I remember being around when non-drip paint was invented, wearing a white coat, and trying to understand what the grownups were saying. Stuff about phase changes and molar concentrations. (Or that's what it sounded like). One thing I do remember is that there was no name for the stuff and that it began (in a tiny laboratory somewhere between Manchester and Bolton) as something called 'thixotropic paint additive'. It's all round the world now - but if I'd tried to describe it to you, in 1969, what would you have made of my story ? If I'd talked of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers then, it would just sound like nonsense as there were only thirty or forty people at the gigs, but now their personnel changes are minutely detailed.

It's the same with stones - exactly the same. The reason I seek a copyright-free Collingwood Bruce image is that by altering the size, transparency and orientation of one of the images of my carved fragment I will be able to superimpose it onto that - showing how it might have fit. (Then I can email it to the head of Bolton Museum with a request that he resign.) The specific difficulty you have is one of paradigm. You must have realised that if this fragment is of passage grave art is real (and what else can it realistically be ?) then the rest of my discoveries stand a very good chance of also being real. I'll have been working with stone as long as Julian has been twanging six strings. Are you going to tell him that he's playing out of tune ? Because that's what these fleckin' inane comments are saying to me.