my life as a artist
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bang
Tuesday 13th November 2007 11:33 PM
This morning, when I went to the newsagents to buy a kilo of Guardian, Greg-behind-the-counter was having a heated debate with Mrs Blackmore, about the big bang theory. Greg, who's a big man, (and generally prone to largeness), was getting quite red in the face, and had started inter-fucking-spersing words with profanities.
Mrs Blackmore, a leathery, hard-faced woman in her late seventies, was not intimidated, and besides enthusiastically positing that the cosmos was the result of a big bang, fifteen billion years ago, she was also demanding her copy of the Daily Mail and a walnut whip, in a fierce, phlegmy, high-pitched, rattling voice, not unlike the sound a two-stroke motorbike being thrashed around the estate.
Although enjoying the smell of burnt oil, and the cut and thrust of conflicting creation myths, I was getting impatient to make my purchase. The Guardian was getting so heavy that I'd already had to jettison Work and Money.
'Excuse me' I said, in my calmest voice, 'My mum says that the laws of angular momentum prove that the universe is isotropic'
There was a brief silence. 'Why didn't you say so before, young man?' said Mrs Blackmore, her voice softening, and her now smiling, leathery face twinkling. As she left the shop she said 'Bang goes my theory!' and laughed.
Afterwards, Greg was so grateful that he said I could flick through the sports section of the Yorkshire Post without having to buy it, to see if there was anything about Huddersfield Town. Before I left, he asked me for some advice about his hair. At the moment he wears it very close cropped, like a Russian weightlifter, and he said that he'd been thinking of having a different style, something that was softer and spoke more of his inner feminine.
I suggested that he grow it longer, and have a power bob, like Anna Wintour, the legendary US editor of Vogue magazine. His eyes shone as I showed him an example from the fashion section of the Guardian. 'It's a lot of maintenance, but I think it'd really suit you.' I said, leaving him the section to look at later. By the time I left, the Guardian was manageable enough to carry home.
In the interests of social critique, over a saucer of soya milk, I read the Charlie Booker column. I recently heard him introduced on a radio 4 programme as 'the cleverest person that Ian Hislop's says he's ever sat next to.' Greg says that the laws of angular momentum prove that the uni-shagging-verse is iso-fucking-tropic.
Posted 11:33 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
the wanderer returns
Thursday 8th November 2007 9:01 PM
Hello Mr and Mrs Blogwatcher! Greetings to you, your gracefully aging parents, and all your beautiful sons and daughters! I have been away, with the poetry, the art, the tide and the fairies, on the lost shores of Aldeburgh, where Suffolk loses its toe-hold, and slips into the sea.
Aldeburgh's charming oddness and sense of singularity was enhanced and echoed by my inability to get a signal for my mobile phone or the internet connection for the lap-top. Sometimes it was like being in an Orwellian sci-fi novel called '1957'.
On my first night, I ate in the restaurant that seemed to offer the best vegetarian option. However, it turned out to be one of those nouvelle 'excuse me waiter, my plate's dirty' cuisine sort of places, so the three-bean wrap I ordered was exactly that. When the waitress brought it over, I thought she was being like a wine-waiter that pours you half an inch as a taster, so after I'd eaten it, I called her over, and said 'That's fine, I'll have some of that.' Instead, she brought me a bill for sixteen pounds, so I ate that instead, but it tasted a bit bitter and overcooked.
On Thursday night, the joint launch of the festival and the exhibition was held in the Peter Pears gallery. I got slightly drunk on red wine, and sold four text-pieces to a golden Labrador, called Tim. On Friday I stayed in and counted my dog biscuits.
On Saturday afternoon, I did a gig with Owen O'Neill, an Irish poet and playwright that I used to do comedy gigs with fifteen years ago. Aldeburgh's attentive, genteel atmosphere was very different to those days, and I'm sure that Owen found their murmurs of respectful appreciation infinitely preferable to the comedy club's usual, cheery shouts of 'Fuck off you ginger twat'
On Saturday night I had my solo gig in the Jubilee Hall. It went very well, except for a slightly strangulated laugh after I said, 'I asked the woman in the jewellers shop if they sold crucifixes. She went into the backroom, and after a short while said 'Do you want a plain one or one with a little man on?'
On Sunday, before I took the exhibition down, I sold another three paintings. ( I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, and cried 'A sale! A sale!') Such are my new-found riches, that as soon as I got back to York, I bought a bottle of maple syrup, which I blended with lime juice, fresh herbs, garlic, ginger and chilli, and savoured the sweet tang of success.
Meanwhile, outside, under the duvet of night, there are moans and rustlings, as the trees are being undressed by the ravishing wind. Mucky buggers.
Posted 9:01 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
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