There was a crash as two supermarket trolleys collided head on in the bakery aisle at Tesco Superstore (Newton Abbot branch) recently; the two middle-aged male drivers of the trolleys felt embarrassed at their temporary lapse of concentration as each normally prided himself on his ability to manoeuvre anything on four wheels.

“I’m terribly sorry,” said the slightly older of the two, “but I was looking for my wife.”

“That’s a coincidence,” replied the other, “I was looking for my wife too. So sorry I bumped into you like that…”

“How funny! Perhaps we can help each other. What does your wife look like?”

“Oh thanks. Well, my wife is thirty, five feet six tall, blonde and blue-eyed, slim but curvy, and she is wearing a tight low-cut pink top and very skimpy denim shorts. And she has great legs – you couldn’t miss her if you saw her. What does your wife look like?”

“Oh, no need to bother about my wife, let’s just look for your’s!”

Some people profess that they hate shopping and boast of zooming around a supermarket and doing all their weekly shopping in ten minutes flat – those people miss out on such a lot in life, as any sexy store security guard would be happy to tell you. A vocational store security guard has every reason to be passionate about his work; from his vantage point he can observe every customer entering the store, and follow them around the shop without even leaving his station. He may look as though he is doing nothing – daydreaming even – but he is very busy; he is a natural busybody. From his screen he watches, he assesses, he judges, and sometimes, he acts. And when there are no suspicious customers to pit his wits against, his eyes will still be roaming,from one camera view to another, watching you, and watching me (as I found out earlier today).

Now I rather like shopping, especially food shopping, not just because it’s nearly always lunchtime when we shop for our groceries (so I’m  famished) but also because I find supermarkets very sexy places. These days I rarely get asked out any more in supermarkets, not with Chris beside me – like me, he seems to enjoy shopping too. So why do we like shopping? Well, our favourite store, perhaps owing to cutbacks a few years ago, turned down the heating noticeably. Do we wear more clothing? Certainly not. Isn’t it cold? Yes and no; my mum puts on an extra scarf and jumper to go shopping whilst I remove  anything cumbersome. It may sound peculiar, but sometimes cold is hot (except by the frozen food cabinets where it really is frigid). I always insist on pushing the shopping trolley, hence both my hands are fully occupied as we walk along the aisles; normally we hold hands on walks, therefore, if Chris wants to connect with me in a physical way he has to put an arm around my waist. Sometimes he may have to squeeze by me to allow another customer passing room, in which instance he usually places both hands around my waist and presses closer. I feign surprise at his boldness and we laugh. We feel like we are in a secret bubble and nobody else can see us behaving like kids.

Today’s shopping expedition was no exception. We hugged, pressed against each other, pretended to be shocked, looked lovingly and smiled our way throughout the store. When we had paid at the checkout, Chris went off to locate and assist my mum with her shopping, and I walked on towards the exit. Craig, the sexy store security guard came up to me.

“Look over there, Sally,” he said, looking in the direction of a girl wearing a black leather jacket, a black mini-skirt, black tights and five-inch heels. Her legs were wonderfully long and shapely.

“My legs could look like that too,” I lied in mock indignation, “if I wore six-inch heels and lost a stone… or three.”

“I know,” he laughed, “I look at you, too, as you walk around the store.”

Craig smiled in a very knowing way and I thought of all the closeness in the aisles a little earlier when Chris and I thought no-one was looking…

This evening my brother, Robert, was awarded his twenty year Fire Service medal at a special ceremony held in the County Hall in Taunton, Somerset. We took two cars up, Rob and his family in one, and Chris, Mary (my sister), Mum and me in the other; we arrived before Rob so we had no idea who anyone was. We were ushered into a grand hall and offered drinks. There were several men wandering around in their smart uniforms with rows of medals. A particularly handsome youngish chap came up to me, held out his hand and said, “Hello, I’m Lee.”

“Hello, I’m Sally,” I said shaking his hand.

“You’re rather nice and dishy,” I thought.

He chatted with us for several minutes during which he explained, rather modestly, that his medals were for long service and not bravery, “sadly”.

We girls went to the loo and conferred immediately on the subject of the handsome man in uniform.

“He was nice,” I said, looking at Mary.

“Wasn’t he handsome?” asked Mary.

“I do so like a man in uniform,” said my mum.

