Remember when you were a kid and you had one of those colouring-in books? Page after page of outline drawings that usually came with a pack of colouring pencils.

To start with you had to be shown how to do this. Your first few (or more) attempts were not so good but, when you showed the picture to your parents, your grandparents or, in fact, anyone that would look at it you heard cries of ‘oh that’s very good’ or ‘what a lovely picture’ even if you had only drawn a series of lines and there had been little attempt of block-filling with colours.

After some time, you got better. You learnt that you had to keep the colour within the lines and that the colour had to be fairly even. At first, it did not seem to matter what colours you used. Faces that were green or blue; trees that were red; the sea that was pink. All were greeted with the same encouragement but, in time, you also learnt to make certain bits of the picture the right colour – and still, all within the lines that were preprinted.

What you didn’t realise was that it was one of your first lessons in life. Your parents and schoolteachers never did explain that, once you got the hang of it you should be living your whole life within the lines. Don’t step outside those lines. You could, if you were slightly strange, weird or creative, use the wrong colours – but never outside the lines, otherwise people would not look at the picture with anything other than barely-disguised disgust.

>It is always recognised that, occasionally, the pencil slips and we stray a little outside the lines for a moment but those who permanently stray outside the lines, as if on purpose, should not be allowed to continue their erring ways.

Some people, by only just going outside the lines and blurring the edges of the colours a bit, manage to go through their whole life without being ‘found out’. Others go outside the lines on only one or two occasions and the slip-up, given that the whole picture (it is your life, after all) is so small and insignificant that it is not noticed by other people or, if noticed, is ignored (since they are painting inside their own painting and inside their own lines).

In my picture I have done all of the above, occasional slips, blurring of colours, going outside the lines on small, insignificant parts of the picture.

Keeping within the lines makes us feel safe. Go outside the lines, we were warned as a child, would ruin the picture, making it unsafe.

But, to be honest, it is quite nice, however, scary, to sometimes paint outside the lines; to create your own picture without the restrictions of the lines that are preprinted; to be adventurous and bold; even to add the odd splash of inappropriate colour.

Why not? The finished picture should be your masterpiece!