Stan's Cafe

An acquaintance of mine, tough old ex-Brighton beach rocker called Rock and Roll Terry described how, in the late sixties, having popped into the local psychedelic record shop, 'Expansions' (now a closed-down burger joint) to have a chat with a mate, he unwisely accepted a cup of tea. Thus spiked, and with the modal drone of Tintern Abbey's 'Vacuum Cleaner' scouring his brain pan, he wandered off through the town and down to the beach where he saw, in a moment of proletarian post-rationing visionary exultation, that the sea had come to resemble 'a giant chocolate digestive'. I always found this a comforting rejoinder to the ususal psychedelic guff about aztec dolphinariums, vents of hell in trouser weft etc. Had he said that he saw a sea that looked like a vast expanse of smoked salmon, I might have sicked up. Although I too James am unsure exactly why. Could it be middle-class self loathing working itself out through fear of canapes?

By the way, do you know about Gainsborough and broccoli?
 

Excellent story!

I know both about Gainsborough and broccoli but not about Gainsborough and broccoli.
 

From The Somerset House Gazette, 6 March 1824, p. 348: "I have more than once sat beside him of an evening and seen him make models… He would place cork or coal for his foregrounds: make middle grounds of sand and clay, bushes of mosses and lichens, and set up distant woods of broccoli."

Found that here. It's one of those things art students know. My friends Andy Cranston and Dave Martin did a little diorama with broccoli and a big orange for a sun with a wee guy climbing the broccoli in their long ago show 'Happy Hunting Ground".
 

Grea! I enjoy the idea of an artist as serious as I imagine Gainsborough to be being as playful as this.