alarm then all this will be lost again. Do something now, fight the need to run home, do something radical, stupid.
The Asian shop is the answer. It takes so long to decide what it will be, this product he must slip into his pocket and walk out without paying for. It’s like he’s drunk. This responsible man of thirty-nine years who wrote what many see as the most probing reviews of the works of two former Turner Prize-winners.
First it was the chocolate aisle, then bacon and poultry. Then anxiety over security cameras and being seen on some screen somewhere, going to the canned produce, touching a few, looking round then setting them back. The products before his eyes are surreal and enigmatic and their names are: Spaghetti Hoops in Tomato Sauce and Heinz Mushy Peas and Burga-mix. And Saul loved Warhol and he is thinking of cans and hands and pockets and he is for the first time in so long so alive and he has to do it now or he is nothing.
The Asian man is staring at him. He made that mistake Saul taught him not to, which was to make eye contact, that other – to smile back. The can of Heinz Mushy Peas is staring back at him, telling him he is a coward and hypocrite. Shut up, shut up, he is telling them. And they reply that they contain only 22g of fat per 100g and that they are very tasty.
Shut up!
Silence them in pocket.
Checkout counter. Running over Saul’s rules.
Don’t walk out without buying something else – so chewing gum. He is telling the Asian guy that he just needs some gum because he’s giving up smoking. Keep your cool, wittering is a dead giveaway. Shut up. Make the guy feel he owes you something. Rule 5 had been Dot’s. Be rude to the shop assistant before you leave. If you placate it is abnormal. They are Asian. It’s normal to be rude. England is racist.
He tries not to say thank you but can’t help himself.
The adrenalin still coursing through him even after the tube ride home. He sets the mushy peas on the counter. He will never eat them and they seem to know it, staring blankly back at him, telling him there would be no escape from impulsive incidents until he had done the one thing he feared.
The phone is in his hand and he is dialling. The gallery girl picks up and he gives his name. She is only a receptionist or intern, he has no time to be asked who he is again or to wait to be put through to some other nobody who can assist him after the same questions. He asks her to get a pen, to leave a message; he has to get her to repeat it to him when it is done.
‘OK, so, your name is Owen Morgan and you’d like to do an interview with Dorothy Shears, about her show, for her catalogue, is that right?’
*
It must have been around Halloween ’92. Saul despised conventional festivities but took Dot under his wing as the new student of his ways and taught her how to dress, and shoplift clothes for herself, giving her lessons on the arts of working in twos and threes in supermarkets to distract the checkout girl and in concealing foodstuffs under trench coats. In turn she started loaning him money, as much as he wanted and more. As for me, my first real bits of work were coming in from the
Hoxton Advertiser
and as the autumn leaves fell we all three marched hand in hand in hand through the crap-strewn streets.
Dot had barely been to art school since she’d moved in with us, then one day she’d travelled to Goldsmiths to inform her tutor that she was giving up painting. Her announcement had created an uproar with her tutors who insisted she was throwing her life away on a whim as she had only six months to put together her graduation show – there had been much ‘painting is dead’ hysteria in the air at that time. On the way home Dot stopped off in Leicester Square and bought a super-cool video camera, a Panasonic. Striding in, she showed it to us.
— I’m going to turn my life into an artwork!
I worried then that it was unwise for her to have taken what Saul had said weeks
The Asian shop is the answer. It takes so long to decide what it will be, this product he must slip into his pocket and walk out without paying for. It’s like he’s drunk. This responsible man of thirty-nine years who wrote what many see as the most probing reviews of the works of two former Turner Prize-winners.
First it was the chocolate aisle, then bacon and poultry. Then anxiety over security cameras and being seen on some screen somewhere, going to the canned produce, touching a few, looking round then setting them back. The products before his eyes are surreal and enigmatic and their names are: Spaghetti Hoops in Tomato Sauce and Heinz Mushy Peas and Burga-mix. And Saul loved Warhol and he is thinking of cans and hands and pockets and he is for the first time in so long so alive and he has to do it now or he is nothing.
The Asian man is staring at him. He made that mistake Saul taught him not to, which was to make eye contact, that other – to smile back. The can of Heinz Mushy Peas is staring back at him, telling him he is a coward and hypocrite. Shut up, shut up, he is telling them. And they reply that they contain only 22g of fat per 100g and that they are very tasty.
Shut up!
Silence them in pocket.
Checkout counter. Running over Saul’s rules.
Don’t walk out without buying something else – so chewing gum. He is telling the Asian guy that he just needs some gum because he’s giving up smoking. Keep your cool, wittering is a dead giveaway. Shut up. Make the guy feel he owes you something. Rule 5 had been Dot’s. Be rude to the shop assistant before you leave. If you placate it is abnormal. They are Asian. It’s normal to be rude. England is racist.
He tries not to say thank you but can’t help himself.
The adrenalin still coursing through him even after the tube ride home. He sets the mushy peas on the counter. He will never eat them and they seem to know it, staring blankly back at him, telling him there would be no escape from impulsive incidents until he had done the one thing he feared.
The phone is in his hand and he is dialling. The gallery girl picks up and he gives his name. She is only a receptionist or intern, he has no time to be asked who he is again or to wait to be put through to some other nobody who can assist him after the same questions. He asks her to get a pen, to leave a message; he has to get her to repeat it to him when it is done.
‘OK, so, your name is Owen Morgan and you’d like to do an interview with Dorothy Shears, about her show, for her catalogue, is that right?’
*
It must have been around Halloween ’92. Saul despised conventional festivities but took Dot under his wing as the new student of his ways and taught her how to dress, and shoplift clothes for herself, giving her lessons on the arts of working in twos and threes in supermarkets to distract the checkout girl and in concealing foodstuffs under trench coats. In turn she started loaning him money, as much as he wanted and more. As for me, my first real bits of work were coming in from the
Hoxton Advertiser
and as the autumn leaves fell we all three marched hand in hand in hand through the crap-strewn streets.
Dot had barely been to art school since she’d moved in with us, then one day she’d travelled to Goldsmiths to inform her tutor that she was giving up painting. Her announcement had created an uproar with her tutors who insisted she was throwing her life away on a whim as she had only six months to put together her graduation show – there had been much ‘painting is dead’ hysteria in the air at that time. On the way home Dot stopped off in Leicester Square and bought a super-cool video camera, a Panasonic. Striding in, she showed it to us.
— I’m going to turn my life into an artwork!
I worried then that it was unwise for her to have taken what Saul had said weeks
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