the connoisseur

Summer rain on Dublin.
Coffee with the Spanish Onion at the Stephens Green Centre.
During a tender moment she handed me a package.
"For you," said she.
I ripped it open.
And lo!
It was a painting.
Another painting.
Oh joy of joys.
Interestingly enough this one amounted to quite an artistic achievement. For it was a good deal more awful than the last one she gave me.
It can't have been easy to go so far beyond that original awfulness.
No really, it can't.
A poignant look came into my pale blue eyes.
"Do you like it?" enquired the Onion.
I let my attention rest on the canvas.
The painting featured a snot green background with dollops of slightly lighter green snots scattered all over it.
I mean, who wouldn't like it?
What's not to like?
I prayed to God that my famous rubber featured face would not give its usual transparent verbatim report on my true feelings.
"I love it," I ventured.
Ah bold readers.
Even a rat will fight when its cornered.
But I wasn't out of the woods yet.
The next few moments would be crucial.
If I burst out laughing she'd be liable to kill me.
And she wouldn't leave a handsome corpse.
With some difficulty I resisted the urge to say: "Snots have become something of an artistic motif for you, haven't they?"
Oh Lordy.
Life is too short.
"What do you like about it?" demanded the Onion peering at me keenly.
I gazed at the painting with the air of a great connoisseur.
"I like the play of colour, one shade of green flowing into another shade green, and then both of those flowing into a whole sea of green," I told her.
At my shoulder the ghosts of Johnny Gielgud and Laurence Olivier nodded approvingly.
This was damn fine acting even by their standards.
Juanita peered at me keenly.
"What is your favourite thing about it?" she pressed.
I held up the painting for a better look.
"It has an hypnotic quality when you hold it up to the light," I mused expertly.
My friend let a little cry.
"You're holding it upside down," she exclaimed.
She really did.
I rotated the painting.
"Just trying to get a different angle," I explained smoothly.
After a few more minutes of my most sublime Shakespearian acting, the Spanish Lady ceased her interrogations and headed back to work.
I sat alone in quiet contemplation.
If you had passed through the Stephens Green cafe that day, gentle reader, you might have wondered at the extraordinarily handsome man staring fixedly at the horrendous painting.
You might also have noticed I was smiling.
Already I had a name for this new treasure.
Homage Aux Snots Verts Part Deux.
And I knew where I would hang it.
I would put it in the bad room at the chateau.
The haunted room none of us will sleep in.
Actually we use it as a guest room.
I wondered briefly whether this painting might not succeed, where the exorcists have failed, in driving out the ghosts.
Yes folks, if any of you are thinking of coming to stay with me for an overnight visit, you should know that from this day forth there will be worse things in the west wing of the Chateau de Healy than the elemental forces of evil and the odd phantom ancestor which you would normally meet there.
Let's face it.
Compared to Juanita's paintings, the multifarious legions of hell pale into insignificance.
But you should be alright if you don't look directly at them.
The paintings, I mean.