As the evening sky grew dark

We sat together in the park, as Dylan says in Simple Twist of Fate. I was with a good friend, the friend who sent the Chardin postcard the other day. We were talking about the artist and I was updating him with an image of her most recent work. We were in the heart of the capital, close to the government, and my companion was framed as if in a painting by an English lake and some tall English Plains trees. Furthermore a pelican was poking its long beak through the railings behind and two tufted ducks had caught the attention of a pretty young woman in jeans, who in turn was catching the attention of my friend. This person is ostensibly a writer but also an ally to the artist, having both written about her in the past for a major magazine and published some of her work in a literary journal. He suggested in the course of our catch-up that a friend we have in common might actually be able to help the artist because he knows the owner of a gallery the artist has already singled out as one she likes. He knows this man well enough to move into one of his properties. I am going to forge contact with the man if I can next week. You know, it's a kind of honour to represent an artist in these kinds of discussions, especially when the occasion is peppered with soundbites on life, love, and liberty. It's certainly far removed from the pricklier but equally compelling subject matter I was about to enter into again next when I bade goodbye to my friend in order to attend a discussion given by a well known moderator, a brilliant ex-junkie ex-army officer journalist, a retired major-general with pluck and yet kindness, an exotic tribesman with balls, and a Mediterranean professor with impeccable manners and grammar. Even stranger was the so-called rebel contacted on speakerphone, talking to the panel from a mountain. I just sat there, silently sipping my glass of water, wondering what the world was coming to. Information, like war, like life, is ever-changing. Expertise in almost anything these days is impossible. It is getting to the point where art is the only constant. Now, that would be something to talk about in a park.