Eye eye, pork pie.

Hello dear reader

And, if I send this in time, a very happy New Years Gregorian (2022) and Chinese (Tiger). If you were born in the year of the carrot, I can’t help you. Sorry.

I regularly think about writing you newsletters more often. But I lack discipline and focus and frankly nearly everything these days annoys me and, as I suspect you might feel the same, why should I bother you with my neuroses when you are labouring with your very own? Therefore, I have pledged that from now on it’s important to be of service. So today I’d like to turn your attention to dogs in European fine art in the fifteenth century, pork pies and why the NHS is not broken.

At the start of the year, my husband and I decided we needed more art in our lives and to this end, shortly after the first day of term, we dropped our son at school, took the day off and ventured into London to visit some galleries.

A funny thing happened though. I’m not sure that I like art any more. Or perhaps I don’t know what art is any more. More and more I feel that art is what rich people tell us it is, so that they might collect it, lock it in vaults, ‘scarcify’ it and canonise art education so thoroughly that on any day of the week (except Tuesdays, the French are wise enough to suggest you stay home on Tuesdays) there will be huddles of tourists in the Louvre crowding around a picture of an odd looking woman. Is the Mona Lisa really that enigmatic? Or is she just wishing somebody would hurry up and invent Senekot already?

It irks me further that you can’t move in a gallery for sponsored rooms proudly displaying the names of families who made a fortune by making lots of people dependent on opioids, or were dependent on opioids themselves but got away with not burying a body because, well, they’re very very rich and look at all the money they’re giving to art galleries.

So now when I go into these hallowed places, I always think of these lines from Joni Mitchell’s Turbulent Indigo:

‘The madman hangs in fancy homes / They wouldn’t let him near! He’d piss in their fireplace! He’d drag them through turbulent indigo.’

Have I become a Philistine? Was I always a Philistine? If there’s no absolute definition of art, how can anybody be a Philistine anyway? And, with war imminent at any given moment on the planet, why should one care about art, or cake, for that matter? If you took away the price tags from the ‘priceless works of art’- funny how Sotheby’s always manages to find a price for them - one wonders would rich people get quite so excited about art.

Dogs though?

Dogs I can get excited about.

‘Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.’ Oscar Wilde

Art, dogs, beauty, beholders, eyes. Oh yes.

Eyes.

Little did I know, taking my eyes for a stroll around the capital the other day, what was to come to pass this last weekend. Should defence budgets be further slashed, the Royal Artillery could do worse than to call up my son and have him share the mechanism of his homemade Lego gun and its elastic band ammunition. It sent me straight to the Ophthalmology A&E at my local hospital, so I can vouch for both its efficacy and cost effectiveness given that there’s plenty enough Lego and elastic bands under the beds of most of the children in the United Kingdom.

I cannot lie: I always like to think I’m special and got a little excited telling the receptionist all about how I came to be the walking wounded, imagining that this was up there with inventive injuries of all time. She paused her typing and peered at me over her glasses.

‘Oh no dear,’ she said. ‘I have to stop you there. That’s nothing. I once admitted someone who’d detached their retina with a pork pie.’

I was quiet after that and went meekly to my seat in the waiting room.

And here’s the thing: there wasn’t really much of a wait. I was triaged, seen by a consultant, advised to stay away from rubber bands and returned to the outside world with my corneal abrasion cream in my pocket within an hour and a half. As a treat I went to the nearest Tesco Express, bought a packet of teacakes and ate them all in one go because when you are a bona fide patient this is allowed.

While stuffing my face walking up the road - again, this was allowed even though it’s very poor form to eat while walking, I know, don’t tell my mother - I recalled the time I had to go to Cedars Sinai ER because of an allergic reaction to a Lifesaver (!) sweet. I could not tell if I couldn’t breathe because it was an allergic reaction or because every minute of triage was a month’s mortgage payment if my insurance wasn’t accepted. (It was. But I still got billed a few hundred bucks for ‘extras’ which made it very expensive confectionery. I am still none the wiser as to what those extras were. They didn’t even let me keep the disposable thermometer.)

It's been through a lot, our NHS. It has been through its Armageddon and it is still there. Working. Welcoming you warmly. Delivering excellence against all odds. You give your name, and in you go. Nobody asking you for a credit card, or handing you a bill a few hours after you come round from surgery. No living with the permanent low grade anxiety that comes from having your ability to enjoy healthcare linked to your ability to pay for it.

It’s worth considering, I think, that while there is much not right with the United Kingdom as we begin 2022, our health service nevertheless is something to be very proud of. The at-point-of-use quibbling notwithstanding, it is free. This still strikes me as miraculous. So, while our politicians might be absolutely useless, no matter: we have free healthcare. And free art - whatever that is anyway.

When we get free dogs and free cake, then we’ll know things are really looking up.

Until then, stay well and stay lucky and thank you for reading to the end.

Love

Nerina x