And it’s not even my past

But anyway, it’s too late. The book has sold out, and I only got mine on Monday.

Throughout lockdown, Ian Archie Beck has entertained his followers on Twitter with art. And it’s not any old art. His paintings and drawings from – mostly – around where he lives; the local streets, the back of his house, his vase, possibly even his flowers. Absolutely gorgeous!

So I thought, this could be a series of postcards to buy, maybe. Or a book. I’ll look out for it.

So, just before Easter he admitted that yes, there would be a book soon. And he’d be selling it direct and I could order one. Thank god I had the good sense to order it there and then. Because it’s already too late, as I said.

I don’t know all that much about Ian. I’ve read one of his children’s books. We’ve gone to the same parties. And with this book he has proved that art is like writing books (only harder, I imagine); it gets a lot better when you deal with what you know best.

As lockdown began, Ian’s dog Grace apparently pulled him in the opposite direction from where their usual walks would go. Ian discovered new areas of his part of Isleworth. He went home and painted what he’d seen, and what he’d been inspired to notice.

And it’s this pictorial lockdown diary he has treated us to, first on Twitter, and then as a book. All right, and also as postcards. And you can buy the original art. Or you could. It sounds like it’s mostly gone already, like the book. Which is just as well, because I couldn’t afford those prices, and my available wall area is not all that available. And the painting I loved the most wasn’t even on the price list of the art for sale…

So that’s fine.

I will sit and dream over the paintings in the book, and maybe frame one or two of the postcards, because as Daughter wryly pointed out, I might have room for those.

The paintings. Well, streets and houses and still lifes, and it all brings me back to my childhood. Which is strange, because that’s not where my childhood happened. But it’s my archetypal English town, the kind I used to dream of when younger.

And I’m clearly not alone, since Philip Pullman expressed very similar feelings on Twitter. As did most everyone else. And I think we can only keep our fingers crossed that there might be a second edition of The Light in Suburbia, and more postcards, and maybe more paintings, and why not a second book?

You know, we can’t have enough of this kind of wonderfulness.