Tuesday May 1st
Fifty Shades of Red
Semi-colons I shall abuse for you.
Parentheses I shall lose for you.
Correct me like you know you want to.
Repossess my nouns.
Cover me with red ink.
Slap my words around.
Infinitives I shall split for you.
Apostrophes I shall omit for you.
The mistakes I make are just for you,
Each greased-up grammar slip.
Let me feel the hardness of your edit,
Your disapproving nib.
Participles will be dangled,
Accents wrongly angled.
So lay me like a transitive verb.
Drip your ink upon my blotter.
Bore me rigid with your rules.
Fix me good and proper.
The erotic dreams have returned.
I had misused a semi-colon. Liz kept me behind for corrective therapy. I was to go through a set of uncorrected proofs for a new book in the Fifty Shades of Grey series and for every mistake I found, she’d remove an item of clothing, and for each one I missed she’d put on an item of clothing. I woke up just as she was putting on a third cardigan over her blouse, tank top and pullover.
Wednesday May 2nd
In my lunch hour, I quickly whizzed over to the bookshop to get my copy of Martin Amis’s Money for this month’s book group. I left, two hours later, having stocked up on a few other books that might come in handy one day: Oxford Modern English Grammar; The Penguin Guide to Punctuation; Kingsley Amis’ The King’s English; Lynn Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves; the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language; and Copyediting & Proofreading for Dummies.
Thursday May 3rd
It feels less like a reorganisation here than a Stalinist purge. A leaving card circulates on average every thirty minutes. It takes me forty-five minutes to write a message in one; by the afternoon, my in-tray was creaking under the strain. The comments within are accompanied by such a curious vocabulary, one far more suited to a book of remembrance: ‘You will never be forgotten’, ‘No longer by my side but always in my heart’, ‘You go to a better place’.
It seemed fitting that I should return home to find an invitation to a tarot reading next Thursday from Mrs McNulty. I can already guess what card she has lined up for me.
Friday May 4th
Star Wars Love Poem
Compared to you, the Diathim,*
beautiful winged sentients of Millius Prime,†
are worth not a druggat‡ or dime.
I would climb
the Gallo Mountains of Naboo§
without crampons to be with you.
If only there were
a Mon Calamari cruiser¶ at my service.
I would explore your surface,
gliding over
your two moons of Tattooine**
before plateauing
to lose myself
in the undergrowth of splendour
that is your Forest of Endor.††
I feel the throb of my lightsaber.
This poem is unlikely to be published
by Faber and Faber.
* Had to look that up.
† Had to look that up, too.
‡ A unit of currency that I looked up.
§ A place in one of the Star Wars films.
¶ I looked this up but still not sure what it means.
** Metaphor for breasts.
†† Forest of Endor.
I discovered through Twitter that today is Star Wars Day. That’s because ‘May the Fourth’ sounds very similar to ‘May the Force’; the latter phrase, I discovered, being a line of dialogue from that popular film franchise.
Liz, it seems, is a fan. She tweeted:
Her name was Yoda,
a showgirl she was.
This is very funny because Yoda – who is a character, I discovered, from the aforementioned box-office smash – frequently forms unusual speech patterns, based around an object-subject-verb word order. Liz takes this anastrophe and applies its logic to – what I discovered to be – the opening lines of the 1978 Barry Manilow song ‘Copacabana (At the Copa)’, substituting the name of the original protagonist, ‘Lola’, for that of ‘Yoda’, in a perfectly applied feminine rhyme. And that is why I found it so instantly funny.
I joined in the fun by posting up a Star Wars poem. I confess that I don’t know a huge amount about the films, but it’s amazing what five short hours on Wookiepedia can do.
I noted privately to Liz that Toby Salt seems rather aloof from the whole May the Fourth/Force thing, having not so much as mentioned it on Twitter all day. He seems far more concerned with advertising his forthcoming book and festival appearances. He has nearly two thousand followers now. I have fifty-two.
Saturday May 5th
Breaking Bard
English teacher turns
Shakespearian drug chef,
cooking and selling
crystal macbeth.
Dylan has been making me help him revise again. Sometimes the commitment of being a one-day-a-week father hangs heavy upon me, like a thick wool cardigan weighed down with a manual on responsible parenting in each pocket.
He’s studying Macbeth. Stuart is taking him to a performance tomorrow night at the Globe, with Bryan Cranston in the title role. They’ll be standing in the pit, he tells me, rather than watching it properly from the comfort of seats, as they would have done in Shakespeare’s time, and which I think is a little bit cheap of Stuart, if I’m honest.
