I'm melting…

It's far too hot to slave over a hot keyboard to bring you much in the way of blogging delights today. And anyway, my temper rather overheated while writing yesterday's review of the Tories' 40 Ideas manifesto. It makes my blood boil even to think about it. Mind you, it doesn't take much in this weather. I evolved to trudge through Irish bogs carrying freshly-cut turf, in the rain, wearing thick tweeds, not endure the relentless searing heat.

Instead, I've been marking re-sit essays (another blood-boiling activity) and going for lunch to mark my friend and colleague Emma's birthday. Despite this town looking like the remains of a bombed out post-Victorian theme park, the art gallery is rather fine and boasts an excellent café. Those of my colleagues who don't queue outside the pub for breakfast are to be found lurking amidst the Edwardian Municipal oils. Or at the moment, admiring the Pauline Boty exhibition. A rising star of the Pop movement in Britain, her death at 28 in 1966 led to her eclipse and obscurity. A shame really: the exhibition neatly demonstrates her rise from derivative student to experimental, talented and independent-minded artist. Lots of her work is lost, but what remains is enough to persuade me that she'd have become really great.

Here are a couple of her paintings, both on display in the exhibition:

It's A Man's World II

My Colouring Book

And now I'm off fencing again, still bruised and aching from the weekend's exertions. Too hot… Tomorrow it's more re-sit marking and a meeting with an MA student who is (hopefully) writing a fascinating dissertation on the changing nature of country houses in interwar detective literature and comic novels.