Back in the hall, Robert and family soon arrived and before long we were invited into another reception room for the award ceremony. Eleven brave men and women were given their medals and certificates; Rob looked especially gorgeous in his uniform and we swelled with pride that he was our beloved brother (and son, in my Mum’s case). There were some heartfelt speeches of praise and thanks; perhaps the nicest came from the Chief Fire Officer of Devon and Somerset – Lee Howell – a handsome chap….

Lee posed in photographs with us later on. He was just as nice as he looked. Rob was a bit embarrassed that his sisters were so familiar with his big boss – but we weren’t, after all, Lee had made the introductions. Oh we do like a man in uniform!

At midnight last night I was in bed, thinking about the forty-minutes talk on art that I was due to give the next afternoon (today), when I started to worry that I might run out of things to say about “Painting in the open air” (which had been my original thought because I had a funny story based on an unfinished painting of the Australian bush that had been painted “en plein air”).

“Chris?” I asked in the darkness, hoping that Chris was not asleep yet.

“Yes?” Chris was awake now… if he wasn’t before.

“Can you think of any funny stories surrounding any of my paintings that I could talk about tomorrow?”

There was a long silence and I thought Chris had gone back to sleep, but no, he was pondering on what I had asked.

“What about the painting of Adam Trumbet’s wife? That’s a funny tale. And you still have the painting to show,” suggested Chris.

“Ah, yes, my ‘Dorian Gray’ painting! Clever you.”

“Or Doreen,” he corrected.

We laughed as we do whenever on the subject of that particular painting, always with rather a lot of irony, although it has to be said that the memory of it has got funnier, and less worrying, with the passage of time – it is seventeen years since I painted it. I went to sleep thinking about how I would present my talk.

At a quarter past two this afternoon I turned up at the Hedley Way Centre in the Dawlish Manor grounds; Chris and my dear old Mum accompanied me – they were my Sherpas (and I thought Mum might enjoy the outing). Chris carried my heavy easel, while my mother and I carried the paintings. Everyone was rather intrigued by the largest painting, which I kept covered on the easel during most of the talk. I began by saying that I had decided to be a bit different to other artist guest speakers by telling them, not about my best painting experience, but my worst! I called my talk, “The Perils of Portrait Painting”.

To give you the “Doreen Gray” story in a nutshell, a recently bereaved husband commissioned me to paint his much missed wife of thirty years, but I had never met his wife and all the photos, showing his wife through the decades, were unclear and either too distant or too blurry to be sure of ascertaining a correct likeness. He did not favour one photograph above another and left the choice up to me; likewise, he had no preference for backgrounds. I was to telephone him when I had something to show him. I painted ‘Doreen” by the sea – she was a pretty twenty-something wearing a mini-skirt. Adam came to view the oil painting at my gallery.

“It’s just like her,” he began, “except for her mouth. Can you please change her mouth? And there’s something about her chin, her chin was a bit heavier.”

Adam didn’t realise that if you change a mouth, and a chin, you may as well change everything and start again, which is exactly what I did. Thus began the gradual transmogrification of Doreen’s image, in five different settings (beach, moors, gardens, Pre-Raphaelite fantasia, plain blue, plain dark green), in five different layers of oil on the same canvas.The painting became my block, preventing me from moving on to other work, and looming over me for the two years it took to arrive at the final stage.

Adam hadn’t called during that period. I saw him around the town, walking arm-in-arm with a new lady; at last I summoned the courage… and got Chris to call him.

“I can’t face it,” he said, “it’s giving me a nervous breakdown. I’ll get get my former sister-in-law to come and look at it.”

Adam never came to see the painting of his first wife – his second wife probably didn’t want a large oil portrait of the first Mrs Trumbet above the fireplace – and “Doreen” has lived with Chris and me ever since. I pass her on the stairs every day but I rarely look at her.

Towards the end of my talk at the Hedley Way Centre this afternoon, after tantalising the audience on several occasions by making to pull back the cloth, and failing to do so; at last, following much urging, I revealed the painting. The lovely Dawlish folk cheered and were unanimous in their appreciation of Doreen’s soft face and the hint of a smile on those lips that had been painted and re-painted to perfection.

“Her eyes follow you everywhere,” said one nice man.

“She’s good-looking – isn’t she?” said a lady.

“A nice face,” agreed another.

