‘Yes. How about you?’

‘More than five hours. It’s the most I’ve had for weeks.’

‘Me too.’

‘Do you think the bells are about to start ringing?’

‘Half past six? It might be a bit early. Apparently they always ring them on a Sunday though.’

‘It was funny when Fiona became a flesh-eating zombie last night wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you scared when she said she’d seen a ghost?’

‘Not really, no. I thought it was funny when you said “ Bella?” and she said “That’s not Bella”’

‘Are you frightened of living opposite the graveyard?’

‘No. Beautiful sculptural shapes and subtle colours.’

‘So are we painting this morning?’

‘If we don’t, the paintings won’t dry in time for the show.’

‘Tea?’

‘Coffee.’

We finally moved house this week. Matt has been unable to take part very much.  He has been caught in a vortex of anxious concentration, intensely absorbed by the edit of his forthcoming series. He heads off to London early in the morning, returning late at night. I taxi him carefully through the lanes at dawn, avoiding roe deer and muntjac  (car-destroying encounters with deer are commonplace round here) and attempting to avoid suicidal rabbits in the dark. We were halted near the station by a violent drunken brawl last night – the re-enactment of a eighteenth century engraving warning of the dangers of drink. Twenty people screamed and shoved their way into the high street A man ripped off his clothes in fury. Someone swung a belt around his head. The buckle was about to make contact. The women fought as viciously as the men.

‘Stop, stop, they might attack us’ said Matt.

‘Go, go! Quick or they might attack us’ said Matt.

‘Oh, God that was exciting!  I wish we had stayed longer to see what happened next’ he said.

During the day, the roads are choked with combine harvesters moving from field to field. I went to buy supplies for the new studio yesterday. As I left a huge combine rolled in to a nearby field of wheat, and by the time I came back the job was almost done. If only the studio could be made ready as quickly.

Dangerous revolution by Gillray, dangerous drink today.

‘His name’s Goris’ said Toby.

‘Goric?’

‘No. Goris.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry’ I said.

‘Don’t worry’ said Goris ‘Ive been called all sorts of things – Lawrie, Boris ….’

Goris, like Boris, I thought, I’ll remember that. ‘Well Goris, would you like a cup of tea?’

‘That’d be nice’ he said.

‘So what’s the theme for the festival?’ asked Toby.

‘Magic’ said Goris.

‘Magic?’ asked Ilaria ‘I’ll have to think about that.’

‘There are lots of ways of interpreting it’ said Toby.

‘It’s a great festival’ said Goris. ‘They always do something original. They construct weird spaces. Last time there was a bar underground. I was down there for ages. Only about 25 people could get in.’

‘Have you been to Ginglik in Shepherd’s Bush Green?’ asked Tim.

‘Been where?’ said George. ‘I love Shepherds Bush Green.’

‘Ginglik. In the middle of the Green. It’s a bar, underground. It’s small. In what used to be the old toilets. You should check it out.’

‘Interesting’ I said.

‘What did you do for the Summer Solstice?’ someone asked.

‘I’ve been to Stonehenge a few times’ said Goris ‘but I won’t go there again. There are too many crusties and too many people are off their face. Drugs have spoiled it. I wouldn’t like to be there with children.’

‘Have you got any?’ asked Sam.

‘No’ said Goris, ‘but I wouldn’t be there with them if I had. The best place to be for the Solstice is Latvia.’

‘Latvia? Are you Latvian?’ said George.

‘Yeah, from Riga’ said Goris.

‘My family’s from Latvia’ said George. ‘Or is it Estonia?’

‘Where is Latvia exactly?’ asked Sam.

‘On the Baltic Sea’ said Goris. ‘Finland is only 60 miles away. It’s next to Russia, Estonia, Belarus and Lithuania.’

‘What happens at the Solstice?’ asked Toby.

‘Paganism is still big in Latvia. It continued underground throughout the various occupations. And the whole country celebrates the Solstice. There’s dancing, and bonfires, and folk traditions. It’s called Jani. Everyone called Janis has to wear a special costume. The men wear wreaths made from oak leaves, and the women wear wreaths made of flowers. Even the animals are dressed up. There’s folk singing, music and jumping over the fire. There’s special cheese and beer.’

‘Is there anything apart from beer? I don’t really like beer’ said George.

‘Not really’ said Goris.

‘It sounds incredible’ I said. ‘I’m going next year.’

Image of Jani celebrations from the Turaida Museum Reserve, north of Riga.

