A TYCOON

 

Having been invalided out of the RAF as a pilot with TB, I started studies to become a doctor, and suffered TB again. I decided that as I had always shone as an artist I should learn my basic trade at art school. So I enrolled at the Central School of Art in Holborn, London.

As well as fine art I also enrolled in their theatre design department, thinking that theatre set design would eventually provide me with money as well as allow me to flourish as an artist.

There were three art school departments of interest to me, they being fine art in the drawing class, painting under the gaze of Bernard Meninsky, and theatre set design and theatre costume design, both in Jeanetta Cochrane’s department.

To work with Bernard Meninsky I had to submit to him a painting or two and some drawings. He didn’t think much of my paintings but liked the drawings so much that I was accepted.

From the theatre department there was much to learn about set design, costume design and sewing, with excellent guidance on the use of colour and brushwork in the presentation of ideas to producers.

As many of my fellow students were recently out of school, I was, as an ex-war student, given extra attention, possibly in a more adult laguage.

Although I eventually bought a Bernard Meninsky at Christie’s, I never really liked his work. But we made friends and would seek out living and defunct music halls in London.

In the drawing class, a callow youth, just out of school, often sat near to me as we made drawings of the nudes. 

I asked one of the nudes if she might pose for me. Her reply was yes, but only when I was famous. As my mantra for happiness in life is to avoid being either rich or famous, the chances were slim.  Had she known that a sniff of fame came my way when I once sold a painting at Christie’s for £33,600, and had I re-contacted her at that time, she would not have been the curvacious creature of art school days, but an old woman.

My fellow student in that drawing class really was to become both rich and famous. He was Terrence Conran, of Habitat and much else, but his drawings were dreadful.

TRAINING YOUR ROBIN

Most British gardens must have a resident robin that hangs around to pick up small worms when earth is dug.

I think that we all love these friendly little birds. The American robin is a much larger bird, as befits its nationality.

We have a small walled garden in London that is mostly paved with flagstones with nearly all its trees, bushes and floral displays growing in pots. These we move around as peer season and the vigour of the plants.

Growing next to the garden’s south-facing wall are alternating tomatoes and runner beans. On its north-facing wall is a small pear tree and apple tree, both in pots, apparently springing from a abacanthus that waves its long leaves in the wind. I grow mistletoe in the apple tree. 

 

All this is in the land, owned by its resident robin, who, this year, chose to nest and bring up a family with a mate high on the house wall in a box made for, but never used, by swifts.

At breeding time we do see and feed two robins but only one seems to belong. 

There have been robin-less years and the garden has seemed bare without one.

The only food we use to train a resident robin is Cheddar cheese, grated very finely. They love it, fresh or dry. 

To train a robin we place a little “bait” near to the house at one end of the garden, the other end housing our summerhouse, or shed as we call it. 

It is within this shed, where we spend much time and where we aim to entice a robin for company.

The first move is bait left on the ground well away from the shed where we humans have drink, music, food and conversation. Then, when the robin has acquired the taste for grated Cheddar, we lay bait nearer and nearer to the shed.

We keep as still as possible during this training period.

The first real excitement is when the robin takes bait from the sill of the opened shed door.

All this time the bird will have noticed, with its eagle eye, grated cheese in the feeder designed for it.

This object is of wood and roughly described as one open shallow box, upside down and sliding over another open shallow box. This can be adjusted to offer a small or large amount of grated cheese.

Bird-landing edges are of rounded dowel rod - fit for birds’ feet. 

Finally, our robin will enter our shed in short stages or even fly directly in, eventually to eat from my knee, which happens generally to be next to the feeding box. 

Friendly wood pigeons also raid the robin box and are deterred from tipping the feeder over to get to the cheese by a lead weight (a sculpture) resting on top of it.

Friendly birdlife has become quite a feature of our garden and amazes guests. 

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A BONANZA RECALLED ONCE MORE

 

In 1953 I was rebuilding my first house in London’s Fulham Road from one that had been bombed in the war.  At the same time I was at art school and teaching myself to paint and 

selling landscapes. 

As the house was right next to Chelsea Football Grounds, a pet subject was the ground itself, and in particular what is known by Chelsea supporters as “The Shed End”.

I would set up my easel on a spectator’s gravel bank and paint away. 

