And as if to provide us with a Christmas surprise for 2021, out, from the topmost and most vigorous carbuncle (apologies to the Prince of Wales) comes a brave new shoot.
So happy, and vigorous have been our mistletoe bunches on such a small apple tree in a pot, that I have had, for the first time, to prune them back and give away some locally (Hammersmith) grown mistletoe to local inhabitants.
We wish all our readers a Merry Christmas and a virus-free New Year.
There has been much talk - and action - recently on planting trees to aid the environment. What seems to be missing is where they may be planted safely near buildings. No such information seems to be forthcoming.
In my unpublished autobiography, not to be confused with my present project of producing an autobiography in words and pictures, I cover the subject in a chapter entitled How to Run a Happy Household. In this I advise on distances from a house where one might plant a tree without undermining its foundations, causing cracks and damp, etc.
This is what I wrote:
Trees near to a house can not only cause subsidence, but may fall in a storm and damage the roof if not more. The roots of willow trees travel a great distance and can undermine foundations. So plant them no nearer than 50 metres away from the house. Plant horse chestnuts oaks, planes, poplars and elms no nearer than 25 metres away. Spruce, pine, yew and magnolia can come a little closer, but not too close. I am for keeping house walls and their immediate vicinity clear of any green growth, to allow air to flow around freely to keep stone and brickwork dry. Outside walls are then easier to maintain in good condition, whether coated, tiled, painted or pointed.
Look after a house and it will look after you.
I suppose that I am anti-perfection. I like things to be a little seedy, comfortable, and even a little stained. Imperfection is something to be desired in my life - just are straight lines. I don't feel right among the sparkling clean, where an accidental spillage of red wine, for instance, can be disaster and an embarrassment.
I like to think that if you look after a house it will look after you. With that in mind I have been recently patching up our house a little. I leave electricity, plumbing and boiler work to professionals. The rest is between the house and me.
Sine the 1830s our house has been altered and repaired many times - sometimes only to improve parts of it for looks, possibly for sale, and often using inferior materials.
So part of it are rotting or have rotted over the years. And those parts have also usually been patched up rather than replaced.
Panels in our porch, for instance, were constructed using inferior composite, pressed board. These and their attachments have moved with the seasons of hot and cold, which has allowed rainwater to penetrate, soften and rot the wood.
To replace the whole of the construction would not only be disruptive but unnecessarily expensive. So I have dug away and extracted rotten bits, replaced some of it with hardwood, and filled gaps with plaster filler, with deeper areas backed with bubblewrap.
To arrest further rot, holes have been drilled in specific places to allow air to flow in to dry filler and any remaining damp wood. Come the summer heat, those holes will help warm air to circulate where needed.
To stop further destruction by rainwater, outside cracks and crannies have been filled and then coated with mastic before being coated with paint.
But this is an old house resting on scant foundations over clay, so cracks tend to open and close with the weather. These are left to their own devices. And probably I am the only one who notices them.
Carpets and flooring surfaces are no longer wool and food for moths, but man-made fibres - with the exception of colourful Middle Eastern rugs (where red wine stains only complement the exotic patterns).
The house is well warmed in winter, but certain draughts from sash windows are allowed - only to let in fresh outside air to blend with and freshen the warm air inside.
I allow this, as having once built a house in London's dockland and installed triple glazing facing the river Thames, patches of mould appear in the stagnant air inside and be the very devil to deal with.
Here we have installed replacement windows at the top of the house with wonderful, double glazed, anodised aluminium windows. With the latest insulation under our newly slated roof, these improvements have made a great difference to heat insulation and retention in the house.
Our inside walls have not been touched for years as they hide behind paintings galore - mostly mine - and shelves of books.
A coating of pictures, and books read or unread, make a wonderful background to my preference for a certain amount of seediness and comfort in a house.
Artists create things. That's the way we are.
This particular artist loves bumblebees, despite having been stung and partly paralysed by one in my youth.
However, they are almost essential for the pollination of crops both in wild nature and inside greenhouses. An angry one, caught in a window perhaps, can be nasty, but to have a peaceful one crawling over one's hand is a pleasure.
So I look after them, large or small, welcome them, and cherish them.
When Margreet looked through some internet search engines, we learned that in spring, pregnant bumblebees like a reasonably large nest box to bring up their brood of worker bees. Yet, when we were observing them pollinating fruit in Dutch greenhouses, the offered quarters there were small. But why?
Perhaps these small houses were only for when the bees wanted to hibernate in winter. We saw no breeding boxes where the pregnant queens, having left their winter quarters in springtime, are being offered large enough breeding hideaways to form a nest in which to bring up young.
So, having tried to entice them unsuccessfully in the past with papier-maché homes, I have now made hibernation places from a tin, a flower pot saucer, screwed to an outside wall, and an almost shoe box size wooden breeding home. These are waterproof, camouflaged, and made comfortable inside with cotton wool.
Making the wooden bee house posed some problems as the wood, acquired from a rubbish dump, had once been moulded skirting board in a house.
But my design, using only available materials of sawn wood, nails glue, hinge and screws and a filling mixture of sawdust, sand and glue, took several days to construct and paint. With an entrance hole having a small landing platform outside it, I'm hoping for the best.
I like making homes for birds and insects. Sometimes they are even used, and hopefully appreciated. A brood of great tits flew the nest box successfully this year.
Some years ago I wrote my first blog on Mistletoe, that magical mysterious and idiosyncratic parasitic plant. It was about how I tried, since childhood, to establish mistletoe on apple trees - and always failed in my endeavours.
Around the year 2000 my son, Pete, gave us an apple tree in a pot to adorn our London garden. Even though the tree was a small one (some 6' tall and slim), it did give me yet another chance to attain my goal of having live mistletoe in the garden and evergreen stems and leaves to look at in the wintertime, not to mention the decorative white berries.
2008. This was the year when I started by harvesting sticky fresh berries from a Christmas bunch of mistletoe and pressing them into the junctures of trunk and spur. I used several methods to secure them and protect them from being bird food (even though there are no mistle thrushes in my part of London). I waited for the following summer and autumn to see if any had "taken". None had.
2009. I tried again. Still no luck (or was it lack of skills?). I let the matter rest.
2010. I was passing a skip of rubbish and noticed that on it was a bunch of dried mistletoe left over from someone's Christmas festivities. There were plenty of berry seeds still adhering to its branches, but they were shrivelled and brown. Why not try again? Perhaps these dry seeds might take when the sticky white ones had failed? I would have another shot.
Soon after discovering these seeds on the skip I tied some to the base of apple tree spurs with string - sometimes on dry bark, others on cut bark, and lastly in bark lifted to have a seed inserted beneath the bark (as best I could). As the string was white and unsightly, I coated it with rubber solution (Copydex) and on it rubbed earth. The result made my "plantings" almost invisible. 2011 came and went, as did 2012. I had obviously failed once more. I lost enthusiasm for the project and decided to give up. BUT...
2013. Three small mistletoe sproutings appeared from the bark - high up and about two inches from where I had planted the seed three years earlier. It was a Champagne moment. Success at last. But it was the only one from many "plantings".
2014. Another sprout appeared - this time half way up the pillar-shaped tree.
2015. And yet another sprout pushed through the bark - this time near the bottom of the small apple tree.
Although all three parasite successes grew well on the moisture running up beneath the bark of their host tree, there was not a sigh of a berry. The bunches must, then, all be male. This was a disappointment.
2019. Two berries appeared on the lowest bunch. We had one female. But no berries at all formed during the following year (2020).
