Colourful animal head with paint drips

The ram went on the side of Mr Halloran's ice cream van on Tuesday, and I have not slept properly since, because the paint would not sit still. You know how the blue goes tacky in June. I had the pink for the muzzle and the red for the shadow under the jaw, and I was feathering the orange into the sky behind him when the rain came over the tops from Cragg Moor and set the whole side running.

Halloran stood in the yard with his cap in his hands and said, "That's ruined, Eddie," and I said, "Give it an hour." I did not know what I meant. I only knew the drips were already coming down the tin like wax off a candle, red at first and then a sort of green where the yellow had gone to muddy water, and I did not want to scrape them off.

So I left them. I let the rainbow bleed out across the back panel where the wash had gone wrong, took the fine brush to the curls of the horn, that blue like a cold river, and gave the ram one black line for an eye he had never had before. By Thursday the whole town had come to look. Mrs Ainsley from the post office said it looked like something you'd see after a bad pork pie. The vicar's boy wanted to climb in the back.

Halloran has bought me a pint and a new set of sable brushes. He drives the van round the estates now with the drips still on it, and the children stand on the kerb and count the colours. Come up at Whitsun and see it. You will have to pretend you did not notice the state of me.

Your loving brother, Eddie