NOT THE WORLD NEWS

Started a new portrait. Won't say anymore about it until it's done.

Also clearing space to get down to seriously finishing my graphic novel, Double Entendre.

Also received the walking stick I ordered: it's blue with shiny silver dots - at least it doesn't look like an oldie's stick. Or shtick.

POST-NINE OH

Post nine oh
Where do I stand?
On right hip gone wrong
On right leg in feeble protest?
Neon-blue stick
Is in the post
Your order can no longer
be changed.

Ah yes, your order!
That is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler
In the mind
To stand and struggle
Or to sit and watch teevee
Until the cows
The blind cows
Come home?

Nothing like a good cliché
To distract you
From the point
My point
This Monday morning
This freefrom carnival morning
Was where do I stand
After the big nine oh?

The answer my friends
The only proper answer
To a rhetorical question is
Beh.......

MORE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Just to round off the birthday another photo then I'll move on.
If you can access Facebook there's an album of about 37 more taken by Habie Schwartz that night.

This is when we're all singing Je Ne Regrette Rien.

BIG BIRTHDAY PARTY

Thank you so much dear friends far and near for your most welcome birthday wishes.

 My party at a local pub on the seventh of August was excellent. I forbade the most boring song ever invented (Happy Birthday) and instead conducted everyone to sing along with me (in French) the much more appropriate Je Ne Regrette Rien made famous by Edith Piaf.

Whatever age you reach on your next birthday, I suggest that you do likewise, sing JNRR, as a choir, with feeling, and you might find that any left-over regrets vanish like smoke.

I didn't take a single photo but others did and a whole album of terrific ones of the whole party, taken by my friend Habie Schwartz, have been posted of her Facebook page as well as mine. If you're not on FB or can't connect to it, I'll try to post at least some of the pics here later.

JE NE REGRETTE RIEN  Lyrics by Michel Vaucaire (translated by moi).  Music by Charles Dumont

No, absolutely nothing
I regret nothing
Not the good
Not the bad
It's all the same to me.

No, absolutely nothing
I regret nothing
It's  paid for
Swept away
Forgotten
Don't give a damn about the past.

With all my souvenirs
I lit a blazing bonfire
All those pains, those pleasures
Don't need them anymore

Swept away my loves
With all their trremolos
Swept them away forever
I'm starting from scratch.

No, absolutely nothing
I regret nothing.
My life, my joys
From now on
It all starts with you.

VERY LARGE BIRTH DAY

Big birth day today. Since I publicly confessed back in January the actual number of years I've been on this planet, no need to mention THAT number again, right?

Okay I will mention it again. Here's the full shocking confession, published in the Guardian in January. Ignore the photo, I look better than that in person.

MORE NdA WORKS TO TEMPT YOU

Here's another small work for your (potential) NdA collection.

THE BAIT  NdA (circa 1970s)
Construction. Wood, wire, acrylic on board.
Framed. 12.4" x 10.5" x 1"inches.  (32 x 26.5 x 2 cms)

LATEST PORTRAIT FINISHED

Early this year Valerie commissioned me to paint a portrait of her late mother Ellen and sent me some photos to work from. Among these was one of Ellen as a young mother with baby Val. I finished the portrait recently and today the baby - now a beautiful and brilliant young lawyer in Vancouver - came over and saw the painting for the first time.

Ellen and baby Valerie. NdA 2019. Oil on canvas 14 x 18 inches.

Valerie and portrait of herself as baby with her young mother Ellen. Photo taken by Natalie  30th July 2019

 A significant thing is that Valerie and I are sort of related. Not blood-related, more a circumstantial kind of relationship: her late father Reg was married to me before his marriage to her Mum Ellen. It was and is all fine and what's interesting is that it feels as if Val and I are literally related, we get on so well. I also wish I looked more like her than like me but that's beside the point. 

I'm so happy that this portrait will soon be hanging in her home, next to the portrait of Reg I painted in Mexico long before she was born.

Portrait of Reg Dixon by NdA. San Miguel de Allende, Mexico 1956. Duco on board.

START AN NdA COLLECTION?

I'm going to gradually post photos of some of my small works from various periods which you might like to own. If so please private message me. I need to clear the decks.

These two are picturepoems.

WHO AM I? NdA 1971 Gouache on paper.
Image size: 17 x 24 cms unframed.
Framed (with mount, under glass) 35.5 x 27cms

 

AMAZING   NdA 1971 Gouache on paper.
Image size: 17 x 24 cms unframed.
Framed (with mount, under glass: 35.5 x 27cms

KEEPING FIT?

Am supposed to go to the gym class right now and spend an hour riding various machines designed to oblige (as in force) parts of the anatomy to move in unaccustomed - or currently unaccustomed - ways. The object of this regime is to improve my hip ostheoarthriticktick situation.

I put on my gym gear: trainers, t-shirt (long sleeves) and leggings. Am I going to the gym? Probably not. Definitely maybe not. I don't know. Have to take a bus then walk a short distance to get there. It's insupportably hot today, as you know. Anyone going to a non-aircon gym in this heat must be crazy. I am a little bit crazy but also rational. 

Why would I wear a long-sleeved t-shirt in tropical heat? If that question didn't cross your mind I'm sorry but I'll answer it anyway.

Some of you will have noticed, perhaps even on your own persona, one of the many un-beautiful things which happen to the human body as it ages. Skin becomess thinner and looser. When I dry my hands on those machines in public loos the skin on the back of my hands and arms flaps around like sails in a hurricane. It's funny but it ain't beautiful. No it's not.

If you're one of those people who say it's all beautiful and whoopee, let it all hang out! I will bow to you and praise you, if you wish, but I won't join you. I will wear la ong sleeved t-shirt to the gym.
I've missed the class now.

TELLING IT LIKE IT IS

The brilliant Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole saying it exactly as it is on Channel 4 News yesterday.

Why can't there be people like this as leaders of countries instead of that weird species known as politicians?

Here is the link to that interview.