At the Clare Art Club

Halfway through...Finished

Isolated in art since I started to paint eighteen months ago in the midst of the first lockdown, I thought it time to meet some fellow artists. The nearest group appears to be the Clare Art Club, which meets once per month for a talk followed by tea and biscuits, and tonight, having paid my entrance fee at the door, I am welcomed in as a guest. Some members are fellow septuagenarians, although some are younger, but none is below the age of 50, and all seem keen watercolourists with an interest in pretty pictures, of which tonight's speaker is a keen advocate. He is clearly an accomplished professional artist, who proceeds to show us how it should be done. His blank sheet of paper is taped to a board before which he stands, his palette in hand, waving his magic brushes to conjure up an impeccable image of a Cambridge street scene. Halfway through, we pause for tea and a biscuit before he resumes his brushwork and with a final flourish the last cyclist is in place and the job is done. We have a perfect image to lighten a dark hallway or adorn a greetings card. 

I have been asked why I don't try to do landscapes or everyday scenes such as this. My answer is simple: I do not want to. I will never have the skill for such intricate architectural detail, or even the eye to cropping the photo to make a pleasing composition. The majority of my work has been portraits, mostly from pictures I have taken myself of family members or friends or neighbours with a face that interests me. I love the contours of the human face, the details the shadowing can enhance, and the wonderful sensation of seeing character emerge as I mix paints on the canvas, wet-on-wet. My technique may still have far to go and result in many failures on the way, but I value the challenge and the chance to portray some inner quality of the person I am painting. 

Fighting Still

I am so tired of this life fight.

If I were young,

ready for fresh eyed conflict,

it would be so much easier

than the battle of lines

and walking canes

but life,

is never done

until the final breath is sighed

and the breast is stilled

beneath the ice cold grave.

by Annie Elliott

Yesterday, I had another 'routine' blood test prior to my oncology assessment later today. Again I had to partially strip in the carpark before driving up to the tent and hang my arm from the window for the girl to do her stuff. But it was all very quick and efficient. The results were available online this morning, and continue to show a slow decline in many of the measures, especially haemoglobin (I am quite anaemic) and white cells (leukopenia for the technically minded). Indeed, my leukopenia is now low enough to be classified as a Grade 3 severity on the oncological scale of adverse events, and I have known clinical trials be stopped if any subject reached this threshold. I can only wait to see if they will stop my own treatment, or give it one more go. Hey-ho for the merry-go-round.

Freedom beckons

Dutch Boats about to collide

We finally could visit London, the first time we have stayed in the capitol for more than two years. Although Covid is still rife, we stayed clear of great crowds, and visitor attractions are still strict in limiting numbers. The National Gallery was surprisingly quiet, even round the more popular 19th Century painters such as Manet and Van Gough. Ann took plenty of photos of me staring at pictures, such as at this great Turner, where two little boats are struggling to avoid a collision in what appears to be a sudden, violent squall coming out of the clearer blue sky behind the black storm clouds.

We stayed in Hazlett's Hotel, in the midst of Soho. Over 300 years old, it is three converted private dwellings, with original rooms, windows and staircases, named after Hazlett who lived, worked and died in the house in 1830. After his death, his landlady, hoping to rent it as quickly as she could, hid the body under the bed while she showed the room to would-be tenants. There are still no elevators, and I was glad we were only on the 1st floor, unlike the boys who were located in the attic rooms. 

We dined well, and drank deep, glad to be alive and free again into relative normality after the dreadful confines of the past many months. Alas, I do not have my old stamina and could not walk too far, needing to rest regularly, but at least we did it. Soho is a pure delight, so full of youth and life. Every pub, restaurant and night club was bursting to the seams, with long queues outside each and every doorway guarded by bouncers, though we saw no whiff of trouble. People were happy, cheerful, celebrating their freedoms and glad to be about again. 

An ice cream in China Town

Ann and I were by far the oldest in the crowds, even Ann being a good 10-15 years older than anyone else we met. Naturally, this did not stop us enjoying some Chinese delicacies - in Ann's case, a rather special ice cream in China Town. Although some restaurants can be pricy, it is still possible to enjoy more modest living. On Sunday we had a late breakfast at the Weatherspoon's Pub near Holborn. Where else can you still get toast and marmalade, tea and coffee for two with unlimited refills for £3-80? We then enjoyed the park-like trees and shrubs of Lincoln's Inn Field gardens before meeting the boys to visit the Soane Museum, which has free entry as still do so many museums in London, including the major art galleries.

