DOGS

Most of us like or love dogs - well, well-trained dogs anyhow. 

And they serve a wonderful service to the incapacitated, lonely, desirous of love and much else. 

Because of these attributes, we make allowances for the smell that comes with training puppies, the sometimes boisterousness, the annoying barkers, the molting hairs, the yapping, the fighting, not to mention the biting and the very occasional killing of sheep and people.

It is lovely to both onlooker and owner to see the devoted glances given by the dog to its owner - sometimes expecting food as a reward. 

But, of course, there are snags. They sadly don’t last that long, and the vet would have them suffering from countless ills - for which the owner pays extravagantly. Some bills I have read about are astronomical and, like rockets, rise inordinately. 

Many dogs are plain ugly, yet owners seem to dote on them, regardless of looks. Handsome or ugly, theft is a problem.

They serve their purpose in towns and cities, but really need the countryside for the exercise they demand and their owners enjoy - regardless of the weather.

And when a dog has a real purpose in the form of a job to do, it is a happy creature and much admired. 

When I first went to Holland, dogs were used to pull churns in small wagons for milk distribution to households. 

When I lived and was brought up in the country, our two dogs were working dogs but also lived with us in the house.

One, Bunty, was the rat-catcher and fox-scarer, and Ben had an eye for our chicken farm’s business. 

If an order came in for a fat bird for roasting, my father would select one by eye (all free range in those days) and indicate to Ben which it was. Ben would then catch it and press it to the ground with his paws for my father to pick up. 

We bred from the dogs and their puppies were much sought-after. 

Now that most owners pick up their pet’s mess to be disposed of, is a huge advance. 

I don’t know what it is like now in Paris, for instance, but it was not so long ago that one might miss the sights for having to pay regard to the excrement on the pavement.

By and large, they are wonderful creatures, and all ages seem to love to pat and stroke them.

We have a dog that needs no attention, is quiet, sits watching everything, needs no food or water, is loved by children, and is cold in the winter and warm in the summer. It is a bronze dog, full-size and almost solid bronze, smooth in bits and sharp in unexpected places. It is very heavy. 

It guards a few old tennis balls. Ugly? Some people think it is a sheep. Loved? Yes. much. 

This dog of ours has a history, a pedigree, a provenance, and a past.

When Menache Kadishman was an art student in London, I suppose in about 1970, he took a dog in plaster form, to art dealer Freddy Mayor’s London gallery hoping to sell i

Freddy, who had wonderful taste in art, told Kadishman that he could not sell a plaster, but would have the dog cast in bronze and then offer it for sale. 

This was duly done, and dog, now in bronze form, surprisingly languished at the gallery.

When my eldest son was born, I bought dog for my ex-wife as a present. She, in turn, gave it to the firstborn 

who didn't like it and gave it (or sold it) to his brother. This son needed money, so I purchased it from him. Now I have bought dog twice. After all, it is a family dog and happy with us.

And should it ever be sold (God forbid) it should go back to the Mayor Gallery from whence it came.

Dealers in those days (Freddy anyhow) were usually friends with their clients who, when necessary, would only sell artworks back to their dealer - generally at a profit. And Freddy had such a wonderful eye for art that anything that went through his gallery was top-class. He only dealt in the best, and with honesty - unlike what we hear about practices in the art world of today. 

But art is a business, and times have changed.

Our dog, though born and bred in England was, so we hear, cast in bronze again in Israel - which sometimes happens to bronzes.

That’s the way of the art business now. And making more casts makes more money. 

At least we have the original - and it might be aware of it. 

PHOTOGRAPHIC INTELLIGENCE

It was 1945. Germany had been defeated. I was in America’s Oklahoma to be awarded my wings and commission. Only experienced pilots were now required for the conflict in the Pacific, so I found myself on the stripped-down, grey-painted Queen Elizabeth liner bound for England. 

As newly promoted officers had to learn to be and act as officers, my first posting was to Harrogate where young RAF pilots were taught to behave like gentlemen. 

