Saturday, March 16, 2024

A Special Austin

 



For one reason or another I needed a car after I had been invalided out of the RAF. My brother, Nigel, an engineer, knew of someone in a hamlet near Southampton who made up cars from second hand and new bits. 


My requirements were simple. It had to be soft-topped, sporty, simple and unique. Then, for a modest sum, I took possession of a little Austin sports car that was crab-tracked with an outside exhaust that would burn the unwary. 


Baby Austins in those days had very poor brakes and didn’t go very fast. But mine was fun and where ever I went, smart or otherwise, it commanded attention. For an ex-RAF pilot with modest funds at his disposal, it was a godsend.


I had been invited to a smart weekend in Norfolk. So off I trotted in my little car. A rather slow cattle lorry was hindering my progress north east. 


As I was in the middle of overtaking this goliath, a cow, standing athwartships decided to relieve herself. Open-sided, the liquid poured from the truck to soak me in cow’s urine. We all enjoyed the tale in Norfolk and fortunately I had taken other clothes.


On the way from my Council rooms to a wedding reception dinner party, a lamppost jumped out from the pavement to halt my progress. I left the car where it stood and continued with another guest who had just before been entertained in my rooms.


The time came to upgrade a bit, and the Austin became rather unstable at speed, and a bit dangerous.


I had joined an Austin 7 racing club and even the great Collin Chapman, founder of Lotus, was unable to find anything wrong with it.


So I sold it to a man în the city.


A while after, he contacted me by telephone and I feared for the worst.


After solving his simple question about the carburattor, I asked him how fast he had taken it. I have  forgotten the answer but it was very slow and quite safe. 








Monday, February 19, 2024

Past Country Life for Children



I’m sure to have written in the past on several aspects of what will follow.  I apologise for it. But putting it all together will, hopefully, give a rough idea of what my country-bred childhood was like during the late 1920s to early 1930s. Here goes with memories - if a bit haphazardly chosen. 


The pleasures of my youth at Sawyer’s Lands in Silchester were miriad and at a time when one did not expect others to give much of their time for us. We were free to come and go more or less as we pleased. Self-sufficiency was quite normal and one’s initiative, was encouraged. But if we misbehaved Nigel and I were punished by beatings with the back of a clothes brush - Nigel rather more than me as I was my father’s favourite. However, I deserved a beating after using scissors to trim the bristles on my father’s hairbrush. 


At some 14 years old I was at one time looking after myself during school holidays because my father had died and my mother was too busy in London working for us to survive. Then all I had learned about feeding myself, shooting for the pot, and local  friendships fell into place.


Aeroplanes in those formative years of flight where very important for my brother Nigel, and me. There was the King’s Cup for handicapped (mostly) biplanes that sometimes flew so low over our house that we could see the pilots clearly. The Schneider Trophy was a speed competition for seaplanes (with floats) over the Solent that we went to view, and Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus, that based itself in a rented farmer’s field, and at which we had our first taste of really flying in an aeroplane. It was magic. 


Then there was a ‘flip’ over London from Croydon Airfield (London’s greenfield airport) in a Klemm Bat, which, when I was 7 years old was one of the many instances that gave me a taste for flying. We were always making models to scale and to fly. One of the latter, a Frog, a monoplane powered by elastic bands, was one of the most sophisticated to fly. 

Kingsford Smith, the great Australian aviator, was to visit and land in our field, but didn’t, due to more “corporate” pleasures. But I did meet him later at Croydon. 


For the house (before refrigeration) we gathered mushrooms (mainly for breakfast and eaten with tomatoes), blackberries blueberries and fruit of all kinds for bottling in Kilner jars to feed us in winter time.

With a chicken farm we ate chickens and eggs a lot, with roast chicken being our choice when asked what we wanted to eat on our birthdays. Our dog Ben would help my father select birds and hold them down with his paw until my father could pick them up. 

We would snare rabbits and acquire game to hang in our larder to eat when high enough. Stilton cheese was also eaten over-rype by today’s standards. 


My rather grand grandmother, of little known origins, once volunteered to clean, skin and cut up a rabbit and rolled up her sleeves to do so. This indicated that she might have been a butcher’s daughter in Ireland. She might also have been a hairdresser. 


My father, an athlete who had played cricket for Berkshire but badly wounded in the First World War, was a bit of a health freak, so crates of oranges featured prominently in the larder. An aluminium pressure cooker that looked like a large Mill’s bomb was used for boiling cabbage overnight. The resultant liquid smelled horrible but my father thought it was very healthy to drink. 

For him, lavatory routine was very important for us children.  We had to “try hard” even if we had not eaten anything for days due to illness. 


Good manners were also very important to him. We would open doors for grownups allowing ladies to go through first. I think we rather overdid it. But it was much appreciated. We had to write “thank you” notes for any gift or visit. I still do. 


My father took great interest in nature and taught us about bird, animal and insect recognition. Our garden was special to him so we were virtually self supporting with fruit and vegetables. When my father had grown some giant gooseberries and was going to show them at the local fete, gypsies broke into our garden at night and stole the lot. Of course we contacted the local policeman who was unable to help, but for every time we called on his services he would say “it’s not good enough” so his nickname to us was always “not good enough”. 

