Читать книгу The Lost Diaries - Craig Brown, Craig Brown - Страница 71

A hectic week ahead. After church, Mr Lucian Freud, who is a painter, arrives to paint another portrait.

He is quite old.

When I ask if he likes corgis, he tells me he does.

Good, I say. I ask him if he has been painting long.

He tells me he has.

How interesting, I say.

He doesn’t reply.

Otherwise precious little small talk. He tells me he paints pictures, mainly. A lovely hobby, I say.

I might have asked him if he wouldn’t be awfully kind and paint over that crack on the bathroom ceiling, but I forgot. They tell me he can be desperately expensive, so I think we got off lightly!

Freud: not a name you hear very often.

HM QUEEN ELIZABETH II

Let’s face it – we are at a watershed in world history. And like all watersheds, it’s full not only of sheds, but of water too. Yup, this shed is full of water – and we’ve got to do something. So let’s be brutally honest. You can’t store all that water in a shed without something dreadful happening. First of all, the water could spill out through the gaps in the walls. Look, I don’t pretend to be an expert in watersheds, or how they’re constructed. I’m an artist. But what I do know is this. If there’s too much water in the shed, then it doesn’t matter how many people you’ve got guarding it, or trying to plug the holes. That shed is going to burst.

And then we’ll all get soaking wet.

Our clothes will be ruined. Our hair will go all flat. And there’s no point even talking about highlights in a situation like that. It’ll all be totally unmanageable.

And that scares the shit out of me.

GEORGE MICHAEL