He Who Hesitates

I was at The Morven Gallery last week.  When I take visitors to Ness this is a ‘must stop’ place because the coffee and cake is excellent and there is so much to see and enjoy from paintings and other artworks of every price to more modest gifts for one’s self or others.  Last week when I was there I saw a painting.  I liked it.  But it had been an expensive month and it seemed like an extravagance.  I hesitated.  It was an extravagance.  I hesitated for the next couple of days.

The artist was someone I knew.  Past tense.  She was the partner of a friend.  When I’d known her then I had no idea that she painted.  She may not have done.  She sticks in my memory principally as the person who persisted in asking me how much I’d spent on my new bathroom.  I didn’t know exactly and said so.  After this had been pursued I decided it would cause less upset if I just told her an approximation.  The figure I gave was met with the comment that it was morally obscene to spend that much on a bathroom.

So spending several hundred pounds of a painting might have been viewed similarly because whilst I need a bathroom I don’t need artworks.

Eventually, however, I decided that my desire for this very attractive artwork was greater than my desire to be thrifty.  Too late.  Another admirer had beaten me to it.  Ah well.