Re-Cycling

We tend to think that re-cycling is suddenly of importance. In fact it was far more prevalent when I was younger.

In the late 1920s to early 1930s in the country, our bottles were always returned to the wine merchant who had delivered them beforehand. They were re-cycled.

After the war (WW2) I bought my wine from Berry's, Robert James, The Army and Navy Stores, but mostly from Lyons. These merchants chose their wines carefully, importing them in cask, as most did, and bottled them in the UK.  For example. Take J.Lyons (of Lyons Corner House fame) who had premises in The Hop Exchange, Southwark, London. They, like others, bottled from cask, corked, labelled and capsuled at this London headquarters. They had the knack, or expertise, of choosing extremely well. Their Chateau Cantanac Brown 1959 was the best red wine that I ever tasted, and, accordingly bought and stored as much as I could afford.

Those who dealt with these splendid people at The Hop Exchange, always returned the empty bottles. They had the labels soaked off and were washed in a great circular machine that made a lot of metallic, glass and water noises. The labels, usually supplied by the makers of the wine, were stuck on to the bottles by the hand of a lady who used cold water paste as glue (most did as bottles were used again, and the label thus came off easily). Capsules (tin/lead - this soft material prevented the bottle inadvertently chipping the rim of a glass), to cover the cork were, again, added by hand, before the bottles were stacked in readiness for sale.

The bottles were English heavyweight, with the diameter beneath the neck being greater than that near the punt. These had the disadvantage of having to be stacked one layer above another with a slip of wood beneath the lesser diameter end. This was to stop them from sliding forward and crashing to the floor. The cold water paste used for the labels enabled the wine's origins to be altered easily by just cooking them off in a bath of water. Then the bottles could be re-labelled (there were no rules then), as when plain Hock could lose its modest provenance and have the royal insignia label substituted for its grander consumption at the Palace. Hotels and restaurants did not have time for staff to select and re-cycle their empty bottles, so left them outside to be collected by an East End organisation, who sold the acceptable ones back to wine merchants and smashed the rest. They did quite well, as the bottles were free to them and they made good money by re-cycling those in demand.

I know this as I had imported a hogshead of Rioja from Bilbainas, in Spain, and needed 350 bottles. The re-cycling merchants wanted too much money for them. So I did what they did, and around 4 in the morning cruised the restaurants and hotels to select the bottles I wanted.

I was very lucky to have lived through the 1950s and 1960s before the wine departments at supermarkets really got going. It was a time when drinking the occasional bottle of really good Bordeaux from the most famous vineyards was within one's means, and minor chateaux claret was one's every day wine.

Then in came bulk wine, disposable lightweight bottles, supermarket abundance, and bottling abroad. 

As wine selling is now a major business, so the re-cycling of bottles for it no longer applies. Bottles are now just glass, possibly to be re-cycled but more probably buried as landfill.

But at least I did re-cycle wine bottles when it made sense and it really mattered. And there was something really nice about handling an English heavyweight bottle and knowing that something delicious was lying inside. 

Dealing in Shares

 I am innumerate - so much so that almost anything involving a number goes into one ear, gets mangled and scrambled somewhere in my brain, and does not reappear in an intelligent form.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses, numbers happening to be one of my major failings. But I am lucky by nature. 

Years ago an uncle started a factory that made hurricane lamps. I was told that he could flood the world’s markets with two weeks production.

The company had shares, and I must have been given or bequeathed some of them. I certainly never bought any. Once or twice we did get a modest dividend. So I viewed the shares as pretty well worthless and rather forgot about them.

I am told that private companies are run mainly for the good of the owners, so I never expected much from my holdings.

However, the present owner wanted to have all the shares held within his immediate family, and bought me out. With no skill whatsoever, I did well.

Robert Adeane, (later “Sir”) was a collector and patron of art and, I believe, Director of the Tate Gallery. He may have had a vote when the Tate bought one of my early dock landscapes for the Ministry of Works (now The National Collection) from the Leicester Gallery. He became a friend in Art School days, and when I told him that I was selling my ex-bombed-out house and going around the world to draw, he advised that I invest the money in certain shares, which I did. On my return a year later the shares had at least doubled in value. So I was able to build a studio house in the country. That very successful share dealing had nothing to do with MySky  skill in financial matters.

I had at least an hour or two to wait in a queue at Lord’s Cricket Ground to see a day’s play of a Test Match. Beside me was a man with whom I got on very well. As we were about to enter the ground, he said, in a loud voice: “I like the cut of your jib. Why don’t you buy some shares in my company?”

Something told me that the important part of dealing in shares was knowing when to sell. So I asked him and he told me.

A few years later when the target price had been reached, we sold and spent the money on a holiday in Sicily. We sent words of thanks to him from the magnificent open-air Greek theatre that overlooks the belching Etna volcano.

So, for someone with no ability whatsoever in dealing with numbers, I have, in a small way, done rather well with my share dealings - an occupation that I believe is best left to professionals.

Blue Paint

Our front door in London is coated with Oxford Blue paint. It is good paint, and one to be used with great care because it is so penetratingly blue, and thus hard to be rid of if falling unwanted on any surface. For that reason I handle it in surgical rubber gloves and with apprehension.

With it I aim to obtain that lovely crusty surface that adorns the streetside woodwork of Berry Brothers and Rudd, those venerable wine merchants in St James' Street, London, where the paint and overpaint may have been applied since the 18th century.

On a summer's day, when watching cricket, I sat next to a house painter who gave me the great tip of how to prevent a dried surface from forming on the top of the contents of a tin of opened paint by simply storing the closed tin upside down. This has stood me in good stead, that was, until the following episode.

After I last painted my front door, I stored the blue paint, for some unknown reason, not right side up and next to my household tools as usual, but with other paints in the loft that were all stored upside down. 

It was springtime, and possibly after our 2019 red wine harvest had passed its malolactic fermentation

in our loft, we decided to bottle the modest vintage. After using a ladder to recover the demijohns behind the pots of paint, I found that the lid of the blue tin had not been closed adequately and that some of its contents had not only leaked out but almost glued the lid to the boards beneath. So, when moving the pot, the lid stayed behind where it had become stuck, allowing what paint remained in the tin to flow out and all around the place. I had to think quickly. 

Perched on the ladder it would have been almost impossible to tackle the disaster on my own. So Margreet brought me some surgical rubber gloves, a basket lined with a refuse bag liner and countless balls of crumpled newspaper. So the mopping up was under way. Tins were wiped and moved, a bag of painting kit put on newspaper to dry, and the paint mopped up.

Bottling the wine had to be abandoned until a later date when the spilled blue paint would be dry.

And we managed it all with only a dab of paint spilled on my wrist and another on Margreet's hand - both of which were dealt with using white spirit.

It was quite a colourful saga I can tell you. 

What do you want to do ?

New mail