draw.

There is a magic to these events, not solely in their happening, it is in the joy and consequences you have for them. It is lucky I have a column.

Artists stitch up the future

Thirteen Scottish artists have received commissions to produce cutting-edge work across the country. Glasgow’s New Media Scotland, which promotes arts activin shaped by new technology, selected the thirteen from over 100 applications, and Will pass on £126,000 from the SAC ’s National Lottery Fund.

The artists include Mandy McIntosh (work pictured), who'll film beautiful people in Aberdeen wearing a collection of digitally- created clothes; Anne Bevan, who’ll create an electronic work inspired by the oil industry; Beverley Hood, who’ll choreograph dancers then broadcast their performances to internet chat rooms; Colin Andrews, who’ll use electronic ghosts to trigger the voices of ghosts in six haunted houses; and Torsten Lauschmann, who’ll destroy video cameras in Dundee.

Also commis5ioned are Chris Bowman, Trevor Avery, Nigel Mullan, Euan Sutherland, Catriona Grant, Alistair Gentry, John Ebner, and Chris Rowland.

Meanwhile, Edinburgh City Council is followmg Glasgow’s lead and establishing a £10,000 fund for visual artists. Grants of up to £500 will be awarded to help artists in the capital develop their work. Details from Graeme McKechnie, 0131 657 4815.

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