A diary collection of words and images from the past year. By Billy Mann
Includes an imaginary showstopper on The Great British Bakeoff, the charms of fictional Venetian detective Guido Brunetti and paintings inspired by Google Maps.
Painting
The Northern Slice
I devised this satirical illustration, drawn on an iPad, in response to the government plan to turn a slab of Britain from the rivers Mersey to Humber into the ‘Northern Powerhouse‘. The initiative was welcomed by the media economics expert Evan Davis, so in a cheeky mood I imagined his appearance on the TV show The Great British Bakeoff (GBBO). The surface of his would-be cake, the icing, is based on a geological map of the proposed development zone; the ‘base layers’ of the imaginary confection is a construction of coloured sponges in the pattern of the union flag.
Silhouette
Nelson Mandela
Satirical illustration
Who the hell pressed SEND?
Map-art painting
Italia
Map-art painting
Huddersfield
For some reason I thought our friend Sarah J was from Huddersfield, so I made this as a birthday card. I was quite chuffed with myself when I handed it over. She’s not from Huddersfield, though.
Sketch
Face
Painting
Phone Box
The theme at the studio was ‘Wild In The City’ and this is my effort, a gigantic fern attached to the top of the red phon box in Langham Place at the top of Regent Street in London. The famous All Souls church sits in the background, in outline. The ‘wild aspect’ of my slant was also in the fact that a sinful colour (red) is prominent.
Illustration
All The Boys I Ever Kissed
This one is thanks to the journalist and broadcaster Grace Dent. She was on the radio, promoting her contribution to a series called ‘My Teenage Diary’, during which she said that her diary contained the names of all the boys she’d ever kissed. I thought that was a great line and the idea for the image came very quickly afterwards. I asked a number of women to privately write the names of up to three boys with whom they had shared a memorable kiss. It proved a great hit and something over which pairs of women bonded, sharing laughs and memories of past romantic encounters. One participant included the names of her two dogs.
Pastel
Cenotaph
Map-art painting
Berlin
Composite illustration
Farm Bus
Montagey thing
Stephen Fry’s Ever Expanding Brain
This one came to me when I could swear I noticed that actor/raconteur Stephen Fry’s head was becoming elongated. It seemed to be growing taller and taller. I found this amusing so I concocted a story in which he was suffering from some kind of advanced brain growth. Until now, he had successfully disappeared from our screens to have his skull secretly extended or ‘mezzanined’, as I imagined, new floors being added to his head by specialist surgeons. In an attempt to disguise his condition and return to high-profile media work once again, Fry took to wearing silly tall hats. He even borrowed them off the Pope. The notation on the hat signifies new ‘filing areas’ grafted into his skull – one for history, one for maths, literature, geography, etc. Now his cover was blown, I thought the ought to should know what he’s up to.
Map-art painting
Toulouse
July
Review: Beastly Things, by Donna Leon
There’s a body in the canal, a bloated man with a neck the size of the average waistband. Stabbed. No identification. One shoe. So begins the 21st in the Commissario Brunetti police procedural series by Donna Leon, all set in and around Venice. This one takes our hero across the bridge connecting the city to the mainland and Mestre, where his sensibilities are assaulted by the irksomeness of traffic jams, the alien manners of upmarket shoe retailers and a visit to a meat processing plant that will have you retching. Turns out Brunetti remembers the victim from a farmers’ protest some years back. Turns out he was an animal lover, a softy vet, and a happily settled family man until …
Brunetti is unlike other fictional cops. Not for him angsty theatrics or the need to wallow in existentialism. He has no special powers of instinct or insight. He collars his crims by plain old hard work, and when there is a choice between nailing a suspect and a lunch of meatballs with children Raffi, Chiara and beloved wife Paola, the grub wins every time. Add a glass of prosecco, let him stretch out on the sofa and the dude will start quoting Virgil.
You don’t need to have read any of the previous Brunetti books – which started in 1992 with Death at La Fenice – to grasp the tectonic movements. Each is a self-contained story and, while over time the back stories of the characters have obviously evolved, Leon manages on each outing deftly to re-familiarise you with the context of their lives. In Beastly Things all the regulars are here: Vianello, Brunetti’s dependable sidekick, is going through some soul-searching; Pucetti (dim but useful) has learned how to use Photoshop; pathologist Rizzardi is ever–sharp and quick to identify the victim’s condition as Madelung’s Disease; self-aggrandising station chief Patta is still useless after all these years. And the enigmatic, but sometimes too-perfect PA Signorina Elletra has gone all creative with EU budget small print and secured Brunetti a brand-new top-end computer. With the internet, and all that.
But the most charming indicator of the passage of time is seen in Brunetti’s children, Raffi (now mid-teens) and Chiara (early teens). In Beastly Things, Chiara is nudging towards militant vegetarianism, something Brunetti and Paola are struggling with (food is a big thing in the Brunetti household). At least Raffi’s schooly interest in BIG ISSUES (war, death, blah) is an area in which they can both indulge in a spot of wine-fuelled parental bullshitting.
Clues as to where in latter-day Italian political history Brunetti’s size nines are planted are rare, though a coy reference in Beastly Things to the “penetrant vulgarity of the current administration” points you somewhere in the bunga bunga direction. Patta’s longevity in the top job is attributed to his strategic reluctance to tackle the mafia. And Patta’s creepy understudy Scarpa is trying to fit up trusty police-boat pilot Foa for nicking fuel. So you get the idea that things are much as they’ve always been, but more up to date. While there is often an ethical core to these stories (the problem of greed, mostly), they are personal, too: places, people and events trigger Brunetti’s memories of his past. So it is that we learn that his mother used to be a bit fussy about the type of parmesan she’d put on the table. Reggiano or nothing.
Any of the Brunetti books would make a good holiday companion, largely because Guido and Paola (an academic devoted to Henry James) are people you would like as friends. Maybe this is why you sense that Leon fervently enjoys writing these stories. But beware, no matter what your holiday destination, Venice will always be with you. If you know the city and the lagoon already, you will be in familiar territory with the vaporetti and traghetti, palazzi and tramezzini. If you know Venice only by image or reputation, you will want to be there, map in hand, your senses primed for exploration. No guide would be better than Guido Brunetti.
This review of ‘Beastly Things’, by Donna Leon, appeared in the Books for the Beach page in the Guardian
Cameo painting
Damnit, Watson, I Need A Crime
I was trying to wrest the silhouette from its ‘block colour’ home and plant it in a multicoloured world.
Map-art painting
Beijing
Illustration
State of the Union
‘I would be heartbroken if this family of nations was torn apart’
UK Prime Minister David Cameron 10.9.14
Map-art painting
Can Isaac, Cap de Creus, Catalonia, Spain
Painting
Paris, France
A poor stab at satire
‘St Hewson of Dublin has just been nominated as the nation’s most accomplished tax dodger. His 1982 essay, entitled A Healthy Democracy Requires A Robust, Fair and Trustworthy System of Taxation, is long forgotten, even among academics.’
Painting
Smithfield Market, London
November
December
Pangea
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