Our Two Contemporary Apartments are now available
* Ideal for visitors looking for a quiet stay in the heart of Worcester, UK
* Architect designed accommodation
* Private, tranquil location * Situated in large garden
* Easily accessible * Ideal base to explore Worcestershire
Four Seasons, (74) Battenhall Avenue,
Worcester, WR5 2HW
www.worcester4seasons.co.uk
(01905) 357563
This week I was fortunate enough to spend a number of hours visiting two major art collections: first the Barber Institute of Fine Art in Birmingham, the second the National Museum in Cardiff. It is always fascinating to see artists represented in different collections; paintings produced perhaps a few years apart: different but complimentary. I saw two examples of Richard Wilson for example, two of Corot, two of Whistler, many by Gwen John, two by Howard Hodgkin. The first viewed in England’s second city, the second in Wales’ first city.
In Cardiff the visit was followed by a well spent half hour in the Martin Tinney Gallery in St Andrew’ s Crescent. This was followed by a boat trip on the aquabus down the Taff to Cardiff Bay via Penarth, followed by a quick dash into John Lewis where we watched a programme about my favourite US artist Frank Stella, then finished with an evening in St David’s Hall listening to the BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales (with choristers from Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester Cathedrals).
The rendition of John Adams’ deeply felt tribute to the victims of the 9/11 tragedy was as expected very moving and there followed an interval. It was just coming to a close with requests for us to return to our seats when the announcements were swiftly replaced by orders for us to evacuate the auditorium immediately. Traipsing at a snail’s pace down the stairs from level 3 behind the elderly and infirm we naturally thought of those caught up in the twin towers a decade ago. Fortunately for us the firemen soon declared our emergency all clear and we were allowed back in to the auditorium to hear Thierry Fischer conduct Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 with Rebecca Evans, Hanne Fischer, Andrew Kennedy and Matthew Rose. It had been a false alarm.
If only that had been the case ten years ago.
It’s the second week back into college and I’ve lost the keys to my cupboard. The first week I was able to blag it by borrowing paper from another department and lending my own pencils to any student who dared show up at art college without a pencil. But now week two is upon me and I’ve spent the last week turning out handbags, going through pockets, checking the glove compartment in the car, searching high and low, even praying to the Almighty that they will materialise before tomorrow morning when I am faced with a new intake of students newly arrived from all over the country as they look at me wondering why I can’t access my own materials cupboards and give them a full set of pastels and white paper not beige.
I woke up in a cold sweat this morning thinking teaching isn’t so bad, grateful that I only work part time, but then I remembered the keys. Panic set in and I calmed myself down with the thought that if necessary I’ll get the technician to use bolt cutters to slice through the padlocks. But it seems such a waste of perfectly good padlocks. So I keep trying to think back to when I last had them, what I was wearing, where I might have put them. I’m a bit touchy about keys; in my youth I lost, sorry mislaid, a fair few sets including car keys. But now at home for the last twelve years we have had a key drawer and I religiously fling car keys in there the minute I come through the door. It is a key depository and everybody uses it. Most of the time.
I now vaguely remember removing my heavy set of college keys from the lanyard and name badge so that end of term photocopying would be easier. I should have known about the potential September cold sweats and put them somewhere safe. Logically this should have been in the key drawer.
But very occasionally I have a bright idea and think of a new safe place. Like a few years ago when we were going away on holiday. I decided to put all my favourite bijoux pieces into a new very safe place. The only trouble was when I got home I couldn’t for the life of me remember where that might be. I’d gone blank. A year later, I got out my Green flash pumps from the back of my wardrobe to play a very rare game of tennis and two gold bangles and a pair of gold earrings were lurking in the toe. I was both elated and furious at the same time. Oh yes, I know all about safe places.
Those keys could be anywhere.
