Veda xxx

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27 MARCH 1969

Dear Tilde,

I realised yesterday that, reduced to an acronym, Works On Paper becomes WOP. I told this to my husband who became furious with me. I don’t know why. I was quite calm and composed when I pointed it out. I would’ve thought he would’ve wanted to know?

I hardly go to the restaurant these days. And, being the bad wife that I am, I barely take an interest in my husband’s charity work either. Jo is getting quite a name for himself on that front. There was even an article about him in the paper, with a photo of him, looking as though he’d got an unexpected fright. It seems to me, Tilde, that he gets younger and more energetic every day, while I get older and more enervated. I have a terrible furrow in my brow, deep and riven. And really, I can’t be bothered with hair, nails, etcetera. Or not on a daily basis. Look at me: I can barely be bothered with complete sentences. That is what happens with poets eventually: they become so minimalist that they don’t need words at all. Just a sound: a scream perhaps, like that picture by that German Munch (was he German? Or Austrian? Norwegian perhaps).

Might go and put my head in a bucket of sand or something. There’s not much better to do.

Send reason for living,

VEDA xxx

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2 MAY 1969

Dear Tilde,

Guess whom I spied with my little eye, after a hiatus of—perhaps a year or more—our friend Susan, aka Mrs G Bridie. And where did I see her? Rifling through her handbag, looking for her cheque-book—in the process of purchasing two ‘lovely’ drawings by Florence Oakey.

Florence is the first woman artist WOP has shown and this has caused plenty of friction. Especially because the red dots kept coming and coming. (They indicate a sale, you see.) Gosh, didn’t I just nurse my wine glass (full of soda water) and cackle.

Jo’s thoughts on Florence Oakey were all positive in the extreme, and he was sure Parish would feel the same once the monies had been counted. But Parish was in a funk—at being proven wrong is my guess—he was not a fan of the artist in question. Gallery assistant had to work extremely hard to jolly him back into sorts.

An all-round cracker of a night.