Thursday Mountain Bridge

It’s April 2010. This year I have slept in a real bed for nineteen nights; in total. Those were the last nineteen, and – boy – does it make a difference? Does it ever!

At the start of March, I enjoyed a magical and perfect week in Munich, and the local surrounds. A crisp white sheet covered the land and made my eyes simply ping with delight. Walking through the Englischer Garten, Munich’s beautiful and quirky playground, lost in my own world, I involuntary kissed the air. Life at its most simple can create an unexpected moment of awe.

In Munich, existence was perfect. In the care of fine friends, I enjoyed a tasty snow-b-q, embraced snowboarding for simpletons and a spent a leisurely day bobbing about in warm water and rushing down slippery slides.

Shortly after returning to Blighty, my family was hit by great tragedy. My rush to tell you all about the joys of being back in a real bed and of idyllic snow-capped holidays was halted. But here I am. I’ve brushed myself down. I’m back on the saddle and as in love with life as ever.

The jumble of emotions that I feel, interlaced and concurrent, is touchingly wonderful. Sometimes I’m like an outsider looking in at myself, whilst simultaneously being. The gnawing loss, that bubbles up and down, makes every moment that has been, and will be, more precious. My cousin is gone, but so many reasons for awe and wonder are not. Warts an’ all life is spectacularly blinding. It’s blinding, my cousin would fervently say, in a glorious allusion to the fucking fantastic.

One day soon, I plan to tell you all about the many, many gigs that I’ve failed to share - but not now.

Instead, with just over 2 weeks left to see the show, I want to recommend ‘The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters’, at the Royal Academy in London. Back in February, I saw the show with a friend that I had not seen for many years, and, combined, the venture proved a real treat.

Usually, as I stumble through an art exhibition, my feet and mind tire, and I lose all focus. The first efforts get my full attention and the last a dismal attempt not to yawn. Not so with ‘The Real Van Gogh’.

As soon as I read the first of Van Gogh’s letters, I was hooked, as if reading a life affirming book. Quite inspiringly, Van Gogh only started his vocation as an artist aged 27. From there on it he made it his mission to master the tools and techniques of the trade. Like me, he came from flatlands and countryside, and at times his early attempts made me joyously homesick. It wasn’t the final, bold, art on canvas that struck home for me, but the delicate sketches wrapped in the love and exultation of merely trying, wrapped in the words that he would craft and send to his dear brother Theo. Van Gogh shot himself dead, aged 37.