It was then that we were offered various airforce tasks, there being enough pilots for the ongoing Pacific conflict and peacetime needs. 

I had flown in Warwicks on air/sea rescue missions over the Bay of Biscay during the war as a trainee pilot, so opted for air/sea rescue on the water - and was given a position, barely known to me, of being a Photographic Intelligence Officer. 

The headquarters for this skill was RAF Medmenham. Here wartime operators were the first to identify V2 German rockets being assembled at Penemunde - a momentous discovery.

I was taught to use a stereoscope - two simple clear lenses set in an equally simple metal stand. If positioned above two areal photographs taken one directly after another, the result of these, when placed almost together showed up as a landscape in three dimensions, thus providing much more information than two-dimensional photographs.

During the war, reconnaissance aircraft, like spitfires and mosquitos on our side, and ME 109s on the other, took many series of photographs over sights of military interest of each other’s territory. The results of these photographs, taken from high altitude, revealed secrets of great importance to the interpreters.

Armed with this knowledge, I was posted to another commandeered grand country house, RAF Newnam Courtney, and given a stereoscope and a series of German areal photographs taken of an oil installation in the northern Caspian. 

Military hardware needs fuel for war and the Germans wanted to know where it was extracted from the earth and its whereabouts. We had captured many of their areal photographs of oil installations. 

With my stereoscope, German areal photographs and now with my three-dimensional view of the installations revealed, I had to work out the complex’s capacity, transport links, expansion prospects and general infrastructure. Why? 

There are, sadly, always wars or conflicts of one kind or another going on, and countries with the best intelligence have the greatest chance of survival. 

When great conflicts come to an end we tend to think that they will not happen again - wars to end wars and all that stuff. But they do. So we might as well prepare for them, however insignificant this information may seem at the time. It might always come in handy. But let’s hope that it doesn’t.

Grobble Up the Beasties

I had forgotten the expression “Grobble Up the Beasties” since many a year. Now, thanks to a dream I have not only recalled it from the depths of my brain but also almost to have solved it - but in dreamland.

The expression was always thought by the British to be Dutch and that it was in common use in Holland. But ask a Dutch person and they will have no idea what nonsense the silly English will believe. Even my wife, Margreet, conversant in several languages, has no idea of its meaning, thinking that it has an Afrikaans sound to it and might have something to do with insects. 

My revelationary dream was as follows: I was offered the view of an ancient map on vellum, beautifully hand-drawn, showing the coast of north east Scotland. I was delighted to find that three small fishing villages on the indented coast, and close together, were the harbours of Drobble, Oppa, and Debeesty.

Could I have solved the conundrum or part of it?

So might the phrase have referred to fishing, fish, weight of catches, or processes such as smoking? And if so, how did the expression spread through the UK and the English speaking people, thinking it to be commonly-used Dutch? 

Of course, it was all a dream, but at least I might have dreamed of the partial answer to its origins. But I somehow doubt it.

Another dream might tell me more. 

MY GRANDMOTHER (GRANNY)

 

How little we know about our own family during our and their lifetime. When they are dead we somehow want to know more and regret not having questioned enough.

We are not even sure about the origins of my mother’s mother. We seem sure that she was Irish, perhaps a farmer’s daughter or even a hairdresser. Whatever, she was a beauty, somewhere meeting my grandfather who, at the time, must have been a budding surgeon at St Thomas’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, in London. 

As a boy I recall being with her at our Silchester home when she was titled (lots of “m’Lady” and your “Ladyship” from Constance our country-bred live-in maid), always dressed in black, very grand and widowed - her husband, Sir Frederick Hewitt, having died as a famous anaesthetist some years earlier. 

She left two tangible items about which I will write in a bit. 

I know that we were all a little on edge when she came to stay. And “James, to the inceneraria” I recall her saying to me when I was disposing of some rubbish or other.