Sunday May 6th
I’ve now received more than two hundred messages on Twitter informing me that Tatooine has three moons, not two. And that I hadn’t even spelt it correctly. Some people really need to reassess their life choices: Tatooine isn’t even real, for heaven’s sake! It’s just a stupid made-up planet from an exploitative, merchandise-driven film franchise cynically developed to extract as much money as possible from the pockets of children and adults who never quite managed to grow up. Given that, how many moons it has or doesn’t have is something of a moot point.
Liz has kept her copy-editing impulses in check and remained silent on the whole issue.
I posted up a poem entitled ‘Pedants’ in revenge:
Foot soldiers in the War on Error,
they’re here to save us from ourselves
with Fowler’s Modern English Usage
(first edition, nineteen twelve).
For these Crusaders of Correctness,
beloved Guardians of Grammar,
hunt down blunders big and small
upon which to wield their hammer.
They hold no fear that in doing so,
they will deprive the thing of life:
for it does not matter what it says,
what’s important is that it’s right.
Ten people have already pointed out to me that Fowler’s Modern English was first published in 1926 but that didn’t rhyme so the joke is on them really.
Monday May 7th
This Bank Holiday weekend has had a face on it like a wet Bank Holiday weekend. In theory, these should be the perfect conditions in which to tackle the Problem of the Dripping Tap in the Downstairs Bathroom but instead, I worked on a poem for Poetry Club. It picks up some of the themes of Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera and represents what future scholars of English literature may well describe as ‘a significant departure from Bilston’s previous work, signalling a new maturity as this promising – but often wayward – poet finally comes of age’.
Tuesday May 8th
So much for new maturity. Future scholars of English literature will be giggling in their twenty-fifth-century senior common rooms.
The evening had started promisingly enough. Chandrima had got us underway in her characteristically serene fashion as she ruminated on the restorative power of the peace lily before Kaylee took us in a different direction with a powerful spoken-word piece concerning institutionalised rape in an Alabaman women’s prison.
Douglas followed with what he claimed to be a ‘found poem’ concerning the Battle of Stalingrad, but which I’m pretty sure was just a lengthy extract from Antony Beevor. Mary then read a very moving poem concerning her fifth husband’s dementia. As she sat down, Kaylee grasped Mary’s hand in sympathy; her grandad had suffered from ‘Old-Timer’s Disease’, she said.
We were then ‘treated’ by Toby Salt to a new experimental piece based on a re-reading of an Ezra Pound canto that he’d been commissioned to write for Radio 4, presumably as filler for some ungodly-houred early morning programme. And then it was time for Liz. As ever, she filled my metaphorical basket; this time with a clever critique of contemporary consumerism in a poetic exploration of sex and shopping entitled ‘Unidentified Item in My Bagging Area’.
I was the last to go. It was only when I reached into the pocket of my favourite cardigan that I realised I wasn’t wearing my favourite cardigan, nor indeed did I have the love poem that was in its pocket. Mildly panicked, I reached for my phone. I was pretty sure there was a near-final version on it.
I announced the title – ‘Love in the Time of Cauliflower’ – and, with a deep breath, set about it:
‘Please marrow me, my beloved sweetcorn,
Lettuce beetroot to our hearts of romaine.
We must follow the courgette of our convictions
And transform our love into Great Artichoke.’
I am not a natural or confident performer. My primary aim when reading poetry in public is to get the words out without stumbling. I am so fixated on this that I often have no sense as to what it is that I’m reading. And that’s why – even as the sound of the audience’s laughter began to percolate my consciousness – I was oblivious to the fact that I’d inadvertently left my phone on its Auto-Courgette setting.
I pressed on:
‘Such lofty asparagus can’t be ignored.
You make my head spinach, for goodness’ sake.
Don’t make me go back to the drawing broad beans,
My magical Lady of the Kale.’
I could hear Toby Salt sniggering in the background. I admit to being a little surprised; this was a love poem, not one written for cheap laughs. I continued:
‘Love is chard and can hurt shallot;
Our emotional cabbage not inconsequential.
But I need you as my parsnip-in-crime
And together, we’ll reach our potato.’
I heard myself read the word ‘potato’. This puzzled me greatly: there were no potatoes in my poem. I ploughed on regardless:
‘I am a prisoner, trapped in your celery;
Without you I’m broccoli, defenceless.
