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Pop culture in post-Millennial Britain was largely snark in various formats. In the art world, Damien Hirst, Gilbert and George, Tracey Emin and Grayson Perry snarked at Canon, culture and collectors (but probably not their cash). Blur and Oasis snarked at each other in an incredibly niche culture war that seemed to hinge on clothing labels as much as anything else, for all the North\South, smug art school kids\common thug narrative that the press rung out of it. There were snarky chatshows, news columns, TV shows and magazines. It’s hard these days to convince people that snark existed in the wild before dark algorithmic rituals turned it into Twitter, but it did. Tony Blair lamented the snark and wanted everyone to be nice and sincere like they had been back in some mystical distant past, but then… well, joined a war despite a million people marching past his front door asking not to, so hardly gained the moral high ground there.

Bobbing along with the snark pack was a young Charlie Brooker, writing columns and reviews, making TV programs ; sarcastic and perceptive and bitterly funny. His public persona was that classic archetype of Britsnark: the smartarse – liked, admired, emulated and despised in various proportions by different audience segments, but relevant, employed and rarely ignored, with a range of projects that gave him options.

In 2011 came the first series of Black Mirror, and it paid homage to many things that Brooker had worked on or enthused about before (Brass Eye satire, schlock-horror Sci-fi, video games), but was also something fresh and distinctively itself, for all that its tag-line is usually along the lines of ‘The Twilight Zone on ketamine’. The move from Channel 4 to Netflix obviously did wonders for the effects and casting budgets but the storylines where still spun around the dreads and hopes of the modern world.

There are so many things I like about it: the spare atheistic of the writing; beautiful cinematography (the lighting); the variety and the cohesion. But the central premise of it all, the pivot around a moment when the viewer and characters understand that their threat perception has failed them, that they have reached a place with inescapable (often fatal) consequences whether they meant to or not, feels too close to some tipping point of reality to enjoy now. Which is not to say I won’t watch season six, when it lands, although I may not be laughing afterwards.

In an early publicity interview with someone probing the ‘dark techno-paranoia’ of the themes, Brooker said the shows were ‘about the way we might be living in 10 minutes time if we’re clumsy’.

Whoops.

On YouTube there are dozens of videos about productivity for artists, offering advice on time management, technique, organising materials, marketing advice and general affirmation. After several weekend bouts of prodding doggedly at various half-finished projects, I would add my own contribution: to make better art, you need elbow room, and a comfortable chair.

As yet I haven’t managed either. The latest chair by the easel is a broken one from the dining room, exiled to the shed for repairs that are unlikely to happen in the next three years, if at all. It is the latest in a long line of awful seats; rickety, always at an awkward height, uncomfortable. Prone to unexpected collapse, accessorized in winter with piles of old blankets.

Collage gets done sitting on the floor, which was fine but now ageing joints makes getting up as graceful as a cow floundered out of a ditch. Printing means standing up at a narrow bench built for a tall man (and I am neither), twisted sideways; balancing wet prints on the pile of bicycles and ladders against the back wall.

It’s not impossible, stuff happens. But every empty warehouse and boarded shopfront I pass makes me wonder what I could do with a bit more room to maneuver, and a chance to make a mess. At least I am not Michelangelo, lain flat on planks high above the ground for four years with a face full of paint and constant strife with Pope Julius.

I’d almost forgotten that exhibitions were a thing, so when the email came my first reaction was bewilderment. It seemed very unlikely, when so many other small shows had fallen apart or moved online.

Next, relief, for the organisers of this show re mainly retired ladies, some well into their later years, and I had been worried about them. I should have known better, for in previous years their fiercely local exhibitions have been the best organised and managed of any I have taken part in, and it seems it would take more than a mere pandemic to change that.

They put on an exhibition every other year as a fund raiser for their ancient and polished jewel of a village church, and it’s always friendly and well-run. Now it seems, against all odds, that they are willing to give it a go again. It was an easy invitation to accept, but given the grudging and remedial state of what I’ve been making in the last few years, finding something to show hasn’t been quite so simple. Eventually I settled on a random clutch of pieces; an older work on canvas, a linocut and collograph from last year, and a mixed-media piece that sits unfinished on the mantel and lowers at me (time to settle with it, one way or the other). A box of cards for the gift shop.

Meanwhile, Frankenstein’s monsters of indecision and dead ends lurk in the shed among the ladders and bicycles, waiting for me to finally come up with some sort of plan or at least some conviction.

Over the winter, we hacked through curtains of Ivy and Mile-A-Minute all over the garden; hauling rubble sacks full out to the dump every couple of weeks; and were rescued when none of our kit was up to the job by friends who, invited for lunch, brought a chainsaw along. Although the creepers will, like the Terminator, definitely be back (Ivy, like cockroaches and brambles, is likely to survive any apocalypse and just needs a scrap of root or runner to spring into life), for now the garden is charging into Spring, getting the best out of the water and light without the competition.

What’s underneath is a garden that someone had clearly put a lot of thought into, and loved, for a long time. Between the old shrubs (some of them unruly and due a massive haircut), bulbs and perennials are appearing and flowering, starting with snowdrops and crocus, then tulips, now irises. It even has a colour scheme (mostly yellow and blue). It reminds me most of a garden my grandmother had, although luckily without the big lawns my grandad seemed to spend half his time mowing and edging. Even though there is a lot to be done, it is worth it to have such a beautiful place to sit among the flowers and wonder what’s coming next.

The ancient, crooked pear tree, which looked on its last legs just months ago, has been covered in blossom and now tiny fruits are forming. I hate pears, and there will be plagues of wasps, but it’s good to see the old thing has some life in it yet. And I have been invited to show work at a tiny exhibition that against all the odds is back on for July, so I had probably better get on and do some…

One of my grandmas worked at a Cambridge College – if I ever knew exactly what she did there, I have long forgotten; but it involved a uniform with a blue nylon housecoat, so probably not the Dean. I remember going there with her sometimes in the summer holidays, fidgeting impatiently among the dark oak pigeonholes in the Porters’ Lodge or reading comics on the riverbank.

When my aunt got married one summer, the wedding reception was held in the Old Hall: more oak panelling, some florid Victorian wallpaper, a minstrels’ gallery and stained glass. As a bridesmaid, I was corralled into a flounced peach-flowered dress, hair nailed in place with a hundred stabbing hairpins. But after the service and the speeches, and the interminable photographs, the party got properly started and I skulked away unnoticed to sit alone in the warm stone cloisters on a perfect July afternoon. Bees were buzzing in the pale pink roses, with their backdrop of supernaturally perfect lawns. For half an hour or so in a long, manic and noisy day I was superbly content, sat on the worn stone flags with my pinching new shoes hidden under a bush, eating trifle, watching the flickering shadows of people walking down the street on the other side of the college gates.

Eventually I was dragged back for the dancing and the fetching of drinks for an assortment of half-known relatives, and I don’t think I ever went back there afterwards.

It’s fair to wonder if there is any point to writing about this, I’m hardly sure myself. Maybe it’s just filler, one more attempt to justify this tired and half-hearted vanity project. Or perhaps it’s pulling the random good bits out of the strata of life for a change, instead of the failures, fears and regrets; dusting them down and seeing them still bright, for all that they were unlooked for and unremarked.