Francis Bacon (A piece to accompany my autobiographical 2021 paintings and covered comprehensively in my previIn 1958 In 1958 ous blogs of 29 November 2015 and 25 March 2017.)

In 1958 I decided to sell my house beside Chelsea Football Ground in London's Fulham Road, to travel and to draw on my way toward the Far East where wonderful Japanese woodcut prints had been produced in the 18th Century. 

But I somehow felt that I still wanted roots in England to confirm in my mind that I still belonged to the country were I was born.

So I advertised in local Hampshire and Berkshire newspapers for a barn to return to. 

"Artist wants to buy a barn for work and life, etc. "

Several farmers and landowners replied, offering me barns - but only to  dismantle and take them away.

One lady, a Mrs Rampling of Chieveley near Andover, offered me a tumbledown thatched cottage on the Berkshire Downs for a ridiculously low sum. I met her. We took to each other. I loved the site with its mouldering wreck, and bought it.

She lived next door in a small cottage surrounded by the kind of garden displayed colourfully on biscuit tins. There was no plumbing in the house that she shared with her First World War veteran husband who had been gassed in the fighting. Effluent went into a trench to grow the following year's runner beans. They were country people at their best, and would look after my new possession when I was away.

I returned a year later after making several thousand paintings, had an exhibition of them at the Reid Gallery in London's Cork Street, and set about designing my new studio and living quarters, using ideas and proportions gleaned from a circumnavigation of the globe. 

Although I might have been able to rebuild the wattle and daub structure and its remaining rodent-infested thatch, I agreed with Mrs Rampling that it would be best to burn it down to the ground and start to build from scratch.

When the wind was in the right direction I telephoned the local fire brigade, told them not to bother, and put a lighted match to the upwind corner of the thatch. In a couple of hours there where only two chimney stacks to demolish. I had already designed the new building, and could now start - but to construct only half of its gull-winged roof design for economic reasons.

The studio house that rose in place of the old structure was, to me, lovely.

I lived there in great contentment and at one with nature. Even a blue tit roosted in my bedroom, and a mother blackbird would virtually leave her first brood for me to look after while she was busy with new fledgelings.

But after a year's drawing abroad I had the greatest difficulty in being able to return to using paint - even with the paint that I had always ground for myself and the wax medium that I had been so used to using, I had vegetated.

In my struggles I turned to making collages out of coloured paper to be able to see my way out of this impasse. They are now popular with collectors. Anyhow, it was time to return to the metropolis, to galleries and a speedier way of life.  So I had to sell the house I loved.

In 1961, after the local estate agent said that he could never sell a house with only one bedroom, I set about advertising it. I chose two nationals. The Times and Telegraph. I was contacted by a Telegraph reader who wanted to see the house. His name was Francis Bacon. He saw the house. It was just what he wanted. There was no negotiation except that I tried to get one of his paintings as part of the deal. It was his London gallery financing him. They declined.

With no fixed address I took various digs and the offers of beds with friends as I looked for my next place as studio and abode. And, quite surprisingly, it was a great period for my art as I returned to painting again, mainly concentrating on the shapes in London dockland, especially around Limehouse where I sometimes worked as a matelot supernumerary on coasters.

Seeing a warehouse for sale at auction, and discovering it had its own river wall by cleaning a patch in a dirty window at the rear, I made the winning bid and got it. 

With no fixed address, a letter reached me via my bank in Regent Street from Francis. Would I come for the day or a weekend? Of course I would. What would be there in my old house with Francis Bacon in residence? 

I arrived to find virtually nothing had been changed from the house I had left. But I could now see why Francis had bought it. The bare walls were still the pinkish, unadorned plaster, slightly varying in texture and colour. The marble floor of the studio was still laid with the collection of Victorian washstand tops that I had been buying and saving for years, and the small room beside the studio was still partly surrounded by a low platform of cloth-covered soft rubber. There were no art materials to be seen in the studio and no pictures hanging on the walls. In fact, the only items missing to make up a Bacon painting were a grotesque central figure and chrome tubing that he once used  when making furniture and was depicted occasionally in his paintings. 

But the missing figure really was there in the room next to the studio, curled up in a corner of the soft rubber platform. It was the contorted body shape of George Dyer, combing his greasy black hair. 

Now, in the centre of the studio, with one of its walls mainly of glass overlooking the garden and Downs, was a small table on which were laid out for lunch of raw kippers covered in raw onion rings, and Champagne. With no pictures anywhere on the walls, this table constituted a small but powerful decoration.

George took very little part of our conversations, but Francis and I were both very aware of the success of chance of painting, and many subjects were covered. 

Sexually we were worlds apart, but he was very insistent that people believed that homosexuals lived in a twilight world, which he emphasised was quite untrue.

