I have received a very helpful letter from Hayley Lock
May I suggest that you make a cardboard template with the desired ‘perfect sideburn’ shape cut out of the centre. This could then be taped to the side of your face measuring exactly the distance from say the top and side of the ear to top and side of sideburn on both the left and side of your face to achieve ‘absolut’. If I have the time I will send a pic and perhaps a diagram. Maybe a hat with the two cardboard cutouts sewn in would work (given that the two sides of your head will be wonky anyway). Failing that I suggest you get them tattooed in as a permanent feature (maybe in little twinkling star form). Hx
I am having a little trouble with my sideburns. The left one has quite a different character to the right. It seems softer and less wiry the right is more aggressive lupine even. I am also concerned with the amount of grey hair that has appeared and am seriously considering applying gravy browning. I confess that I have little experience in the tending of facial hair. I am constantly engaged in trying to even them up but I swear they are as unruly as a pair of kittens! I am also unsure as to whether I should prune them back like rose bushes. Would this encourage healthier more luxuriant growth? The reader will, I hope, excuse my mixed metaphors they are merely a product of my confusion.
Another studio visit looms. Monika Bobinska and her intern Adam are planning to come to Suffolk to see my work. Apparently I am to be in a show called ‘Cosmic Mysteries’ in Valencia and at the London Art Fair. This all seems to be happening rather soon. I was about to move studios because since my relocation in Ipswich I was finding the travelling too irksome. Because of this I have hardly set foot in mine for the last month except to pack a case or throw some rubbish or other onto the ever growing pile at its centre. So, when I arrived this morning to sort the place out and prepare it for visitors I was met with what felt like an insurmountable task. Luckily there was a skip parked outside, which I planned to take advantage of. It was one of those looming container types which either requires one to open its massive doors or to scale a ladder welded onto its side. Too afraid to do the former, lest the contents avalanche onto my frail body, I spent four hours to-ing and fro-ing with boxes of old art, potential art and hopeless mistakes until I had made a clearing large enough for one gallery owner, her assistant and one nervous artist. Next I surveyed some of the work I was hoping to show them. Finding some of it ruined by damp I decided to get some lunch at the local cafe. I have a busy week ahead.
A number of photographs have come into my possession recently. They seem pertinent to the unfolding of this narrative so I have published them here with brief explanatory texts.
Coincidences
I have recently been struck by the power of coincidence. Last night my companion and I watched “Dracula AD 1972” with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing rerere-reprising their roles with
flared accomplices. Dracula’s hip apprentice was cunningly named Jimmy Alucard an anagram that took Van Helsing several minutes with a pen and paper to figure out. This ne’er do well’s dastardly plan was to raise his master in order to re-wreak revenge on the Helsing house. Their first target was Jessica, van Helsing’s granddaughter played appallingly badly by Stephanie Beacham (although my companion pointed out her bosoms certainly earned their equity cards). She was so annoying that quite frankly I wanted to bite her by the end. Cushing did close the film by stating, quite pointedly I thought, that the whole thing was FINALLY over. This aside, the coincidence we noticed was that Alucard’s lair was located in the very same street in Chelsea in which my companion and I lodged a few weeks ago. We recognised both the view from the front door and the layout of the interior.
While ln Amsterdam my companion (who, among other things, is fascinated by houses and their inhabitants) was browsing through a book on famous addresses in London. Initially she was looking for that very same sister’s house in Chelsea but, failing to find it, she decided to look in the index for ‘Dracula’. There she found Bram Stoker’s house in St Leonard’s Terrace. Laurence Olivier lived a few doors down. I decided to hunt out connections between the two actors and soon discovered on IMDb that Cushing played Osric to Olivier’s Hamlet in 1948. A few weeks ago I was invited to put one of my films on the same site. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1537248/
Anagrams of Peter Cunshing and Laurence Olivier’s names are respectively:
Spectre hug-in
And
Lance our evil ire