2021. In the late summer, and for the first time, a few berries appeared on the topmost and most vigorous bunch. Had this bunch suddenly changed sex, or just been reluctant to come out?
What on earth was happening to this parasite's temperamental lifestyle? Does its decision-making and sexuality have any pattern at all? Or is it just being in line with humanity's present-day gender-bending, intersex confusion?
Having written recently a blog on the extraordinary lifestyle of our mistletoe, I will not repeat it. But since I established mistletoe on an apple tree in a pot some years ago, it has been the focus of our attention with its absurdly unconventional lifestyle. Its life and habits continue to astound us.
To reinvigorate the soil where our runner beans had been planted in 2020, I bought a packet of Charlotte potatoes in the spring from a supermarket, chitted them on a windowsill in the kitchen, and planted them beside flagstones in the only exposed soil we have in the form of a strip beneath a garden wall. They have provided us with melted butter, salt and chopped mint.
Our mainly Triomphe d'Alsace vines in the arbour gave us cooling shade in the hotter spells during the summer and a dozen bottles worth of very dry red wine when bottled from demijohns in the spring of 2022.
Our ancient (40 years possibly) bay tree in a pot has been pruned to become an umbrella bay tree and seems to love its new configuration of showing off its decorative branch construction.
The other bay tree in a pot, which was given to us by a lady of religious persuasion who died, has turned into a ball shape from its previous pointer to heaven form.
Flowers, especially Impatiens and New Guineas, have given us red colours throughout the summer, augmented by pots of black and white pelargoniums.
Self-sown Morning Glories flourish, but our many pantings of it by plant and seed in a local square failed, due possibly by being trampled on by children and dogs.
Our Flowering Quince (Chaenomeles) lost its leaves and played dead, but has now grown them back again. Hopefully, it will still come into autumn flower.
In the bird world, great tits brought up two broods successfully in their usual home on the house.
Structurally, I have repaired our hardwood garden bench and varnished it. And the marble-topped garden table has been given new rubber ferrules as feet.
A huge change has been the demise and then destruction on my over-life-size elm wood lovers. After many attempts to make the sculpture weatherproof, it sank slowly as its base rotted - due to fungus, mice and insects. I managed to actually pull it apart by hand and hammer before calling the Council to cart away the bits. It had given much pleasure and an object of conversation over the years. It has now returned to nature.
And nature begins to close down our garden for the year.
There can be more to cat-minding than you might think.
Our only instructions were for a two-day stint of unlocking a thief-proof house, feeding three cats with a fishy kind of paté, top up feeders with dry cat food, give clear water, and leave a tap dripping as the cats liked to drink it that way.
And there was the matter of litter mess to be extracted from two covered litter boxes and disposed of. This was my job as Margreet did the rest.
Well, that was all pretty clear and simple. Moreover our reward consisted of two bottles of good red wine.
On the second of our two visits we noticed that some sliding glass doors were held apart by a spacer on the lower rail, leaving just enough room for cats to squeeze through to reach a high-walled courtyard - considered to be too high for a cat to climb.
We hadn't noticed this gap before, so we telephone the owner to ask if this was intended. It was. All was well.
The owners arrived from the country the following day to find that one cat was missing.
This one happened to be the one I liked best and, when I was sitting down, would lie on my upper legs and purr. So we were friends.
The search was on. The owners and I scoured the district, and Margreet rattled a tin of the dry cat food.
The cat had been seen and even turfed out into the street by the owner of a garden into which it has probably escaped.
Tired of leg and of calling "Jigsaw", we all retired as darkness fell, with the cat still at large.
With daylight the following morning came rain - thick, heavy, penetrating rain.
I telephoned the owners to find out where might be the best area for search.
So, with umbrella aloft, I was once more peering into gardens and below bushes.
I was getting a bit wet, when, glory be, there was Jigsaw under the cover of the porch of an industrial building, looking sad and miserable.
I folded my umbrella and picked her up. Cradling her like a baby we set off for her rightful home.
Unable to hold the cat safely and the umbrella aloft at the same time, we both became thoroughly soaked.
Just to see the joy on her owner's face as she hugged Jigsaw made it all worth while.
So, should you be asked to cat-sit at some future date, there may be more to it than you think.
I never watch cookery programmes on TV as, generally speaking, I like to make up my own culinary concoctions. That's the fun of cooking.
In a like manner, I only give magazine recipes a glance, knowing that the authors of them have to provide the editor with so many words to fill the space, usually too many and too time-consuming to follow and cook. And the chefs also seem to like to add an ingredient or two that you do not have at hand, or possibly not even heard of.
So I was surprised to see two recipes in a glossy magazine that I could relate to. They were both unnecessarily lengthy and time-consuming as expected, but easy to condense and simplify.
The first was a heated-through salad that involved frying garlic pieces in olive oil until just browning before adding pepper and salt, chopped fresh tomatoes and chopped red pepper flesh. The interesting part was to add finely chopped lemon that had been boiled beforehand. I have since used some chipped pickled lemon with equal success. For fresh and lovely lemons I grow a small tree in a pot in the garden. It does not produce a great crop, but those it does produce have a wonderful taste. I suppose it is because the lemons are freshly picked. The dish, when heated through gently in a frying pan with the lid on, is left to get cold before being consumed.
The second recipe was a way of forming a spaghetti sauce. Into a frying pan put plenty of olive oil, pepper, salt, lots of chopped garlic, plenty of black olives, with their stones out, then chopped, and anchovies. I have to go to the Portuguese quarter of London to find the kind of anchovies I like, in brine, pale and shiny. But the dark tinned ones will do just as well. Cook this sauce for a short time to amalgamate the tastes, and add it to hot spaghetti (12 minutes boiling).
To be in line with the "glossy" chefs who are inclined to use an unusual item, I do add to both of these recipes and many others, my own secret ingredient (it may not be secret at all). They are pickled peppercorns. Just put ordinary black peppercorns in a glass jar with a non-corrosive lid and cover well with vinegar. (I use my own home-made variety with a "mother of vinegar". But that's another matter.) When softening, they add a tasty crunch to many a dish.
In about 1982 three elm trees died in my Cambridgeshire garden. I marked pieces for sculpture before the dead trees were felled.
One large bole was turned into two clasping lovers.
A friend saw them and asked if he might see the "action" parts, which I had omitted to carve, but then did (and added a little colour for the fun of it).
The next time he came around I said that it would now cost him a pint of beer to have a look. "Good God," he said when he looked at it. "That's worth a bottle of whisky".
The piece was always housed in the open, mainly because of its size.
It came to my London garden in 1992, where it deteriorated to become the home of mice, insects and internal wet rot.
I was all for letting it return to nature as dust, but Margreet wanted me to restore it, which was just possible using thick dowel rods, waterproof glue, wood preservative, gauze, plaster, and black roofing solution. The "action" part of the sculpture had rotted away well before this restoration work.
In 2021, after heaven knows how much restoring work, it started to subside, sinking slowly toward the ground. The lovers' lives had sadly come to their irreparable end.
What was left had to go.
Although enormous, but fairly hollow, I managed to hammer and pull it apart, enough to dispose of it.
I contacted the Council, who asked for a photograph of the pieces. This we sent, with next to them a 96-year-old with hammer in hand. They enjoyed the depiction of my efforts and, for a small sum, took the pieces to toss them into the rear of a rubbish vehicle - which made a good crunching noise as it consumed the wood.
So the sculpture would, in the end, have finished up as dust.
After giving much pleasure during its lifetime, it returned to nature.
We were celebrating Margreet's birthday in one of our favourite restaurants where we usually start with 3 oysters each and then share a rib of beef.