On our way to the National Gallery, we were caught up in yet another anti-vaccination protest march in Trafalgar Square. I could understand and sympathise with the pretext for this one: it was against compulsory vaccination. We have had too much control and restrictions in our lives to be comfortable with compulsion, although I agree it is a difficult debate where NHS and Care Unit staff are involved. I could even comprehend the group opposed to it on the grounds that they fear the potential side-effects of a new vaccine. I can't understand those who claim it is a world-wide secret organisation plot to inject everyone with some mind-controlling chip. But some of these people went even further, with banners proclaiming the whole thing a hoax; that the virus was imaginary; that there was no such thing as a virus infection. I won't even try to expand a defence for this, except to wonder what our schools are teaching people these days. It certainly isn't logic or rational thought or analysis.

Getting home, I found a letter had been delivered from Addenbrookes Hospital. More accurately, I only got half a letter; it had been ripped completely through and placed in a bag by the Post Office with an apology note for the delay and damage. I do not know what the delay was, as the date had been obliterated. I'm not sure what the contents were either; there wasn't much of the letter left. Perhaps someone else received the other half, and is sat wondering if they have a cancer they hadn't known about? 

Getting Half a Letter

Post-Covid rants

Walking with the dogs

Yesterday, being bright and dry, we went for a good walk with the dogs through Thetford Forest before returning for Sunday lunch at the Plough. We enjoyed their Nut Roast so much last week we repeated the experience - though following Lucy's generosity in remotely treating us, this time without telling people we were there.

I feel insulted by proxy. Nobody wants my old car. Even in a time of used-car shortage following big restrictions and delays in the new car market, my beautiful blue delight lies rusting in a used car lot at Stradishall.  As related in a former blog, we traded the Jaguar in for a Tiguan when I came out of hospital in November, over two months ago. I thought then the trade-in price was a fair offer, so leapt at it without quibbling, even though I could not drive the Tiguan at that time. It looks like I was right to do so. 

My old car lies languishing

Hitting the news this week is the exorbitant rise in energy prices. Our own electricity bill used to be charged quarterly at about £350 per quarter. Now they have revised it to a monthly bill, running at approximately £250 per month. The energy companies are treating us like vagrants huddled in doorways, suggesting ludicrous strategies such as buying extra jumpers, doing star jumps, or cuddling one's pets for warmth. This all comes down to a lack of strategy by our enfeebled government. Boris was so determined to come out of COP26 well he has sacrificed the basic requirement of any civilisation on the altar of green wokery. We do not huddle under animal skins in cave mouths; we do not collect wood from the forest to burn in our hearths; we are a supposedly advanced civilisation, in which food, shelter and warmth should be guaranteed for all. Yet the headlines are filled with stories of people shivering in order to feed themselves or care for their children. In the name of a green agenda, we are disadvantaging young families now so they will possibly avoid climate change in 50 years' time. It is madness. We should be working towards independence of energy, under a national energy program, concerned with present day necessity, not some theoretical doomsday in the indefinite future, with increasing use of nuclear, gas, oil and coal in a balanced and proportionate way. 

While in a ranting mood, I might add I do not blame Boris for attending an outdoor party with wine and nibbles. What I do blame him and the whole governmental machine for is introducing such vicious, anti-sensical rules in the first place. The far bigger error was to bar people from visiting their sick or dying relatives, or attending funerals, or closing schools. No evidence was ever produced to support the ludicrous claims for total isolation, and certainly none for not meeting outdoors or being allowed to go for country walks. For that, they should be punished and driven out of office. What a shame we can only attack them for having drinks together, rather than for the reason it was banned.

Klara and the Sun

I have finished Klara and the Sun, by Ishiguro. Listed as "Dystopian Science Fiction", it is an amazing book, truly original in style and content where the protagonist is Klara, a robot of limited intelligence or ability. Children are brought up in semi-isolation, learning on their tablets, so robots like Klara are sold to be companions for them to prevent loneliness. The primitive Klara can read human emotions moderately well, and through her (it?) we learn of the other characters in the story, and find that many human jobs have been supplanted by robots with the accompanying problems of unemployment and restlessness and potential revolt, though nothing of this develops in the story. The main point of the story seems to be an analogy of how humans throughout history have developed a universal sense of theological worship, whether to objects like trees or animals; human role models like Christ or the Buddha, or abstractions of a spiritual god. For Klara, it becomes the sun she worships, through prayer and sacrifice. 