I was the proud owner of a garden gun that fired .2 2 bore cartridges. One day when my parents were out, two partridges walked in our kitchen garden. Miraculously I shot them both with one cartridge. When my parents came home they were shocked instead of full of praise because shooting game then was out of season. This was not a thing to do in country society. I think we had to bury the partridges as to shoot them at that time of year really was “not good enough”. 



                                                        





We had a lovely tennis court that was free of weeds. After we had weeded it, a monetary prize would be given to the child who found any weed that might have been missed.  


As for other entertainments my father played the saxophone and drums in the local jazz band, so we gave dances on our sprung dance floor. Both of my parents played bridge with local families. I was taken along, and to keep me happy was sometimes given marron glacé when I would much rather have had a simple Mars bar. 

In summer, at our tennis parties, we provided home made lemonade to drink. We were relatively poor as when the local brass band came to play Christmas carols in our drive we had no money to give them, which made my mother cry. We may have given them chickens or eggs. 


We, as children, had access to most houses as all were welcome and few doors locked. My sister June once had to deliver two chickens from our farm for a dinner party at the Firth’s (friends and neighbours). Being used to free access she delivered them to the front door of their house. The butler, Sherrard, told her to deliver them to the servants’ entrance. She never forgot it.

Harry Firth enjoyed a good glass. Unexpectedly one day he chose to visit his cellar and found there Sherrard drinking his favourite port out of a tea cup. He sacked Sherrard on the spot, not for drinking his favourite port, but for drinking it out of a tea cup.


If lemonade was the drink for tennis, my own preference was to consume the dregs from wine bottles left out for the wine merchant to collect and recycle. These tipples must have given me a good start to a later life as weekly wine correspondent for our local newspaper and authorship of several books on the subject. 


We used country recipes for country matters. To kill aphids etc, it was with nicotene spray made from cigarette butts soaked in water. Tomatoes were nourished with cow dung dissolved in water. Iodine was applied for all cuts and hurt like mad. Butter was applied for all burns (which I do to this day with success). Dock leaves were rubbed on to nettle stings. Butterflies were killed for the collection in a jar of laurel leaves.  When collecting bird’s eggs, we were always sure to leave some in the nest. We would blow them for our collections, the method being, a hole was made in the shell and a hollow tube with a curved end used through which air was blown into the egg to empty it. 


Connie, the maid, who was a wonderful cakemaker, and who allowed us children to lick out the bowls, always referred to my father as “The Captain”.  Her lover drove the local steamroller, and would leave his bicycle in a hedge at the bottom of the drive. He would crawl into her downstairs bedroom through a very small window by the back door, when a large window beckoned around the corner nearby at the front of the house. 

The roads were cared for by a lengthman. Our local one was a friend of mine and sometimes I would share his bread, cheese, raw onion, and cold tea -  much to my parents’ displeasure. 


We would collect beer from (really, a Mr Beer) in a jug at a penny a pint from the “Crown” village pub. We would collect bread from our baker (nearly every village had its local baker). Ours baked his bread in an oven in which tied faggots had been burned. Other people’s bread somehow always tasted better than ours. The muffin man would come to our village and ring his bell, balancing on his head a tray of muffins and crumpets. 


The local carpenter would take me fishing for chubb at a tributary of the Avon river. 

There were two local water mills at Aldermaston and Burfield where we would cycle for a swim in summer time. At one there was a notice that said: “Please pay before you bathe or else you will be…..”  the rest of the notice board had been broken off, so we never knew how we would have been punished had we not paid. At Burfield Mill there was a tank of eels - which were presumably for sale. 


With the Reverend John Barker taking over from my grandfather as the Duke of Wellington’s private vicar at Stratfield Saye, the lovely Georgian vicarage he lived in became our second home with its occasional balls, a river to swim in (5 shillings reward for our first swim across), trees for shooting pigeons and, for me, being made a Brownie as my aunt was their “Chief” or something. Next to where the Brownies met was a small museum of local artifacts - the kind that country gentlemen liked to have. Another at Silchester, run by Colonel Karslake, who was also Mayor of Paddington, held items that were related to the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester). 


Being so close to the Roman town we would often find Roman coins. They were just thrown into a hamper, which was eventually destroyed in a fire. 


Although most of the town’s Roman wall had disintegrated, parts had been restored by archeologists. It was massive, and clearly kept its inhabitants, travellers and merchants safe from tribal attacks. 


The town’s amphitheatre had not yet been excavated and was the farmer’s duck pond. 


At the end of our field was a totally overgrown fortification outside the Roman wall that must have been pre-Roman. We called it the fosse. It was completely wild - and might have been unknown. 


Our local doctor, Dr Daley, who made his medicines in a shed in his garden, ministered to us and never charged as my grandfather had got him out of some scrape or other when they were both at Cambridge.  For me, I learned a little about a girl’s anatomy as my cousin Cherry and I liked to play doctors. 


As my father was so keen on sport and had played cricket for his County, he needed to listen to the Test Match in Australia. With the combination of an areal from the house to a nearby tree, and a huge dry battery combined with a wet one, charged by the Firth’s electricity-generating fly wheeled machine with floor batteries, we were able to reach Australia through a PYE wireless containing glowing valves in the shape of bulbs. It was sometimes my job to lug these batteries across the field that divided our properties. 