We worked all day making mosaics. George, a beautiful English girl, told us about her boyfriend. ‘We met on the plane to LA’ she said. ‘It was amazing. I saw him the day before, in a restaurant with my father. He was so handsome. I caught him looking at me, but I couldn’t introduce myself. And there he was on the plane!’ ‘Amazing’ we all agreed. ‘It must have been fate’ said Ilaria.

‘I’ve been interested in astrology’ said George. ‘ever since I was seven.’ She knew all about it too – air signs and earth signs, the moon in Cancer and this and that rising. ‘You’re a Virgo?’ she said. ‘That’s why you’re organised. But you must have some Pisces in you’ I think it was Pisces. ‘They are the artists.’

‘I’m not sure about that’ said Tim. ‘Isn’t it a bit open? Couldn’t you say any of those things about anyone?’

‘You should get your birth chart done’ said George. ‘You’d be surprised by the things you can learn.’

I cannot be alone in noticing how subjectivity emerges from the work people make. It is commonplace for students to create mosaics that match the clothes they wear, or do portraits of others that resemble themselves.

‘Of course I like the other materials, but my eye immediately went to the gold’ said George. And she made a little panel of the night sky, with glittering stars.

Ilaria told us about how she came to be here. ‘I was a designer in Italy, but I was told I would never make it there. My clothes were too unconventional. Italian design is very straight. So I came to London.’ Ilaria (think of Hilary, she said, when I found it hard to remember her name, which immediately solved the problem) was lovely — dark and striking. Her clothes were decorated, or deconstructed, with textures and trimmings and intense hues that complemented her beautiful colouring. Her mosaic was made from patches of brilliant hues.

Tim sniffed.  ‘I found it hard to get out of bed.’ He said.  ‘I jumped on my bike and raced over here.’

‘You must be a night owl’ I said, looking at his inky black mosaic. ‘You got that right’ he said. ‘Hmm. Sushi, good call, Toby.’

‘Or Bali’ George was saying ‘I go there all the time.’

‘You go to Bali all the time?’ I interjected. ‘There can’t be many people who can say that.’

‘My boyfriend’s a travel writer.’

‘Wow. Lucky you.’ we all said.

At the end of the session we put the materials in a room next to the concierge. ‘They’ll be safe till tomorrow’ said Toby.

‘See you then’ I said, as I went to the tube.

‘She’s not there’ said Goris as we waited for the concierge the next morning. ‘What’s happened to her?’

‘What’s your name again?’ I asked.

‘Goris’ he said.

‘Right.’ I said.

‘I’m not going outside to look for her’ said George. ‘There’s too much wind. I can’t stand it.’

‘I think it’s nice’ I said. ‘Didn’t you enjoy it in the workshop yesterday, listening to the trees?’

‘Air carries positive ions, while water bears negative ones. Negative ions are good for you. Positive ones are not. It’s scientifically proven. That’s why we humans don’t like the wind’ she said.

‘Really?’ I said. ‘I see.’

(Happiness in West London continues tomorrow).

When a design is complete in the jig, you lay a glued sheet of paper on top of the tiles, place a board over it, and flip the tray and board upside-down, holding very tight. If you don’t hold tight enough, the tiles move around, and the mathematical precision is lost. The best boards to use are small sheets of hardboard, rough side up, fractionally bigger than the standard square foot of the setting tray. The rough side is less prone to problems created by any accidental spillage of glue than the shiny side. When I bought Milano’s jigs, the boards came too, as a free gift.

They were the cause of regular embarrassment. At some stage, a Milano employee had undergone a psychotic breakdown, and the boards were scrawled with obscene and insane graffiti of a type I cannot relate here. But if they were shocking, they were freighted with history. I could have bought or made new boards, but I treasured these objects. They were invaluable and put to multiple uses in the workshop. How helpful it was to find just the right sized board to shift a wet mosaic, made by a charming student from the Home Counties, on paper, according to the reverse method. How I perfected, like a magician, the act of laughingly spiriting away the board from a surprised individual, in a valiant effort to convince her she hadn’t just read what she thought she had.

The jigs themselves were stamped with the name of the company that sold them. UDNY, they said. What Milano was to North London, Edgar Udny was to South London. If you were determined enough you could find them under a railway arch in Vauxhall. In the entrance to the arch, squinting into the sun from the troglodytic gloom, sat one, or sometimes two of the employees, jigging up a random mix. Yes, those were the days of the old technology.

(For non-mosaicist readers, a ‘random mix’ is a selection of tiles, placed with a balanced rhythm of colours in a non repetitive way. Confusingly, given the name, they generally cannot be made according to pure chance.)