I painted on canvas stuck to board, mariflayed previously by me using tailors’ canvas, hardboard, animal glue and very hot water. The size that  I favoured was 2 foot by 4 foot.

One of the finished canvasses was entitled “Neighbours on Saturdays” as Chelsea then only played on their home ground on Saturdays.

Those football days were a bit on the rough side, hemming me in and sometimes with my garden used as a urinal. But no-one seemed to mind an artist in their midst. 

“Neighbours on Saturdays” was exhibited at the Daily Express Young Artists Exhibition and failed to sell. Still framed, it was stacked away and forgotten. 

Years later, Margreet’s niece  became engaged to be married and, although the groom was an Arsenal supporter, we decided to give the painting to them as a wedding present. The engagement was broken off and the painting hung on the studio wall in Hammersmith.

It so happened that a man from Christie’s auction rooms came to look at my work and asked if he could sell “Neighbours on Saturdays”.  I agreed.

We decided that the title should be changed to “The Shed End”, that being more readily in the minds of supporters.  And we agreed on a reserve of £1500.  He took it away.

I went along to Christie’s Brompton Road salesroom on a viewing day to see where it had been hung. I can’t say that I was ecstatic as it was placed on a wall rather low down. I would rather have seen it at eye level.

I was then contacted by a potential buyer who told me that he was pretty sure to obtain it as he was willing to go up to £5,000.  He wanted to make prints of it and, for a fee, would I be prepared to sign them. We left it at that. 

Somehow I heard that there was other interest in the painting and that it might even fetch a good price.

On the day of the sale I took a plush seat toward the back of a good crowd of art buyers. The auctioneer was a lady who was quite obviously very professional.

When it came to my turn, she said that this work was by Jim Page-Roberts and that there was considerable interest in it. My heart beat increased. 

“I will start at a thousand”.  Up went quite a few hands.

In no time bidding had reached £5,000, then £10,000.  Bidders started to drop out. 

Bidding continued until some £20,000 was offered. Soon only two bidders remained in contention. One, we heard later was the Chelsea owner’s agent and the other a lady who wanted to give it to her Chelsea-supporting husband as a Christmas present.

Bidding continued as the lady kept her hand aloft. 

Finally Abramowitz’s agent realised he would never obtain it and dropped out at £27,000. There was applause.

Christie’s quote hammer prices combined with their buyer’s premium. So the “Shed End” had sold for £33,600, the “Top Lot”.

At that time, fellow RAF pilots who trained to fly with me in Oklahoma, USA, got together with wives and children once a year. At one such meeting word had reached them about my auction success.

“What will you do with the money” ? I was asked. 

Without much aforethought I replied that I would now buy large potatoes as they were more expensive than smaller ones, but much easier to peel. They thought it was hilarious. 

I buy potatoes nowadays and find that the smaller ones are easier to peel. 

As for the fellow pilots (several of whom went to America on a freebee as “Heroes”), I imagine that they have now all flown high into the blue and are no longer interested in potatoes large or small. 

A REAL WINE MERCHANT

What I am about to write might well be cause to send me to the Tower of London. I will explain later.

I have always been interested in wine, about it, and drinking it - ever since consuming the dregs from bottles (recycled then) left out for the wine merchant to collect when I was a child in the country at the turn of the 1920s to 1930s. 

A good way to learn about wine is to have a wine book to record wines bought and years drunk, with opinions in explicitly one’s own descriptive words on its quality over time. 

The 1960s was the ideal period to start, when all but the great Châteaux in Bordeaux produced fine wine at plonk prices.

The 1960s was a decade when I knew the years but not necessarily the Châteaux. 

As most wine then was imported in casks and bottled by wine merchants in the UK, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t do the same. A customs officer, in the wine section of that organisation, who had bought a painting from one of my exhibitions, had done much for a Spanish sea captain and didn’t see why this sailor shouldn’t do something for him in return. 

So some pound notes changed hands and back from Valencia came two odd-looking casks strapped to the ship’s railings (94 litres of 16 grados and 90 litres of 15 grados). 

Bottles and corks had to be bought. Contractors then had agreements to take away all bottles left outside hotels and restaurants to be recycled. I visited their premisses where only Claret, Burgundy and Port bottles were recyclable, so there was a huge pile of broken glass formed in their East End yard of non recyclable bottles of all colours and shapes. So I decided also to collect my claret-shaped bottles left outside hotels and restaurants for free (at 4am), whereas I would have had to pay a shilling a bottle to those with contracts.  

