This is the title of a forthcoming collection of poetry by Amanda Huggins, one of whose included poems forms the textual background of a painting made for Personal Practice. She loved the painting and asked if she could use it as an illustration, and as I had earlier asked her if I could use her words in the painting, of course the answer was yes! To work with the other illustrations, it needed to be black and white, so I put it through a variety of filters in Paintshop Pro and sent three for approval. Today we heard that it had been approved. Tickled pink doesn’t quite cover it.

The poem is called, ‘Not Quite You’ and it is about the death of Huggins’s cat. The painting was built on a similar scene at the Vet’s surgery where an elderly couple waited with their dog for that final goodbye. I called it ‘The Small Green Room’ but renamed it for this new place, ‘the day you make a memorial’.

The book is titled, ‘Talk to me about when we were perfect’ and will be published by Victorina press.

The book in which her poem first appeared is Huggins, A. 2021. The Collective Nouns for Birds, Maytree Press.