Twice this week I’ve been wrong footed. I was up at the Barber Institute on Tuesday delivering paintings for submission to the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2011 and ambled upstairs to see the exhibition Court on Canvas. At the top of the stairs I turned left into the exhibition and had a quick look but wasn’t overly impressed. There were black and white photographs of Billie-Jean King, a cheeky tennis poster (you know the one), a range of tennis rackets from throughout the ages, a case full of art deco jewellery featuring tennis motifs etc etc. All well and good but nothing exactly scintillating. So I continued on into the permanent collection, mildly disappointed, enjoying the Howard Hodgkin as always, revisiting the Vuillard, the Bonnard, Sickert, and onto my Frans Hals and Bellini favourites. I paused for a moment to listen to various excellent explanations of paintings to a school party by a young museum officer before turning right into the final room and catching the train home. Imagine my surprise therefore when I found THIS was the main room of superb, fantactic tennis paintings and prints featuring works by Eric Gill, Edward Ravilious, Percy Shakespeare, Paul Nash, Sir John Lavery, Stanley Spencer and E.H.Shephard. I was gobsmacked and spellbound, in equal measures; it’s an ace exhibition and well worth seeing. But nearly missed it.
Blow me if a similar thing didn’t happen yesterday! I met a dear friend at Compton Verney near Stratford to take in the current Stanley Spencer and the English Garden exhibition. We did a couple of rooms of garden paintings before finishing off in the final room to watch the film about his life and career. This film had originally come out in the late 70s when we had both seen the Stanley Spencer exhibition at the Royal Academy as part of our O-level studies. It was quite a long film and what with the wooden floors, visiting school parties, and open plan nature of the gallery adversely affecting the accoustics, barely audible at times. We both stuck it out however and by the end were ready to go for lunch rating the experience overall as very good but not fantastic. As we walked back through the galleries we suddenly spotted a small sign on a door saying ‘exhibition continues’. This only turned out to be the entrance to the main exhibition which we had very nearly missed: two massive rooms of far more major works than those in the previous rooms.
Later I popped into the RSC theatre to see the current Folio exhibition- a response to Shakespeare by staff and student printmakers at the RCA; prints by Norman Ackroyd, Alistair Grant (my old tutor), Joe Tilson, Elizabeth Frink and many others. It was a lovely exhibition and well worth seeing. On the two and a half hour train journey from Worcester to Stratford first thing I had got talking to two ladies about their day trip to Stratford. What are you going to do there, I asked casually. Go on the river, they replied. Well, you could always go into the theatre, I suggested. There followed a pregnant pause. Why would we want to do that? they asked in unison. Well, because it’s the home of Shakespeare theatre, they’ve just spent a trillion pounds rebuilding it, you can get a cup of tea, visit the gift shop, see an exhibition, it’s the RSC’s 50th birthday, lots of reasons, blah, blah, blah, but I suspect my well meaning suggestions were falling on deaf ears.
Have you ever stopped to think about the clothes you most remember from childhood?
When I was young I do recall having a little red raincoat with a Peter Pan collar, a smocked yoke and red heart shaped buttons with white contrast trim. It swang as I walked and was an obvious throw back to the 50s, and I loved it. A few years later I was the proud owner of an in your face multicoloured anorak with a zip fastener that must have been in the sale because the first day it was worn was the hottest July day on record and I couldn’t wait to wear it round to my best friend’s half a mile away; needless to say I arrived two stones lighter and glistening to put it mildly. The next coat I remember was a navy, white and red ski jacket which was fitted and very flattering; having never been near the ski slopes I could say I felt a fraud, but I didn’t, just comfortably sporty and a willing standby if the Winter Olympic Committee needed an outrageously optimistic volunteer. These outer garments were all colourful, flattering in some way, and in some small way memorable.
