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I really like Petra Bittl.

She’s a hugely talented ceramic artist, she’s got a wicked sense of humour and Axel, her husband, (ex- linebacker) is as nice a guy as you’re likely to meet.

The only thing I’m not too keen on are her bloody cats but I keep quiet about that…

Sometimes.

But she’s giving me a hard time at the moment.

She’s got a major solo exhibition at a flash gallery next month and she’s asked me to translate the blurb in the glossy catalogue for her.

Don’t know who wrote it (it wouldn’t have been her, I’m pretty sure of that) but it’s pretty dire stuff.

It’s reminds me of Corporate Bullshit Bingo, where you take a whole pile of meaningless buzzwords, string them together and spout them out with conviction.

Pretty much like the Hans Christian Andersen’s fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes – everyone knows you’re living on Pseud’s Corner, but no-one’s got the bottle to challenge you.

It’s taken copious quantities of the product of hop, grape and grain to get out of the starting blocks, but I’m flying now.

Laughing hysterically, mind you, but just zipping along.

The following has just emanated from my pen:

Petra Bittl’s creative output has its origins in the intensive relationship between sketching and painting, with clay as the medium. The aesthetic integration of sculpture and image transcend the pure form of the object. An alloy of form and content is forged within the ceramic sculpture itself together with its porcelain epidermis as a surrogate for canvas or paper. Designs and pictorial elements define the sculptural form and detail with facet-rich autonomous stylistic idiom both content and meaning in each sculptural object.

Good, eh?

I think I shall send it in to Private Eye – they’ll pay 10 quid if it’s published…