The Shadow Line – Episode 3

I am beginning to simply enjoy The Shadow Line. I couldn’t care less about what sort of television it is anymore or overanalysing the drama, I am just well and truly hooked. Episode 2 was all about that frenetic chase getting things moving, with Episode 3 following it up with a series of shocks and twists. And an impressive fight scene for a TV show.

First off Gatehouse’s mysterious passivity burst into deadly action at the beginning of the episode. After initially revealing that he and Andy Dixon appeared to be in cahoots (insofar as Andy knew Wratten would get shot), raising questions as to why Dixon didn’t go to him quicker, he kills not only Dixon in his living room, but his pregnant girlfriend and mother too. Cleverly he got Dixon to walk round with the gun, saying he’d need it for protection in a meeting with Jay Wratten, thus leaving oil marks on the young driver’s trousers. All the evidence pointed to suicide after a double murder for the cops, apart from the lack of motive. Gabriel, as usual, had his doubts. But then he can’t trust his own memories so no one takes him seriously.

The big cliff hanger ending was once again Gabriel’s, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor. His partner Honey on the one hand said she believed he was a good cop but on the other started doing some digging into his “double dipping” past. She followed him, rather inexpertly I thought, at the end of the episode, to discover he has a secret family; a woman that is not his wife and a baby. Given his wife’s emotional frustration at not being able to get pregnant, and a scene in this episode where Gabriel appears to share her heartbreak and love her dearly, this is one big secret and apparent proof of his tendency to keep secrets and live a dual life.

Honey had a fair bit to do in this instalment, after getting herself into a close quarters fight in a warehouse full of red dresses, again due to her rather rubbish tailing abilities, this time on foot. This was a needed injection of action for this episode and a surprisingly well executed, hard hitting bit of fisticuffs from the BBC. Her opponent had just attended Wratten’s funeral and was apparently responsible for sending both Jay and Harvey to prison. He adds another dimension to the gangster side of things.

The fight culminated, after some scrambling for guns and an inventive use of a light bulb from Honey, with a tense standoff versus a gun and a coat hanger. And some of that divisive dialogue that some will think brilliant and others think forced and artificial. I personally quite liked this exchange: “Kill a cop and you won’t see the light of day”/”Where’d you learn that? On a course in Hendon? You’re not on a crash mat now love”: (quotes are from memory, apologies for errors).

Away from Honey’s strangely attractive and smouldering delivery of lines (just me?) Christopher Eccleston’s Joseph Bede is having an increasingly tough time of it. Despite just about pulling together a deal to sell a lot of drugs for a lot of money, which may or may not involve Wratten’s killer Bob Harris (Dixon named Harris but it seems likely Gatehouse or those behind him want Harris framed), Bede is feeling the pressure of leading. Yet again he claims he doesn’t want the power but yet again I wasn’t quite convinced.

He has got a lot on his plate at home though, like Gabriel across the line. Bede must cope with the worsening severity of his wife’s Alzheimer’s, as she bawls at him and hits him and forgets the memories of their honeymoon and marriage. As the Guardian points out, the waves washing away a timeline on the beach wasn’t the most subtle of metaphors for her fading memory.

So the wheels of the plot are well and truly turning. There wasn’t a lot of Rafe Spall’s Jay this week, which might be just as well. Perhaps after a breather from his full on performance I will appreciate its impact more again next time. This week it seems we found out that Gatehouse killed Wratten. But next week questions remain as to just who he is; and why he did it. I am now properly glued.

The failure of Reading and Writing Month – An apology and explanation from Mrt’sblog

If anyone at all follows my blog they would’ve noticed the disappointing petering out of Reading and Writing Month. I feel I should explain as briefly as possible why a project I was very excited about and had big plans for did not turn out as I had hoped.

What happened then? I suppose the simple answer is: real life. It’s an excuse all the same I know but when it came down to it I couldn’t motivate myself to either write for my blog all that much or do enough reading because of actual events and “dramas”. I used to make the mistake of using this blog as an emotional outlet for “real life” and I have no intention of ranting again here and spoiling what I’ve worked hard on. But I also once said I would write on this blog should I ever find that elusive state known as happiness. I may as well say now that for most of 2011 so far I have indeed been happy; the happiest I have ever been probably. I am grateful to have felt that even if it was fleeting.

