Granny reads Joan Bakewell's pieces - Just 70 - in the Friday Guardian sometimes; how not. Though she does often find them too prim, neat, too SENSIBLE perhaps. (She prefers sensibility to sense, mostly. As her Beloved complains.) But
this - Paula Rego, not least is one of her goddesses (what else could I do? - indeed) - should comfort her; shouldn't it?
That Bakewell woman. She's always been just a little too BBC2, hasn't she?
ReplyDeletePaula Rego, mind you... When all the Britart went up in that fire in Saatchi's warehouse in South London, the only loss the media appeared to notice was Tracey Emin's tent. They completely missed the destruction of several Paula Regos, and lord knows what other great paintings besides.
Of course she is only 70 so there's plenty of time to come up with a few replacements...
Me I'm just waiting for the theta waves to kick in. Thank you for bringing the possibility to my attention.
Another Paule Rego fan good. Yeah that was annoying - Tracy Emin and go have their moments by comparison. (There was a Gillian Ayres or two as well. And she's pretty good too. It's just they're painters and not conceptual so not so smart.) But I don't think that lack was so awful as the gloating of the tabloid press about the destruction of what they don't consider ART.
ReplyDeletejBakewell is milder version of all of those crushingly sensible ladies used to turn up on Any Questions. (Do you remember Marghanita Laski?) There were some splendid old bats too. Guess I should aim for spendid old batdom: haven't made it yet...
Stop taunting me with stuff from English broad sheets.I'm still in mourning for The Observer. And Phil Hogan.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth Jane Howard has a good auto biography out - Slipstream - she has plenty to say on the aging process. Also she slept with, ohh, just about everyone.
Nothing wrong with BBC2 MarkG.
Good to meet you Morphess. I'll hop over to your site, soonest.
ReplyDeleteAnd well I guess you can get the broadsheets on the Net too - like me. There are European editions here - but rather truncated. I had thought my newspaper addiction could be cured moving away from England. But it's just shifted to my laptop.
I'll try E-J H. She's a good writer. Suffered I think from being too good-looking; not least thereby ending up married to that pig Kingsley Amis.... (He came to talk at Oxford once when I was there. Any ordinary looking female who dared question him got slapped down. The pretty ones got; 'Come and ask me that afterwards, my dear.' Even in my new-born pre-feminist mode that got me. yUKKY jIM.)
Nothing wrong with BBC2 - agreed - trouble is we can't get it. They moved the satellite.
Morphess - was only kidding about BBC2. These days it's the one I watch the most. Which probably means I'm a splendid old bat myself. Except I'm a bloke so I can't be a bat...
ReplyDeleteHelp me ladies - what is the male equivalent of a splendid old bat?
Whoopsidaisy. Forgot to change my addy thingy. You can't access my site with that other one. I have absolutly NO grasp of cyberspace, luckily help is at hand and it is redesigning my page for me so I will add you to my list. And MarkG now that he's retracted that BBC2 comment.
ReplyDeleteBeloved suggests 'old buffer'? What do you think, Mark?
ReplyDeleteWill try and get EJH's autobiography via Amazon. Interfered with as a child? God the longer I live the more I realise just how much mental illness comes from this. Know some stories close to home - not me, thank god. But I worked in a hostel once for people with mental problems and I should think 80% at least were largely due to that.
Hmmm…buffer too kind for KA. For some reason the words ‘misogynist barstard’ keep floating into my head.
ReplyDeleteYes, I SO agree with you on the sexual abuse. A friend of my mothers once said to me (along the lines of)
Oh, people make such a fuss about [sexual] abuse these days; it’s all a load of nonsense, in my day we just got on with things.
One of the most shocking things I’ve heard. She has 2 daughters by the way…
That was SHOCKING. Goes along with old attitudes to clinical depression.. 'surely it's a matter of just pulling yourself together.'Presumably lady in question had never seen long-terms effects. Awful
ReplyDeleteActually one of said daughters is a bulimic anorexic alcoholic.
ReplyDeleteGhastly.
Sounds like the mother was in heavy denial about something. Guess what. Families. Why do we keep on creating them. (Except mine is lovely. I think.)
ReplyDelete