annanotbob2's Diaryland
Diary
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Splash
Well, I’m throwing caution to the winds, as they say, and submitting a painting to the Royal Academy’s open exhibition. The bloke in the Tuesday painting group suggested it ages ago and though I don’t think for a moment I’ll get chosen, I still want to have a go. It’s a painting I did last year, from a photo, of a giant moon rising over one of the really steep hills in Brighton. I did five different versions and hope I’ve chosen the right one. I showed all five to the group this morning and they all chose different ones so fuck it, it’s not for me to second guess. This is my fave so it’s the one. Bloke’s going to take a good photo of it with his flash camera tomorrow during the day, in natural light.
I just looked at the submission page and spotted that my birthday, when the exhibition opens to the public, is on a Sunday this year, not a Saturday, as I’ve told all the people I’ve invited to my party. Leap year, innit. Ah well, it doesn’t really matter – no one seems to have noticed. Daughter and I will go down there, to the New Forest, next month to sort out the details. She’s managed to arranged three bands to play, all for the cost of petrol and a free dinner, which I think we can manage. They’re all covers bands, one doing Velvet Underground songs, the others more varied, both in very different styles. All in her 12 step group. Brilliant. I do feel quite excited about it.
Today was the first Tuesday under the new schedule – art group at home on zoom, then writing group in the room above the bookshop. Much better. The writing group was great today – three of us in person and one on her holiday in Spain, still joining in via whatsapp. The three of us in the room suddenly realized that we’d all lost a brother. Mine to MND, D’s born with a life-limiting condition so he only lived to sixteen, and B’s due to a god-awful fuck-up and misdiagnosis which should never have happened. It’s strange how we find our people, isn’t it?
We did a piece in response to that Hockney painting of a swimming pool with a splash and I just loved hearing what they’d written. L in Spain wrote a first person fictionalized piece about a woman with no confidence diving and feeling “like a fish flopping about, just before it died on the chopping board”; D’s was about an anxious mother (fictional) hardly able to bear her children playing in the pool; B’s was remembering art at her high school, the elderly, strict teacher who only let them have cheap materials, the young free thinker who replaced her and introduced the kids to Hockney and other modern artists – really vivid. Mine was about standing on a diving board in an abandoned army base in Venezuela, which Tito had somehow gained access to. A bunch of us, including kids and a giant bottle of local rum, hanging out by this dodgy pool, with green water that no one else would get in. I took the opportunity to stand on the board until I had the nerve to dive – about forty minutes, as I recall. I’d never managed it before as there’s always someone behind you, telling you to get a fucking move on. Once I’d done it once I kept going, again and again, despite the green water. Keep your mouth shut and you’ll be fine. I was.
I love the writing group.
11:14 p.m. - 23.01.24
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