THE FENCE PAINTING INCIDENT

At the tender age of three, me and the girl next door Elaine,

hatched an idea ........ LET`S PAINT THE FENCE. She was my

senior by some seven days and therefore by accident of birth

gets to shoulder the blame (even though the idea was mine and I

provided the materials) .

The brushes and paint were liberated from my Grandad`s shed...

the colour chosen was a beautiful white due to it`s wonderful

contrast to the dirty, shabby untreated wood effect in place and

the fact it was the only pot within my grasp.

Work began in strict adherence to union guidelines although it

was never decided whose house was to be used for teabreaks. Our

inability to successfully complete such an onerous project of

civil engineering left our Neo-rustic effect fence daubed with

white gloss paint (influenced mainly by post-impressionism and

Salvador Dali.)

The sudden arrival of a near hysterical parent caused a

premature halt to our masterpiece. She asssured us, as she

indicated the puddle of white gloss in which we sat, that the

best method of painting was to put the paint on the fence not on

the garden.
A suggestion of Action Painting cut no ice.

Next door but one stood Mr Winter, a sagelike spectator.
"Why didn`t you call me?" pleaded Mum
"They were enjoying themselves so much, I didn`t like to stop them" the reply.
In later life I came to know that Mr and Mrs Winter were very keen music and art

lovers..... could this have been his real reason for not

calling our Mums ????

Despite pleas from many of the world`s great galleries, the need

for a garden fence meant that this work remained in Leytonstone

and tragically was never completed.

Ralph (aka Salvador Dali) Edmunds