For only you can salsify my desire,
And I, in turnip, will radish you senseless.’
No, that didn’t sound right at all. I looked up, confused. Liz was blushing. Toby Salt was guffawing and wiping tears from his eyes. I peered down at my phone and read the poem once more, this time in my head. Feeling stupid, I hastened back to the comfort of pistachios. Liz told me that she thought it delightful and it was my turn to blush. I played along with the pretence that it had been a deliberate ploy on my part.
Toby Salt, of course, was insufferable. He kept making jokes about it for the rest of the evening, at one point asking me whether I was familiar with the work of Seamus Auberginey. But the joke was on him; as everyone knows, the aubergine is a fruit rather than a vegetable. I held my tongue but I’m pretty sure that this fact was not lost on Liz and the rest of the group, and that Toby Salt must have looked very foolish indeed.
Liz came over to me as we were leaving. She had a spare ticket to see a play written by a friend of hers. It was for Thursday evening if I was interested.
‘It’ll be awful,’ she said. ‘Two and a half long hours of biting social commentary and hard-hitting political critique.’
It sounded wonderful. But then I remembered Mrs McNulty and the penis-shaped crop circle that had appeared on my back lawn the last time I had turned her down.
‘Sorry, I’d love to, but I can’t make Thursday,’ I replied. ‘I have to go to a tarot card reading or the evil spirits will become angry with me again.’
Liz gave me the kind of look that I was used to receiving from Sophie, one composed of disappointment and bemusement in equal measures.
‘Oh, well, maybe some other time, then,’ she said.
‘Yes, I’d like that very much,’ I responded, smiling flirtatiously. ‘How about . . .’
How about what exactly? A drink? An evening of cribbage? A day out at the Derwent Pencil Museum? And when? Next Tuesday? Tonight!? Three years hence?
It suddenly occurred to me that while my brain was rifling through the options (of which there were many and yet absolutely none at all), I was still smiling flirtatiously – except that by now it must be coming across more as a fixed grin or an unsettling leer, as I noticed the puzzled look on Liz’s face. My main priority had to be to bring my sentence to an end.
‘. . . some other time?’ I finished, lamely.
‘Y-e-s,’ she said slowly.
I was saved from further embarrassment by Kaylee.
‘What’s this I hear about a ticket going spare?’ she said.
‘A friend of mine has written a play,’ answered Liz. ‘But be warned, it’s all rather gruelling stuff: poverty, depression, suicide et cetera.’
‘Sounds perfect,’ said Kaylee. ‘We’ll just have to grim and bear it.’
Wednesday May 9th
Nietzsche Abhors a Vacuum
the
will
to
power
a
hoover
was
not
a Friedrich
manoeuvre
‘You see, Brian, when a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything.’
Thus spoke Tomas of Nietzsche, after he’d hoovered up the crumbs of today’s Twix from under my desk. I had confessed to him my crush on Liz, alongside my creeping despair that she might only like me for my poetry. It was a conversation I had been trying to have with the cat for several weeks now but having received very little by way of advice, Tomas was the next best thing.
‘All this Twitter nonsense can only get you so far. You must talk to her properly,’ he urged. ‘Ask her out on a date.’
‘I can’t!’ I cried. ‘Every time I try to talk to her, I end up with paralysis of the brain and tongue.’
‘But you must try, Brian! What is the worst that could happen?’
‘She says no? Or laughs in my face? Or, worse, agrees to meet up?’
‘Stop worrying about such nonsense. You must believe in yourself. Do not live your life in fear of rejection.’
‘I suppose you’re going to tell me next that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.’
Tomas shrugged.
‘This is all very well, Tomas, but how do I talk to her? What do I say?’
‘Only you can figure that one out,’ he said. ‘As Nietzsche once wrote: “No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.” ’
Brilliant. Thanks, Nietzsche. You’re about as much help as the cat.
Thursday May 10th
Mrs Nostradamus
It began like this:
I knew you were going to say that
he’d snapped,
after I told him to shift his arse
and look lively with the laundry.
I could see him cogitating
as he separated the whites.
Then, slowly: There will be rain.
And he was right, there was.
Three days later.
At first, he played it safe.
Kept it small. Local.
There will be a wedding before the year is out.
M. Bouchoir will rear a prize pig.
Crystal Balls, they called him.
He was clever, though.
Thought about the future.
Figured there was profit
to be had from prophecy.
He went for it big time.
Plagues and earthquakes.
