I always anticipate ‘5’ (a numerology thing) days with some trepidation and yesterday was one of them. I try not to make it happen (but perhaps I do subconsciously) but they make me fractious. And I did indeed behave like a real crosspatch, even going so far as to snap at the lovely ex-nurse who wanted to show me pictures of her granddaughter’s album of made-up faces on her phone when I was in the middle of making a drawing. I’m drawing, I said, but she didn’t get it, why should she? I did my best to make it up to her afterwards. Did I do alright? I asked him. You did it brilliantly, he said. It’s rather a surreal thing what with me doing my drawing (real work as far as I am concerned) and the rest, like the ex-nurse and the ex-butcher and the ex-headmaster, all gathering together around a table to drink coffee and chat about how best to keep carrots in the fridge. Then there was the discussion about the Mona Lisa. No, he said, it was The Sunflowers that was attacked not the Mona Lisa, that’s in The Louvre. She had no idea what he was talking about. She meant the shop called Mona Lisa on Great Darkgate St., they were all agog with it, apparently two lads went in there with a knife. And then the ex-headmaster started talking about ‘The King’. No, it wasn’t Charles but D. K. the local thug from way back. He’s in a wheelchair now (last seen being pushed across a busy road by D. Spot). All this while the hover around us waiting to nab our table when we go.
In his note this morning (purported to be from John Kettley the Kettler) he wrote of 40 mile an hour winds. Nope, wrong again. I’d say it was about 20 but things still rattled as a walked by, and leaves danced along the road and rustled on the trees. A garden gate on Llanbadarn Road bashed repeatedly against its latch. I saw a student working at his computer in a top floor flat along North Road, his headphones planted firmly over his ears.
I thought about the two of us bathing her all those years ago. It was an act of love and compassion.