Our cars were generally hand-me-downs from the Smithers family, our rich relations. Our favourite being a bull nosed Morris that we occasionally had to push up hills. 


A field beyond the Crown pub was the village cricket field. Watching a match there meant harvesting and eating wild strawberries on its perimeter and catching minnows in a stream nearby.


We almost lived on our bicycles cycling everywhere. Light for cycling at night was provided by carbide lamps. To work these, water dripped on carbide to create acetylene gas which was lit by a match.  


Within cycle reach were two farms where cheese was made. The one at Sherfield made a glowingly yellow cheddar type cheese, and the other a camembert lookalike coated in straw. 


Heating for the winter was by open fires, and beds warmed by hot water bottles.  Light for upstairs was provided by candles or torches.


Lighting for the house downstairs was by gas, made in a lovely, 

clicking green machine into which we poured petrol. Power to push the resulting gas through to the house in copper tubes was by a large weight (concrete) hanging from a tall tree.

The gas mantles on brackets in the house each had to be lit by a match. 


Water was pumped from a well in the garden to a tank beneath the roof of the house by a Swift car engine or, when we were unable to start it (often) by taking turns at a hand pump in the kitchen. This was next to the blackened range that was used for heating water for the baths (meager)  and cooking for the house.  


Climbing trees was for me a great pleasure, as was making tree houses. These climbing skills were especially useful when I was at prep school where the strict and tough regime had been established to make us boys fit to run the Empire. Our headmaster was sadistic, making any excuse to beat us. Certainly my bottom was often decorated with parallel welts of red and blue. An escape   from this regime was provided for me in the form of a crow’s nest atop a tall pine tree. There I could climb to isolation and to enjoy the view of the Needles off the Isle of Wight and large ships coming and going on the Solent.  

 

If the school was to make us able to run the Empire, it certainly failed in my case. 


The war came. My childhood was over. 

Friday, January 12, 2024

A Eureka moment in the garden


Mistletoe, an evergreen parasite, is steeped in the history of folklore, magic, superstition, ritual, religion, myth, the seasons, regeneration, growth, and much else.


With me, it was, since childhood, an evergreen branch or two, often bearing white berries, and something that was hung in a doorway to encourage kissing at Christmas time. We bought ours, but I wanted to grow it myself. So I tried on apple trees (its favourite host) and I failed. And I have continued in life to try, try, and try again - failing each time.


In 2008, son Pete gave us an apple tree in a pot, which we placed, still in its pot, in front of the northern-facing brick wall of our London garden. Now, here was my chance once more to grow mistletoe. So in the winter of 2008 I tried my luck by pressing some sticky white misletoe berries into the junctures of spur and trunk, employing several methods of attachment and protection. No luck. So I tried the same the next year (2009). Still no luck, and gave up. Then in March 2010 I found a bunch of dried mistletoe that someone had thrown onto a rubbish skip. Among its branches were plenty of now brown and shrivelled berry/seeds. So I tried these, tying them in with string, coating this with rubber solution and covering the “sowings” with earth. You could then hardly see my surgical efforts with their protective dressing. Still no luck. I gave up again. But now came my eureka moment. In 2013 (5 years after my first attempt with fresh seeds) a small mistletoe sprout pushed out from beneath the bark. I had done it - at long last.  


A year later another sprout from another planted seed appeared. And the next year even another - all creating their own nourishment through photosynthesis and using only sap from beneath the bark of their parent host for survival. 


Even now, when a new mistletoe sprout pushes out from the swelling of apple tree bark, fourteen years since I embarked on this mistletoe saga, I hardly bother about it. Well, I am still rather pleased that I have grown mistletoe in the end.

Tuesday, November 07, 2023

A Car for all Seasons and Adventures

 


In 1952 I was working in the theatre, painting scenery at the Royal Opera House, designing children’s television at Alexandra Palace in black and white, touring shows and the scenery for an ice show that paid handsomely, as well as designing and painting scenery for weekly reperatory at various provincial theatres. 


It was all extremely hard work and poorly paid, except for that ice show in London were I painted flats and backdrops on the ice, wearing my RAF flying boots from wartime to keep my feet warm.


The theatre was my life and I lived in two council rooms by the 

steam-engined railway tracks at Victoria Station. It was the time of pea soup fogs and where heating was by burning coal, the smoke from which even thickened the fogs. 


This was an unhealthy time in which to live, especially for me who had suffered two bouts of lung TB and needed to visit a hospital or doctor each week or two with an artificial pneumothorax. This needed a needle shoved into the side of my chest between two ribs to allow atmospheric air pressure to fill a created cavity between my right lung and rib cage.


Despite all this I wanted to travel around Europe to get ideas for my theatre work and do as had been done in the 18th century’s Grand Tours. In my case I had to also seek out the occasional visit where I could have my lung/air dealt with.


For this I needed transport, a vehicle in which I could sleep and eat, drink, cook and travel. 


I managed to buy an old Ford 8 flat-back builder’s van that had seen better days. But it had the required mechanical basics, an eight horsepower engine, four wheels and a strong chassis. 


I had spare time, mainly from that ice show, a list of my requirements and a  certain ability to put them into effect. 


