‘In the rooms the woman come and go,
Talking of Michelangelo’
(T. S. Eliot)

The usual crowd greet one another:

‘Serena, darling! You aren’t working’
‘I never work after 2.30pm on Monday’

Some make a distinction between technique and charm:

‘It’s done quite well. I just don’t like it’.

Another accounts for why the room with small paintings has such a crush of admirers: ‘People can fit them in their houses’.

‘Ugh! That would give you nightmares’

‘Really cheering!’ (small pictures of flowers)

‘That is definitely worse than this one’(Two women examine a pair of obscure sculpted pieces on columns)

‘He’s got a Beatles 48 with an immaculate cover’

An elderly woman is telling a man in socks, ‘My father was at Maldon’, to which he replies,

‘Some of our family was at Harrow. It was less expensive than Eton’

Later I see him bid farewell and one of them says ‘Where are your shoes?’ Sure enough, when I look down he is in navy socks.

Two women in the sculpture room are laughing at two four foot high jelly babies, made of resin, one lemon and one lime. ‘They’re £20,000 each!’

‘ They’d look lovely in the garden, though.’

Nearby is a large piece resembling a ghostly human trapped inside horizontal layers of clear plastic.‘ It looks like an IKEA self-assembly kit’ a man tells his wife.

‘He wouldn’t have been just a nobody, would he?, a woman queries her friend about the identity of one of the artists.

Someone looks at a stripy canvas and says :’It reminds me of, who is that woman who just goes---‘ and waves her arms above her head.

‘Oh, Bridget Riley!’

Side by side on one wall are portraits of rather battered, old fashioned Penguin paperbacks with orange bands . Their titles are, ‘Rags to Polyester and ‘International Lonely Guy’

I nearly trip over a large hat made from elaborately twisted coathangers, and can’t resist nudging a transparent plastic ball with a map of the world printed on it, leaning against a wall.

I hear a woman with an Australian accent say ‘She’s a large lady’ about a nubile giant constructed from dominoes.

‘Teddies don’t have teeth like that!’, says an old boy about some about modified soft toy bears, snarling and wielding red guns made from what look like air-pumps. Their hind paws rest on smaller fluffy toys.

Two Americans peer at a couple of squashed Special Brew cans mounted on a card :

‘Well?’

‘Hmm..’

Loved your take on this- almost made me convinced it was worth the trip. Especially the giant jelly babies and the sockless public schoolies. Delicious.

All I can say is it is the art work is a lot better than previous years. However, I decided some time the best entertainment was to be found amongst the spectators.

Sheila

<Added>

some time ago