Finally, 40 years after first having the idea, I have completed a painting of John Lennon based on the psychedelic poster issued in 1967.

It’s only thanks to Google Images that I have been able to fulfil this ambition, as  the posters sold out on the day of issue, and I didn’t have anything for reference.  However I was able to download a jpeg photo via Google, and used this as the basis for my canvas.

John Lennon is my favourite Beatle and because of that I was actually quite scared to commit any paint to canvas. If I was going to paint Lennon it had to be good, and I wasn’t sure how it woud turn out.

The Beatles evolved and changed with every album they issued. I prefer the second half of their career starting from the Revolver album. However there are some lovely tracks on Help, despite the heavy workload that the Beatles were operating under. Help was issued on 8th June 1965, and was both the soundtrack to the film and their 5th album in three years of intense activity.

The title track ‘Help’,was also a No.1 single of course. This was not a ‘churn it out’ pop song but a genuine plea from the heart. Lennon really was feeling stressed by his pressure-cooker Beatle existence…”When I was younger….I never needed any help in any way. Now those days are gone, I’m not so self assured….HELP I need somebody.”

Doesn’t time fly when you’re enjoying yourself? Here we are at the end of August and I haven’t given Internet Marketing a second thought. This may explain why this months income is 91 pence, and I’m not sure how that was produced? – (it comes from Adsense).

Looking at the list of websites it’s interesting to note that ‘copy-system.co.uk’, ‘copythisbusiness.co.uk’ and ‘provensystem.co.uk’ have hardly any visitors. These are actually duplicate sites of ‘lazywaytoriches.co.uk’ with a different first paragraph, based around keyword research. I don’t like the way these paragraphs read, but I was focused on getting as many of the targeted keywords published.

My first completed painting is an opening scene from the film Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick. Alex and his ‘Droogs’ are out looking for trouble, and unfortunately find a tramp sleeping in the subway. I won’t describe what happens next, but those of you who have seen the film know. 

I’ve always thought this to be a powerful image, with Kubrick filming from inside the subway looking out. This produces the extended shadows and contrast between dark and light.

The Silver Surfer had religious overtones when it was first published. The alien Norrin Radd had offered himself as a sacrifice to save his planet Zenn-La from Galactus – ‘the devourer of worlds’.

Galactus needed to consume living planets in order to survive.  However he transformed Norrin Radd into the Silver Surfer to become his herald, finding suitable alternative planets throughout the universe.

The adverts you see next to this post are from Clickbank. They pay around 50% commission, instead of cents per click from Google. If you haven’t already got these ads on your blog, go to Clickbank.com and download the script to your wordpress dashboard.

Apart from the high commission, another reason I like Clickbank is that you can change the colour scheme of the adverts, so they are compatible with your blog colours. My blog colours are blue and yellow, so I’ve changed the background colour of the adverts to yellow, and the headline text to blue.

Running marathons is hard work, and training for marathons is worse. I got my fastest marathon time during a mid-life crises, trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t really getting older.

I ran 2 hours 41 minutes in the London 1995 marathon, when I was 40 years old. Unfortunately an inevitable consequence of ageing is that you start to slow.

The big barrier for most club runners is the  sub 3 hour marathon, and this was becoming more and more difficult to achieve in my late 40’s. Also the high mileage I was running had given me heel spurs in both feet, so the training was becoming more uncomfortable.

1967 was the ’summer of love’, the Beatles had released Sgt. Pepper and had a number one hit that encapsulated the spirit of the times, with “all you need is love”.

I was a 13 year old teenager completely immersed in the music and psychedelia of the time, so when I heard that the Beatles were going to release psychedelic posters of themselves, I couldn’t wait to get hold of them.

The day the posters were released I went into my local branch of WH Smith Newsagents, and found them – trouble is they were expensive; 10/6 (or 52.5p in new money). No problem, I would save up my newspaper round money and get them later.