Famines and floods. Wars.
The kings and queens
and their courtesans and courtiers
couldn’t get enough of it.
By that time, I’d had enough
and run off with M. Bouchard and his pig.
The end of the world it was, to him.
Poor Crystal Balls.
He didn’t see that coming.
She turned each card over slowly, only pausing between them to open her eyes wider, and let her jaw drop further. The Lovers. The Hermit. Judgement, and then, finally . . . David Beckham.
‘Death. He represents Death,’ said Mrs McNulty quickly. ‘I can’t find the original one so I used one of Kenny’s old football cards.’ Kenny is Mrs McNulty’s son and visits her rarely.
‘But what does it all mean?’ Dave asked, looking up from his phone. His cards had been read, too. Among them were The Emperor (wisdom) and Temperance (moderation) – so I knew it was all baloney. He’d also had The Hierophant but Mrs McNulty had passed over that one quickly. I don’t think she knows what a hierophant is.
‘We must remember that the tarot do not predict the future; they only show us the pathways that the future may take, and can be interpreted in many ways,’ she declared enigmatically. ‘But no matter how you read them, this doesn’t look good. This doesn’t look good at all.’
She patted my hand and did her best to give me an encouraging smile, promising to stay in touch should I ever find myself on the other side.
Friday May 11th
I have received confirmation about my redundancy money. £15,000 is a tidy sum for someone whose finances have always been historically messy. But I must learn to be prudent; it may be a while until I begin to earn substantial money from my poetry.
If only affluence bred confidence. The vow I’d made to Tomas to take the bull of romance by its love-sharpened horns has not sufficiently taken into account my aversion to blood sports. Liz remains ungored and unasked out.
Panicking, I sought refuge in the crossword. Two hours dripped by and all I had to show for my efforts was 17 across:
PEDETENTOUS (adj.): proceeding slowly.
Saturday May 12th
Dylan went inside while Sophie lectured me on the doorstep. GCSEs begin in a couple of weeks and I need to be more supportive of Dylan in his revision, she says. Unless I pull my socks up, he won’t get the grades of which he is capable, apparently. I listened sulkily.
‘He says it’s hard to concentrate at your house,’ she said.
‘That’ll be the students next door. They always play their music too loud. I’ll have another word. And then there’s Mrs McNulty and her sawing. I really don’t know what on earth it is that she’s making. I sometimes wonder wheth—’
‘It’s not the neighbours.’
‘Well, I can’t deny that the cat does make it diffic—’
‘Not the cat. You, Brian.’
‘Me?’
‘Dylan says that you’re always trying to distract him.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Reading him poems. Showing him tweets and videos. Suggesting films to watch. Dressing the cat up as a pirate.’
I smiled at the memory of the cat beneath her skull and crossbones tricorn.
‘I’m wondering whether he shouldn’t visit until his exams are over,’ she said.
I unsmiled. I promised to try harder. I’d remain focused. Do whatever was necessary. Help him as best I can. I went back inside. Dylan was reaching in his bag for his chemistry textbook.
‘Today,’ he announced solemnly, ‘it’s atomic structures and oxides.’
Sunday May 13th
Leak-end
With the day stretching ahead of me like a cat on a lap, it felt like the ideal opportunity to get in touch with Liz. I started to read Money.
It is 400 pages long! Ordinarily, I’d have no chance of completing it in time but given that I shall have more free time on my hands soon, I think this is very do-able.
The thought occurred to me that this may well be my last ‘weekend’, in a traditional sense; such distinctions between the working week and Saturday and Sunday will probably blur as my new life as a professional writer begins. With such idle daydreams the hours did pass, and by the time I stretched to turn my bedside light off, I’d already broken the back of page five.
Monday May 14th
The final archaeological assault on my officle has begun: the sorting and emptying, re-filing and binning and the gradual emptying of my stationery stockpiles, which I smuggle home in the crevices of my clothing, whistling as I walk past the security guard in the evening, like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape with his pockets weighed down with sand.
Tuesday May 15th
During today’s excavation, I uncovered an old LP of Rogers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music which had fallen behind my filing cabinet, along with an old photograph of Dylan as a toddler walking hand in hand with Sophie and me, and a certificate to verify that I had passed my Intermediate Excel course. The record, I think, had been an old Secret Santa present from about ten years ago before the unbroken run of pine-scented candles kicked in.
I took it home with me. It was heavily scratched but somehow didn’t jump. I played it through three times, and studied the photo, until a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall told me it was time for bed.
