lecture on the lunar men

I went this morning to a lecture about the art of the Lunar Society, at the Colchester branch of NADFAS.  I am not a member, but several people on the music society committee are, and when I first met them I couldn't understand why they were all so keen on flower arranging, until I worked out that NADFAS, the national association of decorative and fine art societies, is not the same thing at all as NAFAS, the body responsible for all those strange floral constructions at Chelsea.

I like the Lunar Men.  I've read Jenny Uglow's book and been to the Wedgwood museum and seen the film Amazing Grace and read about the voyages of Joseph Banks and everything, so a friend kindly agreed to sign me in today.  In fact, she is all for my putting my name down to join.  There is a waiting list, which is apparently getting longer as the members are not dying off at the rate that they did.  It costs five pounds to go on the waiting list, refundable against your first year's subscription, so perhaps I should, on the basis that by the time I rise to the top of the list I might have time to go to a monthly art lecture.

The talk centred around the work of Joseph Wright of Derby, the English Midlands' answer to Caravaggio in his use of chiaroscuro.  It was quite entertaining seeing images of some of his paintings of industrial forges alongside renaissance religious works employing the same effects of light, though predating them by about two hundred years.  The renaissance was slow in getting to the Midlands.  Contrary to popular legend James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but he did make it considerably more efficient.  Richard Arkwright was a bombastic and rude man whom none of the lunar men liked, but they testified in his defence anyway when his patent for the spinning jenny came under attack.

I couldn't have gardened if I hadn't been going to a lecture.  It rained and was very cold all day, and by this afternoon it was blowing half a gale and I was feeling pretty much like a swamp in which germs had to live.  I'm not sure that colds that don't quite come out aren't more nerve racking than those that erupt at once in a great explosion of snot.  Tottering around with a slightly sore throat feeling faintly sticky and trying not to breathe on people leaves one wondering if it's all about to get much worse in a day or two.