Author: Liz Dawes
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We are lazing in the garden on a rare sunny Sunday morning when Fireman hands me a leaflet. 

 

“I’m thinking of entering this exhibition” he says.  It sounds fun.  The artist must paint a nude on a small piece of card.  On the reverse he must put the name and address of the gallery, and then post it to them, so that the painting becomes a postcard.  I love the idea that the exhibition begins as you put the picture in the mail.  I love the idea of art in transit, free to roam until it finds its destination.  

And then I look at the date by which the picture must be posted and, of course, it is today.  In years past Fireman would have been able to scour the town for a woman to charm out of her clothes and into his studio in the space of an afternoon.  These days he’s more likely to pull a muscle than a girl, so he does the next best thing, and looks hopefully at me.  

 

Thinking back now, I cannot explain why I did this, but I agreed.  And then I realised just how stupid that was.  “The light is very poor in the house” he says.  “We’ll have to do it in the studio”.

 

Our garden stretches from the back door to about 60 feet.  It’s surrounded by waist high fencing, as all the gardens in our terrace are; we’re very sociable round here.  At the end of the garden is the studio, which has glass doors all the way along the front and faces back towards the house.  You see the problem.  Not so my husband.  Fireman has been painting for so long he has no issues with nudity and is constantly irritated by mine. “I’ll put the easel in the doorway so you can’t be seen.  Or something.  Stop making a fuss!”

 

The doorway is glass, and many feet across.  The easel is small.  I fear this is, at best, an inadequate solution, but he ploughs on regardless.  “Oh, you also need to be doing something” he says.  

 

Ummmmm?” I reply

 

“DO something! Weren’t you making bracelets earlier?  Do that. Or knit?  You can’t just be sat there!”

 

How does this happen to me?  One minute I’m sunbathing on a peaceful Sunday morning.  The next I am starkers in a shed at the bottom of the garden pretending to make a bracelet as my husband yells at me for not looking serene.  I bet the Mona Lisa didn’t have to put up with this kind of nonsense.  As naked experiences go it’s about as erotic as an annual smear test.

 

I point out that it’s hard to look serene while the neighbours are gawping over the fence trying to work out why the woman next door is fiddling with beads in her birthday suit.   I throw a scarf over my lap, and make him promise to paint a head that doesn’t look anything like mine.

 

Finally it is done, and off I go, into the post, and away.  

 

And I will never be able to look the postman in the eye again……..