An antique Udny setting tray, with a off-set, rather than a gridded structure.

I don’t know what impression I made on the workforce at Milano Mosaics. But they certainly made an impression on me. I remember almost everything they ever told me. I revered them. I lapped up the stories about working with Boris Anrep (Russian artist and mosaicist, and creator of the entrance floors to the National Gallery) and jigging up vitreous mixes for various hotels and subways across London. I was entertained by tales of going to Venice with artist Howard Hodgkin to specify tiles for his swimming pool mural at the Broadgate Leisure Club – and was delighted to buy the left-over supplies. I loved the pride both in high and commercial culture – thank god no one was working the marketing spin at Milano Mosaics. The showroom was hung with dog-eared and slightly out of focus photos of tile-clad walls adjacent to car parks and concrete fencing. What a relief it was to exit promo-land and enter the world of making and manufacturing.

‘Saivo mosaics – lovely colours – have you got any of these?’ I enquired.

‘Oh no, darlin’ – we ‘ad tons of it, but we used it as ballast under the car park.’ This was a typical exchange at Milano Mosaics.

In the old days mosaic was supplied loose in wooden barrels, and they still had those in the warehouse. Then there were sacks – plenty of them – and finally boxes. These days mosaic is supplied in health and safety sized two square metre cardboard cartons, but these boxes were at least twice the size – huge and heavy. Glass mosaic was thicker then, and came sheeted up with a tighter joint. Wider joints, thinner tiles – less material, more profit. When the manufacturers made the changes, I felt ripped off, but these days I suppose we would all be pleased we were using up less of the world’s resources.

Talking of the world’s resources, I heard an interesting fact yesterday. Ten years ago, they had no high-speed rail in China. This year they have more high-speed rail track than all of Europe, and next year they will have more high-speed rail than all of Europe and the rest of the world. Global growth — it’s alarming. It almost makes me glad the tiles are getting thinner.

Whizzy manufacturing.

This photograph has been released into the public domain by its author, Alex Needham at the wikipedia project.

I did enjoy the occasional trip into this unfamiliar world though. Milano’s showroom was a portacabin. The warehouse was a big shed topped by a kidney shaped harlequin mosaic made by ‘Old Man Zanelli’. I never knew Signor Zanelli, but he was a figure of legend, referred to reverentially by the staff.  The company ‘Zanelli’, by this stage, seemed to be the same thing as ‘Milano’, but at one time I think they were two enterprises. There were different numbers in the Yellow Pages, but when you rang, you were greeted by the same gruff tones on both lines.

Milano was run by Otello Cavallo — and an English guy. I can’t remember what the English guy was called. He was nice, and very helpful, but the name Otello Cavallo is somehow more memorable.

Eventually, when Milano closed down, I paid a token sum for the kidney shaped harlequin mosaic and brought it to the workshop. I couldn’t allow it to be thrown away. It was part of a legacy, part of the history of British mosaic. I wanted a place in that history too.  It wasn’t that I liked the harlequin especially, but the object was symbolically important. The staff at Milano liked it very much.

‘Old Man Zanelli thought he might sell it to the Harlequin Centre in Watford’ they told me admiringly ‘but he never did.’ At the time I identified strongly with these mild but thwarted aspirations, and of course I still do.

I confess I understood the reluctance of The Harlequin Centre in Watford — Palace of Thatcherite Consumer Culture, to purchase Mr Zanelli’s running Harlequin, with his brightly-coloured diamond-patterned catsuit, and curious short truncheon. He cut a slightly sinister figure, an impression only enhanced by the anachronistic kidney shaped board on which he was mounted. He was not a slick, shiny symbol of contemporary consumerism. He was a richer, odder, creature from another era.

Historically, Venetian masks, like his Batman’s Robin-style one, were worn to protect the wearer’s identity during decadent pursuits, or transgressive behaviour of questionable morality traversing class boundaries. Furthermore there is a tradition of ‘Hellequin’ – found in French passion plays, in which the harlequin is an emissary of the devil, chasing the damned back to hell.  These were the worlds of Signor Zanelli’s harlequin.

A more appropriate icon for the Palace of Shopping in Watford was the jester in a clown-suit and a buffoon’s belled hat – a symbol that we’d all become fools and children now.

Grown up art at the Harlequin Shopping Centre, Watford.

