“Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole”
- The Modern Lovers

Last Thursday evening we were driving home from Wales. Clare was sitting beside me and the kids had fallen asleep on the back seat. The two grown-ups were about to have a proper grown-up conversation when a jet black Citroën Xsara Picasso overtook us somewhat aggressively. The grown-up conversation was put on hold. “The Citroën Picasso,” I snarled with mild indignation. “What do you think old Pablo would have made of that?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Clare. “Why don’t you tell me. I can see you’re itching to.”

So I did:

“I think he would have hated it. I mean, there he is: this major big-ass icon of the 20th Century, a bona fide cultural heavyweight who revolutionised art and transformed the way in which we see the world. People like that don’t want to end up becoming synonymous with a safe and sensible family car. It’s bad for the image. If you ask me, I think he’d be pretty damned furious that his descendants were so willing to whore his name off so indiscriminately.”

“Really?” said Clare, somewhat dryly. “I bet they didn’t get a penny.”

“Really?” said I, somewhat dimly. “That makes it worse. At least, I think that makes it worse.”

There was a moment’s silence as I gathered my thoughts and watched the red tail lights of the popular MPV fade into the distance.

“It’s all about design principles,” I continued. “If you’re going to name a car after someone like Picasso then at least try to remain faithful to your source of inspiration. A proper Citroën Picasso wouldn’t look anything like that. For one thing, there’d be none of those functionally streamlined elegant curves. The real deal would be cube-like, wilfully asymmetrical and feature oblique references to the Spanish Civil War. Plus, all the wheels would be different sizes.”

“It’d be a bugger to drive,” said Clare. “You struggle with parallel parking at the best of times.”

I was now in full-on monologue mode, so I managed to deftly side-step my partner’s sarcasm: “Why stop with Picasso?” I said. “I want to see a range of family-friendly, design classic MPVs inspired by the greatest artists of the 20th Century. Just imagine a Citroën Dalí! A vulgar egg-shaped monstrosity with a massive pair of waxed windscreen wipers, a melting speedo and a Sat Nav that refers to itself in the third person.”

“Or a Citroën Pollock,” said Clare.

“What’s that like?” I asked.

“It’s like a Citroën Picasso that’s been in an accident.”

We spent yesterday in Wales visiting my old friends Jude & Jonathan at their secluded lakeside retreat located somewhere between Llanidloes and God Knows Where (Dduw Chnotiau Ble). I introduced my old friends to my new family and, for the second time in my life, tried to water ski. It was not a dignified sight.

The journey involved us driving up some ridiculously steep inclines, negotiating some svelte-like country lanes and indulging in the kind of hairy off-road antics that my modest Citroen Saxo is not best equipped for. The Saxo might be fine as an urban runabout, but last time I checked ‘driving through a field filled with sheep’ wasn’t one of its unique selling points.

(It’s sitting outside the house now, looking slightly forlorn and covered in a generous coating of babyshit-brown mud. My neighbours must think I’ve taken up rally driving.)

In any case, as we approached our destination we saw a rather disturbing sight. Next to a particularly treacherous bend on a particularly skinny stretch of a particularly vertigo-inducing country lane sat the corpse of a white Vauxhall Corsa. It was smashed to smithereens and looked as though it had been sitting there for quite some time. The most disturbing thing about it, though, was that it was covered in graffiti. Scrawled all over the car in black spray paint was the following sinister message:

HA ha HA HA Ha HA HA ha HA HA Ha HA HA ha HA HA Ha HA HA ha HA HA Ha HA HA ha HA HA Ha HA HA ha HA HA Ha HA HA ha HA HA Ha HA

Maybe it was because I watched too many horror films at an impressionable age, but I couldn’t help but feel ill at ease. Was this an omen of some kind? Should we turn back? Had we stumbled into some weird, Deliverance-style pocket of wrong?

As it happened, the day passed without incident. I can only assume that the white Corsa festooned in HAs was some kind of weird tribute to the late Heath Ledger.

I almost forgot to mention… after leaving Hafod Elwy Hall in Denbighshire last Sunday, Clare and I embarked on a Keruoac-lite drive around North Wales. We headed west along the A5 and through Betws-y-Coed (or, as my brother prefers to call it, “Betsy Cohen”) before veering off in a random direction to see where the Road would take us.

Well, it took us past Moel Siabod and Snowdon and through some of the most rugged and gorgeous landscapes I’ve seen in quite some time. We stopped at a few places, took quite a few photos and ended up in Portmeirion. As you do.

In the popular imagination – well, in mine, at least – Portmeirion is the place where Patrick McGoohan’s famously numerophobic, former-government agent was sent to prison for a resignation he didn’t explain. As a huge fan of the cult 60s show The Prisoner, it was weird walking past all those odd buildings, so many of which have been hard-wired into my imagination since Channel 4 repeated the series in 1985. I was pleasantly surprised at how little The Village had changed in the 40-plus years since the show was originally made: Portmeirion’s Pantheon, for instance, was still recognisable as the green domed home to Number 2, while the stone boat on the shore still looked as mad and as incongruous as it did back then. Then again, it’s a boat. It’s made out of stone. How could it not look mad and incongruous?

Anyhow, here’s Portmeirion:

And there’s me, up there, by Number 2’s ornate lair:

And there I am again, outside Number 6’s home, cheerily refusing to be “pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered.”:

I guess it pays to put your trust in the Road: sometimes it can take you to where you’ve always wanted to go.

This weekend Clare & I are off to Snowdonia. We’ll be stopping at Hafod Elwy Hall, deep in the gorgeous Denby moors. This is what it looks like:

Yummy.

The hotel owners were kind enough to email us instructions on how to get there. It’s not located in what you might call the most accessible of places. In fact, the quaint Irish expression “The arse end of nowhere” springs sluggishly to mind:

You will pass Cerrig-y-Drudion. A few miles after that you will take the A543 signed ‘Denbigh’ on the right. (just before Pentrefoelas). Go 5.6 Miles. You will see a telegraph pole on the left with wires going over the road toward the right. Turn right in to the track at that point. (Italics mine)

I don’t think I’m clued up enough on telegraph poles to recognise one from another. I certainly couldn’t identify one in a police line-up, let alone whilst driving in the dark. Proper dark, that is, not city dark. It never really gets that dark in the city.

The last mile or so of the journey will be along a rough, suspension-knackering country track. In the proper dark. I hope my functional-yet-fashionable Citroen Saxo finds it in its bonnet to forgive me.

Needless to say, I can’t wait…