One day I had earlier shot or snared a rabbit and returned to deal with it at home. When Granny saw the animal she rolled up her grand sleeves, paunched, skinned and cut up the creature to be ready for the pot. We were aghast. Did this indicate that her upbringing in Ireland was in a farmer’s or butcher’s household? We don’t know. 

War came and went. When walking on the pavement with my mother in London’s Soho were some surly-looking youths were standing. She brushed them aside, saying: “aside scum”. They stood aside. 

I then lived in two small Council rooms in Pimlico, offered to me when discharged from the RAF with TB, and Granny at that time was a permanent resident in a room at the Regent Palace Hotel, Piccadilly. 

I would invite her for the lunch she always enjoyed of smoked haddock cooked in milk and butter. She had a good appetite, so I gave her plenty, and I never disagreed with her. So we got on well. 

At this time I was at art school and had a strikingly beautiful Anglo-Indian student as a girlfriend. My cousin, John Scott, fell for her and wanted to marry her. I was delighted. 

As his mother, who had lived in India at the time of the Raj, and Granny, who thought the marriage to be quite inappropriate (I heard “the touch of the tar brush”mentioned)  contrived to breakup the liaison.

John Scott, a party-loving Scottish army officer and personable fellow who, like me, took the easy path, now had adversaries and, although he was his grandmother’s favourite grandson came under her critical influence. 

She told him: “John, if you marry this girl I will not leave you the money I had in mind but only the interest on it”. He decided against the marriage.

When Granny died, he, like the rest of the grandchildren received a paltry sum each. She was never going to do otherwise. So we laughed to think that John had lost his girl for the price of a weekly chocolate bar. 

As I have mentioned, Granny left two tangible items of her life that I know about. The first was a jewel that seems to change hands around the family. One day, a niece’s son told us that this particular piece of a diamond E set in purple enamel and surrounded by larger diamonds was a jewel that King Edward VII gave to either his mistresses or mothers of his children.

Now Edward VII enjoyed the company of pretty ladies, and Granny was much in Court Circles. She had three children, my aunt, whose first husband was one of those Raj soldiers who became a Brigadier, my mother, who married an athletic but wounded officer of the ’14-’18 war (my father), and Wyndham. 

Wyndham was a King’s Scholar at Eton, raced cars, was a rally driver, married several times (mostly to Parisian models) and lived mainly and grandly in France. He looked uncommonly like King Edward VII.

Wyn was often in trouble, a brilliant engineer, and sent to Australia to return as flight engineer to Kingsford Smith who, in his Avro 10, tri motor aeroplane was the first to deliver Christmas mail from Sydney to Croydon Aerodrome in 1931 after a record-braking (17 days) journey with an all Australian crew. (Wyndham, being English, was photographed leaving the aircraft but barely mentioned.)

The second item left by Granny is a gold-topped palmyra cane given to Grandfather, we think, from some eastern potentate as thanks for anaesthetic services.

The gold top is engraved with Sir Frederic’s name and another, Tommy Nottingham. We can only surmise that Mr Nottingham was a close friend of Grandma’s after her husbands death.

My wife, Margreet, now uses the cane for exercises to help integrate a shoulder replacement joint.

 

In Granny’s hotel room hung a piece of velvet on which were pinned favours for charities of good deeds that are pinned on you when you donate to their collection boxes. So she was always prepared and at no expense when leaving her room each day to walk up Regent Street to her bank where the doorman would provide her with a copy of The Times for her to read there. 

She also volunteered her services to charity organisations were she sold donated trinkets - some of which possibly ended up in her room. 

I cannot recall how she died in her old age, but I do remember a bus mentioned and a strong wind.

                            

CRICKET

 CRICKET  (some bits also described in A147)

I treat cricket as a kind of birthright. And yet being enumerate it is a sport that at times I am barely able to understand. It is so much to do with calculations, tactics, history and statistics. Yet I love it, and I am not very interested in who wins or looses but who bats or bowls with skill.

My upbringing as a child was steeped in sports - especially cricket at which my father played for his county, Berkshire.

