it's a fine day, people open windows

[devi]

Day 2: Sunday 30th March

Sunday doesn't need time codes. It's not that sort of day. After all the storm and stress of Saturday, Sunday is still and blue and warm. We have no events on Sunday evening – Rita at Blackwell's is doing something but we're not involved in that at all.

And Sunday is very simple. I have to accomplish the following:
- sit in the art gallery from ten to four
- keep pestering Beast till he gives us our amp and mike back
- er...
- that's it

The clocks went forward in the night. As I cycle down to the gallery, stopping in at an empty G&D's to get a bagel for breakfast, the streets are sunny and deserted. It's ten o'clock but everyone's still in bed because their bodies all think it's nine.

I sit in the gallery looking out across the lawns of St Hilda's towards a clump of spires in the distance. Birds sing. Geese honk. Bells ring in one direction, from nearby, then another, from further away, blurry with distance. I write, I think, I watch no more than six people looking at the paintings and I type loudly because I don't want to hear what they say. I'm not bothered that only a few people are coming to the exhibition because I hear that even the proper galleries in town only get eight or ten people a day. When no one is around, which is most of the day, I try to play the grand piano down at the end of the foyer. I can only remember one tune from my early-teens piano lessons, a simple little thing in B flat called The Owl's Question. I press the pedals down and try to do the big resounding chord from the end of A Day in the Life, but you need more people for that, more hands, in fact more pianos. At one o'clock Heather relieves me so I can get some lunch. I wander out and wander back and find Heather and her friend reading the Sunday papers on a bench in front of the gallery, with the double doors propped wide open, because it's that warm.

Meanwhile I pester Beast with calls and text messages. He finally gets back to me saying yes, he has it, he's very sorry about not answering the calls yesterday but "I was pissed". Oh-kay. He says he'll bring the PA to the Port Mahon at five.

Just before the exhibition shuts up for the day I stroll down to the riverbank and lean against the fence. People slide by in punts. Everything is bright blue and green in the first warm sunshine of the year. Across the meadows I can see the grounds of Christchurch College, where people are walking around the marquees of the official Literary Festival, the one that we're the fringe of. At four o'clock the bells of Christchurch start ringing like mad, in avalanches of descending notes. This day feels kind of blessed. I get to the Port, expecting a long wait, but Beast has already been round with the amp so I take it home. It's a shame in a way. I wanted to look him in the eye.

Dan tells me his friend Cody rang to say he'd seen me on the local news. I put on ITV and there we are: Katherine Langrish's tiny Vikings executing each other and a sentence or two from my interview. I don't sound like an idiot or look especially hideous. I say some stuff about giving people a platform to perform. There are no serious "erms" in it, though there is a funny grimace. I'm more quietly pleased than excited; it doesn't feel particularly real, and anyway, who watches the local news? (Cody, evidently.) I text the rest of the committee and then Dan and I have a cup of tea on the balcony and watch the sun set. The first time we've done that, too.

Later I spoil the perfect day by getting wound up about work, as two sets of overwrought parents ring me up to fret. Oh yeah, paid work, I remember that.

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I wanted to look him in the eye.

Maybe better this way: he preserves his mystery, and you can still imagine what-if.

[mzdt.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking to tell you when I see you next - which hasn't happened yet - that the pub with no name on crowndale road is now a big block of flats. That's progress for you.

Congratulations with everything. Seriously.,

[carbonunit.livejournal.com]

Is it this place?
http://www.o3gallery.co.uk/

It looks awesome.