The Rainy Streets Of Bath.

Great Pulteney Street.

 The weather was a lot better yesterday so I thought I’d have a look around Bath for a couple of hours because it is such a great place and there is always something to see. Outside the abbey there was a lady busking and singing jazz. She was very good, and I listened for a couple of songs. When she finished What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong I threw some change in her bucket and she said, “Thank you very much”. She told me that this was the first time she had ever busked in her life. I asked if she knew any Van Morrison songs. She didn’t, but asked what song I was thinking of. “Well, Moondance is tailor made for you”, I replied. She promised to learn it for next time. I’ll look out for her next time I’m in Bath.

Then, as usual I looked in a couple of charity shops. I was pleased to find a very nice biography of Celine. No, not Celine Dion!,  this is the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1894-1961) His book Mort Au Credit (Death On The Instalment Plan) is one of my favourite novels. He was very influential on the likes of Henry Miller, Kurt Vonnegut and the Beat Generation. After that I got bored with charity shops. I had a look in the Victoria Art Gallery, but I got bored with that as well because I was there back in August with my good friend Rhonda Batchelor from Canada and I have seen it all before. They had something special on called The Sharmanka Travelling Circus, but you had to pay to see that which I wasn’t prepared to do.

The sky had turned dark and it was drizzling rain when I emerged from there. I crossed Pulteney Bridge and I thought I would have a look in the Holburne Museum which I could see in the distance. In all the years I have lived in this area I’d never been in there. It is a beautiful Georgian building and I’m glad I went in. There are some fabulous 18^th & 19^th century British paintings including works by the likes of Gainsborough, Stubbs & Turner. I ended up chatting to one of the staff for about half an hour. I should mention the gardens as well which are known as Sydney Gardens and are the only original 18^th century pleasure gardens still surviving in Britain. They provided a favourite walk for Jane Austen when she lived in nearby Sydney Place and feature in her novel Northanger Abbey.

As well as their permanent collection there was also a special exhibition on by a contemporary British artist called George Shaw. I had never heard of him before but was very impressed. He was born in 1966 and brought up in the Tile Hill area of Coventry which features in a lot of his paintings. He is unusual in that his favourite medium is Humbrol enamel paints which are best known for painting model airplanes. The paintings are very detailed and on first glance could be mistaken for photographs. Urban decay and neglect seem to feature in many of the works. One work I was very taken with depicted an art-deco style pub that was built in the 1930’s to serve a local estate but now abandoned and derelict.

Sunrise Over The Care-home by George Shaw.

 Another work showed an English flag fluttering defiantly on a flag pole behind a high security fence which is obviously a statement about modern Britain. Some of the paintings do have that Edward Hopper feeling of loneliness and alienation. Some works also had a David Hockney type feel to them. I tried to take some photos, but the staff told me that I wasn’t allowed to for copyright reasons. That seems a bit silly to me because you can find his paintings quite easily on the internet. I didn’t argue with them because they were all volunteers and nice people. I had to content myself with buying a couple of postcards in the gift shop. It was gone 4.00 when I left and I scurried along the rainy wide pavements of Great Pulteney Street and headed for the station and that was the end of my afternoon in Bath.

Ash Wednesday 8.00am by George Shaw.