Lenkiewicz gets his second mention this month in the Independent. This time it is only a passing reference:

When I was a teenager in Plymouth, a certain sort of girl used to hang around the Barbican, hoping to be taken as a muse by the local artist.

The artist we were after was Robert Lenkiewicz, an enigmatic handsome bastard and the subject the sort of rumours particularly beguiling to middle-class girls who aimed to go to the bad. I never made it into Lenkiewicz's studio (which is probably for the best). I should have headed to the Hoe, where I'd have had a much better chance with the other famous local artist, Beryl Cook.

I remember The Dolphin pub, where Cook's crazy ladies and fat-bottomed girls used to hang out, and the queue at Cap'*Jaspers, which was the image of one of her paintings.

Such is life: you think you're a brooding Anna in a Blue Dress, and then you realise you're happy to be Dancing the Black Bottom. It's one of the funny things about growing up.

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