An Art Fair To Prepare For With Eileen, But First, A Word Or Two For Kay Scarpetta

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my other website
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

I Am Too Concerned About Kay Scarpetta To Get My Stuff For The Fair Ready

Recently, I have been obsessed with Patricia Cornwell's books about Kay Scarpetta, forensic pathologist.  I have bought each book and read them in order.  I found that my nights were not long enough to read the latest book and find out who the baddies were; I found that A Graceful Death exhibition got in the way of  knowing that at any moment Kay Scarpetta could bite the dust.   I itched to get back to find out why Kay Scarpetta couldn't match the bite marks on the latest body with the teeth of  the mad and hairy supsect that the police had locked up.  I panicked when the mad and hairy suspect escaped.  What if he managed to find Scarpetta and bite her too when I was busy on the phone and painting my paintings?  Oh goodness.  I needed to know, was the latest body that of the love of Scarpetta's life, or was it just another crazy lookey-likey?  Were they bite marks on the body, or were her eyes deceiving her?  What was she going to do, and more to the point, what was I going to do?  I was going to have to give up the day job and read Patricia Cornwell until there were no more books to read.  Then I was going to have to call Patricia Cornwell and behave like one of the sociopaths she writes about until she wrote me another book.  This is how it was going to be until one or other of us died or changed our identity.

But something happened the night before I left to go to Dublin last week.  I was reading deep into the night to get to the bottom of the tangled webs of intrigue and darkness before catching a plane to Dublin the next day and doing A Graceful Death in the private exhibition there - when suddenly I put the book down and said, "Well, Really!".  I had tipped over an invisible cliff and found that I was very irritated with Kay's world and Kay herself.  "Well Really!"  I said again, "for goodness sake".  I found that every plot contained a violent psychopath, every violent psychopath wanted to get Kay Scarpetta, and most members of the forces of law and order were out to get Kay too and further their own political ambitions.  I found that I was more and more concerned that Kay's love for her niece Lucy was a bit unhealthy and that Lucy herself was showing signs of being a hairy psychopath herself.  Kay's love interest died in a gruesome fire only to reappear six years later under a different identity following a huge CIA secret cover up sting operation thing.  And neither of them, in fact no one in Kay's immediate circle, was taken yelping in a staightjacket to the nearest secure unit for a little time off.

Here is what concerned me.  At no point did Kay

• Have a period
• Do the wrong thing
• Think anything that wasn't deeply professional and wise
• Say "Shit!  Bloody Hell and Dammit!"
• Have a mental breakdown
• Go to bed early
• Have a good night's sleep
• Go completely doolally when Love of Life turns up alive after 6 years
• Stay doolally
• Say No to work
• Go on a dating website for a bit of fun
• Get cancer
• Have a day off
• Binge on chocolate when the latest psycho tatooed her name on the latest victim

I am worried that Kay Scarpetta needs a complete break.  I am worried that there is a Psycho Pschool somewhere that gives Kay Scarpetta lessons and the one who actually gets her will get a prize.  But until that happens, the extremely talented and gorgeous Patricia Cornwell will carry on writing about her and everything will carry on the same in Kay's life.  And I am absolutely fed up with it.  I am going back to Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.

About the Fair.  Eileen and I are giving a Christmas Art Fair of our works on the 28 November, and I have no stock at all.  I took it all to Ireland and sold every last piece of it there.  Hooray and Goddam.  So today, I plan a way to make all my angel stock and cards again in just 3 weeks.  The hall will need decorating and making nice and so on, and that will have to be done.  But, I think with a light bulb lighting up above my head, I have done a Ceilidh.  I will make the Art Fair decorations along the same line as the Ceilidh.  Subject to the approval of theWonderful Eileen, Photographer Extraordinaire.  Darling Dublin Friend, the Graphic Designer Extraordinaire is doing our leaflets and posters, so that is a great step forward.  Alexia, Daughter Extraordinaire and her friend Arrieanne will be doing teas and coffees and cakes and I think they will do that so wonderfully that Eileen and I may have to kidnap people from the lines queueing for their teas and make them buy our stuff or else.  And, I have read enough Kay Scarpetta novels to know how to be really psycho.  Actually, that is something Kay Scarpetta has never to my knowledge done - have a cream tea.  No wonder she is struggling.