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(I see that calligraphy is not Fern’s only art - she’s blogging too. I bet she has a flowery template. Have a look here)

Our beloved cat, Zig-Zag, is missing. He lived at the storey institute, but despite what Fern Mccaulay says about Litfest, it was the storey art gallery where Zig-Zag spent his time. Fern and I (she made the other posters) we see things the same and we see things differently. That’s why we get on so well, and why we don’t get on at all, and why we didn’t manage to connect up all those years ago.

Fern’s posters, in that same gorgeous looping writing, helped find the last Storey Institute missing cat, fifteen years ago. She loved that cat too. She would hug it tightly to her chest then all of a sudden pour it out of her arms and it would trot off happily as if something had been added to it.

But back to this cat. Zig-zag spent his time with the visual arts, and years ago, between shifts at the lino plant, I used to visit the Storey Gallery too. The storey has a habit of breathing you in off the street like that. It was all weird art and spoke to another part of my brain, fitting into slots that seemed designed for it. Normal paintings, representational work, disturb me, like that lifeless painting of Arnside bay where a seagull is stilled in a murk-grey sky and the rain is like frozen straws blurring the dark oblongs of the Barrow train stalled on the spindly bridge and the whole image just seems like a piece of flattened machinery.

I don’t go inside the Storey now, apart from to use the toilet. I’m more often in the portico, where Zig-Zag used to curl up with me at night. In the daytime Zig-Zag preferred to sit in the gallery; people are machines that give off chemicals and Zig-Zag would have enjoyed the smell of people moved to emotion by art.

Why didn’t Fern pick up on the chemicals I sent out, fifteen years ago? No one knew about chemicals then. We thought it was mere love. That’s why I sent her the poem, wrapped my chemicals in words and handed them to her. Then there was nothing. Nothing happened for a long time. We could have been something together, it was a waste of chemicals.

But now she’s here, Fern McCaulay is back, helping find Zig-Zag. Look at her swimmy, scribbly scrawl. You have elegant descenders, why, thank you very much, sir. I wonder if it’s really about finding Zig-Zag or if its about her proving something to me. Because she, Fern, was educated here, at the Storey. She missed out on the Grammar. The Storey reopens soon - the ahum Storey Creative Industry Centre don’t you know - so we need Zig-Zag

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