Structurally I would have to open up the back of the cab and incorporate the driving part with the flat back to make space for stretching out at night. Then there would have to be a cover to keep out noxious elements and have modest proof against theft. This was done by bending and fixing three-ply wood with rivets. The back would be of canvas and a hinged section.   So far so good. It was taking shape - if rather an odd one. The combined driving and passenger bench seat was of covered foam rubber with the front of it raised so that one’s body sank into it and knees were raised. It was extremely comfortable - ideal for a long journey, sometimes certainly to be over rough country roads/tracks.


There would for sure be mosquitoes to fend off. So a net was made to fit.


The weather abroad would be hot, so extra ventilation was necessary. This took the form of two nautical air scoops attached to the cab roof so that air could be scooped in to cool both driver and passanger. If passing through a storm these scoops could be reversed and, if necessary, stopped off with large corks.


A horn would be of vital importance, so I found one that worked, if I recall correctly, through the carburetta venturi, It was unusually loud and had been manifactured to be  part of an international sized truck.


With war surplus still around and available I acquired an aircraft altimetre to add to the van’s basic dials. This not only would tell me the height of mountains traversed but also work as a barometre to forecast weather conditions. A simple unswung compass completed my instrument panel.


Four new Michelin tyres were added.


Not having experienced the surface of continental roads after wartime neglect, I was prepared for enormous potholes, so that these tyres would probably hit the wheel arches at the rear and give off squeals and the smell of hot rubber. 


After a couple of brushed coats of British racing green paint I was off to be lifted aboard the “Dinard” by crane at Folkestone harbour en route for Boulogne and adventure. 


                                                                            




JIM P-R'S BLOG


MONDAY, NOVEMBER 06, 2023

My Grand Tour of 1953


I have described the construction of my Grand Tour car (with picture) in a previous “Autobiography in Words and Pictures” piece.

Now I write on the “tour” guided via an extensive diary written at the time. I have ommited many details, such as theatre observations and descriptions of architecture and art as most tourists since 1953 have seen them and transportation for like adventures has now become far easier.

Also missing are many places where I parked and slept for the night, locals met, and the medical side of things were I had to seek attention for my artificial pneumothorax - accept for two contrasting instances.

So here we go from when a crane in Boulogne harbour lifted my live-in car from the hold of the “Dinard” and deposited it on a quay side in France.

Bits of money were posted to myself at various poste restante along planned routes. 

Paris was the Paris of youth, of drinking, eating with friends, drawing at the Beaux Arts, La Grande Chaumière and theatre. 

With an open letter of introduction from the Royal Opera House, London, were I had been a scene painter, I badgered my way into several theatrical performances in one of which, after much hassle, found me sitting in a most comfortable seat.  The performance was Mère Courage. Suddenly, all around me stood up and I was surrounded by Président and Madame Auriol and their entourage. The Marseillaise rang out. I was not dressed for the part. 

I left Paris to drive around the Le Mans race track and to see the parents of André Brasilier (now a well known painter) in their Loire manor house. 

The family Brasillier were and had been local artists in the Pre-Raphaelite style. Once landowners, their farming properties had been sold off to a state were they now lived in penuary. Their manor house was dilapidated as the Nazis had taken it over in the war and abused it terribly

Their cat brought in a small rabbit in the morning and we ate it for lunch. The lavatory was a hundred yards away from the manor house.

I headed for Spain, crossing the Gironde by the Royon car ferry and on to Spain and San Sebastian.

From there to Madrid was to experience unmade up, post-war roads as pot hole followed pot hole. The shuddering car seemed to manage surprisingly well, averaging 45 mph.

The landscape was of white painted houses clustered around water sources. All houses had a central chimney and were spotlessly clean. Food was mainly vegetarian unless someone had killed a sheep. This was medieval life enjoyed by a generous and most friendly population. And it all closed down completely in early afternoon - banks, shops, cafés, markets, everything. The world was then silent except for cattle, the sound of wind and the song of very few birds.

And suddenly, out of this simple and rather desolate place, and for no apparent reason, sprang modern Madrid. 

Parking in the countryside each night, I made forays into cities to see wonderful art and architecture, then out again to tracks and fields.

Beside the wonders of the Prado it was the bull-fighting that intrigued me. 

My first experience of this was to buy a ticket in the sun (cheaper) or shade (dearer).  

For the first fight I chose a cheaper sunny seat. But the heat, the smell of blood, the cruelty, and the prevailing and overwhelming smell of sweet scent, made me feel quite nauseous. 

I was much on the side of the tortured bull until it was dispatched by the highly decorated matador with a curved sword. 

I tried a night bull fight which, less revolting, had lost the drama when seen in the sunshine.

Toward Valencia the crops varied from grapes, figs, olives, apricots, oranges to other fruit, but it was the dust that not only seemed to cover the landscape and the fruit in it that made breathing difficult when ever it was disturbed. Everything near to the road was thickly covered in it.

I had reached the sea and parked for the night on the verge of it. Having cooked and eaten local produce I crawled within my net to sleep and listen to the clouds of mosquitoes wanting to get in and to bite me.

A policeman appeared, woke me, and asked to see my papers. With no Spanish to explain my presence we argued. Then even he had to retire from the vicious insects.

