The Real Talent in This Family

If you go through back issues of Match of the Day magazine, in one of them you'll find a three-page profile of Niall Quinn that includes a photograph of a small sculpture of his first racehorse. It was bought for him as a birthday present by his wife, and it was made by my ridiculously gifted father, who, upon retirement from a life-time in diecasting, decided to put his skills to more creative use and converted his garage into a foundry-cum-studio where he began molding and casting statues/sculptures of horses. This dexterity may or may not have been passed down to Mart and me, but we don't in any case have the necessary knowledge to find out (all our talent seems to be in our feet). However, another of our number has been able to parlay his artistic talents into a job, designing and painting frescoes in schools around the West Midlands. I present for your delectation just a couple of his recent works, guaranteed to excite and scare kids and any 19th-century Parisian cinema-goers.