Trees on a promontory

Trees on a promontory, oil on card, 15.5 x 18.5 cm

Not long ago...a visit to a doctor.

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Ear, oil on card, 14 x 15 cm - unavailable

Not long ago, shortly on my return from the Pantanal in Brazil, where I had been sent by VEM Engineering to discuss the possible creation of a giant plant for the manufacture of domestic appliances, I began to hear in one of my ears a constant scratching sound, much like a knife scraping against a ceramic plate.

After several weeks of this, I went to see my doctor.

He conducted the obvious examination: peering into my ear with a special eyeglass. Finding nothing,  he began to ask me questions about my home and work life before cutting me abruptly: “Stress.”  He scribbled a note. “Give this to your employer. Take a week. Go to the seaside.”

So the next day I found myself strolling listless on a dull Eastbourne promenade, a paperback unloved in a pocket, the scraping sound in one ear, the sound of waves crashing in the other.

And week later I was back in the surgery demanding further consultations: he sent me to an Audiologist near Paddington station. I stood in a tiny room at the end of a filthy corridor in which elderly, obese, patients quietly rotted like forgotten vegetables in a provincial corner shop. 

I lay on a couch and a nurse, using a fantastical machine made a scan of my ear region. With amazing speed the results were printed out and I was ushered into an even smaller room behind where a man was sitting at a desk: Andreas Andreopoulos, Consultant.

He was Greek and spoke with great emphasis on particular words, as if treats to be savoured.  He was filled with enthusiasm for my case. 

“Tell me all about yourself, please, where have you been?”, cocking his head to one side like a cat.

“Well I went to the seaside”, I began. “Yes the seaside- I read that here.  But before? Perhaps you were in the Congo, Borneo, somewhere tropical? More exotic?”

I told him about my visit to the Pantanal, and the plans for the giant factory and how we would soon be able to produce sufficient vacuum cleaners to hoover the entire Amazon rainforest.

“That is wonderful. Progress. We Greeks,” he continued, with a somewhat philosophical expression, “how would you say?, we laid the foundations of civilisation. Now it is the turn of the new countries. The future is always with youth, is it not?”

I smiled.

He looked down to the scans on his desk: “ We do not often get such interesting cases.”

“Look!” He beamed, indicating with a pen on the scan. “It is like this. There is a fly, a burrowing fly, found only in tropical regions. It loves dark places. Look! It fly into your ear! And see...” He pointed to a channel deep in my ear. “It began here, and now!” - he tapped with his pen, at an area that had been circled with a thick red marker- “It has got all the way... here!” It was a point deep inside my cranium. “ It is making a little home! Home sweet home!, as you English say”

He began giggling, then saw my appalled expression.

“We will cut it out. Not to worry. We will cut it out on… ” - he consulted a computer screen- “Thursday!” And he began laughing again. 

“I am glad this is so very amusing,” I said.

“Oh, you will be fine,” he said dismissively, but then his merry smile fell with unusual speed to one of despondency.

“Be cheerful. There is a sickness, there is a cure! It could be worse, look at me: I am shrinking.”

He stood up, and I could see how his clothes hung in swags like theatre curtains, his trousers bagging round his shoes, how he had rolled up the sleeves of his white coat.

“Every year I have to buy new clothes, a complete set. It is...it is ridiculous. Humiliating. My wife won’t even go to the shops with me. She is ashamed. It is shameful.  Of course she is embarrassed. The nurses make jokes. I hear them laughing on the other side” He gestured to the door and whispered ,“They pretend to care but I hear their laughter when the door closes.”

He fell into silence.

The surgery came, I convalesced and left the hospital: the scratching sound was no more. 

And I didn`t see the consultant until a year later.

 I was walking down Wimpole Street with my new girlfriend- a tall slender woman, an ex-model for la Perla with a phD in Astro Physics from Harvard. We were so very much in love that even strolling aimlessly was a joy. A tender sun sent shimmers to the spring trees.

 A figure hurried along the pavement in our direction: at first I thought it a small boy, albeit one oddly dressed in a white coat. 

I caught his face: it was the consultant. "Doctor!" He stopped. 

 "Alessia. This is the wonderful doctor I told you about!" She bent to shake his hand, but he ignored it. “Ah...you are well I see. I'm so glad for you!”

And off he toddled, somewhere towards Portland Street.

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Read to the Detroit Metro Writer's Workshop, March, 2021 and Edinburgh Creative Writers' Club 13 April 2021

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The shoes are our friends.

