A Pair of Art

Today I think is the first time since the artist was sick over a month ago that I've actually seen her sit back a moment from her work, move aside from the industry, the gifted labouring, and all that diligence. I am sure that the meeting yesterday will have had something to do with that. (The result of which remains, unusually, in the lap of the gods.) However, it is still interesting to me how some people will always find a way of staying creative even when they are trying not to be creative. Today for example the artist bought some rail tickets and booked some seats for a northbound train next week with the children to their grandparents in the melodic foothills. On her way back from the station she saw in a charity shop a pair of bright red Spanish high heels. Quietly, she slipped them on in the shop and decided to buy them. When she returned home she walked into the kitchen and took out a tube of acrylic Mars Black paint from the sink and proceeded to completely redesign them. Afterwards the two heels bore the unmistakeable imprint of the artist's detailed doodling. Now we had a pair of art. The creative impulse had been satisfied. The height was fetching. She didn't wear them out - she is with friends at the moment - but the children were amused. (The artist may have taken a night off but she had just taken our daughter to gym.) Now they - the children, not the heels - sit on the bright red sofa under a duvet; I am at the red round table, working on my trip. And no one's got the Tombstone Blues.

A man hasn't got a corner on virtue just because his shoes are shined

After supergluing the heel of my right boot, I take a journey into the city with the artist, a city of four world heritage sights and over 300 languages, a city of 15 shooting and stabbing victims aged between 14 and 19 in the past six months, a city of music impresarios and suicide bombers. A city - it almost seems frivolous now - of the artist and artist's husband. We hit the chewing-gummed streets. (It never used to be like this: not this good.) Crucial art supplies, parked and perky on clean regimental surfaces, are purchased. (Final touches, before the assault.) Then, across the road in a witty woman's shoe shop, by a shelf of improbably high heels, the nation's second most famous children's author is spotted, and told by the artist how much the artist's daughter loves her work, so the author draws something for the daughter, a face, innocently unaware of the artist's own work, but somehow connected. (Unexpected mission accomplished.) We snatch a hushed, vigilant moment together at the national gallery - the eye, the eye, soft breaths on the neck - looking at an exhibition of 17th century artistic freedom, presumably like the sockless man in bright, almost sculpted, pink lace-up shoes in eggshell-blue trousers I later see outside. And then it's the real world again, coffee with a friend bombed back from Beirut, another walk on foot, fashionistas hand in hand bumping into mirrors, pickpockets lighting expensive cigarettes, hyper-intelligent spinsters dashing in the sun. And, heading back, a man, by the station, scabs on either cheek, a man, broken, bashed, with no shoes.