The other night Thieu suggested that I go and stay with my friends F and P who just live around the corner... and leave Maddles with him for the night. We had had a couple of terrible nights, culminating in Sunday night where she woke at 3 and stayed awake until my alarm mocked me by ringing at 6, reminding me I had to drag my weary frame off to work.
So I said yes. And the more I thought about it the more excited I got until it felt like I was about to do something absolutely amazing and fantastic. The idea of an uninterrupted night's sleep seemed like something almost impossible and well beyond my reach. I arrived at their place at around 10 and P made me a margherita which was sensational. Then I went to bed and slept. For nine hours. It was so great. It makes me smile even thinking about it. I felt fabulous the next day and am still feeling pretty good now. And there has been talk of repeating the experiment in the not too distant future.
On the weekend Maddles and I went with a friend, F, to see the Picasso exhibition 1935 - 1945 on at the NGV. Maddles found it all terribly dull and slept through most of it (she prefers his earlier work, in particular his blue period). I enjoyed it a lot, particularly some of his collagey-photo type works. F and I played 'If we could own any of these, which would we choose?' which is always fun. I cheated by choosing a group of nine prints, arguing that they constituted one work.
It was good going to see it with F as Picasso was one of the things we used to talk about when we first became friends years and years ago. She told me that the art gallery in the country town where she grew up had a Picasso ceramic dish in its collection. So one weekend when I went to visit her we went to the gallery to have a look.
The plate was no where to be seen so we asked the gallery attendant if she knew anything about it. 'Just a moment,' she said and scurried off. She appeared a moment later, carrying the Picasso plate in her hands. 'There you go!' she said and handed it over to us. Very surprised, we turned it over and admired it for a few moments before handing it gingerly back.
Sadly, the NGV was not nearly so willing to let us handle the exhibits.