Not so yesterday when I was wearing a Weetabix coloured Michelin man duvet coat making me blend in with the bleached winter landscape and resemble a well lagged hot water tank. I didn’t mind since we were immersed in the Worcestershire countryside on the Three Choirs Way near Madresfield. Well camouflaged with the landscape and looking rather like one of the hills, a fresh cold breeze kissed my chops as I plodded through the red earth taking most of it with me and my walking boots began to resemble clay goloshers. As the stream we were following meandered we decided to extend our walk by going off the beaten track. Our only mistake was not to have a map with us and as the late afernoon light started to fail and we’d covered another couple of miles the yellow footpath arrows fizzled out leaving us lost and on the wrong side of the water. I wasn’t so much worried about traversing the brook, feet and boots can always dry out after all, but irritated I’d a) forgotten my waders, and b) might have my eye poked out as we scrambled through dense undergrowth flanking the stream.
Following our noses and with beating hearts we were lost for a while; indeed I was just starting to wonder if a search party needed to be called, when we came across a bridge further upstream. Phew! Our adventure was over and I suddenly realised I’d quite enjoyed the sensation. Perhaps we”ll leave the map behind more often. Maybe it’s good to get lost once in a while. In any case the generous padding of my coat had kept me cosy as the temperature dropped and protected me from the brambles as we brushed through undergrowth. As with all our walks the steady rhythmic traipsing of our steps took on a meditative quality as oak leaves rustled beneath our feet and winter twigs cracked underfoot, ideas distilling. The January darkness descended fast as we came full circle to our starting point, I not only felt relieved but exhilerated.
My faithful beige duvet coat is a little more beaten up now, mud splashed torn and worn, like an old family member in fact. But it can be washed and mended and in years to come will be remembered by the walk we had on that day we very nearly got lost.
So whose idea was it to cancel all Paddington to Worcester trains anytime after 8pm each evening just as any sensible daytripper or committed commuter starts to think about heading home? Study the train timetable and you’ll find the only option after 8pm is to catch a bus at 9.45pm that arrives 4 hours later in Worcester at 2am which is really practical (what’s the driver doing, pushing the thing?) or stay at home. Shocking.
Thus it was that with a minibus lift back to the Ruskin in Oxford I had the brain wave to stay over and catch the first train back the following morning to Worcester. You shall go to the ball Cinderella, you shall, I thought to myself. Of course I considered booking a hotel room, or a room in my old college, or asking a friend for a bed, but the logistics of arriving after midnight and leaving at 6am meant I would be an unpopular guest. Aha! I suddenly remembered the family room we had years ago at the Oxford YHA when the children were young and we had been pleasantly surprised at the comforts and proximity to Oxford’s railway station; I seem to remember there was en suite, kettle in your room, and only the sound of trains thundering beneath your pillows to keep you awake at night. Would there be a room there? Handy for the station the next morning certainly; I couldn’t afford to miss that 6.56 train.
On the phone I asked the YHA receptionist if I could book the family room – barefaced cheek I know for just one (I’d have plenty of space to swing a cat and with the benefit of hind sight could at least have put the lights on). “I’m afraid our only family room is taken, but we do have a single sex dorm,” she said. With minutes to spare before I caught my train to Oxford, I took it; at least I’d have a bed for the night.
So, still on a high from my evening at the Saatchi Gallery I entered the YHA, toute seule, without the entourage of family as psychological back up. It was very late. The imagined canapes at the soiree had been non existent which meant I had gone without food since lunch time. I was tired and ordered tea and a slice of coffee and walnut gateau. As I watched the Jamaican receptionist make my tea carefully and extract a piece of cake from the dome within the chilled cabinet, the sensible side of my brain was thinking: you’ll regret this, there’s too much caffeine in that m’dear, and if you were at home right now you’d be drinking chamomile tea; and quite frankly you should change your order now and have one of those prewrapped blueberry muffins. But it was too late, I was paying.
“I’ve booked you into F” said the receptionist. “F?” I repeated timidly. “Room 101, bunk F. It’s on the bottom, easier.”
I followed the signs to the bedrooms and snuck into a room that called itself a library. Judging by the number of books on the shelves the Oxford YHA entertains a lot of Dutch and German guests who generously leave their books behind. I suddenly remembered the last time we had come when we had witnessed a fracas between an English bag lady and an American bag lady, each accusing the other of rifling her locker (apparently these women stay three nights before moving on to one of three other YHAs in the vicinity in a continuous bag packing triangle).