Resting for the day, much of it in the cooling Mediterranean water, a crowd of young people appeared in an ox cart for a picnic on the shore. I was invited to join them and we enjoyed a delightful  evening conversing through mixed language, gestures, and drawings in the sand. They wanted most to know about the bullfights in Madrid. They shared their strange food with me and we drank red wine from a porron, a spouted glass jug that delivered the wine in a stream from jug to mouth via an arc in the air - causing much laughter at my efforts to aim properly.

After all the jollity I left the car’s headlights on all night, which meant hitch-hiking with a heavy battery to the next village to have it charged. Three cars passed me in one hour. Finaly, a self-propelled, gas-generating vehicle more or less had to stop to prevent running over me. We continued our journey at walking speed to Villanueva where a lady café owner made me a real Spanish omelette with just onion, potato and beaten egg. 

It was here that I settled for a while to meet Martin Torrents, an artist, and enjoy shoreline food and wine while looking out at night from beneath date palms over a sea dotted with bright lights as fishermen attracted sardines to their nets. Dust was dampened and the air cooled each evening by water spray.

A priest offered to show me his school where his room was odiferous and covered with dust, champagne corks, and cigar ash with butt ends. 

Next to the sea and surrounded by white houses, and balconies of flowers with green or blue lattice blinds, I was very happy. 

I had parked for the night on a dried river bed but my wheels had sunk in the sand. To get out I had to search for rocks to ram beneath the tyres before escaping. Then I was allowed to park in the fish market.

Along the coast north to Tossa, I saw the first English people since entering Spain. 

Whereas those who topped up my pneumothorax at the American hospital in Paris were dressed in surgical gear, a doctor Xalabadar, in a back street of Barcelona, simply produced a large hypodermic needle with a dial at the end, shoved it into my chest and that was that. He refused payment.

The Pyrenean valleys were Shangri Las. Overtaking an old woman with a heavy load, toiling up a mountain road, I remembered the sweat of carrying a car battery and offered a lift. She was most grateful but left behind a most vicious flea. To be rid of it I coated myself with insect powder.

French roads were much better than those in Spain, but the rough Spanish ones had caused a break in the car’s chassis - welded together in France where everything was much more expensive than in Spain. 

Marseille to Cannes with its nudity on the beach and then to Cagnes where my uncle Wyn had asked me to house-sit as he would be in Brittany where it was cooler.  

With poste restante funds in pocket for food and petrol, I was able at last to disrobe and take a hot bath. 

Should two prostitutes from Bordeaux turn up, I was told to entertain them. They didn’t. 

With now three thousand and eighty six miles run, I was off to Italy, buying cheap petrol coupons at the border with France. Côtes d’Azur had seemed somehow false compared with the Spanish coast.

It was while driving through La Spezia that a bee was sucked into the car via the driver’s side nautical air vent. It went straight up the leg of my swimming shorts and stung me. It was when workmen were on their way home on bicycles. A glance in my rear view mirrors revealed some carnage on the road behind. 

Shortly after that I came across a man in the middle of the road trying to push-start a woman in a basket-like vehicle. I wanted to overtake so gave a blast with my horn. The poor man panicked and couldn’t decide on which side of the road to escape - and ended up transfixed in the middle, swearing and quite near to my bumper. 

Lucca, Pisa, Florence, each a feast of pictures and architecture, and each night after a day’s eye-feast I parked for the night on a country road and a quiet place to relax, eat and drink. Locals invariably greeted me with great friendship.  Waking in the morning, I was unable to get out of the car as it was surrounded by a herd of pigs. 

My diary filled with the praises of such as Verocchio, Ghirlandaio, Cimabué, Giotto, Bottecilli, Masaccio and many more, too difficult to describe.

Now came one of my target places. The villa where Boccacio retreated from the plague-ridden city to more or less isolation to write the Decameron. Certaldo was the village’s name and, as I climbed the hill to his house, I passed at almost every front doorstep a lady weaving raffia around bulbous chianti bottles. All that was needed was raffia, a large eyed needle and scissors. Forty a day was the average output per worker.

Boccaccio had chosen well and could relax in an enclosed courtyard of fountain and flowers. It was lovely and well worth my pilgrimage. 

To Sienna where I drank such good red wine at a café, I returned with my two large and now emptied chianti water flasks to have them filled with this wonderful wine. 

Another part of my picture quest was to see the San Romano battle paintings by Uccello in Sienna, and they were as wonderful as expected, but with 3553 miles on the clock and much more to see with the funds available I was off to Rome via Ostia Antica.

Ostia’s Roman theatre and remains of a Roman town were all that one could expect - drains, heating, temples, forum, Colosseum - and all beautifully presented.

Then to Rome itself to see the Sistene Chapel and Colosseum. But cities were always difficult for me and the car, and took so much time to leave for  a night of camping in the countryside.

All roads may lead to Rome, but few away from it. This was the case when I left on the way to Assissi to see the Giotto’s there, and after some driving only to find myself in exactly the same spot from where I had started. 

After Assisi, its Giottos and views of olive trees, with a pinnacle of cyprus trees, I aimed for Ravenna and the clear Adriatic.

I was already suffering a bit from a surfiet of fine art and medieval architectural marvels. Though to see the works of old painter friends like Cosimo, Velasquez, Ucello, Giotto, Bronzino and more, and more, were beginning to fill my brain. 

