OUT NOW: The Dali Squiggle
AVAILABLE in paperback and Kindle from Veneficia Publications and Amazon, and from some bookshops, including Waterstones.
The Dali Squiggle
The art dealer pulled out a few sleeves of acid-free paper folders and opened each one, revealing the works inside. “You see them?”
Alex appraised and dismissed them quickly. He said, “They look like… squiggles.”
“Squiggles?” The man considered the word and looked pleased to have either learned or remembered it. “Yes. Anybody could do them, right?”
“For sure.”
“Wrong. Here.” The man pulled out a pen and handed it to Alex. He extracted a paper serviette from a dispenser on the bar. “You draw one.”
“Okay.” Alex was glad to accept the challenge. The dealer held the folder open, and Alex copied the squiggle as closely as possible. He took his time; he knew what was coming, of course, but he enjoyed taking part. He finished it and showed it to the dealer.
“Happy with that?” the man asked.
“Sure.”
“So how are they different?”
“Tell me.” Alex laughed.
“I sell this to the right person.” The dealer tapped the folder gently. “I get thirty thousand Euros. It’s by Dali. You’ve heard of Dali, of course.”
“Well, sure.” Alex had never been keen on what he had seen of Salvador Dali’s work – floppy clocks, ants everywhere, people with drawers in their torsos, what was all that about? – but everybody had heard of him. Even undiscovered native peoples in the Amazon Rainforest probably had a Dali print nailed to a tree. The dealer told Alex that, towards the end of his days, Dali began lots of drawings, but his old-age attention had often wandered mid-stroke, and they had been abandoned, though not before a sketchy alliance between dealers and Dali insiders made sure that he signed them. Squiggles, then – a good word, found by Alex – but they were still by Dali, leaked onto markets through his estate or, sometimes, via past students of the master’s, their souvenirs turning into money-spinners.
“So, Alex.” The dealer had rolled Alex’s work into a ball – a perfect little work of art in itself – and tossed it. “Yours is a – what did you call it – a squiggle. Mine’s a fucking Dali.”
Some early ideas for the cover. The grey and yellow ones were merged for the final design.
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Londoner Alex Dante is not quite living the dream as he tends a bar in Madrid, but he knows things could be worse. The right señorita would be perfect, he thinks, and falls for Maria Betancur, enigmatic but prey to obsessions and the occasional cruel mischief.
Optimistic, or foolish, or both.
Aided as well as hindered by his strange friend Nuria Hidalgo, Alex refuses to stop chasing dreams that doggedly elude his pursuit. There must be a way to reclaim them, and the endless roads of Spain provide a few pointers; like life itself, they don’t follow straight lines, only squiggles.
The Dali Squiggle is a novella with some art at its heart, but more cars and bars, and it is out now with Veneficia Publications.
Plebs, desperate for management...
Pleb Management
There are some short asides heading each chapter, some of which are extracts from books and guides. Not all of them are particularly trustworthy!
MA in Tourism: this course offers all aspects of pleb management, and a frustrating job for life in the proximity of any number of the following: the sea, crumbling old monuments, crumbling new monuments, great edifices, shit edifices, posh restaurants, shit restaurants, plebs, transport, bad-tempered service-industry professionals, more plebs – fat ones, thin ones, plebs in unfortunately tight clothes, bald ones, jet-lagged ones, drunk ones, plebs who leave home only to find the exotic, and then complain about it incessantly, plebs with stupid hair, think bingo and disco punk spiky gel dos, plebs with legs that are too pale or too red, shouty plebs, broken-hearted, wall-thumping ones, exuberant ones, German plebs, British plebs, Spanish plebs, Russian plebs, suitcase-wheeling plebs, plebs clutching small pleb dogs and pleb children and grandchildren, and deep inside, sometimes, pleb foetuses, and… more, all the varieties of plebs there are – ports, airports, bus stations, train stations, and the like. When you complete your course, people will tell you that in their opinion you must find it very rewarding. You will anticipate this, in time, rage against it, and then accept it with stoicism.
There are some short asides heading each chapter, some of which are extracts from books and guides. Not all of them are particularly trustworthy!
MA in Tourism: this course offers all aspects of pleb management, and a frustrating job for life in the proximity of any number of the following: the sea, crumbling old monuments, crumbling new monuments, great edifices, shit edifices, posh restaurants, shit restaurants, plebs, transport, bad-tempered service-industry professionals, more plebs – fat ones, thin ones, plebs in unfortunately tight clothes, bald ones, jet-lagged ones, drunk ones, plebs who leave home only to find the exotic, and then complain about it incessantly, plebs with stupid hair, think bingo and disco punk spiky gel dos, plebs with legs that are too pale or too red, shouty plebs, broken-hearted, wall-thumping ones, exuberant ones, German plebs, British plebs, Spanish plebs, Russian plebs, suitcase-wheeling plebs, plebs clutching small pleb dogs and pleb children and grandchildren, and deep inside, sometimes, pleb foetuses, and… more, all the varieties of plebs there are – ports, airports, bus stations, train stations, and the like. When you complete your course, people will tell you that in their opinion you must find it very rewarding. You will anticipate this, in time, rage against it, and then accept it with stoicism.