I found room 101 and entered the pitch black and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I made out three slumbering humps all on the lower beds. Someone was sleeping in my bunk but filled with prosecco and high on art and conversation I wasn’t about to argue. I failed to locate a socket for the buzzer alarm clock I had borrowed from reception and fumbled my way out of the room and returned to the desk to seek help turning my mobile into an alarm clock. Returning to the velvet black of room 101 I prepared to scale Everest; I managed it, but whilst my body slumped on the top bunk with tiredness, my brain kept going, fuelled by stimulating conversation and the very recent injection of coffee cake caffeine.
So I lay there for hours listening to the cacophany of sounds only deep silence of a shared dorm throws up: the snoring, the farting, the scratching, the traffic, the trains and the doors banging, thinking I don’t believe I’m doing this. The last time I had done this I was aged nine on a family trip to the YHA in the Lake District, for heavens sake in the days of cotton sleeping bag liners and daily chores.
Needless to say I had a broken night but awoke ahead of the alarm at 6am, as you do, slipping out and away to catch my train. Arriving and leaving in pitch black darkness I’ll never know if I catnapped above the nations’ bag ladies or Europe’s well travelled youth, but with my head filled with grander plans inspired by the Ruskin Alumni Launch of the night before, I really couldn’t have cared less.
Well, was it worth it? Yes, it was, definitely. With prussian blue pastel firmly embedded beneath my finger nails after a morning teaching I made a snap decision to catch the train that would lead me to the minibus that would take me to the Saatchi gallery for the launch; the prospect of being at the start of something, the sum of which would be greater than the individual parts, was too great a temptation.
Unfortunately as I sat in my railway carriage contemplating the space around me I had the stomach churning realisation, horror of horrors, that I had left behind my make up bag ( AAAGH! so if the guys who saw me after 25 years thought I was wearing cheap makeup, understand this, I was, courtesy of a smash and grab sprint into Boots in Oxford); normally, you see, gentlemen, I wear Chanel (a kind gift to myself when I turned 40).
The Saatchi Gallery was awesome: a fantastic space for a really exciting range of painting, sculpture and photography and I loved every minute of it. I particulaly liked the 20′ high triangular faceted cardboard and white emulsion pair of Staffordshire dogs, the embroidered photographs by Maurizio Anzeri and the paintings by the name of an artist I can no longer remember, but the abstract imagery, vocabulary and use of colour of which will live on in my mind forever.
The generous gallery space was soon filled with 100s of unfamiliar faces guzzling free flowing prosecco and I didn’t hold back either. The vast halls hummed with the buzz of creative networking , speeches, photographs: individual and en masse. The new Ruskin Master – a philosopher- was introduced looking young enough to be my son (I always thought they had to look old, but then again I once thought that about policemen) and the two hour stint was way too short a catch up time as the Saatchi staff then tried with great difficulty to break up our party and usher us all home.
I had many brief and poignant encounters with those I knew and those I didn’t; one unexpected highlight must have been bumping into Sarah Simblet, author of The Drawing Book, in the ladies powder room (I had to check my cheap makeup hadn’t slipped), being able to tell her face to face I use her book all the time with students. It made my day, and you never know perhaps made hers too.
This was a tremendous meeting of minds and energy and a mere glimpse of what might be in the future. Thank you Ruskin, but after twenty five years of silence, and 140 years of existence, not before time.
Thaw (extract)
Grey growler lurches forth
Past soft edged solid road
And low light snow surfaces
As disconsolate trees breathe…..
Dreary sledges in long night mist dim straight abreast
As white town turns
And leading magpies blankly glide;
Eternal ice flow drips and grey grime skids -
As this grey dawn starts to thaw.