And car troubles were beginning to tax me and my war-torn body. But when ever there was car trouble I was certain to meet lovely and helpful people. Not many were doing what I was doing. So often I was greeted with incredulety and open arms. Lack of languages was usually overcome with made-up words, laughter, and amusing drawings on paper.

Taking a minor route that turned out to be rougher than expected, car springs in front started to disintegrate, leading to collapse of the leaf springs at the rear. Not only that, but a transverse chassis member also broke. Limping at 10 mph past fields of tomatoes growing close to the ground, I reached Porto Garibaldi and Commachio where a man with electric welding equipment mended as much as he could, but I had to part with my watch as part payment.

Commachio, once joined to Porto Garibaldi by a river and with all transport by canals since it was once a port, was quite lovely to look at except for its filthy water (in which children swam) and was so disease-ridden that I was warned not to eat any of the food offered there. A friendly guide told me that 20 percent of its inhabitants had TB, more with malaria, and typhoid was prevalent. 

My guide bade me to follow him for 15 km to eat in his cool, family house where they grew fruit and vegetables in enormous abundance, yet there was not a  bee or bird to be seen.

I parked on his land and by day visited Venice to see not only the normal sights but the gold cross that Napoleon left behind as he could not believe that it was solid gold.

The weather was hot enough, but that inside the glass factories in Murano intense. 

The usual tat was being produced at the same time as craftsmen and their assistants created fine elaborate pieces, such as chandeliers, as others churned out elephants and naked women.

What amazed me was after a piece had been finished at the end of its blowing tube, just a drop of water and a light tap parted the glass piece from the blowing tube.

Then to Vicenza, and its 16th century theatre with original oil lamp illumination, Verona, and more car trouble in its refusal to start, so forcing me to spend the nights on a slope. But it ran beautifully through the Po Valley rice fields and crossed the Alps at 6700 feet to pass the customs at the summit. Scenery of ultramarine lakes, tumbling streams to French glaciers all through downhill France in fine clear air was lovely. 

Help was called for in France where the Ford mechanic could not believe that my car had crossed the Alps having an 8 horsepower engine and one burned-out valve.

Chambray to find no envelope of money in my poste restante, so headed for Paris and friends with my reserve cash.

The fan belt tore to shreds as I travelled through the immaculate vineyards of the top Burgundies to reach Paris, only to find that my friends (and reserve cash) had gone on holiday.  Even someone I had met on my outward journey would have nothing to do with me as he thought I was a ruffian (and did look like one)

A concièrge of apartments owned by holidaying friends gave me food and enough cash to reach Boulogne, so I spent 100 f on a sandwich and ate the remains from the skin of a watermelon. . 

With papers in order and at the ferry quay side a 60 f harbour fee was demanded. But I had no money left. Yet, delving in all my pockets I came up with three 20 Franc pieces. And the good news was that there would be no disambarking fee at Dover. I was back.

The car (later to be sold to a Scottish Laird) had done 5,227 miles (8,412 km) from 7th of June 1953 to the tenth of August 1953.

That was three months and three days of adventure - a  GRAND TOUR indeed, if sometimes a precarious one. 





                                                                                                                              
                                                            

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Page-Roberts joined the RAF in 1942 to become a pilot. Recovering from TB, he designed for the theatre and television before painting landscape. After one-man exhibitions and mixed shows in London’s top galleries, he turned to sculpting in wood.


An alteration of course after a wrist fracture resulted in him writing 14 books and over 700 articles in the subsequent 24 years. His subjects were wine, vines, gardens, cooking, London’s dockland & travel. In 2006 he returned to painting.


His work sells with regularity at Christie's. In 2010 he held a one-man show of Aircraft Shadows at the Mayor Gallery, Cork St, London.

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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 06, 2023

My Grand Tour of 1953




I have described the construction of my Grand Tour car (with picture) in a previous “Autobiography in Words and Pictures” piece.

Now I write on the “tour” guided via an extensive diary written at the time. I have omited many details, such as theatre observations and descriptions of architecture and art as most tourists since 1953 have seen them and transportation for like adventures has now become far easier.


Also missing are many places where I parked and slept for the night, locals met, and the medical side of things were I had to seek attention for my artificial pneumothorax - accept for two constrasting instances. 


So here we go from when a crane in Boulogne harbour lifted my live-in car from the hold of the “Dinard” and deposited it on a quay side in France.


Bits of money were posted to myself at various poste restante along planned routes. 


Paris was the Paris of youth, of drinking, eating with friends, drawing at the Beaux Arts, La Grande Chaumière and theatre. 


With an open letter of introduction from the Royal Opera House, London, were I had been a scene painter, I badgered my way into several theatrical performances in one of which, after much hassle, found me sitting in a most comfortable seat.  The performance was Mère Courage. Suddenly, all around me stood up and I was surrounded by Président and Madame Auriol and their entourage. The Marseillaise rang out. I was not dressed for the part. 


I left Paris to drive around the Le Mans race track and to see the parents of André Brasilier (now a well known painter) in their Loire manor house. 


The family Brasillier were and had been local artists in the Pre-Raphaelite style. Once landowners, their farming properties had been sold off to a state were they now lived in penuary. Their manor house was delapadated as the Nazis had taken it over in the war and abused it terribly.