After a perusal of the menu, when we enjoy a leisurely glas of the house white wine, we decided this time to have the chef's gravadlax as our first course. And excellent it was.
Ribera del Duero red wine at this restaurant is our choice, but as they were out of it when we last ate there we settled for their Cote du Rhone, which we liked so much that we ordered it again to go with our meat. We then happened to talk about beef and its smell.
It was when I did the grand tour shortly after the war in an old Ford 9 flat-backed van that, with some imagination, I converted into mobile living quarters.
I was in Spain, in this instance, at a bullfight, sitting in the sunny side of the bullring, and in great heat.
It was not the spear-piercing of the bull's body by a Spaniard on a horse, or even the barbed wands that were later jabbed into the bull's shoulders by a more elaborately dressed Spaniard that I recall so well. But it certainly was the densely perfumed air of the heavy scent worn by my male neighbours that, mixed with the smell of the bull's blood, made me feel a bit queasy.
So when our rib of beef appeared, I forgot the smell that once went with beef in Spain and tucked in with plenty of the splendid horseradish sauce that was served with it.
We were unable to eat all the meat on the dish, so I asked the French waitress if we might take what was left home with us in a doggy bag, mentioning that our dogs would be absolutely delighted with it.
When she returned with the wrapped-up meat, she enquired about the names of our dogs. "Jim and Margreet", say I. "And what breed of dogs are they?" she asked. "Human," I replied.
The answer seemed to take her by surprise as she retreated in fits of laughter.
It was on seeing an old photograph of my mother in India at the time of the Raj, sunshade aloft, and sitting in some kind of chair which was suspended on two poles, and being carried by four orderlies, that I realised I must have spent my childhood in a somewhat privileged environment.
I was born near the very important town at Silchester, in Berkshire. Our local doctor brought me into this world and never charged the family for his services as my grandfather had got him out of some scrape or other at Cambridge when they were studying there.
The society I entered was not an ordinary one. One grandfather was a medical Knight for the royal household, the other a country vicar and President of the National Rose Society. Then there was a knighted uncle in politics and a great uncle the Dean of Salisbury. With such connections we were accepted in privileged society. But we were poor.
My father, after Wye Agricultural College was working in the British Protectorate of Egypt when the WW1 was about to take place. He returned to England to join his Territorial Regiment and was sent to India and Mesopotamia. There, in the battle of Hanna, he was shot by Turks in the Ottoman Empire's army and returned to England where he never really recovered.
We had a chicken farm and he had a war pension for income. But I think most of our money for living, education and the like must have come from relations.
My mother, used to court circles, found being a farmer's wife difficult. I remember her being in tears when the local band appeared in our drive at Christmastime to sing carols. We had not a penny to give hem. Perhaps they were given eggs.
My parents played a lot of bridge. Should they lose, fellow players would always volunteer to pay their debts. That was the way it was. Being in financial straits was accepted. It was who you were that counted.
We children, unaware of the family's plight, grew up with nature, riding horses and bicycles, fishing in ponds and rivers, swimming, dancing (we had a sprung floor) balls, tennis parties (we had a lovely grass court), and generally living an ideal life.
We had a maid called Constance who smelled of Lifeboy soap. She cooked good English fare on a blackened, coal burning range that also heated water. We made our own gas to light the house. Open fires provided warmth. Two wells provided water for the tank in the roof. There was a Swift petrol engine that did the pumping, but when we couldn't get it started (which was often) we took turns at the hand-operated pump in the kitchen. We grew and preserved most of our food, stored in a larder on the north side of the house (there was no electricity for refrigeration). I remember the pheasants there that were hung from the two longest tail feathers. When the birds fell to the floor they were ready to cook. I recall their horrible smell. But that was the way they were treated and enjoyed in those days.
That kind of life was coming to an end just before the Second World War. The chicken business collapsed because of fowl pest and the import of cheap eggs from Poland. My father was dying from treatment of the cure-all of the day, radium, and tried, unsuccessful to grow mushrooms. We sold the house, but not before turning the barns into a thatched cottage, where I sometimes lived alone as my mother moved to London to succeed quickly and become the Chief Welfare Officer for the WVS (Women's Voluntary Service). She took in lodgers (I remember a deaf General and a retired ambassador) at a time when German buzzbombs were landing indiscriminately on London.
The idyllic and privileged country days for me were over. I went to the USA as a war refugee and returned in 1942 to join the RAF and become a pilot. The war changed our way of life and the way we dealt with it and with our fellow human beings. I barely had an education, but learned much from my time in the Air Force and post-war, the thirst for missed knowledge.
The privileged country days of yore had been wonderful for me, though largely unappreciated. My goodness, how lucky I had been to grow up in such circumstances.
It seems like an age ago. And I suppose it is an age ago.
This is a hodgepodge of a blog. It is to do with food, communication and bumblebee homes (again).
Food
In our house we like an early evening drink with a small bite or two to go with it. These morsels are seldom the same. Recently it has been a slice of our home-made bread, cut into small cubes and dried to a crispy state in olive oil. Added before or after have been garlic, chilli, Worcester sauce (after), celery salt, powdered ginger and such. But don't leave the stove when frying these bits as they can be spoiled so easily. Keep turning them. The sound will tell you when they are just right. A second or two later and they will burn.
I have just made some hummus, so that will become a many-flavoured dip with heated pitta bread in slices to dip into it.
And if he oven is on, cook aubergine slices, coated in olive oil, as bites, perhaps with a smear of chilli sauce and half a small plum tomato on top for looks.
When using salt, sea salt adds something special, like the sea saltiness and crunch.
I have written before how splendid are freshly shelled prawns, cooked quickly in olive oil with a mixture of grated garlic, grated chilli and grated fresh ginger. If the prawns are cut in half, this combination of taste and texture makes a splendid sauce for pasta.
Communication
In my old fashioned and old aged kind of way, distant communication should be by landline/telephone or hand-written letters. But today is different.
Margreet has moved with the times and communicates with things like text message (sms), e-mail, Whatsapp, Messenger, Spam, Zoom, Face time, browser, Google, Safari, Wikipedia and probably others. There seem to be so many. This is wonderful. But with all these methods, communication (possibly even vital ones) can get lost. Progress with modern communications often involves confusion, usually time-wasting, and also waste of paper. I find much of it beyond me, but essential for my blogs, for instance, when my words leave this keyboard and fly into the ether - thanks to Margreet and her know-how.
Bumblebee Boxes
I have written, I'm sure, on the value and charm of bumblebees. They pollinate, and do so in all weathers in farmers' fields, gardens and commercial greenhouses. So we must look after them in any way possible.
I have designed and made recently two small winter-hibernating retreats for bees - hopefully bumblebees. I wanted a box where a pregnant bumblebee, in early springtime, could make a nest to bring up a family of young.
So I found a discarded piece of moulded, wooden skirting board, and with saw, nails, and glue made such a possible home - lining it with cotton wool.
What I had been seeking before this construction was a suitable wooden box and not found one.
Then, when collecting the early morning newspaper, and passing houses in our street, there, outside one of them, was an ideal wooden box (probably for jewellery) for someone to take away - which I did. All I had to do then was to drill a hole, make a small landing platform and waterproof it.
So now I have two possible breeding boxes, when a week ago I had none.
Come bumblebees to pollinate our runner beans and reproduce with us next spring - like our great tits did - with two broods.
It was my week for cooking and I thought I would make up the menus with the theme of red kidney beans in mind. These beans are excellent, cheap, nutritious and versatile. They are easier to deal with if bought tinned, but more expensive and less environmentally friendly.