Enough of that though and back to blogging matters. It really is most regrettable that I have a real life at all sometimes. I am frequently full of ideas for writing but most thoughts never become blog pieces or creative works. Often I know that if I try to realise an idea and rush it to some sort of completion, its quality will disappoint. I know that an awful lot of the words I vomit onto these pages are not examples of the best work I can produce. Sometimes it’s just imperative that I produce something or air my views on whatever issue I am passionate about, no matter how inadequately.

For Reading and Writing Month for example I had numerous ideas in the pipeline. I planned to write on literary classics like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Lolita, comparing their taboos. I planned to write my own short stories after amateurishly examining a selection of some I had managed to read. I wanted to discuss the future of reading with the coming of Kindles and IPads and audiobooks etc. I intended to explain why I rarely re-read books, and ask why we come back to old favourites when there was so much to discover and consume. Do we all have bibles for certain things, like good writing or storytelling, which we like to re-read to learn again? Like revision almost. Or do we re-read to recapture a feeling? Generally I wanted to have finished reading a lot more books than I did.

More recently in terms of general blog writing I’ve wanted to comment on the Libyan situation and the ethics of a no-fly-zone. Trips to Fulham football club and controversial Champions League games would have once spawned some thoughts. Various television programmes from comedies like 10 O’Clock to dramas like Christopher and His Kind have tempted me to put pen to paper, or finger tips to keyboard more accurately, but I have simply lacked the confidence, the time and the reserves of happiness to begin.

This is incredibly self-indulgent but it does annoy me that a) I don’t write enough and b) I don’t write well enough. Lots of things interest me and I want to write about most of them, but the task often seems insurmountable. The recent impingement of my real life on my blogging has forced me to rethink my writing habits. I shall have to accept that I can’t do it all. Especially if I’m to keep reading. And if I’m to do anything at all with at least a degree of adequacy. So I’m considering drawing up a more regular timetable for posts on particular topics. Film pieces will probably still emerge in a regular messy pattern, but perhaps other things I should simply talk about once a week on a certain day.

It will be sometime most likely before I do anything concrete about this. But it will probably soon have to be done out of necessity and I’m hoping it might help improve both output and quality. If you do drop by now and then I’d love any feedback or suggestions on what readers want and what Mrt’sblog can do better.

In the meantime I am personally trying to convince myself of the positives of Reading and Writing Month, despite its undoubted failure. I read a good mix of short stories and who knows maybe in future I’ll draw on them to write my own. At least for now I have good stories I can return to. I’ve generally rediscovered my taste for reading, not that it ever really went anywhere, even if progress is slow. I’m currently devouring, well gently chewing, Room by Emma Donoghue and soon I’ll start on Martin Booth’s A Very Private Gentleman, now a film called The American starring Mr Clooney. After these reads I’ll return to the list from Reading and Writing Month and try to make headway once more.

A heartfelt sorry from Mrt’sblog then, to myself at least if no one else is that bothered. Do follow me on Twitter (@Mrtsblog) and give me that feedback (constructive or completely pointless, all comers welcome)

The Art of the Short Story – Reading and Writing Challenge Month

For weeks now I’ve attempted to absorb myself in the art of the short story. Not just to read lots of new ones and re-read old ones, but to look closely at their composition, compare their merits and work out why it was that these fleeting snapshots of life seemed so much more like art than their beefier cousin, the novel.

At the end of my blitz of numerous tales I feel at once wiser and just as ignorant. The fact that my study of these stories has been so intense, the fact that it was indeed a solitary blitz, meant I had much less time than I would have liked to dissect, contrast and concoct thoughtful, satisfactory points and conclusions. This mini task within the greater, rushed whole of Reading and Writing Month has certainly not proved to be the magic pill I might have hoped for; I have not morphed into a masterful writer myself simply by consuming such a renowned, diverse range. But I am glad I was ambitious and wide ranging. I feel as if I’ve discovered intriguing examples I’ll be able to return to again and again as an inspirational template and model for my own work. Or works I’ll re-read simply to marvel at and endlessly reinterpret and enjoy.