Their cat brought in a small rabbit in the morning and we ate it for lunch. The lavatory was a hundred yards away from the manor house.


I headed for Spain, crossing the Gironde by the Royon car ferry and on to Spain and San Sebastian.


From there to Madrid was to experience unmade up, post-war roads as pot hole followed pot hole. The shuddering car seemed to manage surprisingly well, averaging 45 mph.


The landscape was of white painted houses clustered around water sources. All houses had a central chimney and were spotlessly clean. Food was mainly vegetarian unless someone had killed a sheep. This was medieval life enjoyed by a generous and most friendly population. And it all closed down completely in early afternoon - banks, shops, cafés, markets, everything. The world was then silent except for cattle, the sound of wind and the song of very few birds.


And suddenly, out of this simple and rather desolate place, and for no apparent reason, sprang modern Madrid. 


Parking in the countryside each night, I made forays into cities to see wonderful art and architecture, then out again to tracks and fields.


Beside the wonders of the Prado it was the bull-fighting that intrigued me. 


My first experience of this was to buy a ticket in the sun (cheaper) or shade (dearer).  


For the first fight I chose a cheaper sunny seat. But the heat, the smell of blood, the cruelty, and the pervailing and overwhelming smell of sweet scent, made me feel quite nausious. 


I was much on the side of the tortured bull until it was dispatched by the highly decorated matador with a curved sward. 


I tried a night bull fight which, less revolting, had lost the drama when seen in the sunshine.


Toward Valencia the crops varied from grapes, figs, olives, apricots, oranges to other fruit, but it was the dust that not only seemed to cover the landscape and the fruit in it that made breathing difficult when ever it was disturbed. Everything near to the road was thickly covered in it.


I had reached the sea and parked for the night on the verge of it. Having cooked and eaten local produce I crawled within my net to sleep and listen to the clouds of musquitoes wanting to get in and to bite me.


A policeman appeared, woke me, and asked to see my papers. With no Spanish to explain my presence we argued. Then even he had to retire from the vicious insects.


Resting for the day, much of it in the cooling Mediterranean water, a crowd of young people appeared in an ox cart for a picnic on the shore. I was invited to join them and we enjoyed a delightful  evening conversing through mixed language, gestures, and drawings in the sand. They wanted most to know about the bull-fights in Madrid. They shared their strange food with me and we drank red wine from a porron, a spouted glass jug that delivered the wine in a stream from jug to mouth via an arc in the air - causing much laughter at my efforts to aim properly.


After all the jollity I left the car’s headlights on all night, which meant hitch-hiking with a heavy battery to the next village to have it charged. Three cars passed me in one hour. Finaly, a self-propelled, gas-generating vehicle more or less had to stop to prevent running over me. We continued our journey at walking speed to Villanueva where a lady café owner made me a real Spanish omelette with just onion, potato and beated egg. 


It was here that I settled for a while to meet Martin Torrents, an artist, and enjoy shoreline food and wine while looking out at night from beneath date palms over a sea dotted with bright lights as fishermen attracted sardines to their nets. Dust was dampened and the air cooled each evening by water spray.

A priest offered to show me his school where his room was odiferous and covered with dust, champagne corks, and cigar ash with butt ends. 


Next to the sea and surrounded by white houses, and balconies of flowers with green or blue lattice blinds, I was very happy. 


I had parked for the night on a dried river bed but my wheels had sunk in the sand. To get out I had to search for rocks to ram beneath the tyres before escaping. Then I was allowed to park in the fish market.


Along the coast north to Tossa, I saw the first English people since entering Spain. 


Whereas those who topped up my pneumothorax at the American hospital in Paris were dressed in surgical gear, a doctor Xalabadar, in a back street of Barcelona, simply produced a large hypodermic needle with a dial at the end, shoved it into my chest and that was that. He refused payment.


The Pyrenean valleys were Shangri Las. Overtaking an old woman with a heavy load, toiling up a mountain road, I remembered the sweat of carrying a car battery and offered a lift. She was most grateful but left behind a most vicious flea. To be rid of it I coated myself with insect powder.


French roads were much better than those in Spain, but the rough Spanish ones had caused a break in the car’s chassis - welded together in France where everything was much more expensive than in Spain. 


Marseille to Cannes with its nudity on the beach and then to Cagnes where my uncle Wyn had asked me to house-sit as he would be in Brittany where it was cooler.  


With poste restant funds in pocket for food and petrol, I was able at last to disrobe and take a hot bath. 

Should two prostitutes from Bordeaux turn up, I was told to entertain them. They didn’t. 


With now three thousand and eighty six miles run, I was off to Italy, buying cheap petrol coupons at the border with France. Côtes d’Azur had seemed somehow false compared with the Spanish coast.

It was while driving through La Spezia that a bee was sucked into the car via the driver’s side nautical air vent. It went straight up the leg of my swimming shorts and stung me. It was when workmen were on their way home on bicycles. A glance in my rear view mirrors revealed some carnage on the road behind. 


Shortly after that I came across a man in the middle of the road trying to push-start a woman in a basket-like vehicle. I wanted to overtake so gave a blast with my horn. The poor man panicked and couldn’t decide on which side of the road to escape - and ended up transfixed in the middle, swearing and quite near to my bumper. 