So, on Sunday, I soaked plenty of dried beans overnight with a view to boiling them on Monday to form dishes for the week. Cooking in large quantities (more than for one meal) may make the food a little repetitive (however good), but saves a lot of time and effort. And alterations can always be made.
On Monday I shopped at an Irish butcher's shop and the nearby market for ingredients.
The rough plan was to cook chilli-con-carne, a beef stew (to have the cooked beans added later), and a bean salad. Excess beans would be added to a "never-ending" soup - one that is on the go for most of the time, usually with occasional additions of superfluous food. When this soup has been finished, it is started again with a leek or onion and potato foundation, adding water, stock cubes pepper and salt.
I usually cook soaked beans in a pressure cooker, but cooking them needs different timings, depending on how dry the beans are in the first place. So now I favour fast boiling, followed by slow boiling - looking at them after 30 minutes and every so often after that. They need to be drained when the insides of the beans are soft and the outer part firm. Strained well, they are put into a bowl and coated with olive oil to keep them from drying out. When cold they keep well in the refrigerator.
The stew is simply made of cubed stewing beef with any connective tissue cut away and discarded. I start with chopped onions and garlic cooked in groundnut oil until the onions are transparant, adding the beef, some flour, stock cubes, possibly tomato pureé, gravy browning (for looks), a herb or spice of some sort, and potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes. This cooks slowly for an hour or more until the beef is tender. It can now be eaten right away or wait until wanted, improving over time. But it must be brought to boil every day. Use only one herb or spice, otherwise should you add your favourite mixture each time the food will lose its individuality.
Now the chilli-con-carne. In plenty of groundnut oil (or other oil) cook minced meat of any kind until it has browned and the lumps been broken up. Add the chilli-con-carne powder, a stock cube, salt and water. Cook this slowly on the hob for it to become united. Then add the cooked beans. Again, heat it through each day until wanted, possibly adding water if it becomes too dry. Be generous with the oil.
I make my own chill-con-carne powder in a bowl with dry ingredients. I combine one measure of salt (I use a dessert spoon as my measure), one of chilli powder, one of powdered garlic, three of ground cumin, four of paprika, and three of oregano/marjoram. This is stirred together and kept in a sealed jar until wanted.
For the bean salad, I put the cooked beans into a bowl and add finely chopped shallot, some grated root ginger, some chopped fresh coriander leaves, with olive oil, vinegar (mine is home-made), pepper and salt.
If there are any beans left over from the above dishes, add them to the stew, the chilli, the soup or the salad.
As you may be making enough of each dish for a couple of meals, it will be time to sit back and think of different things. But of course other dishes will be fitting in between, like hot grilled lamb chops with a cold sharp salad, steamed cauliflower with a white cheese sauce, oven cooked with toasted breadcrumbs on top, or thick pork chops with well-scored skin and held together like a roast with wooden skewers. For this there will be no need to carve as if it was a joint, and the crackling should be perfect if the oven is good and hot.
You might like little bites with drinks before dinner. If you cut up a slice of bread (home-made is by far the best) into small cubes, fry them in olive oil with a pinch of chilli powder, turning them around all the time until crisp. Sprinkle sea salt over them before serving.
My week of cooking went quite well, and any unserved food left over went through the Mouli and into the soup.
Cooking is such fun - but it does take time.
An artist, like myself, who uses imagination in preference to producing pictures derived from what is in front of me, spends much time, night and day, in thought. And those thoughts are not always connected with the art in progress, but are often triggered by it or perhaps by general conversation. So there is a lot going on in an artist's head when he or she is not actually painting, sculpting or whatever.
Yesterday, for instance, my thoughts crossed from bidets to old aeroplanes to punishment, besides deciding that I would have to clean several pastels after finishing a composition that relates to a dog knocking over my first baby.
When using or just looking at a bidet, I keep reminding myself what a wonderful object it is. The French have realised this for years.
As an impecunious student I would seek out saucy 18th century coloured French prints of the goings on in bedchambers, often aided by a maid with a hidden gentleman looking on. Framed, they adorned my lavatory in the country. I bought them for a pittance from those sort-of sheds on the banks of the Seine in Paris. Many scenes featured a bidet, and used, as had always been the case, primarily to refresh and clean one's intimate parts. When leaving the countryside to return to London, these coloured prints fetched a surprisingly grand sum at auction.
The house I acquired in Hammersmith did not have a bidet, but a woman in the adjoining street, who had also bought at the same time, did have one, which she thoroughly disliked. So I had it plumbed in to my house - to our mutual satisfaction.
Not all French people find bidets essential to lower-body cleanliness, as the owner of the hotel in which we always stayed in Dieppe, had all the bidets in his hotel dispensed with. We have not returned there.
I then found myself thinking about weather and aeroplanes (they are close connected, but not in any way with bidets).
I rise early in the mornings, earlier in summer, and look out at the weather. I want to see what is happening with wind direction and speed, rain, clouds, frost, snow, ice, dew, the changing seasons, birds, and especially aeroplanes. I like to know which runway is in use when aircraft approach Heathrow from the East. Once a pilot, such observations become habitual and at times life-dependant.
Sadly, the shapes and variety of aircraft are merging into the form of an elegant body and two jet engines. Those with four engines seem to be out of favour as being less commercially economical.
I was pondering about which aircraft I had flown or been flown in that were a pleasure to the eye. I settled on the 1938, four-engined Ensign - now virtually forgotten. And for glorious eccentricity the obvious choice would be the 1931 HP 42, four-engined biplane. The large machine, that always looked to me as if it was a bit bent in the middle, flew from Croydon Aerodrome in London to Le Bourget in Paris. It travelled at a stately 100 miles an hour, giving its 40 passengers plenty of time to be served Champagne by the stewards. These aeroplanes were utterly reliable, but had one been in trouble it could have easily landed in a field, be mended, and then taken off again.
I suppose that thinking of 1930s aeroplanes took my mind back to school when I first took to the air as a child passenger in an Avro Tutor.
The water to flush the tiled urinary wall at school was housed high up in an iron cistern. With strong stomach muscles I was able to pee into it from floor level (boys will be boys). Word must have reached the headmaster about this misdemeanour. I was summoned to his office, short trousers down, bend over, swish, swish, swish, pain, trousers back on and return to class.
The red and blue welts crossing one's behind were almost a badge of courage and pride, being much admired by ones fellow students.
Some schools, founded in times past, were geared not just to educate but to toughen up the boys (no girls at this school) to prepare them for running the Empire. Margreet. who is Dutch, thought that this treatment was most barbaric. We accepted it - had to.
We are involved with smells from birth to death. They are mostly taken for granted and unnoticed unless especially odorous or malodorous, depending on the sensitivity of our brains.
As a child I was most receptive to the smell and taste of wine and happy about it until caught and punished for consuming the dregs in bottles (and flies, too, probably) left out for collection by our wine merchant. Emptied bottles were washed and re-used by the wine merchant in those far off days.
I certainly did not like the smell of rabbits that I had caught in snares or shot, and then paunched and skinned for the pot.
At the time of my youth I had no idea that my senses of smell and taste were so acute.I knew people by their smell and even knew when women were enduring their periods.
I put these abilities to good use later when I wrote on wine for newspapers and magazines. At tastings I was known for my direction and force of expectoration.
I remember that in middle age, and thus many years after schooldays, a man passed by me as I sat in a London bus. He had the smell of a school classmate. I felt obliged to confirm it by passing by him and turning around to get a sight of him. I was right - no doubt about it. I did not feel like renewing our acquaintance.
