This painting was started in Glasgow in1995. It was finished in London 2001 prior to its exhibition in Thirsk at Zillah Bell Contemporary Art.

It took me through my finals, my jobhunting, my move to London (when it was removed from its stretchers and reassembled in Blackheath). It carried on growing through 1996. It moved to Clapham in the same year, but I didn't get much chance to work on it as I was apprenticed as an editorial assistant at Chatto & Windus. When I had to leave Chatto (due to pregnancy and depression) the painting started to develop again. It moved again in November 1997 to Deptford where it was hung above the sofa, and it was on that wall that it was worked on for three and a half years inbetween having babies, feeding babies, changing nappies, doing shopping, walking prams and pushchairs everywhere (we had no car until 2001). When the work was accepted for exhibition in Thirsk, extra impetus was put onto completing this many layered creature. I replanned and set out to finish it at last. It has lived in Thirsk ever since.

I feel it is a bit like the embroidery of the Five Sisters, a tale told in Nicholas Nickleby. It saw me through many happy times and got me through many unhappy times.

I see it as the strongest single expression of myself and my changing times.

While we were living in Deptford, the painting could clearly be seen from the windows of the double decker buses that passed our flat twenty four hours a day. At one time it was mirrored on the huge billboards across the road in an advertisement for the new volkswagen beetle. The advert also juxtaposed the snakes and ladders board with a crossword puzzle.