There has been so much clattering and banging and disrupting, both at home and at the coffee shop where I seem to be doing a kind of drawing residency. We’d leave our precious home to the mercy of either a decorator or a carpet fitter only to find that our table in the café was also under siege and taped off (they’ve also got the painters in, refurbishing it while it remains open). It dislodges me. I feel capsized. And then there is all the other swirling inside over my project. And now the man in the sports jacket has just emailed to suggest that I don’t give up on the digital element. Can’t he see that I don’t want it, that what I want is to be authentic? Anyway, back to the decorators. Our table was lost to us, you know the one in the corner where I can draw without attracting too much attention. So we had to sit in the next one along and immediately some shopfitters started to make comments. Don’t stand still too long, one said to his mate, or you’ll find yourself being drawn. They both turn to stare at me. Well, she’ll have to have a big pad to draw me, says his friend with the bald head and rotund belly. A4 at least, he added, clearly racking his brains to remember a particular size of paper. The decorators, who I was trying to capture as they pushed their rollers attached to poles along the ceiling, also stared. Are you drawing me? one asked eventually. I said I was but tried to diminish its significance by saying I was only practicing. I wondered why you kept looking at me, he said. Oh it was all too exposing and yet that is what I’ve decided to offer up. Am I mad? I tried to make a joke by shouting over to him that perhaps it was his ‘strange and unnatural beauty’ that made me look at him. He laughed and said, I don’t think so. And completely missed the Molesworth reference.
What can I say about him? I wanted to like him, or at least feel some human warmth. He was a challenge. Perhaps he found us to be so also. I made coffee, offered water. What was it about him? He was taciturn, unfriendly, and careless of our home. That was it mostly, that lack of care. And how I wanted him done and gone. It took so long. Too long. And then there was the phone call mid way. It is all about how one manages things, people, events, isn’t it? And even now my gut churns about whether I ought to do something or not. And now she wants to come and see the work. Ok, fair enough, then can we have some peace?
They felt and sounded like she’d put sparklers in my ears. I smelt the burning and then heard the fizzing and crackling. It was strangely restful. She makes me feel calm. We talk nonsense. We talk about light things and I am made calm, emptied out of me.