Again on a bus, I was aware of an unusual male perfume arriving behind me. It came from two American men whose voices had that degree of penetration peculiar to the race. But it was their conversation that made me forget their fragrance and listen to them. In considerable detail one relayed how his sister was invited to the White House in Washington and seduced by President Kennedy. As this was well before the President's peccadilloes had become common knowledge. It was fascinating information - far more interesting than the young men's aftershave.
My acuteness of smell decreased in my mid-eighties, so when I became aware of a new smell in the house in my mid-nineties, I thought that it possibly come from me. And at that time I had a dream that only people of my age and beyond were able and privileged to experience the exotic perfumes used by the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt. So, with this illusive smell around, was I being somehow influenced by such ridiculous dreams?
And there were also the daily aromas to join in with the confusion of now and the past.These other perfumed aromas emanate from Margreet's den every morning. Some of her more recently acquired scents come from the Middle or Far East. They are heady and lustrous. Her French ones are finer and more sophisticated in their complexity. But do they or any others in their freshness or decline have any bearing on this illusive smell that sometimes surrounds me? What is it, I wonder?
I think I'll run the bath.
Sometimes I would like to write on wine again - even without the regular tastings laid on by the trade.
When I did write on it, I belonged to a clique of wine writers who were, at that time, interested mainly on smart and expensive wines for smart and wealthy readers (some still are). Actually, most of us plebeian drinkers were shopping around for drinkable plonk at reasonable prices in those supermarkets that were beginning to offer wine with their other commodities. So I saw a niche as a wine writer, and filled it.
Really good wines for me are a great treat, but like those early times of writing on the subject, when £2 was about the usual price per bottle for recommended wines in my articles and books, I am still on the search for good everyday house wine at a reasonable price. And they are certainly there for those of us who look what's on offer and drink regularly and with pleasure.
I feel that the French have rather overpriced their wines and that their co-operative bottled examples from famous areas do not live up to the grand labels. And for the money asked by the French, I now favour the high quality and much lower priced wines from such as Argentina, Chile, Australia, South Africa, and now Portugal.
Aldi is at present our favoured supermarket for wine. Let us hope that they don't become too high-class or greedy.
I am suspicious of the sellers of wine who use the same, plastic branded corks for much of their range. But then I am a bit of a cork fanatic, though I love screw tops.
In 1970, having sold a studio house at the end of Limekiln Dock in Limehouse, London, we needed to cart our selves and a week-old baby, Robert, off to America for my ex-wife to take up a position as Post Doctoral Fellow at Yale.
With air fares sky-high, I looked for an Atlantic crossing by a budget airline (then, in their infancy, through a "bucket shop").
I remember climbing stairs in Lower Regent Street to find a small room where I put a lot of faith, and money at risk, to obtain tickets.
As instructed, we appeared at Gatwick Airport on the allotted day with no idea at all about times, aircraft, airline and much else.
I think an announcement was made, or was it simply word of mouth, summoning us and many lost souls like us, who where hanging around anxiously, to move forward and then to board a Laker Airways 707 bound for New York. (Freddie Laker was then a pioneer in the budget airline business.)
The stewardesses were both charming and efficient. After slinging the baby in a hammock above our seats we set off and arrived safely at New York's La Guardia airport.
With an overworked and poorly paid scientific micro-biologist member in the family, it was my job to run everything else.
Our tiny apartment in New Haven had a large balcony on which I made a most productive garden, using various pots containing subsoil from a local building site and with soiled nappies as fertiliser.
The baby and I needed space in which to play. And in the middle of the town was a grassed square, set among Ivy League university buildings. On the grass I watched as an admiring new father, and Robert learning to crawl.
A large black dog, careering out controle, knocked poor Robert flying. He didn't seem to worry too much and it did not put him off from loving dogs.
Also using the square each day was an ancient old boy (probably of Italian decent) selling balloons. "All baloney", he cried, "all baloney".
He, his ballons, the black dog and Robert in nappies are the subjects of this part of my Autobiography in words and pictures.
Our London terrace of houses is backed by another terrace. Between the two are small gardens, mostly paved, and left sterile by renters. So this is not a bird-friendly place. And we both love garden birds.
There are advantages though, one of them being that we get to know our few avian residents, and they us.
There have been times when birds have been plentiful, as when an annual count included 27 house sparrows who ran the place and kept us much amused - until one year when they all left, never to return.
We have trained robins to eat from our knees when we have been in our shed at the bottom of our small garden. Blackbirds have been friendly and filled the surrounding air with glorious song. Goldfinches are commonplace, and local visitors have been wrens, greenfinches, dunnocks, blue tits and great tits.
When there has been a dearth of birds in our vicinity, this seems to have coincided with a plethora of pet cats.
I do everything possible to attract old and new bird friends to our garden, offering food, water, and housing for any who might care to share it with us.
Besides hanging feeders of niger seeds, peanuts and sunflower seeds, there is accommodation aplenty.
High on the back of the house is a sparrow box (just in case), with a tit box at its end, and a concrete house martin's nest attached to it below.
At the same height and a distance away is a box for swifts in an attempt to lure a couple back who lived two doors down but whose nest hole was filled up by builders.
Below the swift box is an odd shaped home for bats, bees, butterflies, and any homeseekers.
Low down, and absolutely cat-proof, is our nest box for great tits. This is used every year with success and sometimes failure. As couples, we know each other well.
Then, nearby, is a robin box. This is a bit too vulnerable as one summer a crow ate all the young from it, and during another summer a great spotted woodpecker did the same.
I have just added a new roof to this box to make it a little more proof against villains. Now, screwed up to the underside of it I have made a nesting home or hibernation place for a bumblebee.
I love bumblebees, despite once being stung on the hand and the poison slowly paralysing my arm up to the shoulder.
This nest haven was made from a small tin, sold with bread yeast. With junior hacksaw and tin cutter, a hole was cut into the side of it, forming a little porch roof. And where the bumblebee might enter over sharp metal, a piece of wood has been glued on as a more comfortable sill.
A paste mixture of glue and compost has been used to fill the gaps and, in a rustic way, made the tin blend in with the box's woodwork. A little dried moss has been inserted for the sake of comfort.
All my bird boxes have been camouflaged roughly to represent the cement and brickwork of the house. For this I have used the wax-based oil paint that I used for my paintings of years ago (I use pastel now). It is resilient to weather and sunlight and has a matt finish.
For years I have had a bell in the garden, the handle of which had rotted away. I gave it a new handle - a long one. It hangs from the vine arbour that spans the garden and is there to be tolled in the frozen winter to tell the birds that they can finish their foraging and come to my garden for the freshly offered food and water.
The bell came in handy when we made noises from the pavement outside our doors to show our gratitude to the overworked men and women tackling the Covid-19 virus.
There was a time when clothes washing machines were so unreliable that you would not leave them working when leaving home. Then matters improved. Perhaps some design innovations cut in to stop overflowing water. We could then leave them to go about their rightful business and go shopping.
So it was, with some surprise, that I wandered into our kitchen one morning to find the tiles and part-carpeted floor covered in a layer of water. Our trusted washing machine, with many years of reliable use, had failed us.
The water was turned off and electricity disconnected.
The carpet was dragged to the garden to drain, the water level reduced with the deft use of dustpan and bucket, with the rougher technique employed by brushing water out and over the door sill with a broom. Then it was a case of laying down towels and rubbing them around under foot to sop up the remaining water.
That done, I worked out that either the drain from the machine had become blocked or some internal pipe connections had come adrift.
I emptied the water-filled drum through its drain filter. The drain appeared to be clear. I ran the machine, which continued to pump out water. A plumber had to be engaged.
