Writing on the Wall

In natures rhythm I awake as the moon sets and the sun is rising.
By 8 am. I am in seat 15, on the coach. The stranger to my left in 14, by 9 becomes my friend.
A coffee stop at 10.15am., and at 11 we are with other granulating vehicles, slipping the M.10’s narrow hourglass, through swelling suburbia, towards the mound of London’s art scene.

Arrival.

12pm. Country folk are shelled like peas from our protective coach, out into the harsh rut and thrust of city traffic among bag toting visitors.
I stand ruffled and pigeon toed in Trafalgar Square awkwardly awaiting my friend.
A song drifts over above the coloured medley of people, busy din and water fountains. The singer a diminutive figure, dressed in bright blue stiletto’s with an ultramarine and black dress and long white gloves.
Easily enchanted, I’m captive, joining her audience beneath the backdrop of The National Gallery.
Her piercing operatic octaves acoustically dissolve the huge stone pillars projecting her voice.
Then the Blue Bird stops singing, wraps her talent in a black shawl, gathers up her portable radio orchestra and money hat, leaves, bowing out to pattering applause and the flapping of wings.

Meeting.

My mobile phone vibrates… ‘I’m here’. - ‘So am I’- ‘I’m by the pillars where are you?’- ‘I’m at the front.’ ‘Ah!’-
‘I’m up the steps’. ‘Yes.’ There is the zooming together of eyes locking onto each other, mobiles clamped to ears.
Smiles. Call ended.
A warm embrace at the bottom of the steps, the comfort of familiarity, and delight in the planned anticipation of shared time.

Exhibitions.

David Hockney’s Portraits. Time becomes suspended, special tensions hover between couples, especially Mr. and Mrs. Clark. It’s a familiar painting but larger and more luminous than expected. All these earlier works appear radiant in a glowing Californian light. We share insights in the busy gallery, other people are dark shifting silhouettes, and I overhear comments and familiar questions of, how long a painting may have taken.
Its significance to artists is bewildering but important to others. I wonder and move on.
Decisive pen and inks, etchings and tenderly observed studies of his mother. Some later thinly worked self portraits.

Lunch.

We leave the confined building; escape its crowded marble floors for the cool park. On the way buy Sushi for lunch.
Beneath a canopy of Plain Trees find an empty seat. A solid London bench, it has heavy separating wooden arms. People spacers. Decide bench-mark boundaries are symbolic in cities, like walls dividing flats permit cultural diversity, poverty and wealth.
Seating like this is enforcing respect for boundaries.
But we lean across, share, dip rice bundles in Tamari. Laughing, we experience the green Wasabi kick. Its shocking blast, a ‘Devil’s Dip’ ride to the nasal passages.

Velazquez.

I am eager eyed, feast on the sumptuous sensuality, joy and intensity of vision. Velazquez’s skilful painterly expressing of flesh and fabric, brass pots and egg shells.
A wealth of deceptive simplicity.
In the paintings I see a profound respect for people and the everyday, through his art expanding it to become extra-ordinary.
Rooms full of powerful pictures speaking to me from over 400 years.

Why do people think time so important, a way to asses value perhaps?
I feel art can be created outside of a time framework. This is one of the pleasures within the discipline; not to be dominated by the dial, the flat face of 9 to 5.
I imagine at moments when Velazquez, Michelangelo or Leonardo made their art, an energising sun was luminous within the powerhouse of their creative being and they were without shadows.
Time stepped aside for them, put its hands together and prayed at their feet.
Their art is a living shadow stretching infinitely. The artist’s inner light is revealed for all.
Once laid down it is immense, it has no boundaries and will not be measured or contained by time.

Return.

Am I richer for this journey, yes?
Returning, I witness the parallel of still-green fields, the flit-metallic trading of passing cars and tinny glances through glass.
Visually a bit overwhelmed, I understand why drowning minds grab out for the yard-stick mast of time.
And over the engine hum think I can hear the incidental Opera Blue Bird sing.

Sometimes in the evenings I’m invited out to fill in Country Calendars, which occasionally inspires a bit of diary work.

The evening that I’ll describe for you, was as a result of a meeting when attending a Musical event I maybe told you about, and was a formal invitation to a dinner.

I accepted without realizing it was a Singles Night.

I arrived dutifully clutching my bottle of possibly inferior wine from the local Spar, a hasty choice and speedy drive along winding country roads, a few wrong turns that led me eventually to find the land mark crumbling stone pillars along a Welsh green lane.

Stepping out in my seriously high L.K.Bennett’s with the black bows; purchased one shopaholic day in Hampstead, I trod noisily up the gravel, loving a moment the warm damp evening air and entered the large dark doorway of this rambling country house.
 
I gave up my Chardonay but was reluctant to give up my coat, like a first day child at nursery but more from cold than fear, and was ushered into an amply furnished room.

To keep the sun out, the heavy brocade curtains had probably been closed all day to protect the surface of the family treasures.

Lack of illumination was I decided an invisible aspect of a wealthy inheritance and the northern chill a lack of ready finance.

When eventually I was introduced to some of the other guests I instantly forgot their names.

I am surprisingly distracting by being in other peoples curious interiors, seeing on the walls the conversations between ancestral portraits while at the same moment absorbing a living person on all the levels and add to that the need to retain bodily heat.

I was glad I’d worn more than was requested on the invite, ( jacket and tie).

I’d dressed demure and devastatingly low key in my blacks.

Standing in the shadows of the softly lit period drawing room with the other ladies, we looked like women from a Bronte novel patiently awaiting partners for the dance.

Every one assembled but it seemed our lovely hosts had invited three women and two men.

Did some one chicken out?

Later in the candle lit, kindly respectful of our personal patina dining room, we were offered chicken as part of the meal, was this the fate of our missing single guest?

The smiley man, who sat opposite across the mahogany and through the large silver candelabra, was Arron or was it Arnold from somewhere south.

I didn’t grasp the others name except he talked war and flew a lot, not during the meal though I’m glad to say.

I never discovered what everyone did, I guess I should ask.

I’m not as direct as our host.

Seriously, husbands matter to him it seams, maybe he’s OK with sharing though, as here we women had two, potentially, between three.

His introductory question to me, when we had sat together at the musical dinner event was, ‘and who is your husband?’

I could have said that’s for me to know and you to find out, or ‘and who is your wife?’

My reply was probably disappointing as he has a real nose for networking.

I hoped he had imagined a Russian Duke for me, and that’s what motivated him to arrange this charming meal, but he somewhat curtailed my chances as he seated me between him and his wife.

One of us Bronte’s told some really amusing travel tales between courses. Visits to ‘after the Raj’ type Palaces in India, where, ‘My Dear, the rain was running down the Rembrandts’.

Sipping the cellars best, the men were quieter, but nice guys and as I had to miss the coffee, I missed the kisses too.

I wonder if romance emerged from the sterling effort by my hosts and their enchanting children, who before I left, proceeded at about 11.30, to wind us in a magic spell by rushing around and around the table at some speed. Stopping only for moments to climb on any available lap and daintily demolish cheese, ensuring a vivid night between the sheets, though some fell asleep on the floor, so journeys to the loo had to be trodden with considerable care.

Going early, I picked my way out around midnight, as my drive was almost an hour.

I slept boringly well, and for a scary second on the way home behind the wheel.