Wolf spirit haunts Bath street

Between showers and between being wet and being dry, the road outside is trying to convince me it is made of lizard, shark or dinosaur skin.

It has been quite a few years since I have made any figurative sculpture, but now I remember how you start to see everything in sculptural terms when trying to come up with solutions to 3D representational problems. Currently, it is pheasant's legs. Have you ever looked closely at the skin on the legs of a pheasant? The link between dinosaurs and birds becomes much clearer when you do.

When I was carving life-sized classical figures, I would find myself staring intently at the curve of a woman's arm at a party or wherever. When I was carving women's backsides, I was amazed at how much information I could effortlessly draw on which I had gathered over the years for other reasons.

Sometimes I overtake a woman in the street and recognise her from behind as someone I saw a few days ago, purely from the shape of her arse. I am good at retaining some information and very bad at others. I routinely correctly guess the nationality of women by the shape of their arses. The Spanish have the most distinct and easy to identify backsides.

I cannot remember the name of the autistic kid who was spotted by a famous British architect for having a truly photographic memory for architecture. He liked buildings.

His parents first noticed his prodigious skill after taking him out one day when he saw a large building which impressed him. When he got home he decided to draw it. It was correct in every minute detail.

The architect made a TV documentary with the boy, and in it he takes him to a few large London buildings. The boy looked at them - rather casually - for a matter of seconds, then went back to the office to reproduce them in pencil on paper. Every crocket, every pinnacle, every window and every detail was remembered and put down, the exact number of windows and precise juxtapositions in perfect scale to each other.

Ok, I know a woman's backside isn't quite as complex as Kings Cross Station, but there is more going on than just a couple of buns stuck next to each other.

Now here's a strange thing. Yesterday I heard the sound of a child howling like a wolf, and I looked out to see a young Arab boy with his lips pursed, howling into the sky as his parents made a phone call.

Just now I heard the same noise and I looked out expecting to see the same lad, but there was a young girl of the same age, making the same noise in the same place as she walked with her parents.

I might go down and see if I am affected by some sort wolf presence on that spot, but I think you probably have to be a child.