We have an excellent plumber, if a bit rough and ready, who hales from the Lebanon. He dismantled the top of the machine to discover that a conduit of some sort deep inside had perished and parted from its seating.
After much fiddling we decided that was in our interest to replace the 25-year-old washing with a new one.
A few days later, our plumber appeared to prepare the way to dispose of the old and install the new machinery. The new one was delivered by his mate, another Lebanese who was keen to tell me that he only drank French wine. Château Margaux in particular. At least I didn't have to manhandle the white goods any more as the existing drying machine was lifted onto the new machine by the two strong Lebanese.
The plumbing was connected and a trial laundry of three butchers' aprons, used when we cook or eat on our knees, placed in the drum to be washed. We could at least relax after a tiring period of both body and mind.
As we had not yet read the instruction leaflet properly, about which buttons to press, this seemed to take a long time. When the cycle was over and we could extract the aprons, they were absolutely clean, though no washing powder had been used, but so tangled up that it took at least five minutes for us both to untangle them.
Much of the following day was taken up with taking all the mopping-up towels to the local laundrette and replacing all the bits and pieces that had been moved to facilitate the whole operation. Damp mats were restored to their rightful place to dry slowly indoors and in their place.
When a white wash was tried, having pressed the right buttons this time, all was well.
A dry house, where pipe water is directed to when and where wanted is much to be desired.
Quite often as we talk at home under Covid restrictions and I mention certain facets of my life, Margreet will say: "Why don't you write about it?" Well, I may have done so already in a forgotten article or blog. So should I repeat any of the three stories here, I apologise.
Across a field in front of the house where I was borne in the country, lived the Firths. There was no electricity then, but the Firths made their own in a generating room containing a massive fly wheeled motor on a floor covered in a series of wet batteries. We would have ours connected to the system for re-charging occasionally so that my father could use it, combined with a large dry battery and a PYE radio, to listen to Test Match cricket from Australia. This important news arrived via an aerial wire that stretched between the top of a nearby tree to the house radio, which was full of bulblike valves.
Harry Firth, whose athletic Cambridge Blue brothers died early, and was the runt of his wealthy (stainless steel) family, lived among the comforts of life, liking one of the non physical games, such as bridge, with my parents being part of that coterie.
Harry kept a well-stocked cellar, Graham's vintage port being one of his favourite wines.
He very seldom entered his cellar, leaving its contents in the hands of Sherard, his trusted butler of many years' service.
One day Harry decided to view his collection of bottles, descended to the cellar, where he found Sherard drinking some of his favourite port out of a teacup. Had Sherard been drinking from a glass, perhaps all would have been forgiven, but a TEACUP! No! He sacked Sherard on the spot.
I think Sherard emigrated to Australia.
In the early 1960s, I worked as a supernumerary on coasters. I travelled, drew and sometimes helped out by taking watch or feeding us when the Dutch cook was drunk.
For this particular voyage we had collected bags of fertiliser from Antwerp bound for Cork in Eire.
On docking there a young lady came straight aboard and was locked in the Stuurman's cabin - one that had no plumbing connections.
I was the only outsider allowed in - just to make a drawing of this Irish woman.
She was married to a Danish sailor who was at sea much of the time.
Our cargo had been sold before we docked, and was offloaded on to a stream of horse-drawn wagons driven by Irish farmers. This took several days.
When finally offloaded and new cargo aboard, the Stuurman's lady was allowed out. She walked down the gangplan on to the dockside. When free of connection with the dock, we were off once more to the open sea.
Some time in late 1943, I was in a train returning to London on leave from an RAF pilot training station, when we came to a halt in the outskirts of the city. An air raid from German bombers was in progress.
The sky was clear and dark - very dark. Even the lighting of a cigarette was banned in the blackout.
Except for the occasional distant rumble of bombs exploding or anti-aircraft fire from the East End some distance away, it was eerily silent - as silent as it was dark.
The drama came from the beams of light made by searchlights scanning the sky in search of Nazi aircraft so that our anti-aircraft guns could open fire.
Although we knew that our lives might be in danger, I doubt if many, or any of us, were at all afraid. We were transfixed by the pictorial and tranquil scene and its possible sudden transformation from peacefulness to violence.
On a censored postcard I described this small episode of war to a friend in the USA.
He sent me the card after the war as a souvenir. On it I had written that I wouldn't have missed the air raid for the world.
This was before the advent of the nasty German VI Buzzbombs and V2 rockets which really did fall around our ears when I was in the capital. And we had virtually no defence against them.
I write this as I am working on a painting (pastel) of Rubens's Peace and War, or Minerva Protects Pax from Mars.
It is one of my present series of Autobiography in Pictures, in other words, recollections of incidents in my past with a written piece and a picture to go with it - or a picture with a written piece to go with it.
So how does a Rubens enter the fray?
When I bought a bombed-out house just after the war near Chelsea Football Ground, London, and rebuilt it to the height of the second floor, incorporating a studio, I had ample wall space to cover. Why not cover one wall with a large mural of Rubens, just to enter a corner of his mind when he painted this particular picture, now in the National Gallery?
It would be an interesting artistic experience for one comparatively new to professional art, having just been to art school and painting landscape and designing for the theater?
Within all my pictures are related shapes that form a basic design.
This particular painting is a conglomeration of naked ladies, cherubs, soldier, leopard, drapery, and hidden shapes in dark stormy clouds. It is fun, but to me a difficult composition, ripe to unravel with my present eye and memory.
Soon after I had completed the mural, in about 1953 perhaps, I decided (or was commissioned, I don't recall) to paint a large self-portrait, in the background of which was my Rubens on the studio wall.
Now, in 2021, I am pulling my interpreted mural apart and including myself as an artist within the picture. It has taken me four A4 size pastels to see what to keep, what to discard and what to re-design. You muck around with a Rubens at your peril. This has taken some weeks.
Now I have got to the stage of drawing my design in pencil on an A1 size card. This, too, has been altered many times. Now it is time to add colour. At this stage it is a momentous move and I am shaking a bit.
With my coloured composition in a satisfactory state the time has come -as is my wont - to paint a mount around it. And within this mount I also not only want to give the painting a setting within the studio, but also to incorporate within it the impression that there is a tall double studio door at one side of the room and a window on the other, I turned over several ideas in my brain and finally settled on a single angle line on either side.
I made a few very minor alterations before taking the work outside, to lay it down in the garden and spray it well with fixative.
Next came signing it and giving it a studio stamp enclosing its reference number, and then finding a frame once used to hold an aeroplane picture exhibited at the Mayor Gallery in Cork Street.
The painting now hangs on a downstairs wall at home.
I really don't know if anyone will want it, but this whole series is primarily done for myself, recalling parts of my life in paintings and words.
I think I'm right in saying that atmospheric pressure decreases with height. Thus, the air inside the top of a tall chimney is of a lower pressure than that inside the bottom of the chimney. So nature and brickwork can provide an up draught of air at no cost or use of machinery.
In a very small way I wanted to use this principle twice in a house that I was designing for myself in the early 1960s.
In one instance, I ducted outside air beneath floor level to below a fire's grate, controlling its volume with a butterfly valve, also below floor level, allowing nature to cause an up draught for the fire's smoke (aided, of course, by heat generated by the fire itself). To make fire work efficiently a draught is necessary. In a house this arrives generally through ill-fitting doors and windows. So the underfloor method prevents unwanted draughts and stiff necks.
Therefore I designed and built a second chimney right next to the fire's chimney. For this one I also ducted in air beneath the floor from outside to be warmed by the real chimney's heat. This transfer-heated air was directed straight into a bedroom above, controlled there by an adjustable grill.