Lucca, Pisa, Florence, each a feast of pictures and architecture, and each night after a day’s eye-feast I parked for the night on a country road and a quiet place to relax, eat and drink. Locals invariably greeted me with great friendship.  Waking in the morning, I was unable to get out of the car as it was surrounded by a herd of pigs. 


My diary filled with the praises of such as Verocchio, Ghirlandeio, Cimabué, Giotto, Bottecilli, Masaccio and many more, too difficult to describe.


Now came one of my target places. The villa where Boccacio retreated from the plague-ridden city to more or less isolation to write the Decameron. Certaldo was the village’s name and, as I climbed the hill to his house, I passed at almost every front doorstep a lady weaving raffia around bulbous chianti bottles. All that was needed was raffia, a large eyed needle and scissors. Forty a day was the average output per worker.


Boccacio had chosen well and could relax in an enclosed courtyard of fountain and flowers. It was lovely and well worth my pilgrimage. 


To Sienna where I drank such good red wine at a café, I returned with my two large and now emptied chianti water flasks to have them filled with this wonderful wine. 


Another part of my picture quest was to see the San Romano battle paintings by Ucello in Sienna, and they were as wonderful as expected, but with 3553 miles on the clock and much more to see with the funds available I was off to Rome via Ostia Antiqua.


Ostia’s Roman theatre and remains of a Roman town were all that one could expect - drains, heating, temples, forum, Colosseum - and all beautifully presented.


Then to Rome itself to see the Cisteen Chapel and Colosseum. But cities were always difficult for me and the car, and took so much time to leave for  a night of camping in the countryside.


All roads may lead to Rome, but few away from it. This was the case when I left on the way to Assissi to see the Giotto’s there, and after some driving only to find myself in exactly the same spot from where I had started. 


After Assisi, its Giottos and views of olive trees, with a pinackle of cyprus trees, I aimed for Ravenna and the clear Adriatic.


I was already suffering a bit from a surfiet of fine art and medieval architectural marvels. Though to see the works of old painter friends like Cosimo, Velasquez, Ucello, Giotto, Bronzino and more, and more, were beginning to fill my brain. 


And car troubles were beginning to tax me and my war-torn body. But when ever there was car trouble I was certain to meet lovely and helpful people. Not many were doing what I was doing. So often I was greeted with incredulety and open arms. Lack of languages was usually overcome with made-up words, laughter, and amusing drawings on paper.


Taking a minor route that turned out to be rougher than expected, car springs in front started to disintegrate, leading to collapse of the leaf springs at the rear. Not only that, but a transverse chassis member also broke. Limping at 10 mph past fields of tomatoes growing close to the ground, I reached Porto Garibaldi and Commachio where a man with electric welding equipment mended as much as he could, but I had to part with my watch as part payment.


Commachio, once joined to Porto Garibaldi by a river and with all transport by canals since it was once a port, was quite lovely to look at except for its filthy water (in which children swam) and was so disease-ridden that I was warned not to eat any of the food offered there. A friendly guide told me that 20 percent of its inhabitants had TB, more with malaria, and typhoid was prevalent. 


My guide bade me to follow him for 15 km to eat in his cool, family house where they grew fruit and vegetables in enormous abundance, yet there was not a  bee or bird to be seen.


I parked on his land and by day visited Venice to see not only the normal sights but the gold cross that Napoleon left behind as he could not believe that it was solid gold.


The weather was hot enough, but that inside the glass factories in Murano intense. 


The usual tat was being produced at the same time as craftsmen and their assistants created fine elaborate pieces, such as chandeliers, as others churned out elephants and naked women.


What amazed me was after a piece had been finished at the end of its blowing tube, just a drop of water and a light tap parted the glass piece from the blowing tube.


Then to Vicenza, and its 16th century theatre with original oil lamp illumination, Verona, and more car trouble in its refusal to start, so forcing me to spend the nights on a slope. But it ran beautifully through the Po Valley rice fields and crossed the Alps at 6700 feet to pass the customs at the summit. Scenery of ultramarine lakes, tumbling streams to French glaciers all through down hill France in fine clear air was lovely. 


Help was called for in France where the Ford mechanic could not believe that my car had crossed the Alps having an 8 horse power engine and one burned-out valve.


Chambray to find no envelope of money in my poste restante, so headed for Paris and friends with my reserve cash.


The fan belt tore to shreds as I travelled through the immaculate vineyards of the top Burgundies to reach Paris, only to find that my friends (and reserve cash) had gone on holiday.  Even someone I had met on my outward journey would have nothing to do with me as he thought I was a ruffian (and did look like one).


A concièrge of apartments owned by holidaying friends gave me food and enough cash to reach Boulogne, so I spent 100 f on a sandwich and ate the remains from the skin of a water melon. . 


With papers in order and at the ferry quay side a 60 f harbour fee was demanded. But I had no money left. Yet, delving in all my pockets I came up with three 20 Franc pieces. And the good news was that there would be no disambarking fee at Dover. I was back.


The car (later to be sold to a Scottish Laird) had done 5,227 miles (8,412 km) from 7th of June 1953 to the tenth of August 1953.


That was three months and three days of adventure - a GRAND TOUR indeed, if sometimes a precarious one.



                                                        



 

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