Photo: Nigel Cox. Permission: Creative Commons Licence 2.0

I’m walking to an appointment at the fracture clinic. At the entrance to Whittington Park a dirty, smelly, skinny, absolutely wild looking man is attempting to conduct a public prayer meeting. He has buttonholed a passer-by who is nodding tolerantly. Further up the hill I am struck by a tattooed bruiser in a black ‘I heart fistin’’ T-shirt, and a comatose drunk lying flat out, clutching a can. The contents spill onto the pavement. Is he really asleep, or has he passed out dangerously, I wonder, and if so should I do something about it? I am deterred by my terror of vomit, but I’m also afraid he’ll die from lack of public intervention. I’ll be late if I stop, I reason.

*     *     *

The cast comes off. ‘Does this hurt?’ asks the doctor, poking my fractured bone.

‘Yes’ I say.

‘And this?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK. Run along now, and they’ll sort you out with a new one.’

I am half way across the room when realise I am about to pass out. My arm feels – ghastly, sickly, weird…

‘Uh oh’ says a nurse, spotting my faltering steps. ‘We’re in trouble here’ she says to a colleague. ‘Just sit here with your head down, and I’ll bring you a glass of water.’

‘I’m so sorry!’ I say.

‘Don’t worry’, she says ‘it happens all the time.

*     *     *

I pick up my text messages. ‘Lost rag with Claudine’ Matt says. ‘Am furious.’

*     *     *

I am at the bus stop. ‘How did you do that?’ slurs an odd woman in brightly coloured clothing.

‘I fell. Silly me’

‘The woman who attacks people has gone’  she says. Oh dear, I think.

‘Really? How did she attack people.’

‘She gave them black eyes. She knifed them.’

Suddenly I am aware that part of her thinks she caused my injury, and part of her fears that I suspect she caused it. I’m afraid her fear may make her angry.

‘So she’s not around any more?’ I seek reassurance.

Every answer is preceded by an immense delay as if I were on a telephone line to the moon.

‘Yes, they’ve killed her. She is tied down under the house.’

These are metaphorical descriptions of an aspect of her psyche that is currently treated with medication, I tell myself. She’s in a dream state. But is it more sensible to stop now, or to continue the conversation?

Others are gathering at the bus stop.

‘Under the house? Oh dear. How terrible!’ I say playing for time.  Would it have been more appropriate to say ‘Thank goodness for that’ instead, I wonder?

‘I don’t wear these clothes when I am going out’ she says, as we get on the bus.

‘Madwoman’ by Theodore Gericault

‘OK. So it’s three coffees and a tea — then I’ll show the slides.’

I go into the kitchen. It is almost lunchtime. I have prepared some salads. The potatoes are ready too, they just need to be dressed. While the kettle boils, I lay the table. I change the tablecloth.  I choose a beautiful one embroidered with intricate patterns of pink and white. It was a gift from the Nobel laureate Neguib Mahfouz. I must tell the students the story, I remind myself. I will throw the old one in the laundry basket.

The storeroom is dusky, lit dimly by the grilled glazed window and door to the garden at the far end. The room is a glorified long, narrow lean-to. Shelves of mosaic line the walls, custom built to fit sheets of vitreous and ceramic material. Opposite the shelves stands an old butlers sink, and a rack of soaking trays. It is a useful system if, like me, you use a lot of sheeted up material. Adjacent to the rack is a heated cupboard, with shelves of metal mesh to dry the tiles.

At the end of the store is a utility room. I keep my tools here, and the washing machine. A fly buzzes against the glass. Spiders have spun webs between the metal bars on the window. There is washing powder spilled on the floor. A broom handle sticks out across the threshold of the door — signs of a lack of attention.

Suddenly I am in mid air. Then I land, wholly horizontal.

I’ll lie here for a minute, I think. My head is resting on a metal toolbox. It is some time before I am able to move. Someone will come, I think, ashamed of my weakness. It is not easy to stand up. I feel strange, and feeble. My arm is a funny shape.

‘Excuse me’ I say, slightly fuzzily, to a nurse ‘Please may I have one of those cardboard bowler hats to be sick into?’

A&E (accident and emergency) is crowded.

‘ Come this way’ says the nurse. ‘Lie down. Look into the light’ she says with apparent concern. I am concerned too. Matt is parking the car. How will he find me in this tiny cubicle? I thought we would queue for hours. But it’s a relief to be able to rest.

I feel a rush of overwhelming love for humankind:  gratitude to my assistant Sandra for taking over the class, to the students who were generous enough to let me go, to the handsome, brainy Asian doctors, who are going to put me together again, to the insightful nurse who plucked me from the crowds, to my husband for his solicitude and for patiently reading to me as we wait for the X Ray. He goes to get me a drink. A young man with a bloodied bandaged hand towers over me. He is wearing work clothes – plastic clogs and checked trousers.  I recognise the uniform.

