A Sunset and Badbrook Hall

This is my drawing from last weekend’s Secret Artist (in fact, a slightly different version of it).  In something of a departure, it does not feature a pun. 

Modern Leisure

Like all members of the truly leisured classes, Algernon Swift has no idea what leisure is: he’s busy all the time (whether it’s thinking about Sumerian grammar, sourcing the finest cod roe, writing an inventory of remembered smells, or wearing in a new pair of shoes).  

Reverend Hawker, in turn, struggles with the concept of modernity.  What’s modern, he says, changes with each succeeding age, so really there is only a succession of moderns (just as there is only a succession of present moments).  The trick is to choose a modern that suits one.  He decides to plump for what was modern c. 1850 and, adjusting his starched collar and straightening his cape, congratulates himself on being a very modern man indeed.

So it is with no little irony that Hawker and Swift find themselves transporting the Hawker’s Pot suitcase (along railway tracks in the dead of night, through snowy fields and under the noses of sleeping dogs) to bring it to an art fair called Modern Leisure at Badbrook Hall in Stroud.

The Hawker’s Pot suitcase will be here at the opening on Friday November 30th 6-9pm

then Sat 1st/Sun 2nd and Sat 8th/Sun 9th Dec 10am – 4pm

Please come by, if you’re in the vicinity!

(Badbrook Hall, Bath St. Stroud GL5 3BZ, or: across the road from the Star Anise café.)

Secret Artist and Fey Spook

I have a drawing in this year’s Secret Artist in the Museum in the Park in Stroud.  I will post a picture of it next week, when everyone’s identity has been revealed.  If you’re in the area, please do drop in – the exhibition is open between 11am and 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday and it’s all for a good cause (the Museum’s Walled Garden restoration project).

In the meantime, here is a joke that bitter market research with the Hawker’s Pot suitcase has shown that roughly one in ninety-five people finds amusing.  A big prize of imaginary pottery goes to the first person to post the answer in the Comments box!

Steel Yourself

Go Forth and Prospero

Akkadian Driftwood

MADE Market, Gloucester

The Hawker's Pot suitcase will be at the MADE Market at the wonderful Folk Museum in Gloucester this Saturday between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.  I will be selling an array of postcards and hand-made books, so please drop by if you're in the vicinity!

Grave Misunderstanding

Algernon Swift writes to the Editor of The Times:

Dear Sir,

It seems to me that the experiment of planting stones in graveyards with a supply of organic matter under each one should be declared a failure.  Not one of the stones has grown any larger, and this despite the best efforts of the ground staff and interested parties in keeping the grass mown around them and their bases free of weeds.  

This practice has gone on for centuries, and reached its zenith in the stone-planting craze of the Victorians, who by now would surely have expected to see stone forests at the edge of every major town.  Instead, any traveller on the railway is confronted with the dreary prospect of row after row of transplanted -- and slowly eroding -- stone.

I feel strongly that the whole pointless endeavour should be called off, especially as the demand for such stone as might have been produced in these places has long been filled by other materials such as concrete.

Yours faithfully,

Algernon Swift

_______________________

To which the Editor replies by printing a picture of a large churchyard angel, whose wingspan has increased each year since 1873 and which now resembles a ragged and decayed old tree.

Wisdom of Hawker's Pot #11

Forewarned is forearmed, and soon you'll be up to your elbows in it.