The Beeb

The ordeal is over. The three minutes LIVE on air has passed, and I survived. Why this should hold such terrors for me I don’t know, but it does. When the BBC car arrived for me yesterday at dawn and brought me through empty early morning London streets to Broadcasting House I felt as if  I were being taken to my execution. It is the idea of a live interview that terrifies me- what if I should suddenly become overcome by the giggles, or start stammering, or not understand the questions asked or have an attack of touretts and start swearing or saying rude things? Now, those possibilities are remote, but they do exit, so they had robbed me of all sleep during the preceding night...

Once in the venerable Art Deco building, I was taken through a vast hall full of seemingly hundreds of working desks – mostly empty at this hour- with computer screens until we arrived in an area which had a sign above it advertising the fact that we were now entering  the LIVE broadcasting zone where silence must reign. To me it might as well have read ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here...’

I was shown into a waiting room from which the recording studio with the news readers/presenters was visible through glass walls. Another  interviewee was sitting there drinking coffee and looking through his notes. He turned out to be a transport union official and he was there to talk about Brexit. I confessed to him that I was very, very  unhappy...then it all happened and we were brusquely shown in to the recording studio on tip toes where we were silently kitted up with earphones. My fellow interviewee went first and was of course brilliantly concise, confident and a marvel of concentration. My heart was thumping away so loudly that I was sure it must already  be audible to the millions of Today listeners who were having baths, brushing their teeth or making toast.  I comforted myself with the fact that it was at least so early that most people I knew were certainly still in bed...

And then it was finally my turn. We went off to a bad start, but strangely it was the interviewer, Martha Kearney, who fluffed it, not I! She began by talking about the new exhibition of images from Djenne at the BRITISH MUSEUM rather than the British Library... so I had to begin by correcting her. Then she wanted to know why the manuscripts of Mali were important, and I was able to cobble something together about Sub Saharan Africa having been seen as a place virtually without history since it was believed that there was no written documentation, but that the study of the Malian manuscripts during the last thirty years had proven that on the contrary, West Africa was rich in centuries old documentation through the Arabic manuscripts etc etc... and the rest went if not swimmingly, at least I believe it was a pass...

The ordeal is over, and now I will actually just enjoy the Private View of the Djenne Exhibition tomorrow night at the British Library. I will give my speech, but that holds no great terrors- the place will be full of friends. The event is heavily oversubscribed and  many people who did not RSVP in time are now finding themselves unable to attend!

More later...

How to eat a sandwich

 There is only one satisfying way to eat a sandwich, as everyone knows. One must nibble around the edges until one creates a perfect circle.

 Then the lovely moment arrives when one chomps into the circle and creates the crescent, which become a moustache of course. This moment always has the potential to irritate people I have noticed. People finds one quite silly at this point. But not one's real friends. They understand. This moment sorts the wheat from the chaff.

 The friends that stay with you even when you repeat this every lunchtime, they are the ones worth keeping.

 Now, there is another important matter I would like to discuss regarding eating habits. It concerns the Pain au Raisin. I have noticed that one can tell a lot from the way people treat  a Pain au Raisin, and here again one can come across the most disturbing habits, which , I believe, tell volumes about people's psyche.  I have gone into many a cafe and ordered a Pain au Raisin and  when the waitress brings it out, she has massacred it by cutting it straight across its lovely curly body!

  Obviously there is only one way of eating this delicious French invention: one has to uncurl it bit by bit until one reaches the lovely heart of it... the sheer insensitivity of some people dumbfounds me.

And yes, I am still crawling around on my hands and knees on the Auckland floorcloth... and it is beginning to get the better of me.
My lovely God children have now left me to go to university.
I still haven't written that blasted  speech for the Private View at the British Library of the Djenne exhibition next week... it is beginning to stress me out. And I have just been asked to speak on Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday! And it is live. I hate that sort of thing... But can't very well say no I suppose.
Mali is booked.
Leaving on the 7th of October....
LATER:  Just about to try and write that speech... and of course I am very happy about this event at the British Library and even, I suppose about the radio interview- but only lacking in confidence.

This and That...

The most fun of all that happened this week was undoubtedly that my dear friend Kathy Prendergast, (whom I have known since our days at the Royal College of Art when she was in the Sculpture school and I was in Fashion)  won a new big art prize on Friday night: £50 000! The very first David and Yuko Juda Art Foundation yearly prize  was announced at a Private View at the Annely Juda Fine Art Gallery in Dering Street. She was one of eight nominees, but was so certain that she was not going to get it that she had not prepared any thank you speech ...

 There is noone more deserving than Kathy: hard working, dedicated and inspired, she makes thoughtful delicate work, but she is also a great mum who has always had to juggle the demands of motherhood with a demanding career as an artist. Now she will be able to throw herself in 100% again! Her children have grown up and are now going to university- but at the moment they are working as my painting assistants as the three of us are crawling around on our hands and knees in a studio in Queen's Park, painting the floor canvas for Auckland Castle. We have to be out of here by the end of September- it is touch and go whether we will be ready...

 I took the day off today- it is incredibly hard work physically- and enjoyed a lovely quiet  Sunday until my old friends Claire and Geoff called and enticed me out: just around the corner  to something called 'Portobello Soul', a mini music festival with live bands, bars and exotic food stalls.

And while all this London activity is going on, there is also preparation for my next Mali trip in the beginning of October- but first the British Library exhibition with its Private View on the 27th of this month- I am supposed to give a speech! and unaccustomed as I am ...ahem, it does worry me a little...

For Goodness’s sake: Let’s stop this Labour ‘anti-semitic’ nonsense!

First of all, I am not a Labour voter and I have never been. I don’t particularly like Corbyn. But I am just appalled at the continuing accusations of anti-semitism being thrown his way. This whole affair is insidious and disingenious in all its aspects. It is all unbelievably simple, but no one dares to speak the truth, because the Jewish Lobby is all-powerful. But have some courage F.F.S.!  

 So what is this simple problem? It is that the state of Israel calls ‘anti-Semitic’ anyone who dares questioning its behaviour towards the Palestinians. And that is all that Corbyn has –rightly- done. We all feel that the Jews were the target of some of the world’s most horrific and unforgivable mistreatment during the holocaust. That is without doubt. But that doesn’t give the State of Israel a Carte Blanche to  to behave however it pleases!

There is of course no question about it- Israel is behaving in an illegal way – it is occupying territories that does not belong to the state of Israel.  Get a grip! Unless I am missing something?  I am certainly willing to be disabused with a convincing argument. But let’s stop this beating around the bush, being scared of the Jews!