A while ago we had a bunch of friends over from England to stay for the weekend to celebrate Jason’s birthday. It turned out to be a very rowdy time, more than a bit thanks to everyone’s amazement at the bargain price of the wine at our local cantina. Not to buy would have been economically irresponsible the theory went. And then not to consume, socially inappropriate.
One night, we decided that it would be fun to take some photos and we were feeling creative. I dug out a book of Da Vinci paintings and we decided to have a go at recreating his famous Last Supper. We were a few disciples short of a following but such details weren’t going to stop us. There followed a stint of rummaging around for props and arguing about who got to be who. Jason scored the Jesus lead by playing the untrumpable birthday boy card.
After a few self-timer comedy moments (last supper with sprinter in foreground) we’d managed a quite good (by which I mean terrible but recognisable) offering.
Some days later, with everyone gone and the silence returned, we received the print we’d had made and I decided to go and get it framed at our local shop. I’d been in there a few times and had got to know the gruff-but-heart-of-gold framer a bit. We had even come to joke about how we had polarly contrasting framing tastes. I knew that if I went for a frame type that prompted an ‘urgh’ reaction, I’d probably chosen well.
I was a bit nervous about him seeing the picture. Maybe there was a law against masquerading as a biblical figure. Maybe he’d think we were mocking the lord. As I unfurled it, his eyebrows lifted. “L’ultima cena?” (“The last supper?”) he half asked, half stated. “Er…Si” I replied, smiling out of one side of my mouth, looking at him hopefully. He burst into a big fat laugh. Ha ha ha. I looked him in the eye. Ha ha ha, he continued, “Jesus is good” he said.
