An exasperating morning

I was commissioned by their old boy’s magazine to do an article on Duncan Grant and Paul Nash who both attended St Paul’s School.

I was Head Girl of St Girl’s School, Harriet Harman was a schoolmate, and possibly I am the only arty journo who would do this for free.

Truth be told I rather enjoy this sort of thing. I can dash off 1,000 words in no time then just have to fill in on the schooling.

I earmarked yesterday morning – having a vision of Jamaican Blue Mountain blend coffee, some Mendelssohn and a relaxed morning but first I must clear my chores.

The first was to inform British Gas that I was the new tenant of a flat I intend to rent, a simple enough procedure you might have thought.

I obtained a customer services number but none of the automated questions bore any relevance to my situation.

Eventually I got a humanoid who would send me a registration form. Could not be simpler, he said.

In fact it was not a registration form but a chat line which regrettably British Gas could not now operate.  I gave up.

Then our art course teacher sent us an encrypted Microsoft message which none of us could decode.

You have to hand it to Microsoft – they come up with exquisitely original ways to torture us.

No sooner had they sent me the one-time password than it was out of date.

On the 14th attempt I gave up.

At midday the Paul Nash autobiography I had ordered arrived.

I was hardly in the mood now for research.

The crucial thing about Nash’s time at St Paul’s was that he was there at the same time as Eric Kennington, whose Kensingtons at Lavanie is regarded as the First World War One war painting.

I was hoping for some visionary art teacher inspiring Kennington and Nash in the studio with a storming Dr Walker, the Rugby-style Dr Arnold headmaster, known in that curious public school terminology as Highmaster clamouring outside for the two aesthetes to translate Virgil in his classic class but sadly no – the only reference was to a chance meeting on the first floor of the old Waterhouse building in West Kensington, now a block of posh flats.

The truth is that Nash was soon despatched  to a Crammer in Greenwich to prepare him for his naval exams and St Paul’s did not appear to have any lasting effect on his future artistic career.

I have had more productive mornings.