Thursday, March 1

Going Going Gone!

Sonnet and I invited to a dinner auction fundraiser for the Contemporary Arts Society ; Veronique is on the committee.  The dress-code is "Circus chic" and for a moment I contemplate the cow suit but instead go for the African wrap, pictured, which Katie gifts me from Nairobi. 

The evening at the Farmiloe building in Clerkenwell, a retired warehouse now used for .. entertainings. A man on stilts greets us from 25-feet up; two Frenchmen juggle and a model smiles in a provocative clown suit.  Inside , we watch acrobats dangling from ropes contorting their bodies in gravity defying sorts of ways.  We are handed martinis and champagne cocktails.

Since this an auction, the art displayed for the 1% who bid £50,000 like it was water . The Sotheby's auctioneer moves things along : " Can I hear 35?  35 is on offer. Do I hear 36? 36 it is! 37? 37? 38! DoIhear40goingoncegoingtwice!soldtothegentlemanininsequenedtrousers" Taste is subjective. 

I sit next to the Russian whose dress holds the rest of her in. She has a gallery on Regent's Park and invites me to have a look. At the gallery. Ar ar.

Car ride to football.
Me: "So how much homework are you boys going to have at the Hampton School?"
Eitan: "I don't know."
Joe: "They say its an hour and twenty minutes. Every day."
Me: "Which will take you guys , like, three hours."
Eitan:
Joe: "Is that your way of saying we are not very smart Mr Orenstein?"