The same nice man, who had liked Doreen’s eyes, stood up with his hands together when I had reached the end of my forty minutes or so, and thanked me. The meeting had started with the Lord’s Prayer and ended with a song of grace for the tea and biscuits we were about to partake of. I thought how sweet and charming they were – the old-fashioned quaintness was somehow refreshing.

It is only now, as I write this, that I am beginning to look at the original Mrs Trumbet (in her many layers) in a good light. Perhaps from now on I shall look up at her as I pass by on the stairs and think, “You have a nice face…”

The view outside at eight o’clock this morning was pretty well the same as it has been for some days now – grey, wet and windy. I can gauge the force of the wind by noting how much my neighbour’s honeysuckle bush gets blown about against a background of watery grey sky; every day recently, the leafless stalks have been shaking and waving wildly like the extra-long, super-thin arms of a Giacometti statue come to life and behaving dementedly; and each time I see them I think, “I must cut those horrible arms!”  These are the kind of days that make me think of how nice it would be to be back in Brisbane in the Spring.

And yet, there is something very exciting about living in our big house by the sea at this time of year because the October gales and high tides have arrived; the big waves crash against our sea defences, trying to force their way through granite and concrete, and sometimes succeed; and when the seawall has been breeched we can feel the impact through the foundations of our Victorian terrace, but while the fringes on our lamp shades shake with trepidation, we are not so timid…

Chris and I looked like ‘Scott of the Antarctic’ (except that my coat is pink) as we set out for a nice walk in the rain and gales this morning; even with my hood enveloping most of my head, and with the cord tied secured so that only a three inch diameter of my bare face was open to the elements, the rain, whipped up in the wind, still managed to sting  and my face smarted. We lowered our heads and made our way down to the railway bridge by Coastguard Cottages, where we met another couple of intrepid explorers, similarly dressed like Scott, and with the same tell-tale, wet red faces. We all laughed, as you do, and, without speaking, we were in accord that the seawall was impassable from that point – even the trains tiptoed past, hoping not to be spotted, and deluged, by the waves.

We took another route down to the beach. I was taking a few shots of the rough sea with my mobile phone camera when a man came along; he wore black jogging pants, an old brown ‘Scott of the Antarctic’ hooded coat (the genuine article, by the looks of it) and sandals. The man stood for a minute or so, looking very intently at the pounding waves, and then he took off his sandals and his coat.

“You’re not going in – are you?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, taking off his tee-shirt. (He was a man of few words.)

“But aren’t you afraid?” I pointed at the sea crashing into the wall.

“I do it every day,” he said.

I supposed that meant he went swimming in the sea no matter what the weather.

“May I take a photo?” I asked.

He nodded his consent but he paid me no special attention and walked straight into the raging water. Several people came along and marvelled at the man “from Atlantis”; we  agreed, behind our hoods, that he was an excellent swimmer so we moved on.  As we were leaving, a couple of self-assured young mothers decided to take their little tots for an invigorating walk along the same seawall where the waves were of a mind to frighten the pussyfooting trains.

Everything seems to involve trains this week – ever since I started reading “Atlas Shrugged”, which has a lot (1,200 pages!) to do with railways, as you know, if you’ve been reading my blog recently.

It was hard for me to sleep last night. Maybe it had something to do with “Atlas Shrugged”, the book I’m reading for bookclub; perhaps I read for too long and I became overtired, or my eyes were strained by reading small print late at night. Or it could have been that my mind could not switch off after reading page after page of vivid descriptions about railways and the machinations of big business conducted in a bar room – as black as a cellar, with a ceiling “so heavy and low that people stooped when crossing the room, as if the weight of the vaulting rested on their shoulders” – built on the top of a skyscraper. For whatever reason, when at last I put down the heavy tome and rested my head on the pillow, sleep refused to come.

The black clouds, that had earlier blocked out the full moon, had moved on and moonlight filled the chink in the not quite closed curtains of our bedroom. Even with my eyes shut I was aware of the light and my mind’s eye envisaged the light of a train in the distance, and railway lines, reflecting pale yellow, as they disappeared towards the oncoming dot of light. Chris was asleep, breathing heavily and rocking back and forth every twenty seconds (as he does sometimes). After an hour or so I got up and drew the curtains together at the top but the moonlight, still intent on pervading the room, entered through the the double thickness of material and turned the empty space of the room an ethereal grey. I decided to go upstairs to the loo – maybe I would be able to sleep afterwards – and on my way I stopped by the double-glazed door that looked out over the sea and the moon above it; the night had calmed and the waves no longer pounded and spumed their anger at the steadfast seawall.

