Brought by a common friend, Ranko Murtić came to my last party. The last time we saw each other was about a quarter of a century ago, when we had spent a couple of weeks together on the Adriatic coast. When he learned that my paintings were two-sided, he turned a couple of them around. But when he put them back on their battens, he carefully placed them so that their lower edges were flush with the outer edges of the battens. Now, I would assume that everyone would do this, but this is actually not the case. In fact, this is never the case. This is how I can always tell whether someone has fooled around with my paintings. They regularly end up too close to the wall, thus being in danger of falling down to the floor. The width of the battens was carefully chosen to prevent this from happening, but to no avail. A son of a famous Croatian painter, as well as a Zagreb art dealer of renown, Ranko knew what he was doing. The funny bit is that I loved him for it. That quarter of a century that separated us evaporated in an instant.