Being Dotty

Yes, Conrad Is Being Tasteless Again

You'll see why shortly.

     Okay, today was a day for being artful, so Your Humble Scribe put on his best shoes and boldly made his way into Gomorrah-by-the-Irwell (changeable weather today) to visit the Aviva Centre, where they have an inaugural exhibition, "You, Me And The Balloons" put on/staged/constructed/installed by Yayoi Kusama.

     Here an aside.  Yes, it's needed at this point!  Art!

     Here are two iterations of 'Dotty', Bill's over-affectionate (to understate wildly) grandmother from "Bill And Ted's Bogus Adventure", and Miss Faversham from "Great Expectations".  So, of course - obviously! - Conrad needed to know where the word comes from, and most unusually it seems to hie from Holland, being derived from "Dote", meaning "Folly" and if it's pronounced as all other Dutch words, then it would be "Doh-tuh".  Which, o'er the centuries, came to be pronounced "Dotty" here in This Sceptred Isle.
     Okay, put a pin in that - METAPHORICAL PIN THESE ARE INFLATABLE STRUCTURES - and let us press boldly on to the Aviva Centre.  Art!

Not exactly prepossessing

     Thank heavens for armoured underwear! for the chap at the advice lectern just inside the door proved to be Paul.

     "I used to work with you," he informed.  "I bet you don't remember me."

     O but Conrad did!  Not bad for an aging gin-raddled curmudgeon: we had crossed path at the Co-Op many years before when HR still worked in the Old Bank Building.  He was enjoying working for the arts immensely, and more power to his elbow.

     Now, let us have the first exhibit: "The Hope Of The Polka Dots Buried In Infinity Will Eternally Cover The Universe".  Art!

     Conrad, being surpassingly nosy, asked one of the staff it the exhibition had been successful?  Overwhelmingly so, they said: busy every single day it had been open.  I will gloss over the bit where, scanning how high the balloons reached, I managed to back into one of the giant tentacles, which fortunately didn't suffer any damage.  They are supposed to be quite delicate, so Conrad is grateful his elbows didn't inflict any rips or tears, nor his Size 11 feet burst them at the seams.

     Then it was up to a balcony where you got a sense of how large these balloon sculptures were.  Art!

     Curse people for being polite and keeping out of my shots!  I wanted puny humans present to show you haow large these balloonsculptures were.

     Here you see some of the suspended items, with a warning not to fall over the handrail.  It was a good four feet high, you'd need to run at it determinedly to manage that.

          Here's a vista of things from thirty feet up in the air, giving you an idea of how large the items, how small the humans.  I think that's Yayoi on a loop in the background, 'singing' in Japanese, so I had no idea what the lyrics were about.

     Aha!  There is a translation in the pamphlet handed out - I shall spare you the details today.  Perhaps tomorrow.  I can tell you now that Yayoi is a permanent resident on a psychiatric ward at a Japanese hospital, and has been since 1977, with her studio located nearby for convenience, hence today's title.  <insert a platitude here about art and sanity>.  She's going pretty well, considering that she emerged into the world in 1929.

     Puny humans compared to one of the smaller balloonsculptures, and the lonely and neglected suspended items, which I snapped out of pity.

     Don't fret, there is more to come.  What, you think I'd blow this all in a single Intro?

Let's Get The Shots Of Food Out Of The Way

These photos are from Thursday, Conrad's birthday, and as we have observed a tradition in the past, it was off for a meal with Darling Daughter.  Art!

The venue

Darling Daughter Sal peruses the menu

Sal polishes off the last of her Buttermilk Burger

The tail-end of Conrad's 'Junkyard Dog'

     Apologies for not getting any pictures of the starters, we scoffed them too quickly.  More Coincidence Hydra fodder - our waitress lives on Oozewood, not far from The Mansion.  Small world and all that.  Conrad is tempted to go back and order the "Peanut Butter And Jelly Burger", forsooth.  Art!

    It now adorns my wall.

Ooops

Hmmmm.  The Ruffian's 'Luna-25' mission to land an instrument package at the Lunar South Pole has hit a hurdle or two.  Art!

     You may not be aware, but it was supposed to be launched at this date two years ago, until testing proved that it would probably miss the Moon entirely, but would definitely hit a hospital on Mars.  Then it was supposed to be launched in May 1922, when things elsewhere were taking up everyone's attention.

     One presumes it's been launched to show that Ruffian can manage to do something - anything! - successfully.  Now all Roscosmos is admitting is that the unit did not manage a pre-descent burn, because of gremlins/technical difficulties/stolen instrument parts <delete where applicable>.

     If they don't get this sorted soonest, the Indians will get there first with their Chandrayaan 3.

"City In The Sky"

The TARDIS has materialised forty years into the future, when the orbiting habitat Arcology One should be long-abandoned.  However -

Green hydroponic grasses grew underfoot, and the Tardis had managed to land exactly within the footprint of a bamboo embrasure at the very centre of this greenery.  The travellers hopped over the miniature fence, turning to see that a laminated plaque declared “Site of the Original Materialisation”.

     ‘Ooops.  We seem to have created history instead of merely observing it,’ whispered the Doctor.

     Nearby workers grubbing in hydroponic underlay or with bags of harvested crops stood and pointed at the new arrivals.

     ‘And we’re making it now!’ exulted Ace.  ‘Cool!’

     ‘Ace!’ came the predictable scolding.  ‘It is nothing of the sort!’

      Their arrival and reception this time was far less problematic than their earlier arrival forty years ago.  For one thing, the Tardis had managed to arrive in exactly the self-same plot that it had arrived at forty years ago : the bamboo-striated enclosure marked that remarkable event.  Secondly, everyone of any importance had already been extensively briefed on the strange, time-lax travellers who might turn up again.  Lastly, they were a welcome change from the dull routine of normality.

Davros peered near-sightedly at the Tab’s screen.  If you excluded the scratches and scuffs on the display casing, it seemed to mention The Doctor, Ace and Tardis.  All three entities from the long gone, long distant days of the first generation.

    Yes, Dorothy, show some temporal decorum why don't you*.

Allow Me To Gloast A Little

As you may be aware, Conrad likes to play the odd game of Mah-Jong in the solitaire tile configuration, when you start out with a fully laid-out set of tiles, half of which are hidden from sight.  Art!

     The idea is to take away pairs of identical tiles and clear the board.  You work against the clock in this iteration, and you can Undo moves, or get the game to suggest possible moves using Hint.

     Well, I cleared the board.  Art!

     Done in 07:18.  No, I am not going to play again, this game is an insidious eater of time.  It's 19:01 right now.  Were I to play again it would instantly become 21:47.  Not going to happen.  Please, have a go yourself and see if you can do better.

Finally -

Your Modest Artisan has finished "The Killers Of The King", and can inform you that the next to last chapter has all the makings of a thriller, which could legitimately be set in South Canada and involve the settlers, Native Americans, the English crown, turncoats, rebels, regicides, secret hiding places, resentful South Canadians before there were even South Canadians, and speleology.  I'd have to describe it across a whole Intro, so you may get a description tomorrow.

Chin chin!

*  Ace and decorum have long been strangers