Sunday and Monday

I deliberately hadn't visited the sales areas in the Clocktower before Sunday: shops in town would be closed, these wouldn't, and there'd be plenty of time before our one event of the day. After a leisurely breakfast we plunged in. I was - um - reasonably restrained: I bought a number of comics, and a poster, but I resisted the puffin mug and the hand-knitted mythical mice:

I had planned to buy a copy of The Red Virgin, but Page 45 had sold out: there might be some available after the talk that afternoon. We'd heard Bryan and Mary talking about the book the previous year, but would probably have gone to hear it again, if it hadn't clashed with Dave McKean's performance. I'm not regretting that choice: Black Dog - The Dreams of Paul Nash is a sound-and-vision rendering of McKean's new book, an extraordinary fusion of McKean's voice and art with that of Paul Nash. I hadn't planned to buy the book, but now I want to (having been launched the previous day, it was already sold out, which was probably just as well as far as my budget is concerned). I see they are repeating the performance alongside the exhibition at the Tate. and I recommend it (also see that the exhibtion will in due vourse come to the Laing, which is more good news). Still dazed and overwhelmed, we trotted back to the Clocktower, bought our copy of The Red Virgin and had it signed, chatted briefly to Kate Charlesworth about the event we had just shared, and how it was sparking thoughts about her work-in-progress -

- and that's it for another year. ( Not quite all - with pictures. )