Even prior to this challenge I found that a certain type of short story would leave me baffled. It would feel as if I’d barely read what could be called a “story” at all. Ernest Hemingway was one of the particular authors that could simultaneously make me feel cold and unmoved and fascinated. At A-Level I studied Cat in the Rain and for this challenge I read other tales from Hemingway’s “First Forty-Nine Stories” collection, including Homage to Switzerland and One Reader Writes. One Reader Writes is barely two pages long and feels as though it were lifted straight from an experiment in a creative writing class, as the narrator, clearly barely literate, attempts to write a letter about her husband’s syphilis. Homage to Switzerland presents three almost identical but also very different conversations at a railway station in Switzerland.

This last story is more typically Hemingway. He simply paints the picture of a scene to the reader; who watches. It takes the rule of “show don’t tell” in storytelling to the extreme. It points towards any number of possible truths about the characters, just as the famous Cat in the Rain does. The reader is left to interpret, as if watching a scene from a play. Indeed the quote from The Guardian on the back of my Hemingway collection sums up, what in the end, is his subtle brilliance:

“The author’s exceptional gift of narrative quality gives the excitement of a well-told tale to what is, in fact, a simple description of a scene” (my emphasis)

Here then is the first vague, hardly groundbreaking truth I began to comprehend better about short stories; that they can show us the many, differing qualities of a specific scene, much like a play. They can have as much or little drama as the reader (or the audience) chooses them to. Their brevity and focus also means that short stories encompassing a substantial sweep in time become harder to write. They’re also more likely to succeed if they contain dialogue. I do not say light-heartedly that dialogue is easy to write, but simply that good short stories rest on their ability to show us things in flashes, like a play. This is easier to do with well written dialogue. The professional looking winners, submitted by amateurs, to last year’s writing competitions, for Summer and Halloween in The Guardian and Telegraph respectively, mostly contained convincing dialogue, from which the reader can infer.

Chekhov was of course a playwright and this might explain his aptitude for the short story. In an insightful and enlightening introduction to a collection of Chekhov stories, Richard Ford makes a number of points about the merits of Chekhov’s writing that can also be applied across the board to short stories. Firstly he highlights how teachers were always telling him it was the sheer economy of Chekhov’s writing that others tried to replicate. As he concludes though, whilst this was evidence of accomplished craftsmanship it was hardly remarkable. What Chekhov did to elevate his writing, what made them art, was to expose universal, everlasting truths of the human condition still relevant today. His stories, the most famous of which being The Lady with the Dog, went against convention by taking established forms and zooming in on their less explored aspects. Like poetry, or a well executed play, Chekhov slowly makes us accept facts of existence we knew to be true all along; he simply crafted the circumstances and phrases to express them.

And yet short stories don’t all have to be masterfully subtle scenes, open to endless interpretation. The subtlety helps and it certainly doesn’t do any harm to have the fine focus of a scene. But they can also be the seeds of future novels, as Haruki Murakami’s Firefly became Norwegian Wood or symbolic essays on ideas. If I had to categorise the stories I have read, and I don’t think it would be wise to, I would divide them between these focused scenes and explorations of a particular idea. Fiction, in this condensed form, can be a far better, fuller examination of any idea than a hard written essay. Short stories can also better express something, without all the trappings and requirements of a novel.

In a refreshingly frank and interesting introduction to the collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Murakami talks about the difference for him, as a writer, between short stories and the novel. As always I find his distinctive Japanese symbolism captivating, even when he’s not crafting anything creative:

“To put it in the simplest possible terms, I find writing novels a challenge, writing short stories a joy. If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden. The two processes complement each other…”

Certainly there is substantial crossover in style and themes from Murakami’s novels to his short stories. Like his most celebrated novels, these tales are often heavy with nostalgia, sentiment and emotion. I mentioned ideas, but Murakami is a writer more interested in feelings and moods. His short stories allow him to explore these moods in isolation, touchingly and with symbolism. Many of his stories are symbolic and for me at least, irresistibly enthused with ingredients like adolescence, love and Japan. He is also an old fashioned storyteller in the sense that his short stories are often told by a character, or have happened to a friend of the narrator. Stories are currency to be passed around and retold, often based on perplexing coincidence that cast life in light or shadow.

Among my favourites from his collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman was A Poor Aunt Story, apparently one of his youthful, inexpert creations. This was a story with a symbolic idea at its heart, as opposed to someone’s emotional journey; the narrator wanted to write a story about a poor aunt, only for one to appear stuck to his back for the world to see. It seemed to me a wonderfully poetic way to make a point about the forgotten members of society, the pieces in the background.

