The Pearl Fisher

Thursday, 12 November 2009

Chrysalis

My dear companion has developed a fascination for carnivorous plants. While walking through the Bloemgarten she told me a Venus flytrap was on her Christmas list for five years but it never arrived. I had one of course and probably killed it with frequent ambitious feeding. The conversation reminded me also of the seventies dramatisation of ‘The Day of the Triffids’ with it’s young flared John Duttine and face slapping plants. Later we visited the Butterfly house. I tried to show my bravery as the huge nectar sucking insects alighted on my scarf. My companion didn’t notice though, she was too busy watching the giant chrysalides twitch.

— posted abroad

Tuesday, 10 November 2009

Arrived in Amsterdam last night. The crossing was calm and largely uneventful except for one point when one of our party slipped on deck. He contrived to land full on his face fetching himself such a knock that he split his eyebrow completely open. This morning he looks like a losing prize fighter, but was otherwise unaffected. Three hours into our voyage we sighted a grey band stretching across the horizon. Some swore it was land as it thickened and darkened. It soon became clear however, that it was heavy weather. We felt captain Holmes altering course and began to fear the worse until we realised he was steering towards a rainbow in the distance. I must admit it was a magical and disappointing moment when the bow entered the rainbow’s end and it faded from sight.

— posted abroad

My dear companion has begun talking in her sleep. I have decided to take notes. Last night she mumbled about our trip to Bath. I have paraphrased the gist of it below hopefully making sense of parts that were not immediately clear to me.

Bath

With the lovely Pearly at the train station. He’s gone stiff and nervous.

Trying to distract the lovely Pearly with pictures of mummified animals in National Geographic.

Flicker of recognition from JJ at the turnstile.

Roll onto JJ going round a roundabout in the back of the taxi.

Ask JJ about his bloodstone ring.

Pearly is quiet I am noisy.

Concrete.

Berlin.

Wet everywhere.

The sound of Pearly stepping into deep puddles.

I relentlessly question JJ.

Dr Dan seems nervous of JJ.

JJ holds forth on the sofas.

He laughs when I say my arse is large (watch it JJ)

Get bus.

Students cocky and annoying. One girl who looks like a shitsu is talking relentlessly about how much men want her. I wonder if this is how Alex feels when I go on and on.

Bath so beautiful and looks like its rendered in halva.

Back to campus.

Lost although a milimetre away from Alex’s show.

Alex has shut down and is in nervous concentration mode.

Dr Dan and Charles seem very awkward in the bar and I worry that I am pissing them off-but wonder if Dr Dan is just worried about the night ahead.

Gin and tonics through the men/women’s loos-like Mr Ben

I like the records and the high up eau de nil ship

‘in conversation’

JJ is riffing on a few themes and wangles some of Alex’s work into them.

JJ thinks Alex is more of a cynic than I think he is.

I pipe up relentlessly.

Unfortunately the obvious brilliance of my argument is fluffed by the gin and I realise I can’t remember what my point was as soon as I start talking.

JJ declares me the new Martin Parr as he peaks on red wine.

I’m in bed

Dreaming – I am holding a baby and I love it

Wake up Alex warm and soft in bed.

Alex tells me he loves me.

Put my ear plugs in and Alex says the prayer-I know he does because I feel his lips

Awake and have a bath with Alex

Take photos of JJ’s room.

Egg and bacon bap with Alex.

Quest for the Bath bun.

The Circus was cold.

The Royal Crescent was colder.

Fell asleep on Alex on the train home-dreamt he was a giant furry squirrel.

Curve of the weir and the water-sad the rubber ducks weren’t there.

The spa.

Seeing the town and rooftops while being in a giant communal bath.

Different steam rooms: Vicks, Chanel number 5 and lavender.

New friends James and Daniel at the baths find it hilarious I am in underwear.

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Joy, joy, joy but not all joy. It is all over. The show is hung, the conversation had, the drink drunk and the invoice almost ready to go. I say almost because I don’t have a printer at the moment, an absence that causes me no end of slight logistical nonsense. The management at my place of work is currently striving towards a paperless office. An ideological standpoint that has only served to push my colleagues photocopying habit underground. Pale and shaking we huddle in corners printing and copying papers for our students. Some of us have taken to stockpiling handouts for future use. Now on top of this I find myself sneaking prints of personal documents snatching them away from sight as they appear.

Looking back, many things were discussed and said before during and after the opening at ICIA University of Bath. One thing I was asked (by Doctor Hinchcliffe) not to write about, so I won’t. Another topic, this time during my conversation with Mr Charlesworth, is likely to be edited from the video recording. Later, in the student bar, drinking with my dear companion, JJ and the Crayola Girls a further conversation will remain unreported for other reasons.

I did tell JJ about my (so far secret) plans to apply for an Arts Council grant to cull a large number of Artists in the fashion of Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger. I have always been taken by the efforts Auric went to gather the mob bosses to his home, explain his plans to them with elaborate model and audio visual presentation and then kill them whether they were in favour of his plan or not. Perhaps I should not have mentioned this.

As a sort of performative work I have been trying to grow my sideburns similar to those sported by Peter Cushing in his roles as Van Helsing. They also hark back to my father’s facial hairstyling in the seventies. Back then I wondered how they were produced and half believed that they would appear like the facial growths on a dominant male orangutan. My companion has become rather attached to them.

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