a load of pollocks

And so I have my life back and I can return to me favourite subject. Me. It began yesterday with art class 2 of 10. Last week I reported that I wasn’t going to go back as there were no fit men and I didn’t get a snog. Hopefully dear readers will know that was a Jodie joke. I didn’t really enjoy the first class though but luckily I had expected this would be the case so I didn’t panic. I loved University, which finished 10 years ago, but I have also enjoyed not being in a classroom since then. During my final term at Uni, I didn’t get around to finishing 2 of the course novels, Tom Jones & Middlemarch. On occasion, and even to this day, I sometimes have nightmares that I’m in my final exam and I am faced with a series of questions, based exclusively on the 2 novels. How absurd is that? I passed with a healthy 2:1 and yet I’m still plagued with guilt. Maybe I should just read them.

On arrival at our studio space we were surrounded by drying still life canvasses. I was early and as my fellow art lovers stumbled in bit by bit, they nervously eyed the canvasses too and I tried to make light of the situation by making nervous quips about a recent Coronation Street plot involving Jack Duckworth and nude modelling. Surely they wouldn’t hit us with that on the first day of a beginners course? Sir arrived promptly and after register, a very brief Health & Safety talk and tips about where to have sly fags, we were given a lecture on colour and it’s use to demonstrate movement and depth on a 1 dimensional space. Next to Sir sat a blonde lady and we all wondered who she was. I thought that perhaps she was a trainee lecturer or even his Muse, as she sat there tittering at his jokes and making a few Carry On type suggestive comments. All was revealed, literally, later into the lesson when she did in fact take all her clothes off and do four 1-minute poses, which we had to quickly sketch in oil bars. Sir had told us countless times to take the membrane off the top of the oil bars. I had taken some plastic off the top of mine, but didn’t realise that there was yet another layer. Consequently, I completely missed pose 1 and only had 30 seconds for each of the other 3 poses. I can't upload the darn image straight, it needs to be rotated so that the green line is on the right. My work suffered a little but I soldiered on. We then spent the rest of the first lesson and most of yesterday’s lessons colouring in the lines. Sir didn’t laugh at my work and said that my use of colour is bold. I really enjoyed lesson 2. The blonde lady was there but did absolutely nothing this time.

I was in town early yesterday to pick up more art supplies (it’s a very expensive hobby), and just in case I didn’t enjoy lesson 2 I spontaneously booked a hair appointment for after class. As regulars will know the Laydee thing did not suit me, however there are limits and when the WB (who has a Leo Sayer barnet) tells you that you need a haircut, that’s when you’ve exceeded them. So I now have a Vidal Sassoon hair cut. It’s a classic Vidal cut and it’s the one that I had for most of my 20s and it suits me, peeping out from under a fringe.

I was very surprised to get a call on a UK mobile from the Vixen who invited me for drinks in Brixton. I have been avoiding alcohol, company and going out much more than usual since giving up the fags. Despite being a little nervous about drinking I leapt at the chance to hook up. The last time I gave up smoking I kept getting really pissed and it took me sometime to realise that as my right arm was used to going up to my mouth constantly, I was drinking way too quickly. As a precaution yesterday I smoked a cocktail stick. Later on, I chained smoked a cocktail stick and a straw. It might have looked silly, but who cares. Anyway, the Vixen is back in town for reasons as funny as Michael Barrymore but she is headed back to New Zealand next Saturday. Luckily for her, she doesn’t do jet lag. She’d only arrived the night before and showed super human strength by barely even remembering that she had not long been off a long haul flight.

Who remembered? There’s a couple of robins larking around in our back garden.