Murakami also has the knack for the occasional, sensational and fantastical funny tale. A perfect day for Kangaroos, Dabchick and The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes were all witty and amusing. Other personal favourites from the collection included: Hanalei Bay, Where I’m Likely to Find it (wonderfully mysterious), The Seventh Man, Hunting Knife and Birthday Girl.

Like Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro is a writer excellent at moods, and I thoroughly enjoyed his atmospheric collection “Nocturnes”. This was five stories of music, love, nightfall and heartbreak. Here we find another string to the short story bow; loosely connected stories, that are quite separate but as a whole unite to portray one emotion, one truth or experience.

So finally then, to ideas. Whether they are sci-fi musings such as the poetically described automated house, with all its rhythm and life, in There Will Come Soft Rains from Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, to Thomas Mann’s more intellectual and philosophical ponderings via his protagonist in Death in Venice, the short story can properly showcase them all. Mann’s masterpiece is a superbly written meditation on obsession, love, beauty, youth, art, ageing, inspiration and everything in between. It’s also just a damn good story, with an impressive sense of place, created from very little, compared to the time devoted to beauty and reflection.

Stories need not replicate the sweep of Mann’s success to be brilliant of course; I’ve already praised the narrow focus of the genre. They can deal with aspects and ideas within a grander theme. From the collection of love stories, My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, The Hitchhiking Game by Milan Kundera and Lovers of their Time by William Trevor, stand out. Kundera’s story for its exploration of role-play and the need for a balance between meaning and fun in a relationship; what he calls “lightheartedness and seriousness” (reminded me of his unique philosophical novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being). And Trevor’s for its portrayal of the decay of love over time.

My three favourites from my fleeting trawl through the form then: The Hitchhiking Game, Death in Venice and Murakami’s Where I’m Likely to Find it.

Thus concludes my inadequate summary of the art of the short story. But as I say, I do feel enlightened and extremely excited to have reignited the joys of reading and writing.

Cultural Wanderings of an Ignorant Youth

This week I went all middle-class and cultural. On Wednesday I went to the Royal Albert Hall for “An Evening of Vivaldi” with violinist Nigel Kennedy. And yesterday I ambled round the Tate Modern, hoping I didn’t look as stupid as I felt. It was all certainly a far-cry from my rural roots and the working class hubbub of a football match and the intoxicating odours of warmed sausage rolls. But if I’m honest I don’t feel comfortable in either environment.

Wednesday then and the much anticipated, long awaited evening of Vivaldi. I was spirited to the venue by an irritable cabbie all the more grunty and scowly I suspect due to the additional traffic clogging the arteries of the capital’s roads, vomited up from below by the tube strike. On several occasions his grumpy state prompted less than textbook driving manoeuvres and one of these bursts prompted the howling horns of a sleek BMW pulling out into our lane, along with an un-graceful involuntary spasm from me. Not daunted in the slightest he drove on and continued occasionally with his inaudible mutterings, and I listened to Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 as he accepted calls about the change in the law allowing prisoners to vote, prompted by the EU courts. Eventually the Albert Hall crept on me from nowhere and I was out, stalking around its beautifully lit circumference, killing time until the doors were opened.

I was suitably impressed by the building from the outside and enjoyed snatching chunks of a singer that floated from a window in the Royal College of Music opposite, but was somewhat underwhelmed by the scale of the interior. I loved the deep scarlet (or crimson?) colour to everything and the history present in the antique seats, but whilst it was undoubtedly a big venue, perhaps my aforementioned working class sensibilities, used to giant football stadia, left me unmoved by the jewel in Britain’s musical crown. However I was pleased with the view from my seat and impressed by the impression that everyone’s seat must have a decent view. Still it felt smaller than it looked on the Dr.Who Proms anyway.

