Instant Vintage

The artist's parents kindly sent us some money from the foothills for an anniversary meal. This we had last night with the children. We sat round a friendly table in a pleasant restaurant, a table of twelve loud women to our left, a serious couple to our right, and were enthralled and gripped unashamedly by our own narrative, as if this was one of the first times in a while in which we were able to let other people do the work for us, and I guess we wanted to celebrate this too. The children were - in a napkin kind of way - dribblingly incisive, as indeed was the artist fetchingly strident: a hint of cleavage, warm red lips, affection for her grateful husband. No, it was an all-inclusive experience, whose backdrop had been a day of helping the artist - as if help was needed - fine-tune the pieces to be shown Wednesday's important visitor. Now, presently, right now, as some 'electronica' plays on the laptop, and the children do hand-stands by the bright red sofa, I look over at the artist with a third - previous - piece on the go, and watch her hand tweaking, comfortingly, the already rich, and impossibly detailed, content, and I feel a mixture of pride and hope. Actually, I have just noticed a sculpture freshly created by our five-year-old son. Where did that come from? When did he do that? On a pink plastic plate in a bed of clay are three small toy ladders, one slipped slightly into the other, and the three of them, tall and aspirational, now leaning like a skeletal version of the Tower of Pisa. ('It's called "Nothing",' he says when asked.) Also, in just under an hour our eight-year-old daughter has a friend over and I will take them all to the old-fashioned fun fair erected for a few days on the open expanse of land serving as a kind of buffer zone between us and the rest of the city. Seabirds will glide in the vast blue-grey sky. Kites will compete. Buses will move grumpily. The sign outside the local drinking establishment will sway in the light wind. And I will look upon these children and feel the opposite of despair. All the while knowing the artist will still be working with a smile on her face.