A Dab Hand

The artist is on a roll. There is no stopping her now. Her hand moves furiously across the paper on board. It goes dab, dab, dab, like soft fingers on soft glass. A piano sonata plays in the background - more fingers, more dab, dab, dabs - and it is a joy both to see and to hear. This is all in preparation for the visit on Wednesday from the most expensive living artist in the world. He has emailed the artist several times now, as has his assistant. No pomp. No self-importance. His last message reaffirmed that he was indeed looking forward to seeing what he called the 'pictures'.  It will be interesting for them to see each other again. Both are as committed as the other: it just so happens that one of them was rewarded with extraordinary success. But he, I suspect, knows Oscar Wilde's dictum that a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, even if my earlier mention of him as the most expensive artist in the world today suggests I do not. Today is our tenth wedding anniversary. I sprang into the back garden, like a cat, not a particularly agile one, at seven o'clock this morning, and plucked a bright red thorny rose from the rose-bushes by our bedroom window and presented this to the artist while she lay in bed.