Instant Memories

It is our wont in later life to reminisce about countries visited in one’s lifetime and, importantly, impressions (often only minor ones) that remain in the memory about those places. Dates to some people are of importance, but to the enumerate, like me, they are of little consequence.

We were talking about these quick impressions over a glass or two in the 2018 summer of heat. And sitting beneath our vine arbour in London, the foreign incidents recalled from such an English setting seemed even more remote than they were.

I start and end in the UK.

In Wales, just after the war ended, a family took me in when I had been posted there to be the air controller of a single Spitfire. From a generous supply, they placed every single lump of coal in the firebox of a grate that warmed the house and supplied heat for cooking. This coal, for them, in a mining district, was unlimited, whereas in the rest of country we were severely rationed for fuel. It seems a very minor incident, but such bounty gave a warmth of feeling that better times were to come and, in my case of a missed education, thirst to catch up on knowledge.

Scotland’s Aberdeen in peacetime I thought to be grey and forbidding. But it was the sick on the pavements in the mornings after early compulsory closing of pubs in the evening, that I remember most about it.

On a visit to Ireland at one time to see if we might live there, an evening in a pub where a rugby match between England and Wales was shown, a serious confrontation almost erupted when we cheered for England.

In France I once had to hide in a cupboard when my lady companion’s lover and protector came to visit unexpectedly. I had imagined that such incidents really only happened on the stage of Whitehall farces.

To the north, in Finland, visited as a supernumerary on a coaster to collect timber, I was introduced to a black sauna. The fire to heat large stones had no chimney, so the soot from smoke mingled with sweat, stung the eyes, and clogged the lungs. We dashed into the cold Baltic water at intervals and drank a lot of lemonade. Because I was a foreigner we wore items of clothing.

Sweden, on yet another coaster trip, meant mosquitoes (huge ones) and a youthful population who seemed to have nothing to do but look miserable. Our motley crew of non-Swedes were pointedly ignored.

Holland, where all the courses for a meal might come at one time on the same plate, is, for me, Amsterdam, where you can hardly turn without seeing a building that is not a delight. And I managed to find a wonderful wife from that country.

In St Petersburg, the closely-fitted bunk bed was too short for my frame. So I put the mattress on the floor for the night. As soon as I had done so, the floor lady rushed in to investigate (no locks). Being observant of architecture, I noticed that our hotel had a floor missing (an extra one when seen from the outside and missing one from the inside). This was the electronics floor, found by a fellow guest (a spy) at a dinner party, who managed to access such a floor in Russia and was never challenged – being thought to be part of the organisation.

As a child visiting Germany before the war, I was delighted to see so many fortifications and tanks around. My mother knew what was to come and saw it in quite a different light.

After distributing clothing and blankets on the Austria-Hungarian border to refugees fleeing Hungary, we stopped off in Alsace. Next to our bedroom was another smaller room with a hole in the wooden floor for defecation, etc. The smell was really atrocious. If that wasn’t bad enough, I looked above this hole toward the ceiling where there was another hole for those living above. 

Staying with a family in Switzerland to learn French as a young schoolboy, I was summoned back to England as war with Germany was imminent. But before I made my way back, I was going down a wooden-slatted slide into a lake for a swim and had not realised that a bucket or two of water should have been sluiced down first to lubricate the wood. So I returned home with vertical welts on my behind instead of the usual horizontal ones delivered by my sadistic headmaster at school.

To me, Spain means swifts. In England I watch each morning in springtime to see the first swift arrive from Africa. When one comes, summer has arrived. Alas few are now to be seen over London at all, but in the 40 degree heat of Granada, in Spain, the sky was full of these mysterious birds that only touch ground to nest and reproduce.

In Sicily, where we had noticed in a nearby café several Mafia youths throwing their weight around, and who were obviously not going to pay for their food and drink, one of them fancied Margreet, broke away, and started to follow us. It was not a nice feeling, and a memorable one.

In Bulgaria, my son and I ordered beer. And as is our custom, we paid for it on its arrival. Our waiter went off duty. We ordered more and paid for that, but they claimed that we had not yet paid for the first order. Without knowledge of the lingo, and despite our protestations, we had to pay again to avoid trouble. We were glad to leave that surly lot.

Confirming that scent prices rely on marketing and exclusiveness, it was a delight to find, in Greece, copycat scent that was sold from bulk for next to nothing. And with returning samples to test at home, they were as close to the “originals” as we could discern.

En route through desert scrubland to an oasis in Morocco, where no visible roads led to a suddenly revealed small community based around a stream surrounded by crops, trees, and animals, we passed a tree inhabited by goats. To see these four-legged animals climbing around a tree was almost more surprising than coming across the verdant oasis in mid desert.

On the eastern side of North Africa, in Sudan, desert merged with town and goats with desert, there was something touching and elemental to see a family stop in the desert sand to pray.