Openings for the vent pipes outside had to be vermin-proofed with wire mesh.
I sold the house to Francis Bacon, the painter, when I decided that I had cut myself off too severely from metropolitan life. Even a blue tit had decided to roost in my bedroom.
Francis was bewildered by the above chimney innovations and ducts, so invited me to visit and explain them to him. We got on so well that he invited me to stay, but with only one bedroom and an internal balcony, and his boy friend George Dyer in residence, I declined the offer.
But I went there again for lunch of raw kippers, decorated with raw onion rings, with Champagne to drink.
Perhaps not being one of his coterie in any way and not being on the make, we became good friends.
With the lockdown imposed to tackle the Covid-19 virus, we watch a little more television than usual.
One of the programmes that Margreet enjoys is when potential buyers of property are shown around houses by presenters who adhere to a formula and sometimes emulate estate agents.
It is fascinating to notice that buyers, especially those who are interested in moving to the country from town, are almost invariably impressed by BEAMS. Beams are simply items of construction, seen inside more often when exposed by the lack of such as plasterboard covering. Beams are for holding up roofs, supporting floors and, in some old properties (and brand new ones), forming the very framework of the building itself. The gaps between timbers of an old wooden framework may be filled with bricks or some sort of plaster-alike substance, depending on the prevailing methods of its period or district availability.
What fascinates me, and is yet to be mentioned by any presenter that I have seen or heard, are those usually black-painted Xs, round discs or S-shaped additions, apparently stuck to the wall of an old house at random.
They are not mentioned for a very good reason (on the part of the salesman or -woman) because they are there to prevent a bulging wall from bulging further or even collapsing. They should be a warning to potential buyers that either the wall itself is faulty or, having bulged outwards, come away in some degree from the internal floor joists directly behind them.
These, usually cast iron "plates", are attached to either end of metal tie rods that lie close to ceiling joists and pass from one side of the house to the other.
The plates are attached to a tie rod's screw-threaded ends by nuts on washers.
I wondered if these faulty walls might be flattened by the nuts being tightened over time. But I believe that this course of action is not to be recommended. With frail bricks or stonework, one could see why.
Buyers beware.
I have written on some of the following items in previous blogs. Here they are in a different context.
From flying in biplanes of canvas and wire with air-cooled piston engines making much noise in the wind around open cockpits, to now boarding an aircraft the kind of which is not revealed until reading the "escape" manual on board. I have been lucky enough to witness and live through times of enormous change in aviation.
As a schoolboy I made exact models of aircraft from "Skybird" bits. In these boxes were pieces of wood, some thread, a lead casting of a pilot, a piece of mica for the windshield, a propeller and two wheels. Included was a set of plans. The rest was up to you. One learned a lot about aeroplanes that way.
For the practical side of flying, a pilot, F/O W.E. Johns, wrote an illustrated book called The Pictorial Flying Course. It was my bible. He went on to write the highly successful Biggles books.
In 1932, aged seven, I first flew in an Avro Tutor with Allan Cobham's Flying Circus, from a farmer's field rented by Cobham near Rye, in Hampshire.
My parents had paid extra (7/6 in all) for me to experience a loop-the-loop, which was done over the sea.
A year earlier (1931), Kingsford Smith, with Wyndham Hewitt (my uncle) as flight engineer, flew the first all-Australian airmail flight from Australia to England in an Avro 10 Trimotor (Southern Star). It took them 17 days. Although much publicised as having an all-Australian crew, it wasn't, as my uncle was about as English as they come.
Because of my uncle's friendship with Kingsford Smith, my brother and myself were offered a flying trip around London, taking off from Croydon Aerodrome. But because of Kingsford Smith's unreliability, or that the tail skid on his aeroplane had broken, we were taken aloft (loose in the open rear cockpit and with caps back to front) in a very modern German low wing monoplane, called a Klemm Bat. Then, except for flying in a Dominie and a Gypsy Moth, it was not until I had joined the RAF in 1942 and, in waiting for a posting, that I took a temporary job as a prop swinger at RAF There. It was there that I flew in an Oxford and an Anson. But it was mostly in DH 82s (Tiger Moths) that I obtained flying instruction - usually on weather flights upwind with a sympathetic pilot from the airfield in charge. There was no meteorology then so these flights were to see what weather was in store.
My brother-in-law, Ian MacNaughton, in his army AOP Auster, flew Generals around battlefields. So he flew with no rules and often under very adverse circumstances. He landed crosswind at These, much to the displeasure of the authorities there, to fly me over Silchester to see the house where I was born. He supplied his mess with eggs (then a rare commodity) by finding a farm with a driveway, landing on it and parking at the front door of the house. The farmers were so surprised to find an aeroplane on their doorstep that his mess was seldom short of eggs.
It was during this time that two matters of interest took place above my head. The first was a German Ju 88 flying low in front of me on its way to bomb Reading. The other was when I heard a strange sound from above and looking up to see a smallish and fast aircraft flying with no propeller at the front or rear. It was our first jet aircraft, the Gloster E 28/39. I was with others on the airfield at Theale when it flew over. None of us could quite believe what we had seen.
My first solo flight was in a Tiger Moth at RAF Shellingford, in Berkshire. The station consisted of a few huts and a farmer's field. For me it was a watershed occasion, even though I already had some experience in the air. But I was now on my way as a real pilot.
Like other trainee pilots we were given operational experience to give us an idea of what was to come. I was sent to RAF Davidstow Moor (now of cheese fame), in Cornwall, and one of the RAF's high altitude airfields.
From it we flew Warwick aircraft, a twin-engined bomber failure but still of use in Coastal Comma with a specially made lifeboat strapped to its belly. Our job was to look for baled-out aircrew in the Bay of Biscay and drop our lifeboat suspended through the air by six parachutes. In the 20 hours of my time there on operations we never found anyone to save. Bur I did have my uses. My job was to keep an eye out for German Condor aircraft, which were powerfully armed with cannon. We were no match, being poorly armed by comparison. From the second pilot's seat I did see one at a great distance from us. So we dived down to just above sea level and headed for home.
Years later there was an interesting sequel to this episode. It transpired that the deceased father of my picture framer was a Warwick pilot, at Davidstow Moor, and at the same time as I was there. I might have flown with him. So we looked at his logbook to see if my name was mentioned. If I was one of his aircrew, the entry described me only as "passenger". Had I lost my life on one of those sorties, I wonder if my demise would have even been noticed at all?
Also for experience I was posted to a Lancaster squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe, just outside Lincoln. One day the rear gunner of a bomber was unable to be aboard one of the Lancasters flying on an engine test to Scotland and back, before leaving to bomb Germany at night. So I took his place in the rear turret with four Browning machine guns loaded and ready. It was unlikely that a German aircraft would cross the North Sea to shoot us down. But I was ready. My only job aboard was to line up my guns on the landscape below and read off the aircraft's drift on a gauge. This I relayed to the navigator at his request via the intercom.
When my real training took place it was in Oklahoma, in the mid-west of America where the weather was generally good. The aircraft for those of us starting was a Cornell (PT 19). When water sprayed up from a wet satellite field on to the control surfaces of my aeroplane and froze, I crashed it. It was a lovely aircraft. Then I flew Harvards (AT 6s) until awarded my wings and commission.
Returning from America once after the war, I crossed the Atlantic in a four, turbo prop engined Britannia - it being much cheaper than the newly introduced Boeing 707 jet. I expect that the Britannia was a lot quieter.