The only thing that mattered to my father (if I wasn’t writing would have called him Dad, but that sounded wrong and just a little too affectionate to be accurate, although father makes me sound more refined than I am) about Nigel Kennedy was that he too was an Aston Villa fan. All I really knew of him was a few performances on TV and the CD of the Four Seasons I own, played by him, that I know inside out and was my only real motivation for coming. That CD alone convinced me I loved Vivaldi and seeing as I loved his native city of Venice too it seemed like a good idea to delve deeper. But as I have said, I am a stranger to this world of cultured classical music and was therefore grateful in many ways for Nigel’s eccentric onstage behaviour with a working class twang. He honestly looked scruffy in my opinion. But he was instantly likeable. He swore frequently and strongly, to the shock of some and amusement of most; “Now I guess I have to play some shit on my own”. He bantered with audience members late because of the tube strike, pouncing on one with kisses and theatrical gestures; “You’ve only missed a few concertos but there’s loads of good stuff left”. He referred to sport when introducing his glamorous and beautiful female companions. He generally joked and entertained. And he seemed as baffled as I was at times at the ever so frequent applause. Every minor piece required a bout of praise at its finish, leaving me and by the look on his face at times, Nigel himself, wondering when they would get on with it. But then I guess it was all so wonderfully and terribly British, and why so many Germans, Irish and Italians were seated around me to enjoy the show.

I am hardly qualified to comment at length on the music itself. The first half of the show was comprised mostly of concertos I was unfamiliar with and consequently towards the end of it I found myself growing a little weary, especially during the softer sections. I confess that I enjoy the frantic and furious crescendos considerably more than the gentle, swaying parts, no matter how beautiful and intoxicating and calming they may be. I suppose the real revelation in seeing the performance live was the sheer visual spectacle of the violin. During my favourite intense moments the entire orchestra moved in energetic, synchronised slashes and jolts. All that striking swishing up and down through the air was like a chorus of swords striking at our ears, echoing the very “V” sound of Vivaldi, Venice and violin. Watching Kennedy duet with his various exotic female companions was also extraordinary for me, seeing the sort of chemistry I had only previously experienced between singers or dancers between two instruments was wonderful. The way he would undulate and stomp and stamp was so engaging at times, as if he was enjoying it then so would we I guess. Nevertheless I shamefully longed for some of the lively hip gyrations and sexy beats of Dirty Dancing which I had seen the week before as a present for my mother, at times. But of course when he finally got round to “four little unknown concertos” I was so delighted he was going to play the whole Four Seasons, and felt for a brief moment brilliantly middle-class and cultured to be in on such a joke. The striking strings tell such a story in that music and the waves of sound rising up stronger and stronger during my preferred pieces was wonderful and fantastic to hear the whole thing in one go. Admittedly by the end I was tired and keen to leave for bed, but I was privileged to have heard what I knew as tracks on a CD, treasured and enjoyed in quiet privacy, in the company of others, even if they were more than simply a casual appreciator as I was.

Mind you I am a bloody expert on Vivaldi when you compare my knowledge of his music to my knowledge of modern art. So I’m not sure why I had the urge to go and look round the Tate Modern, but go I did. I guess part of it was simply the wonderful approach and the walk past St.Pauls and over the marvellous Millennium Bridge, poised like a delicate, wobbly blade over the Thames. The walk was actually surprisingly easy and quick and I shall be doing it again. I loved the contrast of St.Pauls white marble with that of the Tate Modern building itself, beautiful in its own way. Part of my problem has always been though that I appreciate the buildings selected to store great art in more than the works themselves. Whilst I can see the value more easily in the traditional works at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square (and I always pop in), with some pieces, such as those of the Venetian canals, blowing me away with their vibrancy and colour, I find it much easier to marvel at length at the scale and beauty of the building around me than the paintings.

Once inside the Tate Modern though the interior is nothing to marvel at. Disappointingly there was no sign of the controversial seed art installation that had made the news, but I picked up a map and set off aiming to educate myself. I was expecting to despise a lot of what I saw, as I am an ignorant, rural, traditional sceptic when it comes to “modern” art in many ways. I do not claim to know what constitutes art and what doesn’t, and would rather not get into that debate as it’s surely a subjective question, but for me a piece of canvas painted one colour, albeit a striking one, is interior design, not art. There’s no reason why it would not have been done before by someone. I’m not saying it doesn’t require skill and aesthetic appreciation, but it does not seem to be art to me. And yes there was the odd piece that I hurried past to avoid staring at it angrily and in disbelief. Even Matisse’s celebrated “the snail” which I was familiar with from a documentary and was surrounded by admirers, does nothing for me with its simple blocks of colour. For the most part however I was surprised at how engaging I found a lot of the works and generally enjoyed my couple of hours or so wandering about.

