Bee up the shorts

When I was designing for the theater and landscape painting in 1950, I was beginning to think that a wartime gap in my education needed to be fixed. A Grand Tour around Europe was what was wanted. I would feast on paintings and the theater, let alone the food and wine from foreign parts.

Painting scenery at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and designing and painting sets for repertory theatre was artistically and creatively rewarding but poorly paid. 

But when I worked on background scenery for an ice show (I still had my RAF flying boots to keep my feet warm on the ice), I had enough money to buy an old, flat-back, Ford, builder's van on which to construct a sort of mobile living space.

I made my vehicle to fit my body shape, with a most comfortable, deep, rubber seat, canted up in the front for me to lean back and, in so doing, raising my knees. On the flat part of the truck was enough space for a blow-up bed, cooking kit, stores, water, paints and other stuff.

As it would be hot in Europe, on the roof above the front seat I installed two large air scoops - the kind seen on old-fashioned steam ships. These would scoop and duct down fresh air and, should it rain, they could be turned to face the rear. And as an anti-mosquito measure, combined with a net, they could stoppered off with two large diameter corks. 

Then I added a horn that would waken the dead. My personalised Grand Tour vehicle made an unusual sight with its added streamlined bodywork, made of moulded ply and canvas. I gave it new Michelin tyres, brush-painted it British racing green, and set off. 

It was when travelling along a main road somewhere near Genoa in Italy, and amid a throng of workmen returning home on bicycles, that a bee was scooped in and down through the vent above my head, directly entering my shorts. 

I glanced at the consternation in my more view mirrors but was otherwise more concerned about that bee. 

Back in England, my live-in car was eventually sold to a Scottish Laird and may have been used to round up deer or other animals. Armed with a mosquito net and corks he may well have got the better of the midges in the course of travels around his estate.

As for that Genoese bee....? I can't recall.