Wednesday May 16th
My Favourite Words
Pipette and plectrum, obumbrate and flimsy,
Balderdash, spatchcock, flapdoodle and whimsy,
Obnubilation and nontrepreneur:
These are a few of my favourite words.
Sachet, humdudgeon, haboob, hurly-burly,
Scroddled and dottle, goluptious and surly,
Mumpsimus, tawdry, decumbent and blurb:
These are a few of my favourite words.
Susurrus, zephyr, rubescent, boondoggle,
Reboant, gaggle, hubris and hornswoggle,
Refulgent, plethora, plinth and perturb:
These are a few of my favourite words.
When the rose droops
When the branch snags
When I’m lachrymose
I simply remember my favourite words
And then I don’t feel morose.
I came close to popping the question to Liz today. But I got stuck on the thorny issue of venue. I gave it some more thought as I cracked on with the laundry. A quick mental run-through of my favourite things and potential topics of discussion – detective series, crosswords, custard creams, the cat – confirmed to me that any attempts at prolonged and free-flowing dialogue would be risky indeed. I needed a venue or destination which might serve as a foil or shield so I wouldn’t be subjected to the relentless pressure of having to make conversation.
I concluded that more thinking was needed before hanging my heart out on the line like a pair of tatty, well-worn underpants.
Thursday May 17th
Monopoly
They met at a beauty contest. She came first, he second.
They monopolised each other. Prosperity beckoned.
Chancers of the exchequer, they advanced straight to go.
These were the good times. How the money flowed!
Stock sales and dividends. A building loan matured.
Bank errors in their favour. An inheritance secured.
And every birthday – to celebrate the pleasure –
each of their friends would pay them a tenner.
They owned the streets. But it began to unwind.
Found drunk in a sports car. A small speeding fine.
Doctor and hospital fees. The cost of street repairs.
The perilous state of their financial affairs.
The Super Tax hit them. They took out a loan.
They were dispossessed of their grand Mayfair home.
They’re in jail now. But no sign of contrition.
Last week, they won a crossword competition.
I’ve had another one of my dreams. I walked into the sitting room to find Liz reclining on a Monopoly board, naked except for a thin layer of banknotes which covered her like a cheap paper duvet. Laughing, she asked me to ‘strip her of her assets’. I began to peel the notes off her one by one, and slowly her smooth, pale skin revealed itself.
Each banknote stripped away, I would then set alight and we laughed once more as the paper crackled in the fireplace. But as I took another glance at the flickering of the flames, I noticed that, to my horror, it wasn’t Monopoly money at all – it was my redundancy money. The door suddenly crashed open and we became surrounded by policemen and fire fighters, and before I knew it, I was being carted off to the cells and I hadn’t even picked up a get-out-of-jail-free card.
I looked this up in my Dream Dictionary – once I’d located it on my bookshelf – but there was no mention of Monopoly nor any other property-based board games so I am none the wiser as to what it all means.
Friday May 18th
At three o’clock, I heard the dread squeak of the drinks trolley wheels as they trundled their way over to my officle, a desultory crowd of well-wishers and other ghouls trailing in its wake.
Janice said a few words about the enormous contribution I’d made and how the place wouldn’t be the same without me. I recognised most of it, including the amusing anecdotes, from her speech when Chris Jenkins left a couple of months before. In turn, I got up to say that although there were many things I’d miss about working here, the thing I’d miss the most was the wonderful people I had been so privileged to work alongside. I’d borrowed this speech from Chris Jenkins when he’d left a couple of months before. I was presented with a leaving card and the token gesture of a £25 book voucher.
Tomas was amongst those who gathered, having rearranged a seminar he was hosting on Wittgenstein and the Rules of Language in order to make an appearance. We have swapped phone numbers and vowed to stay in touch.
It wasn’t long before my imminently erstwhile colleagues began to drift back to their desks. I collected up my few remaining belongings, put them in my bag and slipped out the back door without further fuss, keen to avoid anyone who might hear the rattle of paper clips and staples in my pockets.
Saturday May 19th
Aujourd’hui j’ai révisé le français avec Dylan. Nous avons travaillé très dur. C’était bien ennuyant. Le chat dormait. Dave, Martin et Marvin ont mis leur musique très forte pendant tout l’après-midi et Mme McNulty a scié. Nous avons mangé tous les custard creams.