We practiced a lot, hardening our hands regularly with methylated spirit. So excelled with bat and ball at school.

My sister, June, was captain of her school X1, brother Nigel did well, and I made off with most of the prizes for fielding, throwing, and catching - the prizes being cricket equipment, so reducing the drain on my family’s finances (it was the time of the recession).

My father listened to Test Match cricket when played abroad via a PYE radio with its glowing valves, wet (car) battery, heavy dry battery and aerial leading from the house to the top of a nearby tree.

My father died. The war started, and I became a refugee in the USA, playing once only in a match of refugees against Boston Gentlemen at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. It was in aid of British War Relief. We took $130.

After becoming a pilot and contracting TB, I thereafter never had the time or occasion to play cricket again. But I do watch part of the Test Matches at Lord’s Cricket Ground. 

Four incidences at Lord’s stand out in my memory. 

The first was when, as raw volunteers when old enough to join the RAF in the middle of the war, we were about to be greeted by an officer at Lord’s. As we waited expectantly in a corrugated iron roofed, open spectator stand (were the Warner Stand is now positioned), the occasion for us all was of expectation and solemnity. Then one of our number blew up a condom and let it sail out over the hallowed turf. The tensions and expectations were both suddenly turned into a more lighthearted occasion. 

The second recollection was when Margreet and I were stuck in a human traffic jam behind the Grand Stand, when a member of the public passed by us shouting: “Sick bowl, mind yer backs”. The human traffic jam parted, we kept close behind him, and the three of us sailed through as the crowd stood aside. 

The third time was when Margreet and my sister had reserved seats in the Grand Stand. My sister had mentioned that she had been given brownies by her son’s girlfriend. They watched the cricket and ate the brownies - laced unbeknown to them with cannabis. Margreet (Dutch) for the first time understood cricket, and my sister, June, felt so unwell that she repaired to the St John’s ambulance station nearby and was given a cup of tea. For some time after, my sister refused to answer her doorbell for fear that it was the Police calling to arrest her. 

The last memory still continues and was even to my financial benefit.

This came about as I was in a queue to enter Lord’s Ground and had got on well with one of my neighbours. “I like the cut of your jib”, he explained as we were about to pass through the Grace Gates. “Why don’t you buy some shares in my company?” This offer was made in his rather loud voice, so I had a feeling at the time that he was hoping others would hear and take advantage of his proffered advice to help his company prosper. 

I do not have anything to do with shares, leaving that skill to others who can add - or subtract.

However, I said that as far as I was aware it was essential to know when to sell. I asked him and he gave me a figure.

Several years later the shares reached the selling price that he had given me. 

And I sold. 

Margreet and I went on holiday to Sicily on the strength of it. We naturally wrote to him, from Taormina, to thank for our break.

Our benefactor has, since our original meeting, become not only a great friend but also a collector of my art. 

Cricket - lovely cricket.  

(A154)

BLACKOUT

 

Margreet was reading about a Red Arrows pilot who wore anti-gravity blackout compression kit as part of his job as lead pilot.

Training in America during the war we had no such kit, even though our two-seat Harvards were the British and American advanced training aircraft, enabling us on graduation to convert directly to flying Spitfires and Hurricanes.

She read out from the article about blackouts and I told her that I had experienced such during my flying from an airfield in Oklahoma.

It so happened that a famous fighter pilot was being rested from operations in Europe and sent to the USA to rest, speak publicly and to the likes of us.

He felt like flying a Harvard and that as I was one of the better student pilots,  I was chosen to fly with him.

So up we went with me in control. Then he said that he would take over when we were high enough and in an airspace safe for aerobatics.

He then proceeded to fly our aircraft in the manner of fighting German Me109s in combat.

During several of his pretty extreme manoeuvres I blacked out, being aware of most of my faculties but quite unable to see, as blood that should have been feeding my brain fled toward my flying boots under the force of added gravity.

So had the war in Europe not come to an end I would probably have flown bomber aircraft rather than fighters.