#6

COATS OF MANY COLOURS

B&Q has run through the second half of my life like the word Brighton through a stick of rock (and we’re not talking Graham Greene here).  Over many years, I redecorated half of Southern England, Shropshire and Andalusia, and built wooden shelves, cupboards and bespoke kitchens for the other half. How could this be combined with being a father, full-time academic and an observant Orthodox Tottenham supporter? You may well ask.

Back in the day I used to run quizzes in college to raise funds for a charity supporting the orphanage in Siret, North East Romania (see FESS chapters 53-4). People are really quite competitive when in teams, and no-one was ever satisfied with a score-draw. I devised a series of tie-breaker questions, one of which was never answered correctly: ‘What do the letters B & Q stand for? (Talking of acronyms the company’s website address is a simply brilliant distillation of description, brevity and memorability:  diy.com). No I’m not on a retainer, nor do I have shares. The answer is ‘Block and Quayle’ the names of the men who opened the first store in a disused cinema in Southampton. Until the company recently installed self-pay machines, the throng at the checkouts on a weekend or bank holiday made you wonder whether it was a cute version of the old philosophical axiom, to be is to queue.

I’m on a decorating jag at the moment. Evolutionary theorists or ethologists might say that I was preparing the nest in springtime for a new batch of offspring. How terribly wrong they would be: it presupposes the desire, the energy, and the partner of a different sex and age-group, not to mention, rapidly depleting funds and non-existent patience. No, my own contribution to parenting and step-parenting is done: four little bleeders (and I use the word advisedly) is more than sufficient. I’m simply distracting myself for a couple of weeks while my play is being read by various luminaries of the theatre world (they say) so I can decide if it has legs, or should be binned.

Anyway, at the aforementioned DIY emporium this week, I attempted to match my living-room’s existing colour, which many people have remarked upon favourably: obviously I had not maintained a record of the original mix, because that would be too easy and efficient.  Courtesy of an excellent system of decent-sized card samples, each with a coy name that made you want to strangle the author, I found the right colour: a lightish grey with just a hint - more of a wink, really – of something else. I hesitate to say lilac because it makes me think of toilet spray. I then parted with the kind of money that would still buy you a flight to Spain, which would have been a much better idea.

Back at the ranch, I should have stopped painting after the first brush stroke, but you don’t do you, you are paralysed by the astonishing contrast with what you expected and cling to the vain, self-deluding hope it might dry out differently. No, it doesn’t. I want to make clear that it’s a perfectly nice colour, but the proportions are reversed. Lilac, so-called has become a purple/mauve, and light grey has become dark grey. It invokes a changing room in the days of Biba and harks back to the Mackintosh/ Klimt colours of Art Nouveau, before that. It’s a perfectly nice colour if you want a main living room to look like a teenage bedroom in the 60s, or an Edwardian study. So, £58 worth of top quality matt emulsion awaits anyone who wants it, I’d rather give it away than have it mocking me in my workshop. Seriously, 7.5 litres of Valspar Premium matt emulsion called Waiting Game (R3C). More like Black Cherry yoghourt, but someone else has got the copyright for that. Apply now while stocks last.

I seem to be settling for monologues these days, a vague meandering through several territories with a number of diversions, but which grope towards a finishing line which has something, somewhat to do with the start. I am going to practise this, in the hope of accumulating as many ‘likes’ as it takes to achieve fame and justify the epitaph I’ve always wanted:

“He was a bigger star than Ronnie Corbett”. Cheerio.

PS Btw, Valspar Premium is the best paint I’ve ever used in 50 years of B&Q, I mean, DIY: excellent coverage (so quicker) fast drying, solid colour and washable surface. A bit pricey but well worth it. Other brands are available.

ATM

The papers have come through: I have changed my name to Aaron Titus Milner, so that there be no more confusion in my teenage daughter's mind about whether I am a father or a cash machine.

QUOTE/UNQUOTE

Joan Rivers:                                                                  

I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.

It's so long since I had sex that I've forgotten who ties up who.

My husband wanted to be cremated. I told him I’d scatter his ashes at Neiman Marcus – that way, I’d visit him every day.

POST OF THE WEEK

GALLERY

I've always been surrounded by artists: both wives        

and two daughters, all artistically gifted, The Bristol 
Swans, and a number of other people who are very
accomplished painters, or photographers: Sean Sprague, Dominic Dibbs, Fernando la Rosa, Bill Ling. Not to mention weekly tutorials from a well-known Professor of Art History. None of this seems to have been transferred to me by osmosis. My best effort at school was a lino cut which probably would have been best left on the floor, later, a few good photographs, probably accidental, some silk screen prints from an evening class I rapidly gave up when my first daughter was born, some  political posters for CND, and one painting: in hospital I was encouraged to do some therapeutic painting, starting with a place I loved. Shropshire came to mind immediately and I attempted a painting of a landscape which would be photorealist in its accuracy but was abstract expressionist in execution. It was a rhapsody of greens and browns which might have been titled "Vegan's Vomit". However, I would like to give a platform (not that they need it) to the proper art of some of my friends and relatives. Starting with a photograph from a series Dominic Dibbs has made of Brighton, where he lives.  Very happy to receive copies of similarly admired pictures you have seen or made.  The audience is still 'select', but who knows, it could reach double figures by this time next year. Adios.