Last weekend I went to the Writer’s Toolkit conference in Birmingham which was an eye-opener. First I had to get there, and in my eagerness and early morning sleepiness jumped onto the wrong train enjoying an excursion all around the Wrekin, even seeing the northern delights of Smethwick, before hitting my final destination; factor in a nail biting wait for a broken freight train, and you can imagine I was late, arriving drenched in sweat and having thoroughly kickstarted a January fitness campaign well before its due date. Sightseeing and a keepfit regime? Yes, and all before breakfast.
Once I had arrived however I was able to recuperate nicely in the comfort of my chair as I listened to the many published authors, directors from the BBC, publishers and literary agents, basking in their undoubted success and dreaming……..hmmm, just dreaming; indeed by the end I had even started to imagine who amongst us mere mortals sitting in the audience could be THE NEXT BIG THING in the literary world.
During the course of the day I therefore rubbed shoulders with as many mere mortals as possible, lubricating myself in their possible future glory in the faint and optimistic hope that some of their shimmy shammy genius might one day possibly, just possibly, rub off on me.
You can but live in hope.
The pots on my terrace which I have been nurturing all summer are fading fast; the hostas are withdrawing into themselves and even the banana plant is eyeing up the coming frosts and tipping me the wink to be brought indoors. However the weeds that grow up between the cracks on the terrace are multiplying faster than you can say Roundup; those green and bushy weeds are thriving so much you’d imagine I was feeding them a great RHS elixir. Hhhmmph! the ones I give my attention to are failing and the ones I ignore are thriving; you can imagine my sense of injustice.
When I’m writing I sit staring at a blank screen with some vague idea of my intended outcome and………..ppssshhht…………nothing comes, my brain goes blank, the result of those alcohol filled teenage years no doubt; however if I so much as converse, jump in the car, go to the cinema, ride a bike, or read a book the ideas flow faster than an iceflow in summer BUT because I’m occupied I do not write them down and then when I sit back in front of my computer…………ppssssht………..my mind’s gone blank again; my brain would never admit to any idea, let alone a good one, and I conclude my brain prefers multitasking and naturally I should be carrying a notepad at all times. Still, the incidental (ie a new idea) is a byproduct of going off task, completely unexpected.
With painting I toil all day with a difficult painting or illustration, battle it out, break out in a real sweat when it doesn’t go to plan; then at the end of the day when I’m no longer concentrating, just idly toying with the colours left on my palette – like a surly child playing with her food- I see the most succinct little abstract piece with layers of meaning you could ever hope to create. And that’s just the palette. Still, the incidental (in this case an end of the day painting) is a byproduct of going off task, completely unexpected.
In Venice we found ourselves millimetres away from the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni itching to see the Carpaccios; scratching our heads in dismay as the actual entrance eluded us (I later found out it was covered in scaffolding and closed anyway). Stopping and asking a chichi Italian woman exactly where it was, she sign languaged us to follow her. With her arm fully outstretched as her chiwawa lead the way, she marched us all over Venice on a wild goose chase, down every imagineable alley and over every conceivable bridge, until finally emerging on the Grand Canal, where she pointed at the water meaningfully, we smiled gratefully (how very British), then promptly disappeared. Uhuh? Che? Never understanding what our grand tour had been about and not having the language wherewithal to enquire further, to this day I think she harboured an earnest disregard for all visitors to Venice (ie hated tourists), and was taking sweet revenge by trying to wear at least one set out. Perhaps I’m being too harsh. What she hadn’t realised however was that she had inadvertently created the most powerful experience of the place for us and an indellible memory etched on our brains for ever more. In hindsight I loved that walk, not so much Lost In Venice as misled in Venice. Still, the incidental (ie a wonderful memory) is a byproduct of going off task, completely unexpected.
So today in and amongst the weeds in the cracks on my terrace I happen to notice half a dozen little winter flowering pansies smiling in the sunshine. How lovely. Self set, the seeds have obviously blown off the bowl of violas on the table, which had flourished until earlier in the summer. The new little baby plants are a delightful by product, one I hadn’t planned, but one which I shall now nurture. Hhmmm, thank goodness for those unexpected incidentals but hey, go easy on the Tumbleweed, Sara.
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drawing from life
