Hello, gentle listener, and welcome to nocturnal transmissions, the fortnightly podcast that brings you dark tales, both old and new, performed by your humble

narrator, Kristen Arlen. Of all lies, art is the least untrue. Gustav Flaubert. Art is the least untrue, Gustav Flouber.

Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.

Theodore Tracer, love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

Hmm, Constantine Stanislavsky.

Nocturnal transmissions is proud to present an exhibition by Matthew

G. Rees. Vile. That's what he was, in her eyes. The mere thought of his creations. It made her shudder. It polluted her, his effluent, so that her tea, yes, even her tea, the very tea in her very cup, tasted bitter.

Julius, blunt, the little darling of the London art world, the enfonteurible of English culture,

who claimed he was still a simple nant-ber-a-lad at heart.

Never mind his mansion in Bermuda, let alone the complete accident of his local connection,

"'delivered at Nantboro General, Silver Spoon's son to a father who'd been some sort of top diplomat,

"'and a mother who, according to all the magazines, had been both a beauty queen and a ballerina,

"'in whichever country it was that Blunt Sr. had been doing a beauty queen and a ballerina, in whichever country it was, that Blunt Sr. had been

doing his diplomatic act, Denmark, or was it Sweden? The infant genius Julius, entering the

world in Nantboro's maternity ward on the night of a storm that saw flash flood submerge

all roads and railway lines south

to London. And never mind also the young Blunt's education at a top public school, followed

by his attendance at a highly fashionable art college, and with it possession of an accent,

posher than H.M. The way he and his PR people spun it,

blunt, was just an ordinary northern emperor, lad. And so the town gallery, suckered like so many

others, actually took in his trash, rather than dumping it in the gutter where it belonged.

The council, yes, the cash-strapped council, as it liked to proclaim itself, even bidding for the lower-price stuff at auction.

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