Visiting the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square is my idea of a great holiday, a great escape, a recuperation, for rest and relaxation. A place for me to forget Brexit, happening half a mile away in Parliament, and whatever else I want to forget.
Without forgetting, we cannot survive as people. We cannot always remember the troubling things because that’s where health and wellbeing goes out the window. Anxiety, among other things, is not being able to forget the grim and troubling; and forever always living the worst bits of life – which is the crap.
I’ve known the National Gallery as a place to use since 1961, aged 15. Back then I used it as a place to have a wash in the lavatories after sleeping rough around Trafalgar Square, whilst doing my best to avoid the police.
After I got put away and had decided I wanted to be the greatest of all great artists, I used the National Gallery for its intended purpose: a place to view art. We had 10 days holiday from incarceration each summer and at Christmas, and I’d spend my time in the National Gallery, or its sister gallery the Tate (down on the Thames beyond Parliament, and now called Tate Britain).
I could smell the paints of the Trecento, Quattrocento and Cinquecento periods, the Early Renaissance in Italy and Northern Europe, and I soaked up the art. I took small sketchbooks and made drawings. This was my attempt to break out of chasing after girls, pop music and beer. And it worked.
Last Monday I spent the afternoon in the National Gallery and would have stayed all night, if it stayed open. Just wandering through the altarpieces, and the great works of Michelangelo, Titian, Rembrandt, Veronese, all still on display from the days of my young manhood and boyhood.