After I’d returned from chez Dylan, I noticed that he’d left his French Grammar and Practice book lying on the table. For reasons which remain unclear to me, I spent the evening leafing through its pages to find some of my favourite sentences and create a ‘found poem’ of sorts. I have called it ‘In Winter They Adjust the Thermostat’. À ces égards, nous passer le temps.
She’s leaving on the seventh of May.
‘Which dress do you like the best?’
She won’t answer me.
There are a few potatoes left.
She’s staying at home today.
The birds wake up early in summer.
She doesn’t want to see anybody.
Nothing’s changed.
The train arrives at two o’clock.
I don’t think about it any more.
She stops in front of a shop window.
There’s not a lot to see.
We don’t have enough time
To be born. To die. To come. To go.
In winter, they adjust the thermostat.
It’s raining. She can’t swim.
Sunday May 20th
Man of Action
I am writing to report my dissatisfaction.
How dare you say I am not a man of action.
You say I like:
to sleep, to loaf, to lie around,
to drift, to dawdle, to loll and lounge.
All verbs, I note.
Have you not heard
that verbs are known
as doing words?
There are times in life when you just have to seize the day. The ancient Romans used to have a phrase for this, so impatient were they to get on with things – tempus fugit – which literally means ‘to fight time’. For, they believed, in order for the day to be seized, time needs to be battled – and that’s exactly what I did today.
I had been giving some more thought to the business of how I might make some inroads into the whole Liz thing when my phone buzzed. There, among my Twitter notifications, was a message from Liz:
Fancy meeting up next Friday?
This was the opportunity I’d been seeking and I was determined to grab it with both of my grubby day-seizing hands. Not one to dither, after just forty-five minutes I had managed to fashion a reply that I thought struck exactly the right tone of acceptance and forthrightness:
Yes.
This was all very well but as any day-seizer worth the name knows, the devil is in the detail: we needed a where and a when. I waited for Liz to tell me. Five minutes later:
How about the Tate Modern?
12 o’clock?
The Slazenger tennis ball of day-seizing had been struck firmly back into my court. But this time the response was harder. It wasn’t simply a case of repeating my ‘Yes’ from earlier: I’d already ventured down that linguistic cul-de-sac and to remain in it would reveal a distinct lack of imagination. I needed a response that was not only affirmative but one that might subtly reveal my enthusiasm at such a prospect. In the end, I settled on:
Sounds good.
There are those who hang around waiting for life to come to them. But it won’t!
Some days, you just have to go out and find it.
Monday May 21st
I’ve come down with a severe case of affluenza. The redundancy money has only been in my bank account for a few hours but already I feel like a man transformed. I walk with the straightened gait and breezy self-confidence of a man who knows his own worth (£15,000).
All I need now is my writer’s shed. Until then, I’ve decided to take a well-earned staycation. I may knock off the odd poem in the interim but the serious business of writing will begin upon my shed’s arrival in a couple of weeks.
Besides, I have the whole business of meeting up with Liz to contend with and I always find it hard to write when my head is full of thoughts.
Tuesday May 22nd
A first date – if that’s what this is – in an art gallery is all very well but what if I’m asked to contribute an opinion or an original thought? What if I make some schoolboy error and get my Monets and Manets mixed up? Or mistake the cleaner’s bucket and mop for an exhibit?
When in doubt, read your way out. I headed to the bookshop in search of the reassurance of tomes. Two hours later, I staggered out with my booty: An Illustrated History of Modern Art; An Introduction to Impressionism; Art in the Twentieth Century; Degas for Dummies; The Bluffer’s Guide to Art; Short Introductions to Art Nouveau, Cubism, Conceptual Art, Pop Art; and a 700-page biography of Picasso.
When I got home, I took out an online annual subscription to the Grove Dictionary of Art just to be sure, and because the thirty-four-volume print edition is now out of print.
Wednesday May 23rd
It’s incredible what can be achieved when there’s not the inconvenience of a job to get in the way. If I had to sit an exam today on modern art, I’d be unnerving the other candidates by putting my hand up for more paper twenty minutes in.
I spent the afternoon creating prompt cards containing pertinent facts, which I intend to throw out there casually on Friday. For example:
- Picasso’s full name is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso.
- Frida Kahlo’s right leg was thinner than her left one. This was as a result of the polio she contracted as a child.
- Andy Warhol was a secret hoarder of pizza dough.
- Tracey Emin has a twin brother called Paul.
