The Generation Gap

The first thing I noticed when I walk into the 'life model' hut at college was the enormous wet patch on the floor, all around the heater. The friendly tutor told me that the ceiling had nearly collapsed under the weight of water trapped in the roof - he'd had to slit the ceiling panel and put a bucket underneath to catch the flood. The college had given up on maintenance for the huts as their budget was fully stretched building the new Arts block....
The lesson was based on a Schiele drawing - thankfully one of the less unflattering ones - and was about the use of line. Six girls and three boys arranged themselves around the room while I did one of my famous 'perched on the edge of a table' poses, but this being the friendly tutor at least the table was padded and covered. Half an hour became forty minutes - he checked to make sure I was OK with that - and we had some good conversation during the ensuing break. I'd been observing the students and noticing they could be categorised as cocksure youths with hairstyles, and thin bored timid girls, so we got into a discussion of teenagers in general and in particular. He has four of them at home, lucky man. This lot are sixteen to seventeen - one is his oldest daughter - and I could assure him that they did develop more personality and originality, but that yes, they were growing up in a completely different social and economic milieu to our times - we had feminism, Thatcher, and mass unemployment; they have consumerism, technology and debt as the norm.
There were only four students in the second group and I did the same pose, but facing the other way. The undergrowth outside the window is now thick, green and impenetrable. I watched the occasional dapple of sunlight struggle through to reach the grubby floor, wavering like light reflected off moving water. Then I started imagining drawing hands - mainly my own - as the next stage of my personal artistic odyssey. Hands and gloves seem to be a bit of a theme. And by the end of the session I'd moved on to imagining making a music track with multiple samples of blackbirds' song - liquid honey over pebbles interspersed with the sharp chirr of alarm... shame I don't have the skills or equipment to create it, but that's usually the case with my creative flights of fancy.
So all in all, it was pleasant and easy work today, in messy grubby surroundings. I'm not an old hippy for nothing...
The ash trees are finally in leaf. The wild roses are flowering, weeks too early. And it was raining again by the time I got home. No mowing today then.