Lunch
I've successfully rolled through the first few weeks of January very much full bellied and today is no exception. I go to the studio for a couple of hours, drink half a pot of weak coffee and read a chapter of 'How Glasgow stole the idea of contemporary art' by A. Kennedy from 2009. I'm particularly interested in this pretty obtuse bit where he calls for a 'return' to art criticism away from the emergent art writing that he has decided is incapable of real judgement and that rather than informing a public creates a 'smokescreen'. He refers to a lecture but doesn't name the pro-art writing speaker who magnifies the success of a kind of 'critical regionalism' in art writing. Kennedy disagrees with art writing's ability to be critical claiming that what art writers mainly do is just glorified PR for their friends and colleagues. Sometimes this is true I guess, but this feels like a thinly veiled personal gripe. This term 'critical regionalism' whirrs around my head all day and I picture a group of writers based outside of London sitting around in a circle drinking coffee and eating donuts doing criticism. Anyway, Kennedy has pissed me off and I try to paraphrase it all to K on the way to lunch.
Walking along Byres Road we head for Kimchi Cult. I order a Korean chicken burger and a coke, K gets a bulgogi mushroom bibimbap and a hot lemon drink. We share some kimchi cheese fries which arrive first in a fanfare of pale yellow cheese sauce and spring onions. The lemon drink is a perfect sweet lemon flavour and colour, slim crystallised rinds bob along bottom of the cup.
We walk along the road for a coffee to aid digestion. I'm absolutely stuffed and regret becoming so stuffed, apprehending the cresting waves of indigestion. Later at The Hunterian after an altercation involving the coffees, I sit down relieved and queasy on a bench in front of a large Joan Eardley painting of Catterline and imagine her blowing around in a stormy gale on the beach streaming sand and oils across the wide and sturdy canvas.
Dinner
M marches into the living room plate of pecorino and a grater first, swiftly followed by a really delicious pork ragu with large macaronis. A long slouch on the sofa and a couple of peppermint teas have at last eased my indigestion.
We watch 'The Lost Daughter' on Netflix which is peppered with the peeling of oranges by Leda played by Olivia Colman. Much to her children's delight she likes to peel oranges in one curling swoop with a knife, thumb pushed up to keep the peel neatly on its spiralling course until it becomes a snake. An attempt at some control, she thinks, reflecting on the action. I remember my mum using a knife in a similar way and view it in macro. Making slices of something, maybe coring apples, with the blade carefully and impressively meeting her thumb, much longer than mine, a thick ridge running down the middle of the nail.
Caitlin is a programmer and writer based in Glasgow. (@caitlinmerrettking)