As a work of science fiction, there is much that is only implied or ill-defined and not worked through, but one anomaly stands out. It is fundamental to the story that the sun sets behind Mr. McBain's barn as Klara seeks it's resting place, but it never moves from that spot. In reality, the sun will move round the horizon by a full 45 degrees each half year, or two degrees per week. It is as though Ishiguro's  earth is standing still in heaven, neglecting its seasonal changes, to still the sun in its track as a fixed marker in the sand for the story. This trivial fact is representative of the whole: we get nothing but hints of science fiction, with nothing worked through; a sense of great political and cultural changes, but lacking any impression of to what it might lead. We are left, like Klara herself, floundering and neglected in the junk yard trying to get our impressions in order, but with no real sense of the outer world or what it means.

Today, Ann is suffering. Her eye is sore and weeping. She has to put several types of drops in each day. But worse, at the moment she has lost even the peripheral vision she had, and is completely blind in the eye. She used to see me scratching from the corner of her eye without turning her head, but now I scratch without comment. We are left waiting for improvement so she can once more keep me in check.

Edwin and Andre are house-hunting in Bury and Norwich. Their present appartment has grown too small, with both working from home and needing office space. They saw two houses today, then came on to us this evening. To save Ann from discomfort in going out or having to prepare a meal, they have kindly gone into Haverhill to get a take-away Chinese. They have taken my new car, to include the dogs, and will walk them down the High Street to sit in one of the pubs awaiting the meal to be ready. They are so thoughtful!

There have been so many jokes circulating about the hypocrites of Downing Street. A local pub has put a sign outside: "OK, we admit it. We did misjudge Boris Johnson. He can arrange a piss-up". 

Medical visits and Welsh whisky

At the drive-through blood test

It has been an unusual week. On Tuesday, I went for the pre-immunotherapy blood tests. These were taken in the park-and-ride carpark in Cambridge. They have erected a large marquee in one corner, where cars were queuing to enter, being directed to one of five lanes. There, I had to wind down the window and hang my arm out while the phlebotomist wheeled up a trolley with all her gear to do the necessary. It all seemed very odd, yet strangely efficient; they had all the paper work and sample bottles ready, the test was done quickly, and the result was available on the Addenbrookes website later that evening.

On Wednesday, I saw the oncologist who examined my rash and listened to my moans about how itchy it was. In fairness to myself, the pruritus had become almost unbearable, being constant and waking me several times at night, unless I dosed myself up with strong painkillers and antihistamines while smothering my whole body with various creams and lotions, including some with strong steroids and antibiotics in them. The urge to scratch is almost irresistible, despite Ann's constant warnings, but it is she who finds the blood in the bed each morning and has to change the sheets and pillowcases more often. The doctor looked me all over and agreed it was bad, so called in his consultant. She too made me strip down and looked all over. Her decision was to postpone the next immunotherapy for two weeks, as this was probably contributing to the rash, and commence an immediate dose of strong oral steroids. The way I explain immuno is simple: the immunotherapy triggers the immune system, firing it up like pouring petrol on a smouldering fire. The gush of flames in the form of active T-cells attack the cancer cells, trying to incinerate them like they should any foreign body (that's how they fight infections). The trouble comes when the fire is so intense it starts to burn other organs in the body. It is non-selective, so every organ is vulnerable: kidneys, liver, adrenal gland, thyroid gland, heart, pancreas - all my be attacked leading to their failure. That is why they do the blood tests every month, to check for liver function, renal function, diabetes etc. The skin in my case is a sensitive organ, and the T-cells are attacking it, making it flare up in an itchy rash. At least that means the immuno is doing its job and has fired up the T-cells. Now the steroids are the equivalent of a fireman coming along with a powerful hose to squirt and quell the flames again! But already the rash is fading and the itching is easing, so the firefighting is working too. But now everything is pushed back two weeks, and the whole rigmarole of Covid test, blood test, and consultation will have to be repeated. Hay ho.

Then last night, Ann had a phone call from WSH asking if she was free to come in for her cataract operation next day at 8a.m. She had been delaying it for some time because of needing to drive in case I fell ill suddenly, but they had had a cancellation, and as I no longer needed to isolate or be driven, she agreed to go ahead, so this morning I drove her to the hospital. Three hours later, I drove back to pick her up. She is very brave; she has had both eyes done now, but hopefully it will give some improvement to her vision, for though blind in her right eye she still has some peripheral vision in it, which hopefully will sharpen a bit now. The eye is sore now, and weeping, so I have dressed it with a sterile eye patch.

