‘Did you sleep OK?’
‘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 [...]
‘Would you like a cup of tea Loric?’
‘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 [...]
We met outside the block of flats. ‘Hello’ I said. ‘Hello’ said Toby. ‘This is Tim. This is George, and this is Ilaria.’ ‘Hello’ I said.
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 [...]
I’m not really a moulder of men, I’m more of a fellow traveller. I think it comes from having brothers and sisters – you just have to share, or there’s big trouble from the siblings. I don’t make much of an impression on people either – they always forget they’ve ever met me, and at [...]
In the eighties, when I started working in mosaic, there were two suppliers of glass – Udny and Milano. Milano was somewhere in the outer reaches of North London. It might have been High Barnet — those depressing leafy conservative places all look the same to me.
I did enjoy the occasional trip into this unfamiliar [...]
It is Monday, and it is hot. I am at the Apple store in Regent Street. I’ve been at work on my book ‘Mosaic Masterclass’ but something is wrong with the computer. It has almost no available memory. I am trying to ditch folders to free up space but they will not delete. I have [...]
When I first met Matt, my lovely artist and art critic husband to be, I shyly confessed to being a birdwatcher. ‘I know it’s a bit strange and nerdy’ I said, ‘but I’ve liked it ever since I was a teenager.’
‘Don’t worry’ he said racking his brain for precedents of behaviour of this kind in [...]
‘The problem with him is he suffers from sexual anxiety’, says one bellman to another as I pass them on my way to the Art Institute. That’s a pretty sophisticated level of conversation, I think to myself.
‘Hello. Welcome to “Working With Ceramic Tableware”. My name is Emma Biggs and for more than fifteen years of [...]
In London in the late eighties there was a fashion for the distressed and old. The city was gripped by a frenzy of house buying. Everyone — except me – was feeling rich. The Conservatives were greasing the palms of protest with oil wealth, and half the city seemed to be on the move, trading [...]
‘Do you have a sponsor in Oman?’ asked an exotic voice. ‘Not at the moment’ I said, attempting sang-froid. I gestured excitedly to Tessa, and covered the mouthpiece of the telephone, in the days when it was obvious which bit of the telephone was the mouthpiece. ‘He asked if we have a sponsor in Oman!’ [...]