Because of my unique position, the managing director of a famous cork company personally selected with me short-long Bordeaux length corks for my bottling. He was also rather fond of drinking Sherry, so we consumed quite a bit. 

Another wonderful importation was a hogshead (58 gallons) of Crianza Rioja Bilbainas, Haro and more from Prignac in Bas-Médoc, and so on it went.

Not all was straightforward. In 1969 a small cask (a quart de Barrique) of Châteaux Gallais Bellevue got crushed aboard a coaster on its way to a wharf on the Isle of Dogs in London, where it was found to have lost about half its contents. I would have had to pay duty as though it was full. But I had friends in the system and on the following day of its arrival my cask miraculously had a tin patch nailed to the wound and the barrel was now full to the shrive (bung). The wine that was used to top up my barrel must have been of the highest quality because the blend was absolutely delicious. 

For all my bottles, bottled and shared among friends, were labelled with my own designed label, and capped with a red tin/lead capsule, (whereas a firm, Corfe & Seccombe, could have provided me with a choice of many fancy labels of their design).

In those days, importers of wine could call the contents of their bottles anything they chose. So it was a period where knowledge and discernment came to the fore. 

It was about this time that I came across wonderful J Lyons at the Hop Exchange Wine Cellars in Southwark where most client’s bottles were washed and recycled on site. 

It was here in January1968 that I chanced upon Châteaux Cantanac-Brown 1959 which was the best wine I had ever, or since, drunk. So I bought a lot and had most kept in their paid reserve as I lacked space for it. The last bottle consumed was on the 4th of December 1993 and in my wine book I wrote: “Farewell dear old friend”. 

In those splendid Hop Exchange Cellars worked a wonderful lady. Her job was to stick the 

J Lyons house labels on their bottles. 

Beyond her gluing apparatus (two hands) was a large round bath in which was placed any wine the labels from which had to be soaked off and replaced by a wine in demand. 

Perhaps I should not have been witness to it, but at that time J Lyons were supplying Buckingham Palace with white wine (ordinarily just “Hock”) with rather grand royal labels, now stuck to the bottles by this lady. 

Is revealing such Palace secrets justification for a beheading? I hope not. 

A GARDEN SHED

There is something very special about a garden shed.

Perhaps it should be large enough to accommodate a spare bed, but most of all it should be a cosy retreat. 

An octagonal one made of cedar wood, and roof, coated with sun-reflecting paint, is ideal.

Six of its eight sides should be at least three quarters glazed, and its other two sides of overlapping cedar boards should hide garden accoutrements, like tools, wood, bamboos, compost bin and other unsightly items like bags of bought compost and emergency bags of sand if floods (even being remotely possible) are kept.

Through the glazed sides one should be able to admire the plants and trees that have been lovingly tended to display themselves at their best.

It is an important place in which to pass spare time, relaxing with a glass of two, with added music and conversation.

After moving into my London house some 36 years ago I happened to be looking for plants in a country garden centre when I saw my shed, but lacking its door. As such, it was offered at a good price for both its cost and transport to London.

The country delivery lad and I assembled the shed, all of which had to be brought through the terraced house to be formed on paving stones at the end of the small walled garden. And for some fortunate reason it was now delivered with its missing door.

Its eight sides where easy enough to handle and be screwed together. But the roof, in one piece, only just managed to pass through doors when tilted at an angle.

This untreated cedar wood haven has matured in colour over the years and now houses two very comfortable chairs and two fold-up hardwood ones.

It is decorated with two large paintings, shelves for multiple objects, including a special robin feeder, garden fertilisers and several plastic containers for birdseed. 

It is 5.30pm on a balmy English summer’s evening and time for me to lay down my pen, leave the shed, and make a Champagne cocktail (using Crémant de Loire).

So then Margreet and I can enjoy talk of the day, listen to radio music, and consider our plants and birds. This is a lovely way to enjoy the approaching evening.

And as it is Margreet’s turn to provide dinner (we cook on alternate weeks) I wait to see what culinary surprises will appear. 

I smell that garlic is part of one.