On a happier note, I suddenly received a bottle of Welsh whisky, Penderyn, this week. I have been adding a tumbler of whisky to my various hypnotic concoctions for sleep, so it was welcome, but it had no note explaining who was the donor. Ann put it on Facebook, and it turns out to have been Edwin as a little cheer-me-up. I am not familiar with Welsh whisky, but it seems that, historically, they have been using stills there since the 5th C. so there is a long history behind it. The Welsh-born prime minister, Lloyd George, introduced legislation in parliament specifically to support it becoming a high-quality legal product and move away from the poteen cottage industry. So thank you Eds, most generous, and I look forward to sampling it - though it may have to wait till I'm off my steroids.

Grayson Perry, The Pre-Therapy Years

Edwin views Grayson Perry's work

Grayson Perry is one of my heroes, so when Edwin invited Ann and me to visit a retrospective of his early work, I was thrilled. The exhibition, The Pre-Therapy Years, is at the Sainsbury gallery at UEA, Norwich. The first part of the exhibition contains modern and abstract work by a number of artists, but entering the Perry display was truly mind-blowing: unlike any of his modern work yet clearly foretelling the direction he was going. The vast majority is his trademark pottery, with which he combines pictorial art and poetry in arresting juxtaposition, using the clay forms as other artists might use a canvas or notebook. The works question any pre-existing mores of sexuality, emphasising so often his inner feminine being, Claire. Throughout the work, he seems to question not just who he is, but also who Clare is, as though searching for her character through a wealth of feminine role models. The whole exhibition is thrilling, yet faintly disturbing. These were the pre-therapy years, stretching back to a period of nearly forty years ago, when he was still freshly wounded from childhood traumas. It is interesting to compare the work with his recent post-therapy work; much calmer, less distressing, yet with an ever emerging technique in handling his chosen clay medium. 

Grayson Perry Plate

In the evening we dined at a wonderful vegan restaurant in Norwich - with some of the best food I have tasted, vegan or otherwise. The whole day out more than compensated for our poor start to the year.

But on Sunday, we had the biggest surprise of all. We had lunch at the Hundon Plough: a fine nut roast with all trimmings. We indulged ourselves with plenty of wine, desserts, and liqueur coffees afterwards. I went to the bar to pay, but the lady said, "There's nothing to pay. Lucy has paid it!" Lucy had phoned the restaurant and paid for our meal on the phone! Unbelievable and a wonderful surprise and treat. The lady added, "I wish I had a daughter like that." "We have," we said, "she's wonderful."

A rotten start to the year

Walking in the shadow of the docks

Sunday, 2nd January. The weather was bright and warm, tempting for a day by the sea, possibly with ice-cream and a meal for our first outing of the year. Felixstowe sounded promising, so off we set. Hitting the Orwell bridge, we were suddenly caught behind a massive traffic queue, with no exit route for several miles. Finally, crawling forward in little jerks, we reached the cause of our holdup: a broken down ancient horse box blocking the lane. 

After the long delay and with the dogs still in the car, we stopped first at Landguard Fort to walk them, ending up at the cafe under the shadow of the great container ships at Felixstowe Docks. We went to the cafe toilets, but decided to go into Felixstowe to walk on the beach before enjoying coffee and ice-cream. No such luck. We had not allowed for the Bank Holiday crowds and could not even park. 

Selfie at Landguard Point.

We decided to cut our losses and head for Aldeburgh, where we did manage to park. But that was all we did. The one pub was full, with people sitting outside with their drinks. The hotel was closed for refurbishing, the one restaurant open had stopped serving. The only available food was if we joined the long queues at the take-away fish and chip shops. We could not spot so much as a decent cafe for a coffee. It was getting late, so we set off for Bury to finally get something to eat. No way - the fates were against us this day. The sky grew dark as night, and it began to rain,  Not a shower of rain, but a total deluge was falling, the roads rapidly flooding, and vision severely limited, so we abandoned the day and finally reached home having had no drink all day, and not so much as a chocolate bar. Welcome to 2022.

Lone Christmas Tree at Aldeburgh

It did not help my mood when Edwin phoned. He and Andre had gone to Dover, which was quiet and where they had a lovely day, ending in Morelli's Italian ice-cream parlour, sending a photo of the two of them with a towering dish of icecream dripping with sauces and sprinkles. They had the sense to leave at 8:00 a.m. so they had a full day there in warm sunshine. I can make no comment.