Of the two paintings that did feature in my visits to Chieveley, one was an image that I once saw in some publication or other of Bacon's painting of George, curled up in his corner, just as I had first seen him. (I later looked in the Bacon Catalogue Raisonné to find out more about it, but it was not included.) And the other was one given to Mrs Rampling next door. It was of thick impasto paint of Mont Ventoux - almost childlike in its bright colours, simplicity and directness. I do not know what happened to it, even if it had been painted by Francis.

Whereas there was no clutter, pictures or paint to be seen at Horsemoor Studio in Chieveley, other than a painting I had done on a bedroom door to represent a bookcase (which he praised), the contrast was extreme when compared with his Reece  Mews abode in London which was cluttered up with paint tubes, colour, pots, brushes, easels, pictures, scrap paper and much else that forms a messy studio. I was invited there once to meet James Baldwin, who had just arrived from America to launch a new book over here. I was most surprised to see fellow guests who appeared to be mostly young man from the city in city suits and very much "presenting" themselves. 

I had expected an artistic-looking crowd. A more arty crowd was at a pub party given by Francis near the Theater Royal in London, where a fellow guest remarked that Francis was unaware that George was gay - whatever that meant.

Francis wrote to me later (in 1966), thanking me for seeds and that he was selling the Chieveley house. (I thought he had given it to George before George killed himself. Perhaps it came back to him.) He wanted me to explain about the house's idiosyncratic bits so that he could inform the new owner. These were mainly to do with drains and the septic tank. But the house had other hidden features, such as a central, frost-proof core in which all drainpipes, tanks, water piping and cisterns were housed. No pipes were to be seen anywhere. And there was under floor heating, a pipe for air to enter the house beneath the floor to give draught air to the fireplace, and a fake chimney that took in outside air to be heated by the real chimney next to it and then deliver its warmed air to the only bedroom through an adjustable grille.

After this sale I met Francis several times in London, and he would always stop to talk with me.

I suppose that our relationship hinged on the facts that we naturally got on well together, I was not in awe of him, and  that I would not take advantage of our friendship.

As he always seemed to me to be so youthful in looks and mind, it was quite a shock when I learned that he had died.

He was a friend.

Ideas for Slow Cooking

 The trouble with writing recipes is to cover the variables satisfactory. 

All us family cooks have our favourite pans and know their limitations from years of use. We know the settings for our ovens, slow cookers and gas or electric adjustments. Owners of them know their drawbacks.

But we don't know what preservatives have been added to food to increase shelf life, the amount of water injected into meat, or the chemicals used for curing meat - such as for sausages, hams and bacon. And what is used to dye and smoke the meat and fish? Might these be bad for your health?

The times needed to soak dried beans, chick peas and lentils will depend on their age. It is difficult to tell by looking at them. So we have to interpret a lot to get matters right.

Thus, when I write that a dish takes such and such a time to cook, I may know when using my own kit, but with yours it may be different. 

One's own judgment of quantities and timings is what counts, and mine rely on "throwing in" this or that and timing rather roughly. Others have to, and are happy, to measure everything.

As I belong to the "throw in" brigade - I expect surprises and inconsistencies - and delight in them. 

The following two slow-cooking recipes come very much under this approach to cooking.

I think that lamb or mutton shoulder is tougher and certainly fattier than leg.  But a shoulder, or half of one, laid on a bed of thickly sliced potatoes and all covered with plenty of garlic and chopped rosemary (I use a hand-operated Mouli for that), pepper and salt and all moistened with a good glass of wine or beer containing some lemon zest, lemon juice chopped preserved lemon, will produce a splendid dish if given half an hour in a hot oven, followed by an hour or two at 130 degrees

The top part of the cooked joint may be what is now known as "pulled" (stringy), the lower part being more for slicing. The potatoes will melt in the mouth.

Oven settings will vary on the oven make, the height at which food is placed in it, and if others in the district are using the same power source at the same time. And then, of course, timing will depend on the meat, game, stews, fish or vegetables being cooked.  That's when a certain amount of guesswork comes in as well as the occasional glance at the proceedings. Extra liquid may be in order, in which case it is best to heat up the liquid before adding it.

Before serving, pop the plates in the oven for a short time to warm. But keep an eye on them as they can get too hot quite quickly. 

My slow cooker is rather tinny and ancient, but throw into it any sort of meat and surround this with almost any desired vegetable, then pouring over some stock, wine or beer, some pepper and salt and perhaps a herb or spice, and out will come a delicious meal in an hour's time, having set the heat (in my case) at the 1 and a half setting.

I might add that when I last cooked shin of beef in this way (one and a half hours) I used whole potatoes and Brussels sprouts as the vegetables. Should you try this (the sprouts are delicious), add more spuds and sprouts than wanted at the time. Then mash the leftover vegetables to form excellent bubble and squeak.

Cooking can then be so easy and fun.