Live the Conrad Nightmare!

Thank God for the verities of life in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland! When your train is leaving Cardiff Central at 08.55 and you are in St Mary Street at 08.55 then only a non-native of these benighted islands would despair. Of course First Great Western were late: they’re trains and they’re British. What else is to know? As an added extra the company even provided an apocalypse-like entry into Reading when day was turned into night with the storm lashing the poor train! At least Clarrie had made it to the shelter of the station before the elements pummelled the earth. So much for England!

I was more than impressed with the fish shop to which I was taken by Clarrie: the range of fish available was astonishing. Clarrie, with her usual understated approach to food limited her choice to a few selected items which are illustrated below. Delicious!

The house is prime for development; it is being brought back to life after a sojourn as student rented accommodation, with the ministrations of Clarrie and Mary. I’m sure that, given time, the blank canvas of the house will be glowing with expensive colours: I know that to be true – I’ve seen the paint pots! From the horizontal living style of Brixton they have now migrated to a more vertical style of existence in Reading: three stories of picture space!

It is always a joy when Clarrie makes my financial management look like something straight jacketed by the IMF; she used my looking for the Motorola L7 Red for Toni as an excuse to purchase a very expensive Blackberry phone with e mail capability, full keyboard and coffee making facilities. We developed an elaborate strategy for telling Mary about this purchase but were hoist with our own petard when the time fell through. Mary also was not impressed when she found out that the state of the art photo printer (which she thought I had brought with me) was actually a ‘present to myself’ from Clarrie! Such larks, Pip Old Chap!

The journey home was the usual late night train horror. The train was late (gosh!) and empty but with selected lewd fellows of a baser sort. The glaring oddities this evening were a couple of drunks; a younger and an older. The younger glasses wearing, bleary eyed, slurred speaking disgrace slumped against the older one caressing his bald head and giving him inexpert kisses from time to time. As they were directly in front of me and facing me, it was difficult to avoid looking at them and, more depressingly, hearing them. Thank God for the ipod and short sightedness: the one blanks out inane speech and the other converts all sights into a soothing blur. Of course, given Sod’s Law, they stayed until Cardiff.

It was depressingly late by the time the taxi finally pulled into Rumney and I had that sort of alert tiredness which luckily converts into somnolence as soon as your head touches the pillow.

Up with the lark (as long as you consider larks sluggish and resentful) and waiting to phone Ceri to go to Phil’s exhibition. The same Sod’s Law (see above) ensured that the exhibition was closed by the time we got there for a three hour lunch break: 12 to 3: what civilization!

To make up for this disappointment we went to the Museum to look at Cedric Morris’s paintings to see if they match my flower painting. I have to say that they did. I wasn’t impressed with the paintings but there is a generic similarity, perhaps I should take this further; not sure how.

One of Cedric’s (Sir Cedric’s) paintings showed an industrial scene with dark satanic mills; they were childishly portrayed and the impasto with which he paints is distasteful to sight. I thought of Lowry’s depictions and looked around for the Museum’s example and neither of us could find it. I asked one of the Museum guards and she said that she would take me there at once and walked purposely towards a large Kyffin canvas and it was only when she got there that she admitted her mistake. I must admit that I was revising my knowledge of Lowry before I saw that she was wrong!

Paella for dinner: Toni’s comments? “Too many things and not enough rice.” I’ll keep trying.