Pengealitus

On the way to Tate St Ives there was a sign to a place which sounded like Penge (can't remember its exact name). I joked with my daughter it was the Cornish name for Penge, a horrible suburb in south east London. Ten minutes later, in the Tate St Ives bookshop, there was a guy wearing a Penge Cycle Club T-shirt. He was with his wife and two kids. He picked up the book Alan Kitching: A Life in Letterpress and said to his family he used to work with Alan Kitching, 'practitioner of letterpress typographic design and printmaking'. His family showed absolutely no interest in this interesting fact, and walked off. I was familiar with Kitching's work – I've seen it a lot in posters and magazines, and a friend of mine is always going on about him – and was about to ask the man about Kitching (and Penge, which I used to live close to) and show him more interest than his own family. But I didn't, and the moment passed.