
Oh dear. I had expected to be out and about again by now, as
At least that genial if tiresome national treasure, Sir (it can’t be long) Cynthia Puppy RA, potter to the stars, doesn’t put us to that trouble. We know perfectly well where we are with him, usually that state of mild embarrassment as when the joke falls flat, yet again. But at least when he’s on the television he seems to prefer to leave his frock in the wardrobe and ankle socks in the drawer. He’s been on it quite a bit lately, supposedly to keep our spirits up amidst the gloom, and he seems somewhat less colourful too so far as I can tell, watching in black and white as I do – a Sony 9” portable c. 1970 since you ask, which I have to give a shake from time to time to get a picture: I mislaid the aerial long ago. And without the Alice Band his hair is rather floppier, and much longer too. I’m surprised Mrs Cynthia, who has been appearing with him on the programme, hasn’t picked up the pudding bowl and given him a trim. She does her own hair, perhaps in the same way, rather
fetchingly in grey and white stripes, like a badger, very neat.Where was I? Oh yes, the programme. It was called Cynthia’s Art Club (I
speak from fading memory) in which under his eponymous direction the viewer of every hue and cry, talent, description and proclivity, was encouraged to produce what he, and I fear you and I too, moving with the times as we must, would call an ‘artwork’ on the set theme of the week, safe in the understanding, since we are all artists now, that art wouldn’t come into it.
And so it came to pass that every Tom, Dick and Harriet, Sharon, Jim and Wayne, not to mention Malik and Ramon down the road, nor forgetting old Dan Pearce out in the sticks, set to with a will with whatever was at hand or came to mind – macramé, finger-painting, applique, matchsticks,