Victoria Gallery 2, Stephenson 0

This might make you laugh.

Some of you may remember when, years ago, I had to replace the missing feet on a statue of Hebe by the sculptor Canova. The original was in marble, but mine was in concrete so I had to model the feet against the exposed metal armature of the figure, then cast the feet directly against it having made a plaster negative mould from the clay model.

I began the tedious business of researching Canova's Hebe by trawling through books and photos, even going to Bristol where I knew there to be a large book on him in the main library. These were the days before Googling.

All the photos were in moody, subdued light and none featured the feet in any detail, so I sort of had to make it up as I went along. In the end, I made a perfectly good job of giving Hebe a new pair of feet and the figure was sold by the antique dealer who asked me to restore it.

My research told me that Canova made three copies of Hebe - there are three originals dotted around the world, all in public collections. Suddenly one day, I began to get an inkling that I had seen one of them fairly recently but could not think where. Then I remembered.

On the other side of that wall in the photo is the Victoria Art Gallery. It has one of the original marble Hebe figures in its permanent collection. I can actually see the top of her head from my bedroom window. In fact, I have seen it every day for the last 28 years.

My latest project involves a niche in an arched alcove with stone quoins and voussoirs on the face of the front wall. I am drawing it out now. I was going to have the cut stones surrounded by rustic, tufa-like stone, randomly set between the voussoirs and keystone, but my client decided he wanted coursed, cut stone on the whole of the face with the tufa only in the niche itself.

I went back to the drawing and began wracking my brains about how to run the coursed stone up against the quoins and voussoirs in a visually satisfying manner. I tried to Google-up similar examples on the net, but could not think of the right words to use without confusing Google's vast but simple brain with its limited vocabulary.

The other day I looked out of the window and the answer was staring me in the face. I had been looking at it for the last 28 years. That little boy seems as though he is thinking of giving up on me for an idiot.