As I study them again several hours later, although they may be correct, I’m not entirely convinced that they’re very interesting. I’ve rehearsed a few in front of the cat but she’s barely stirred in response.
Thursday May 24th
What to wear to an art gallery? I consulted the internet. That was a mistake: it seems there is no clear consensus. Fashionista.com eloquently summed up the dilemma:
Dressing for an art exhibition presents a unique challenge. Turn up in your mufti and all will assume you’re a nobody or that everything in the gallery belongs to you. But arrive ‘too dressed’ and you will look as if you’re wearing the art.
Most evidence pointed to this being either smart-casual territory or casual-smart territory.
I set out for M&S with my points card.
Friday May 25th
A Brief History of Modern Art in Poetry
| 1. Impressionism Roses sway in softened reds Violets swim in murky blues. Sugar sparkles in the light, Blurring into golden you. |
2. Surrealism Roses are melting Violets are too. Ceci n’est pas le sucre. Keith is a giant crab. |
3. Abstract Expressionism |
4. Social Realism Roses are dead. Violence is rife. Don’t sugarcoat This bitter life. |
| 5. Pop Art Roses go BLAM! Violets go POW! Sugar is COOL! You are so WOW! |
6. Conceptual Art Roses are red, Coated in blood: A deer’s severed head Drips from above. |
It may not have gone swimmingly well but neither was it drowningly awful; it was something in the middle, a doggy-paddlingly mediocre affair, in which we felt pleased to have kept our heads above water even if we didn’t really get anywhere.
I met Liz on the steps. She looked like a Botticelli study of beauty, which made me feel like one of those blobby efforts by Francis Bacon, slapped onto canvas on one of his off days. All the same, I had the inner confidence that comes of someone sporting a new Blue Harbour shirt and who could feel the reassuring bulge of his deck of modern art fact cards in his left-hand chino pocket.
I tossed the first one out there as we gazed thoughtfully at a Giacometti:
‘It’s interesting to think of what else he might have done if he hadn’t died of pericarditis and chronic bronchitis at Kantonsspital in Churin, Switzerland in January 1966.’
Liz looked impressed.
We stared at Duchamp’s Fountain:
‘Whenever I see a Duchamp, I always think about what a good chess player he was – although he could never quite translate his success in France to the international stage, as we can see from his Olympiad record of four wins, twenty-two draws and twenty-six losses.’
We were looking at Picasso’s Weeping Woman, and I was halfway through telling her Picasso’s full name, when Liz interrupted:
‘Thanks for all the trivia, Brian. But how does this painting make you feel?’
I must admit this threw me. There was nothing in the books that prepared me for this. There was nothing in them about how I felt. I stared at the Weeping Woman, thinking hard.
‘Wittgenstein once said that “What can be shown cannot be said”,’ I responded, channelling my inner Tomas.
Liz nodded at this, although I couldn’t help thinking she seemed a little disappointed, too, as if this was a test and I’d come up short.
I kept the rest of my facts to myself as we continued our tour of the gallery. An hour or so later, we parted at the bus shelter in an awkward embrace, half-hug, half-sideways feint, as the bus approached. Just before she climbed aboard, she said: ‘I enjoyed today. We should do it again,’ before handing me her phone number on the back of a beer mat she’d stolen from the cafeteria.
Saturday May 26th
Love is Where the Lines Join Up
I’ve been doing maths revision with Dylan today. For once, I did not throw his books down in a fit of pique, attempt to worm my way out of it or suggest watching television. Instead, we got down to it for four hours – algebra, ratios, geometry and probability, taking in two-way tables, tree diagrams and Venn diagrams along the way.
I find there’s something very beautiful about a Venn diagram; it’s all in the way the curves intersect.
Sunday May 27th
‘ARE YOU READY?!!!’
We were watching British grime artist Diamond Gee-Zah (real name: Dennis Pike). The audience shouted back as if to say yes, we are ready, for all moments have led to this moment, and we find ourselves poised and primed in this near-perfect state of readiness. I could see Darren joining in but I didn’t add my voice to the response as I waited at the bar for another two pints.
‘I SAID, “ARE YOU READY???!!!” ’
The crowd was roaring now as they approached peak readiness.
That’s how it continued for most of the night against a backdrop of bass vibration and beats, pogoing and stomping. It was a rather intense, noisy affair for a Sunday evening, and I found myself wishing it was last Friday again, contemplating the slaughtered corpses of cows preserved in formaldehyde, with Liz.
