Yesterday, a very pleasant Saturday morning in April, we headed for IKEA Lakeside, which is about 25 minutes' drive from our flat in Docklands to get a large picture frame. IKEA offers them at a reasonable price, probably the half of what I would pay at Atlantis in Whitechapel. I was not sure of their quality, but I needed to get one, immediately, to see how a piece I am reworking on would look if (properly) framed. The piece is a manually copied manuscript of the General Prologue page from the Ellesmere Manuscript of Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. I did it more than 5 years ago on a sheet of A1-sized tracing paper and it still needs some retouching and (maybe gilding too). I started it rather like a study back then, without any clear intention of making it a work of art, but looking afresh after 5 years it seems to have the potential. So I needed the frame, again immediately.
So heere bigynneth the tale.
On their way to Canterbury, sorry, to Lakeside, the wife of the artist told him that she wanted to go to the Primark store in the Lakeside Shopping Centre, which is almost adjacent to Ikea (if you drive). The artist thinks he knows just how long it would take before the artist's wife finishes shopping and just how annoying it would be to hang around in the clothing stores with the enormous lime-green push chair made in New Zealand and how crowded the shopping centre would be on a sunny Saturday like that and consequently how difficult it would be to find a parking space. To sum up, the artist hates the shopping centre. However, the artist knows that artists have to be nice to their family, so he headed to Primark, first, not to IKEA.
It was about 10:30 in the morning and fortunately finding a parking space was unexpectedly easy. Unloading the rather heavy push chair, which the artist prefers to call the Tank, the family, consisting of the couple and their two very young daughters, commenced strolling towards the shopping centre. The wife uttered then, "what if we have a quick look in H&M?" The artist immediately calculated the amount of time to be spent in at least two shops mentioned so far but was nice or pretended to be nice. The artist did not have any information as to what sort of clothing the wife was after and became just slightly irritated when she started browsing swimsuits and summer sandals for their elder daughter. The artist then recalculated the estimate of the time to be spent and decided to wait in the concourse instead because that way she would be able concentrate on shopping. He was then pushing the Tank with his younger daughter in it so that the wife and the elder daughter could enjoy shopping more comfortably, and did not realise that she had hung her handbag and stuff around the handle of the Tank.
He came out of the H&M shop, leaving behind his wife and his elder daughter. He was going to call her to tell that he was waiting outside, just when he spotted an HMV store across the concourse. He had a quick, just a quick glance inside and got a Chopin nocturne CD and a Rachmaninof piano concerto CD and a Gershwin CD, all of which were the Classic FM selection. He normally downloads music on iTunes and was a bit happy to get music in a visible and even tactile format. He paid £17.97 for them and thought it took only a few minutes when he realised that his wife didn't have the purse with her nor her Virgin Mobile. He hurried back to the H&M shop to find the duo. There they were looking at him with tears almost pouring from their eyes, as if to blame him for their being unable to pay for the summer sandals, or for their having had to look everywhere almost desperately for the artist without the means to (electronically) communicate. The moment he realised he was accused of creating all the mess, his initial gesture of being nice turned into a counter-accusation against the wife for her lack of understanding how discouraged people like the artist in question would feel when their priorities are interfered with by something they consider far less important. They turned their heels to the car park and immediately headed home without exchanging a word. They have not talked to each other up till now. Sometimes it is artists' partner that can be an archenemy of creation.
