It was one of those crisp August mornings when the soul, stirred by the presence of a rather decent summer dawn, begins to contemplate the finer things. Bertie Wooster was lounging in the armchair, idly turning over a thought or two, when Jeeves shimmered into the room bearing the first post on a silver salver.
"Your correspondence from Alison Aye, sir," he murmured, his voice resembling the faint purr of a well-oiled sports model. “It transpires, she has been embroidering a commission for a client in Belgravia for quite some time.”
"Ah, Jeeves," Bertie replied, taking the missive. "Splendid. I haven’t heard from the old girl in ages.”
"Extremely satisfactory, sir."
"She says she wants to chat about a rather pressing matter concerning those RA Bastard Shites. She’d been meaning to scribble a few words about it for months, literally months, but things happened, you know. An aunt here, a spot of bother at the Drones there..."
"The artistic temperament is frequently prone to such delays, sir."
"Exactly," Bertie continued, adjusting the old dressing gown. “Furthermore, instead of indulging in that modern form of self-torture, scrolling over her telephone while jolting along on the omnibus to and from the daily grind, she has surrendered herself to reading ‘The Code of the Woosters’ for what must be the fifth time. The solitary snag in an otherwise capital arrangement, you see, is that her inner monologue has taken on a distinctly Wodehousean ring. It is an affliction not unlike that dark period when, having thoroughly saturated her brain cells with a television melodrama by the name of Breaking Bad, found herself repeatedly addressing us as 'bitches’".
"As regards to the Royal Academy, Jeeves, she is tossing a hearty bouquet in the direction of Christopher Madden. The fellow has pulled off a most spectacular coup and landed his ‘Interlinked Mints’ smack-dab in the Summer Show!
You may recall that back in the year 2024, after some thirty years of absolute, unremitting toil with a needle, Aye finally managed to smuggle a piece into those hallowed halls. A dashing collage it was, entitled ‘Shifting to the Moon,’ upon which she had stitched a most spirited ‘Smash Thatcher’ placard.
Well, as fortune would have it, Christopher spotted an account of her triumph in the Observer and dashed off a line to explain the dizzying genealogy of the thing. ‘A most peculiar route to Piccadilly,’ he remarked, or words to that effect. He’d drawn a caricature of the late Lady Thatcher back in '79 in full 'Iron Lady' or 'Mad Axewoman' mode. The Socialist Workers Party snapped it up for their own banners; other chaps copied those banners; a snapshot of that effort landed in a rag somewhere, and forty-five years later, Alison Aye stitched the print onto a tea towel! A splendid choice of material, he called it, offering a tip of the hat to her, though he lamented that his own direct assaults on the Academy had always hit the woodwork, shortlisted a time or two, but always pipped at the post.
But mark how the wheel of enterprise turns, Jeeves! This very season, the fortress has fallen. Young Madders has been weighed in the balance and found thoroughly acceptable, and you may gaze upon his masterpiece decorating Burlington House from now until the twenty-third of August”.
“And for how long does she propose to continue expressing herself in this decidedly wanker-ish manner, sir?”
“I gather, Jeeves, that she intends to keep this up until the Belgravia Commission has concluded. And, if I have the measure of things, the bounder isn’t at liberty to show it to us just yet.”
“That would appear to be the position, sir.”
Northern Echo. Photographer uncredited.
Shifting to the Moon ready to be carted off to the Royal Academy, 2024. Copyright: Alison Aye, 2026.
Shifting to the Moon (detail). Copyright: Alison Aye, 2026.
Me, at the Royal Academy. Photo by Cassie Candle, 2024.
RA Bastard Shites. Ongoing. Recording my Summer Show rejections. I left it too late this year. When I tried to enter they had ‘sold out’.
