Back to the Yarts

Oh, the things one comes home to - some very welcome, like the early spring flowers in the garden, and one's own bed; some tiresome, like the News, and a mighty heap of post, including six apparently identical letters from HM Revenue & Customs telling me my Tax Code for the year. And, in my inbox, an email titled 'reaching out about nigeness.blogspot.com' and emanating from one 'Joel from Artsy'. Suspecting a prank, I opened it, and discovered it was, alas, entirely serious.
 'Artsy' is an arts website dedicated to publicising the contemporary Yarts in all their glory, and 'Joel' claims that, 'while researching Zaha Hadid', he had come across my page. What page? His link led me to Nigeness for July 2008, in which month I presciently announced the death of Labour, but did not, as far as I can see, make any mention of Zaha Hadid. Indeed, I believe the only time I've mentioned the Camilla Batmanghelidjh of architecture (as Malty calls her) was in a recent post about a visit to Haddon Hall, where 'all was as I remembered it, apart from a bizarre object plonked in the middle of one of the rooms. Clad in a grubby, hideously coloured textile (a kind of Seventies mustard yellow) and resembling a disassembled delta-wing aircraft, this was, I learnt, a sofa designed by Zaha Hadid. How anyone would contrive to sit on it I have no idea; why anyone would buy it and put it on display, still less.' 
No wonder Joel felt the urge to 'reach out' to me, drawing my attention to Artsy's very wonderful Zaha Hadid page, and urging me to 'spread the word' about it. Consider it spread, Joel.
 And now, thanks to the News, I learn that Zaha Hadid has won the RIBA's Gold Medal. And that the 'pop artist' known as Kaws has been allowed to inflict a number of his gigantic and disgusting 'sculptures' on the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Will Gompertz seemed delighted, but then he always does. Hey ho - life goes on...