Another sketchbook from a visit to Oslo. I must’ve been alone. Had I gone over there to see my aunt? I made sketches in the Munch Museet and clearly had coffee in Coffee People. We’d always intended to go and see the Munch Museet together, Tante Aase and I, but by then she’d become too infirm to make the train journey. She knew his work inside out. She knew him. Well, vaguely, a school friend of hers lived next door to him and she’d see him in his garden when she visited her. She wasn’t sentimental about the work, she just owned it. I love seeing the paintings. They are part of me too, and Mum and Aase. Pared-down, they are intense in their succinctness.
‘Closed all day Wednesday from now on’ reads the sign in Andy Records on Great Darkgate Terrace. But when is now? I encouraged myself to walk a little further this morning. I want to get stronger. It is still slow going. And I am tired now. He woke gloomy. I’m nervous, he says. Of course you are darling. It is all so uncertain. Just put one foot in front of the other, I say, and it will be alright. Will it? What is alright? It has changed. We have changed. He is sleeping now.
