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Very chuffed (does anyone say ‘chuffed’ these days except me?) to hear from Peter Boughton, the curator of an exhibition of my uncle Robin Ironside’s work in Chester this September, who has promised to keep the lights turned up during the show. This may sound obvious, but it’s a breakthrough. Most curators turn the lights down, slavishly following conservation guidelines which recommend that all exhibits should be shown in semi-gloom in case they fade. It’s understandable when they’re on permanent display, but since the eyes of people over 60 (most museum and gallery-goers) absorb 30 per cent less light than younger people’s, most of us oldies need a torch to see anything at all. Surely better that the colours fade a fraction during a month’s display and we can see them, than that they be shown in such gloom that no one can make head or tail of them? I saw a collection of New Look clothes at the V&A a while back. They were all gorgeous bright garments celebrating Dior’s new dawn after the war. Sadly they all appeared a sludge grey as they were shown in a light reminiscent of the blackout.
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A friend who has nothing better to do has just sent me, in view of the success of what he refers to as ‘Sixty Shades of Shite’, a list of classics renamed so they’ll sell in even more millions. Among them: ‘Pain Eyre’, ‘Anna Caningarear’, ‘Crime and Lots of Punishment’, ‘Swish Family Robinson’, ‘Ouch of Africa’, ‘Put Out More Flagellants’ and ‘Mrs Beaten’s Book of Household Management’.
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Spotting an argument in this magazine about the word ‘feisty’, I looked up its origins. I always bristle whenever anyone calls me feisty. The word’s meant as a compliment but I’ve discovered I’m right to have the heebie-jeebies. ‘Feisty’ comes from the German ‘feist dog’ (which, as Dot Wordsworth recently pointed out, itself derives from the old English word ‘fist’ — to break wind). It describes anything small, irritating, yappy, belligerent and full of nervous energy. Like a lot of our MPs, in fact.
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Friday: just booked tickets for the Albert Hall, where the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is playing in September. It’s amazing to look back on the day in the mid-1980s when my son and I first saw this brilliant group in the upstairs room of a pub in St John Street, Islington. At 15, he was too young to buy a drink. Eventually he joined the band. I briefly became an impresario when I put them on at a few venues; now it’s world tour time. Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall, the Albert Hall, nearly sold out, and the North Pole (or as near as anyone can get to it). I notice that Gainsborough isn’t on their itinerary.
Virginia Ironside’s one-woman show, Growing Old Disgracefully, is at the Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh throughout August.
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