In the 1950s there was only one civilised way of getting to France by car. Waiting on the grass at Lydd airport on the Kent coast would be a propeller-driven, high wing Bristol Freighter aircraft, its jaws wide open. Your car, with two others, would be driven into the freighter and secured. The jaws would close and the passengers allowed aloft to sit with the pilot. Then the aeroplane would trundle over the grass to fly just above the waves of the English Channel and land at Le Touquet. There the jaws would be opened, the cars driven out, and away we would drive through France.
To travel that way was something special - and fun.
Twice in the Far East I was a passenger on ex-wartime Dakotas (DC 3s). One rattled as part of its construction undid itself and then reversed the process. In the other, wires were hanging down from the cabin ceiling. But they worked. What a wonderful aircraft it was - and probably still is.
BEa's 3 jet Trident aircraft pioneered Autoland in the 1960s. It was great then to land at Paris's Le Bourget airport in dense fog. That was real aviation progress.
Nowadays, when close to passenger aircraft that look as if, and do weigh tons, I wonder how on earth they can fly, let alone with freight, luggage and passengers aboard. I know the principles of flight and have had experience of them for years, but it is still somehow magic to me that these metallic hulks can take off and fly at all.
I was staying in a small fishing village that was just connected with the land but mainly rested on wooden stilts over the tidal waters of the Mekong estuary.
The dwellings were simple huts of woven bamboo with atap roofing. There was no machinery of any sort around, no electricity, no telephones, and no water other than that which ran back and forth with the tides beneath the village huts.
Fishing kept the inhabitants alive and occupied, but they did make a special crab soup that local people came to buy.
That was why I was there - to taste the soup and see how it was made.
The locally famous dish was concocted in a "missionary" cauldron above burning wood sticks, and consisted of salted water and crabs. Two kinds of crab were used, virtually filling the pot. The larger variety was placed above a smaller kind.
After the initial cooking, the larger crabs were taken from the liquid to be dried in the sun, and the smaller ones to have their meat extracted and returned to the soup. The shells of the smaller ones were then pulverised into a paste which was also added to the soup. A small bowl, full of secret ingredients, was tipped in to form the complete dish.
It was when the old and wizened lady cook was about to tip in the secret stuff, and possibly disclose some or all of its ingredients, when a young Englishman interrupted my observations. He wanted my advise (possibly because of my age). He was of the English Public School mould, tall, fair, well spoken and somewhat too well dressed for the surroundings and the heat. No sooner had he arrived, than a young lady fisherwoman appeared. She was quite stunning in appearance, tall, willowy, elegant and graceful. She would have starred on the finest cat-walks of the grandest fashion houses of the world.
The two were obviously in love, touching each other, gazing into each other's eyes and quite lost in that euphoric state that engulfs young lovers. They wanted my advice on their future.
I had to point out, possibly too bluntly, the obvious difficulties of language and cultures, and the obstacles that they and their children would encounter, summed up in the words "roots" and "acceptance".
Having put these ideas before them I noticed tears in their love-sick eyes and felt some in my own as well. I ended by saying that should they part they would always look back on this period of their lives and remember them as their time in paradise.
I kept in touch with both, the man who then joined the ranks of the expected and orderly by marrying and bringing up a family, and the girl, who continued life in her fishing community, unaware, perhaps, that to western eyes she was a striking beauty.
Both revealed that they recalled their days in paradise, wondering what their lives together might have been.
My contact with the girl ceased abruptly. A tsunami had swept away her village with no one surviving the catastrophic upheaval of nature.
And the soup? I never did discover what was added to it from that bowl of secret ingredients.
You see, in times of virus pandemic and lockdown when not much happens, I have begun to take interest in, and to remember and record dreams like this one.
My wife, Margreet, who has been checking my rather extensive autobiography, says that she would like to know more about the people in it. That failing is because I am more at home and comfortable with inanimate things rather than people. With things, situations, and places, I know more or less what to do or not to do, or make note of. With people I am not so sure and do not like to offend. Moreover, they are extremely complex.
So I got to thinking about some of the people who have influenced my life in major or minor ways.
Arthur Keep was gardener to my grandfather and later worked on our Silchester chicken farm.
When grandfather bought a car, he asked "Keep" if he would abandon gardening to become the chauffeur. Arthur Keep drove the car to the end of the rather long drive, didn't like it, dismounted, and remained gardener.
He and I, though he was much older, got on well. So from him, and my father in a different way, I learned the ways of the country and countryfolk.
Arthur Keep recalled later that as a small boy I would go to his dwelling and ask for "half a nana", and I presume was given it. And when he retired to a small cottage near Aldermaston, and where I would sometimes stay when painting landscape in the district, he taught me how to eat a tomato in the hands by making a hole in the skin, sucking out some pulp, replacing it with vinegar salt and plenty of pepper and consuming it with bread and butter. And outside in the sunshine, with the tomato warm and straight from the vine, it was quite delicious.
In his old age he would take a great delight in watching black and white children's television.
It was probably that having taken me rather under his wing that I was happy catching newts with the village boys (bad form) and drinking nettle tea with our lengthman - a man in charge of the surface and drainage of road (also bad form). But on his advice I avoided the Tadley gypsies (good form). I did once visit Tadley to meet our maid's family. When the door opened, there, hanging from the wall, was a large black pig, dead and cold, ready for butchery (one remembers these things).
Sights like that were normal, as was the baking of bread in most villages. This bread was baked in such ways that other peoples bread was always different and seemed to taste better than our own. It was something to relish, as was the bread and butter consumed at Arthur Keep's cottage with ripe tomatoes.
With WW 2 well under way (I'm sure it should be "weigh"), I disembarked from a liner in Montreal, in Canada, as a pubescent 15 year old refugee. I was being possibly the only member of my family to survive the imminent Nazi invasion of the UK.
My kind hosts, the Killorins, collected me and we drove down to Watertown, Connecticut where my host worked with a brass factory and my hostess in the very smart Taft School. I soon came to realise that I had landed in a very foreign country and that I was a misfit in it.
Because of my adopted family's connections with the school I was enrolled there, where I excelled only in sport. So I was sent by bus each day to a Trade School in Torrington, Connecticut. There I learned to draw cog wheels and had difficulty with the over-befriending headmaster who thought I might be a good match for his plain daughter.
With no money, except for the magazine subscriptions that I sold locally, life was a bit bleak.
That was, until I met a person called Souther Buttrick, a fellow, but American misfit.
Souther did not fit in with the almost ritualistic American way of life. Older than me by several years, he lived alone above his parents' garage as a wood sculptor, clarinet player, furniture mender, Bull Durham smoker and whisky drinker. His chaotic eyrie smelled of smoke, freshly-cut wood and Bourbon. There was a most pleasant haze about it.
Souther didn't speak a lot and got on with his creative processes.
In the room where I lived I designed and made a musical instrument, helped in the garden, and dug us out of the enormous snow-drifts that piled up outside each winter.
In Souther's place I was happy and felt at home. And what I learned there about wood and wood sculpture has stood me in good stead ever since.
Unbeknown to Souther, he did me a most useful service by giving me too much Bourbon one evening. I lived a short distance away from his hideaway, and to cover the distance on this occasion I recall resorting to all fours. Regaining my room, the bed tried to tip me on to the floor as the walls around moved in all directions. I have been in many a tipsy state since but never one like that. The lesson learned had been a memorable one.
When once I returned to America it was important to me that I locate Souther to say how much I had appreciated his company during early wartime before returning to fly in the RAF, and to tell him how he had influenced my future.
I did find him, living alone in the countryside, mending antique wooden furniture.
He had forgotten me.