Back in bed, the bedroom furniture was silhouetted against the strange dark light and as I closed my eyes I was suddenly back in Australia; I was back under the shade of the giant fig trees at Wellington Point (South-side Brisbane); and I was sitting on one of the huge roots which I have known and loved all my life. The trees were always magnificent; if I have grown then so have they, and they seem the same as when Mum and Dad used to take us as children; when Dad used to stand beneath us while we climbed as high as we dared; when we made camps in the undergrowth, when we explored the cliff paths and Dad said, “Trust me, you won’t fall – take my hand”, and he was always right.

And all through the years, at different stages, those same trees have shaded generations of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families and young lovers. From time to time we of those generations all return to reminisce or try to relive whatever memory is most dear to us; whilst the very young and newcomers begin their own happy memories beneath those beneficent boughs.

Last night, before finding sleep at last, I climbed one of the giant fig trees and I did not fall; I had a picnic with a lover from the past, watched my little son on the sea-saw and the swings; sun-baked on the beach with my dad and held his hand; and sat joyfully on one of the roots, so conveniently shaped for sitting upon, whilst surveying the happy scene of sunshine and sea, from within the world of shade. Then I turned on my side and cuddled Chris to make him stop rocking… and I went to sleep.

The Tesco supermarket, Newton Abbot, had something new in store for its patrons yesterday, and there were plenty for all – if only we knew what they were…

Dear Henry, Clint, Harrison, Mel and Brad,

Please excuse me for not writing to you individually by hand, but I don’t have your addresses, and I know that even this is a bit of a long shot; nevertheless, I’m hoping that at least one of you reads my blog every day by now (I have been at it for around four months!); and please don’t be offended by the order of your names – it doesn’t mean I like any one of you less than an another – I simply thought it would be more respectful to begin with the eldest and continue in chronological order. Well, I had better tell you why I’m writing to you, but first, let me say that it has nothing to do with money, I’m above that – this comes from a woman artist (accustomed to starving) who waives her fees for public speaking at the Havana Club, Dawlish – and I trust you have the same disregard for filthy lucre.

I am writing to you because I’m in a bit of a spot; you see, I belong to this bookclub in Teignmouth (down in Devon, the South West of England – you may know it already – Goldie Hawn is a regular, not to our Bookworms club, but to the area), and last month our gorgeous leader, Reuben, suggested that each of us bring a new member to the next meeting at 4.30pm Sunday 27th October, only a fortnight away. I have asked my husband if he will be my new member/guest but he has refused point blank. I asked him if there was any way that I could induce him to change his mind and he replied, “Only if Goldie Hawn makes an appearance!” Now if any of you lovely chaps are on friendly terms with Goldie you could put a word in for our little diminishing group of bookworms… However, perhaps that’s not such a good idea because we already have more female bookworms than males (owing to the charisma of our leader, no doubt) and the majority of the group would definitely prefer more male bookworms.

In case you’re wondering, I don’t think anyone will think the worse of you if you turn up without having read this month’s book – few of us will have had time to read it either; in fact, I haven’t finished reading “A Tale of Two Cities” yet (much as I love it) and I had to put that on hold in order to read  the Kindle free sample of “Atlas Shrugged”, our latest tome, while I waited for the local library to send out to Tiverton for my copy, which I collected yesterday. In truth, I’m only halfway through the free sample – imagine my dismay when I found that the paperback version has nearly 1,200 pages of extremely small print! So, no worries, hardly anybody will have finished it and I can fill you in with a synopsis (which I will read the day before the meeting). I bet you have read it already Henry. What do you think about Ayn Rand’s philosophy of the individual first? (Or greed, as most people call it.)

Accommodation is no problem, you can stay the night, or a week – yes, make a free holiday of it if you wish. Mel, if you decide to come I hope you won’t be leading Chris astray and taking him down the pub all the time – better to stay in and reminisce about Australia with me. Sorry, Brad, but the group doesn’t encourage members to bring their wives and many kids along – they are far too distracting (Chris says to bring Angelina but leave the kids with Nanny). And Clint, did you know I’ve written a couple of books myself? Harrison, I hope you will be able to tear yourself away from the jungle, or wherever you are filming at present, to be with us in a fortnight. Please come.

Your fellow bookworm (hopefully),

Sallyxxxxx