Calling the Tate Modern “modern” can be misleading in itself, as there is a lot of history to be found within the walls. Granted when you take human civilisation as a speck on the table top of world history then the twentieth century works on show are very modern indeed, but for me as a child born at the end of the century it’s a period rich in variety, close enough to be stirringly relevant but far enough away to be exotic. I stumbled across Monet’s Water Lillies for example, which seemed like a genuine progression of what the sceptic might term “real” art, as opposed to a cop out like some of the more controversial, politically motivated revolutionary pieces. I was happy to sit and lose myself in its colours for a fair few minutes and could see the value in the blend of colours expressing something true about what one actually saw in such situations. As I’ve said before on this blog, for me culture speaks to me most when it says something true and I found throughout the day that reading the brief background of a piece might help me see the meaning the artist was striving for and thus appreciate it more. Having said that some pieces were simply a visual treat I didn’t want to spoil by thinking about and dissecting, such as Jackson Pollack’s Summertime, on the opposite wall to Monet, which was a colourful splash of elongated colour.

Generally reading about and discussing the various methods of artists, especially when they produce dubious results, bores and alienates me. But when these methods are placed in the context of their times and given intellectual motivation I am more interested. I found a number of pieces by German artist Max Ernst interesting, for example. One of them, The Entire City, painted in 1934, was created using a technique called grattage or scraping. This introduced elements of chance into the work and I found this philosophical idea fascinating, especially when placed in historical context it is said to express Ernst’s pessimism at the unfolding Nazi situation in Germany. It also helped that the visual end product of The Entire City was visually intriguing as well as being not so abstract as to be unintelligible by my simple eyes.

I have always found it difficult to relate to the craft of the artist, perhaps simply because I was so utterly useless and talentless myself.  I have always preferred and understood the skill of the written word and seen more value there. But in the “Poetry and Dream” section of the Tate I found some pleasing overlap that could stimulate my brain as well as my senses. A piece by Juliao Sarmento entitled Mehr Licht, meaning “more light”, is interestingly ambiguous with the image of a man holding a woman’s neck and was intended to be so, as the artist points out that such a gesture can be violent or tender. Having said this I still found that the end product of some works seemed to bare no correspondence to their descriptions lavishing praise and finding intellectual enquiries where there were none. Francis Picabia’s Handsome Pork Butcher for example just seemed grotesque and silly and perhaps that was the point, although his Otaiti was more thought provoking.

So whilst I did appreciate the different and striking pieces, especially when they had inspirational ideas behind them and connected to them, the uneducated ogre in me still preferred the pieces that resembled “real” art and exuded skill. Yes there were sculptures by Anish Kapoor and others such as a tumbling stack of felt and a circuit comprised of ordinary silver kitchen objects that held me transfixed for a while, but these seemed to belong in a different category. The realist room containing pieces by Meredith Frampton and Dod Procter, seemed to have a better blend of skill and modern ideas. Dod Procter’s Morning had a wonderful 3D quality and captured the light and imperfections of the human form as well, and better, than any camera. Frampton’s works too seemed to have mastered the fall of light as well as containing symbolic, vibrant objects that made it more modern and set it apart from a traditional portrait.

Oh dear listen to me trundling out the sort of art critic bollocks that usually makes me heave. And worse still I’m a complete amateur; at least they’ve been taught or learned the bullshit they spout inside out. If I’m honest in the vast majority of the galleries I was often distracted from the works by the superior quality of female that creativity seems to attract. I mean seriously I may have to consider cultivating a sideline in bullshit art appreciation alongside my “writer’s beard”, as a friend of mine told me I was now sporting. I have literally not seen so many attractive girls in one place at once in a very long time. Or maybe I just haven’t been looking hard enough. But anyway every other girl seemed to be a stunner, I was looking around for the gallery official whose glorious job it was to admit the beautiful and turn away those whose standards fell short. Was it always like this? I imagined that if I should ever be lucky enough to talk to any of these women, even if they churned out arty farty crap that was incomprehensible to me, I would listen, transfixed, jaw hanging in wonder and scraping the industrial floor. There was the odd creative guy type about who would clearly act as a magnet to all the budding female artists drifting aimlessly, except that a great number of them may have been gay by appearances. But then who can judge by appearances alone? Artists perhaps. Anyway needless to say I did not speak to any of these wonders, these fine specimens, these art drugged creatures. I simply marvelled and left, having enjoyed my cultural wanderings. But I remained essentially terribly ignorant.