141. A poem without words

Are you any good at drawing?  I’m not and that’s not some kind of faux modesty because I really cannot draw anything that looks at all like it’s supposed to. 

I am artistically illiterate.  It was the Roman lyric poet, Horace, who said that a picture is a poem without words. 

I can draw a house but it will just consist of rectangles representing the outline, the windows and the doors, with a triangle on top that is the roof. 

It is the kind of thing that a child might draw - but more of that later.

It has never been something that has bothered me until yesterday, when one of my daughters mocked me, or at least, I think that’s what she was doing.

That daughter really can draw and her ability is such that not only did she achieve a grade A at ‘A’ level art, but she was offered more than a thousand pounds - that she turned down - for one of the paintings that made up her end-of-course portfolio.

I don’t know where her talent came from; it certainly wasn’t from me and not only has she talent in art but she has a very pleasant singing voice too whereas to all intents and purposes, I am tone deaf.

Until recently, I haven’t had to draw anything.  I gave up art at the end of my third year at secondary school, aged 14.  Then, a few weeks ago, my grandson came to visit.

Joshua is 2 years old and as it does at that age, his vocabulary is expanding by the day. 

We all went out for Sunday lunch.  The service was a little slow and one of the waitresses gave Joshua a plain sheet of paper and a jar of wax crayons for him to play with while we all waited for the food to arrive.

After a couple of minutes, Josh had given up scribbling and pushed the jar of crayons and a clean sheet of paper to me.  “Cow,” he demanded.

“I can’t draw a cow,” I told him, hoping as I said it that one of the other adults would take up the baton from me and draw him a cow. 

“Don’t be such an old misery,” Caroline said.  “Draw him a cow.”

I did.

“Horsey,” insisted Joshua. 

I had to think how a horse is different from a cow and then I tried to do as I had been instructed.  Joshua had said nothing critical but I couldn’t be sure what he was thinking.  His face gave nothing away.

I converted the horse into a zebra when he wasn’t watching by adding some stripes to the horse.

I was quite pleased when he asked me to draw a sheep because I thought that my representation of a sheep would be so different from that of a cow, a horse or a zebra, that it might unmistakably be recognised as a sheep.  I think I just about managed it.

The banana, plate of dinner and the house that he asked me to draw were easy but I found that differentiating between a chicken and a duck was difficult.

Our first courses arrived and, in the process, I managed to end my ordeal and embarrassment by slipping the paper to Alice, Josh’s mum. 

Lucy, Joshua’s aunt and my younger daughter, rang me today.  She had been to visit Alice.

“Josh is quite good at drawing, isn’t he?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I told her.  “I’ve never seen anything he drew.”

“He’s got some drawings on the fridge,” she told me.  “I’ll send you an email with a photo.”

Bloody cheek!