John's Quavering Pencil

I am driving through the late September sunshine; it is morning and I’m feeling fine. I turn off the urban motorway into a small retail park and abandon the car at one of the neatly drawn parking bays of the garden centre. Striding swiftly into the store I press the right arrow of my mental keyboard to swerve the first life avatar to the right,  gliding smoothly to a holt in front of the packet seed rack. My eyes rotate in their sockets as I scan for over-winter cabbage. Damn, they have none. My research online last night indicated that you need to make sure you get seeds that are appropriate for autumnal sewing. I abort this plan and swivel to the left in order to inspect the bulbs that hang in perforated plastic baglets, full of promise for the spring of 2010. 

I throw some snow drops and irises into the basket. I am about to make a dive for the till when I notice some onions. I perform cognitive categorization gymnastics on the spot: onions :- VEGETABLES :- cabbage. This neat bridge is sufficient to salvage the recently  aborted plan. I smile, make purchases, and head for the car. I promise myself lunch as a Skinnerian reward for adaptive behaviour.

Brrrrmm….. Brrrrmmm…. Vroooom…. Vrooommm… Well, in my car perhaps it is putttt…. putttt… fizzzzle…. pottttterrrr…. Either way, I arrive at what was once Europe’s largest shopping mall (or so I am told), the Gateshead Metro Centre .

I head for the very lovely Marks & Spencer store and stock up on some essential items of clothing: 1pr black chord pants (trousers, to the English); 2 pr undershirts (vests, to the English); 3 pr boxers (saucily striped, to anyone); 1 shirt. Deep breathing enables me to avoid fainting at the checkout when I discover how much it all costs. It is fairly painless: the card is flashed; the pin number is button-pressed; the personal inventory is incremented by 7 items.

Pencil & watercolour 25.09.09

I settle at a table by the window in an Italian coffee shop and put my lunch tray down. Were I a food psychiatrist, I should say that my plate of quiche and chips was undoubtedly suffering from chronic depression. Indeed, I think the only way to liven them up would be to give them a sharp dose of ECT….. Munch…. munch…. chew…. chew…. I watch the world go by as I wash down the solids with a more than passable mug of Americano coffee. Bottoms, some huge and bulbous, others tightly petite, wobble and role past. I regret that I did not manage to sketch any bottoms in situ, as it were, but I have sketched for you a rather fabulous example of the species post-hoc. The woman appears to be leaning into a roadside telephone booth and from the look of it I would imagine she has stopped somewhere on a highway in the  States, possibly to order a pizza for her dinner. This is the first painting that I have done since I withdrew from the MA course and I am very pleased to have broken the watercolour duck, in this regard. My nephew is a surgeon who specialises in colorectal surgery; maybe I shall follow in his footsteps and specialise in bottom sketching.

 A young woman has her toddler in a baby chair at the next table and is feeding her spoonfuls of gorgeous goo, if the gurgling sounds of glee are anything to go by. I note that it is not only policemen that get younger every year; mothers do too.

Driving home I leave the contempation of mortality back at the mall, where it seems to belong, and mull over my early morning piano lesson. I played badly today. I think what happens is that I look at the sheet music and my eyes become glazed as I focus on some point in the middle distance about six feet beyond the piano. So I am not actually reading the music. What I play, is what I have imperfectly remembered from practice. Since I have not practiced in order to remember, this results in frequent breakdowns and stoppages as I struggle to find my place in the music. If this sounds dreadful to you, believe me it sounds (literally) much worse in my teacher’s parlour. I really must sort this out.

As I drawn nearer to the city I think about the preview of the MA Students exhibition I went to see last night at the university Design Department. It was good to meet up with some of my old friends, but I did not really fit in. The night was a night for celebration and a mature student who had withdrawn (well, quit – let us not beat about the bush) for rather vague personal reasons was no longer occupying the proper role for the occasion. I came away feeling very sad. It had seemed important to me that I go to this event, though; it would have been cowardly not to do so. It was the last thing I needed to do to provide myself with a sense of closure. While I was walking round the exhibits, I did try to talk to various people about my drawing and what I wanted to do in terms of making this blog into an illustrated journal but somehow this seemed to be of scant relevance to the university in general or this programme in particular, and my conversations were patchy. Folks were very kind to me, but my speech was somehow located in the wrong place at the wrong time. On the way back I compared it with the highly animated chat artists and sketching techniques I had had with my neighbour that morning: chalk and cheese.

Speaking of art and all that stuff, I bought a small protractor today. I would still like to learn a little more about calligraphy and one has to pay attention to the angle at which the strokes lean. Originally I needed to explore the families of calligraphic hands in terms of the title pages for my animation film. Who knows, that film might still get made one day.

I had intended to plant my bulbs this afternoon but I think I need to take a nap. Speak to you later.

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