‘I SAID . . . “ARE . . . YOU . . . READY???!!!” ’
Was I ready? Now there was a question.
When the lights came on at the end, Darren turned to me with a stupid smile and said: ‘I guess it’s a rap.’ I could tell he’d been waiting to say that all evening. I ignored his remark – as it only encourages him – and I was annoyed because I’d been waiting to say it, too.
Monday May 28th
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A Bank Holiday Monday empty of commitments and a reliable, if moderately speeded, Wi-Fi connection is a dangerous nexus for someone with a bank account oozing with redundancy money.
The focus of my online attentions was to find a few furnishings for my soon-to-arrive writer’s shed. I stuck to the essentials: a writing desk and chair, two floor-to-ceiling bookcases, an antique Remington home typewriter, a whiteboard for brainstorming writerly thoughts, a desk lamp, a standing lamp, some curtains, a rug, a small wood-burning stove, a yoga mat, a new kettle, two tins of Lapsang Souchong, coffee machine, two packets of fair-trade Sumatran kopi luwak coffee, a neo-Dada abstract painting by up-and-coming artist Monica Banerjee, three cushions, three Penguin Classics cushion covers, a footbath, a mini-fridge and an antique globe mini-bar.
I didn’t bother with stationery as I already have enough of that.
Tuesday May 29th
I’ve been carrying Liz’s beer mat around in my pocket since last Friday and although I’ve taken it out to stare at the digits from time to time – hourly, to be more precise – I have yet to take affirmative action of any description.
As is customary, I’ve been working hard at convincing myself that this inaction is borne of a deliberate long-term strategy of playing hard-to-get rather than the accumulation of years of shyness and social awkwardness.
And so, instead of picking up my phone and keying in those eleven simple digits, I choose rather to sit here, beneath the cat, and write a poem: not one for me to perform at next month’s Poetry Club; not one written for my own amusement; but one written because it feels like a kind of action even if no one will ever see it except me.
Please Excuse Me
My dear ambassador, I am afraid
I am unable to join your pompous parade
of dignitaries on Thursday evening,
because I am working my way through
seven seasons of The West Wing.
Such an enthralling drama, I have found;
it passed me by first time around.
How thoughtful of you to invite me
to this exhibition by contemporary artists
on ‘Post-Urban Space: Dislocation and Catharsis’;
it’s an important theme that resonates
deep within me. But I cannot make this date,
nor indeed the next six weeks;
I have to read ten thousand tweets.
Dear Lord and Lady Asquith, I was charmed
to receive in the post today, your card
inviting me to supper at Hedge End –
ever the magnificent setting.
Gustav’s profiteroles are legend.
I would love to come, I really would rather,
but I’ve reached a new level on Candy Crush Saga.
Thank you, world, for thinking of me.
I’ve never been much good at society.
Please do not think me rude
but I would rather hide my shyness
in solitude, behind a screen,
and use my own knife
to whittle down the hours of life,
to something barely seen.
Wednesday May 30th
Tonight was a new book group low for me. What with one thing (Liz) and another (Liz again), I hadn’t progressed further than page 12 of Money. I could sense the group’s disapprobation as I attempted to bring the conversation around from its very specific and limited focus on one particular novel written by one particular author at a very particular time, to a far broader and wide-ranging discussion of the whole nature and philosophy of money, along with the intrinsic flaws of the world financial system.
To illustrate my point, I showed how, through some strategic doodling and folding, it was possible to transform the Queen’s face on a ten-pound note into that of Amy Winehouse, but no one seemed to show any interest in this. What’s more, when I went up to the bar to get some more honey-roasted peanuts, the barman wouldn’t accept my money and threatened to report me for treason.
Thursday May 31st
I checked into Twitter to find a message waiting for me from Liz:
Want to meet up tomorrow?
It seemed that my spurious hard-to-get strategy had worked after all. There seemed little choice but to accept:
Sure. Where shall we go?
Please say somewhere with a ready supply of alcohol. Or, failing that, some place where talking is frowned upon, like the British Library. Or a Trappist monastery.
Betjeman Arms at 8?
Yes! A pub! Perhaps it was a Trappist pub. I could get there early and have a quick drink to steady my nerves. At 6.30, say.
OK. See you there!
I’d used the exclamation mark as a signifier of excitement. I hoped this wasn’t lost on Liz.
I shared the news with the cat. She gave me a look that was rather difficult to read but is perhaps most accurately translated as: ‘Try not to blow it this time, you idiot.’