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Gothic shoes, oil on card, 14 x 12.2 cm - unavailable

 The Shoes Are Our Friends

Shoes, of all the things we wear, are our dearest friends, protecting us and making our lives possible, accompanying us on every journey, uncomplaining, diligent, dependable.

Perhaps it is because this deep loyalty of service is expressed with so few complaints that we take our shoes for granted, casting them aside at the close of day almost contemptuously, stuffing sweaty socks inside them. And giving them the polishes they require only when they are utterly essential, their un-nourished faces having caught the contemptuous expression of  junior colleagues at the office. You rarely consider their well-being until the moment when, crossing a puddled pavement with wettened feet because the soles have holes, you sigh, I had better take these to the Paraguayan cobbler later this week. How tiresome!

I have long been aware of the wrongness of such indifference, and have been repaid not just with fidelity but loving concern. 

Recently,  I was in a small town in northern Uruguay, night falling, the air cool: a perfect time for a stroll. There were some people still around, closing shops, making their ways home. And out we went, my shoes and I, and I wandered somewhat aimlessly about a square, then down a cobbled street where a charming old church beckoned. The street lighting grew dimmer as I proceeded and, peculiarly, my shoes began pinching terribly. I had to return to the hotel immediately to relieve my feet.

"Have you been for a walk?", the plump receptionist enquired pleasantly.  I said where I had been. He replied, "you should be most careful round there, Señor, there have been many robberies". 

Indeed there was such a robbery later that night, only fifty metres from where I`d stopped. An old woman had been relieved of her handbag and pearls, and suffered a terrible heart-attack.

There is no doubt in my mind that it was a premonition on the part of my shoes that caused them to warn me.

Similarly, a few months ago, I decided to drive to the south of here, where coconut trees sway continually in a state of meditation. I dressed, then reached for my shoe, my foot expecting fully its cool embrace. But the shoe was resistant, as if it reduced itself by several sizes. I tried with the other shoe, but it was the same: I could scarcely squeeze my foot past the opening. I had to abandon my trip. Later I discovered that two tourists had been killed there by falling coconuts, their thick skulls  reduced to bloody fragments on the beach.

The scientifically-minded among you will, quite understandably, question my conclusions. They will mention, I`m sure, such factors, as coincidence, the possible swelling of my feet, or have some complicated ideas about auto-suggestion, or cleverly say, with enormous self-satisfaction, "ah but this is not enough to establish a pattern!" They might even suggest that I have been visited by delusions.

But I suspect that those among you who take such a stance are the very sort of people who, at the end of the day, casually fling their shoes into a corner of the room without so much as a "thank you", or a "goodnight".

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Read to The Vicious Circle writers' group 22 March, 2021

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Santo Antonio, sketch of trees

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Santo Antonio, sketch of trees, oil on card, 16 x 18 cm  - available

Bolivia

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BOLIVIA

Bolivia: the following seems likely: get from the Brazillian border city of Puerto Suarez to Santa Cruz by train, subsequently bus to La Paz, then further buses to Potosi and Sucre.

It strikes me that the parts of Bolivia that will be most interesting will be in the south west, because the Amazonian part will, most likely, be quite similar to Brazil. In any case, one cannot go everywhere.  I am dreading these long bus journeys.

Santo Antônio de Lisboa, April, 2014; Bolivia

Santo Antônio de Lisboa, April, 2014, oil on card, 15.5 x 17 cm - unavailable

This time of year, Autumn can be great for painting here. It isn`t so damn hot, and there is often a fine, silvery and somewhat melancholy light, both clear and subtle.

I`ve painted from virtually exactly this spot before. I like revisiting places and seeing how they have changed, and comparing my reactions with before.

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I`ve booked flights to Bolivia- or rather, Campo Grande, from where I get a bus to the border. I`ll be there for just under a month, in July. I`d rather have flown direct to La Paz, but the air fares to there were extortionate. 

I have still to figure out my Bolivian itinerary. The lesson of previous trips is that one should not try to see everything, and that for painting it`s wiser to stay in fewer places, and get to know them, then spend one`s time rushing about just tick sights off a list.

 

Saachi

I am selling some work through Saachi now, but you can still contact me directly through Facebook if you are interested in buying any paintings- it makes no difference and will be cheaper as there would be no commissions to pay: http://www.saatchiart.com/profiles/portfolio/id/115898/p/2