Art for Art’s Sake

I had my first visit to another Mr D today. I may have to call him Mr D The Artist as he had several of his own pieces sitting in his front room. It was a great conversation starter as I immediately recognised this portrait as the world famous cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Mr D had watched him on TV playing in one of the Proms and asked me if I ever watch the Proms. He was quite surprised when I said I had sang in a choir several times at the Proms. The conversation moved on to Mr D’s career path. As a young boy he was the first person at his village school (and in his farm hand family) to pass the 11+ & go to grammar school, he then passed his school certificate with top grades & being awarded a place at Oxford Uni. Before he could go to uni though he had to do National service where he’d been made to learn Russian. On completion of his Chemistry degree he then started working in research and Laporte Industry. He started a side hustle translating technical documents into or from Russian and eventually took this on as a full time job. At 91 he no longer works full time but still keeps his hand in translating 2 or 3 articles a month. The time flew by and it was soon time for me to get back to work. He’s set me some homework to work out his 2 remaining clues in his Guardian crossword although I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge. Looking forward to seeing him again next week.