‘Are you a chef?’ I ask.

‘Yes’ he says.

‘Did you do that at work?’

‘Yes, I sliced through the tendon as I chopped’ he says.

As he paces about, he tells me about his journey to the UK from Hungary, the room he shares in South London, his job in Crouch End. ‘I like my employers’ he says ‘but I don’t think they’ll give me sick pay.’

‘I’ve told you more than once to sit down’ the nurse says, faux-gruff. ‘We can’t have you cluttering up the corridors.’

‘It doesn’t hurt as much if I’m standing’ he says, and he paces off.

Someone is knocking at the door. My glasses have been smashed in the fall, but I can tell it is a man, in a turban.  He is grinning and grimacing, inviting me to come with a beckoning forefinger. He beats ever more angrily. Hospital protocol forbids me to open up.  I start towards the door, but think better of it. I must check with the staff first. He drums more and more loudly, infuriated by the delay.

‘Oh yes, say the nurses – you can let him in, he’s one of the doctors!’

‘I know I look like a dangerous man’ he says with an accusatory air as I open the door ‘but I’m not really.’

Fine judgments are difficult to make when you’ve had a bang on the head.

In addition to a bang on the head, Emma Biggs had a twisted knee, a broken wrist (distal radius), a broken rib and a grazed arm. She would like to thank her students for their understanding and hopes they will forgive her self-destructive act.

He drags an item to trash. ‘You must drag the folder to trash’ he says. ‘There you go’ he says, depositing the folder in the virtual waste paper basket.

‘But why is it still there?’ I ask.

‘Oh, that’s strange!’ he says. ‘Let’s do it again.’ He does it again. ‘There!’ he says, triumphantly.

‘But it’s come back again’ I observe, and he begins to look frustrated. ‘Hmm. That’s odd. You may have overstretched the capacity of your memory. Perhaps I had better book you in for an appointment with one of these guys.’ He points at a line of t-shirted geeks. ‘We don’t have one until Thursday, I’m afraid.’

‘I’m sorry’ I say. I am at the edge of an abyss. I believed all would be well. Now I am filled with despair. A black fog engulfs me.

‘You murderess’ he says.

I look at him with surprise.

‘Your e-mail address’ he repeats. I laugh nervously.

I have elected to wait. I am ‘on standby’. There are others on standby in front of me.  ‘It will be at least two hours,’ an assistant confirms.

While I wait, I am backing up onto a hard drive. The computer is on my lap. It is very hot. The hard drive is beside me. It is a whirring radiator. I am melting, but I cannot leave my seat. A foolish phrase thumps through my pulsing head — ‘Horses sweat, men perspire, ladies glow.’ Ladies expire, I think.

It has been two and quarter hours. ‘We do apologise. We have a bit of a log-jam’ says a smiling young woman. ‘Would you like a glass of water?’

‘Normally you come in and he gets you in a headlock and all that’ a young woman said to her friend as we walked past. Her friend smiled and nodded knowingly. Sandra and I agreed it was a strange form of normality. And what about the ‘all that’? Were the consequences really so casual?

After our meeting we went on to Woolwich. We were visiting Gary Drostle, ex-President of BAMM, and King of the Reverse Method (not a fertility rite, but the means by which mosaic can be adhered to a substrate.) Gary is about to install some work at the University of Iowa, and he’d invited us to have a look before it left the country.

‘Let’s get the bus’ said Tessa. ‘We can take it to Bank and get the DLR.’ Sandra and I agreed, and two hours later, we arrived at Warspite Road.

‘Yes’ said Gary ‘the Open Studios have been successful.’

‘It’s the River of Life’ he said, describing his new work. ‘The River flows through brighter and less bright areas – the yellows symbolise health and happiness and the darker areas stand for trials and tribulations.’

‘Talking of tribulations, did you see that piece downstairs about multiple ways to commit suicide?’ asked Sarah Zirkel.

‘Some of these people need help’ said Maria.

‘I needed help’ said Gary.  ‘There was a fire in the studio, and the extinguishers went off. The whole of that’ – he indicated another workbench with a figurative mosaic of impressive size – ‘was ruined. The tiles floated off the paper. Clare had to stick it all back, piece by piece.’

‘Well it’s a real achievement Gary. Well done.’

We took the tube home. The lead story in the paper was the antics of artists — a front page photo of Tracey Emin with a black eye. She was hugging Sue Webster. Sue’s fist had connected when they had a play fight the night before. ‘They’d had a couple of drinks’ the story said.