Driven to abstraction

I'm sorry to report that there was no such outing this year. No romantic nights (yes, even at my age I can do with a little romance) at Stourhead, or somewhere suitably downmarket but clean in the Quantocks.

I was disappointed, but it was all my fault.

Henry was still cross about my spring trip to Italy with younger, Italian males, and would not listen to sense about it having been a business trip. All his prehistoric views about women and work have come to the surface.

Actually, that's not true. He's absolutely fine about other women working or studying for PhDs, he just doesn't like his wife getting up to such things.

I honestly didn't think he noticed anything I did anymore, but he obviously does. This is quite gratifying, not that I care a fig about him of course. Still, if we have to keep sharing a house, then we have to find a reasonable way to deal with each other.

I do sometimes wonder whether it is worth sharing a house with the morose, philandering zoologist, but the truth is, even after all the silliness of the past year or two, I'm still really quite fond of him.

Anyway, as I was saying, he's normally the first to mention a bit of a spring trip but has remained as silent as the gargoyles on his college walls. I would expect a suggestion sometime in early April, at which point I would find a nice spot and book a room somewhere.

Then there was the added complication of Artweeks. Having been life drawing for a few months, I was feeling chipper enough about my drawings to put them up among the rest, at the small, private art school where I do my lessons. I was also quite keen to see what sort of work other artists (did I say that? I am, of course, not an artist, but you know what I mean) were producing.

This fell right across the time that we would normally escape for our weekend - after the beginning of term, but pre-exams. So I have to admit, I didn't push the issue. If he wasn't keen, then I certainly wasn't going to suggest being away and miss private views', or pv' as I now know they're called, by those in the know.

I sometimes feel like they've all joined some private club or something, a club so private no one is aware it exists, but they know if you're in, and they certainly know if you're not in - like me.

I am a middle-aged interloper, a cuckoo in their arty nest, a nest made up of carefully interwoven strands called St Martin's, or RCA, or Goldsmith's, or Chelsea.

They all know what they're referring to and they all have strands of one or the other in their sharp little beaks.

Like all clubs it has its strange foibles and it has its parties. In Oxford, most of these take place in Artweeks, all on the same night in May, so the evening ends up as an aesthetic pub crawl.

Henry doesn't take me to any college parties, except the Christmas party - and we won't start digging up that old chestnut again, the memory of the Venezuelan hussy still makes my eyes smart - so I don't get to many a knees-up these days.

But having recently arrived on the outskirts of the world of those that paint, sculpt and make jewellery, I suddenly found my mantlepiece decorated with beautiful arty cards all asking me to come and drink wine, get drunk and buy a piece of art that I would never have bought, if I were sober.

What I can't understand is what are all these artist-types doing inviting all their friends to their private view? Surely they realise that the people least likely to buy any of their art are other people who consider themselves artists.

This is either due to penury or the green-eyed monster known as envy' that would rather rip a canvas to pieces than buy it, if it is good enough to buy in the first place. I suspect that I received these invitations because I am new blood on the block and they suspect I might have a little cash up my artist's smock.

I have to confess, I did wake up on Saturday morning beside a couple of pictures I did not recognise, with no recollection of buying them, where, or from whom. They had a barely legible signature, which I think says Barney' Someone, but can't be sure.

They are rather nice - a couple of edge of abstraction landscapes - and I can see why they appealed when I'd had one too many.

More and more people seem to be using the University Museum for their events. A while back I was there for Helen House, then in May I was back for the Artweeks forum, discussing Is Art Useful?' Well of course it's useful. You only have to look at the pleasure it gives to anyone in any condition, but it is also very useful for getting your husband's back up.

Henry doesn't like the landscapes. If I ever expected a weekend away, the landscapes did for it. Funny really. He used to love the Artweeks Festival, until I started to enjoy it.

There's something to muse on.