It was while drawing women weeding beneath rubber trees in Malaya, and standing near to a Land Rover, that I heard shouts and screams. Coming straight toward me was a large snake. Just how I found myself on top of that vehicle I will never know, it happened so quickly. The snake passed by the wheels below and made off toward the jungle nearby.

In the south of Africa we stayed in a hotel in Cape Town that had once been a prison. Wisely or not, they had preserved that ancient punishing machine, the treadmill. What a sinister and frightful object it was – and adjustable for speed. It upsets me even to think about it.

As the only passenger on a ship from Singapore to Thailand, an ant run crossed from one side of my bunk to the other. When in bed, they crossed on top of the sheet.

I rented a room in a Bangkok brothel. It was cheap and entertaining, giving me much to draw. The downside of my room was to have an open drain at one end. This plumbing arrangement was used by the occupants of cubicles upstream. Perhaps that was the reason for the modest rent.

India is a place that seems to be either loved or loathed. It is a country full of extremes. For one leg of our journey through this land of beauty, and architecture that often needs a good scrubbing, we took an overnight “Luxury” bus voyage in Rajasthan. With passengers mostly made up of men, many slept on the floor and most, if not all, farted throughout the night. So much for luxury.

In Vietnam, when I was there, Vietnamese soldiers in the south were being trained by Americans to fight northern Vietnamese. This now seems absolutely crazy.

In Japan, where there was an appreciation of art throughout, I saw gardeners  pruning a pine tree, clambering around its high branches with secateurs in hand, such was the general appreciation of nature among the people. A word or two of the language would have helped when venturing into a small section of a public bath, I found myself buried up to the neck in very hot volcanic sand. There was no escape. And my shouts for help may have seemed to them like noises of appreciation. I now know how lobsters feel when cooked.

In a South Pacific island I saw a spider catch a full-sized bird in its web. And when walking along a remote crushed coral track, a dark man appeared from the jungle next to me, dressed only in an animal’s tooth through the nose and a scarlet jungle flower in his hair.

A returning sad and diseased passenger on my South Pacific coaster to Australia, kept saying that back of beyond in the outback of Australia was “back of Bourke”. So, on landing in Brisbane, I hitchhiked to Bourke. It took several days. There were very few cars on that dirt road, but each would stop. Once, for a very short ride, I became the self-starter and reverse gear to one of them. Two workmen, knowing that I was interested in seeing a kangaroo, spied one and tried to shoot it for me to look at. It was rather like a Japanese fisherman who did the same with a bird, killing it with an oar. We have rather a different approach to wildlife.

I left Sydney, Australia, on a ship that called first at Aukland in New Zealand. I found during so brief a stay that all was so neat and tidy I wanted to see dirt, poverty and even some of the lawlessness of Australia to give it balance.

For another brief stop of the ship in Tahiti I bought a large and flat mother of pearl shell from Gaugin’s son who ran a small souvenir shop there. It is a remote connection with his father, and one that I treasure.

After Tahiti came the Panama Canal and at the end of it a rather sordid Panama City. There I saw a buxom lady, dressed not unlike Carmen Miranda, who was offering her body – with a free cigar.

Back in the USA, having completely written off a rather nice aeroplane there during the war, and in the process knocking two instruments out of the panel with my head, I asked the ambulance driver who was taking me to hospital what had happened. He didn’t know. My question had been a global one. Was I, perhaps, in London and been run over by a bus? And of course I had forgotten how wonderful it had been to have left wartime rationing behind in England and been able to eat unlimited (though not very good) food.

The 707 jet airliner had just been introduced on the New York to London route. Short of money I took the cheaper Bristol Britannia instead to the country of my birth and one where aeroplanes had always been part of my life.

It was from the muddy grass field of Croydon Aerodrome that Kingsford Smith was to fly my brother and me around London in the very early 1930s. But the tail skid of his aeroplane had broken and another pilot took us boys up in the open cockpit of a Klem Bat. With our caps on back to front we held on like grim death and were probably more frightened than observant. They were days when flying was still in its infancy, but fascinating.

It is extraordinary how often such minor incidents in life stimulate the memory of them and events that surround them. 

What's in a Name

I was born a Page-Roberts, for better or worse, and given the forenames of James Frederick Clare. For calling me the James part is anyone’s guess, Frederick because my father was one, and a knighted grandfather the other. Clare was because my grandmother may or may not have been born one, or perhaps lived in County Clare. We don’t know much about her past as she kept it secret.

Having started out with a hyphen to my name I kept it for my ordinary self and for my art and writing. After the 1950s I dropped the hyphen for my artwork signatures as it looked a little poncey, or might have made me out to be a dilettante, even though I was a fairly well-known artist at the time. All well and good.

After those early days I signed my work PR, or in capitals without the hyphen.

In the early part of the 1800s, my great grandfather, a Master Confectioner called William Roberts, married a Prudence Page who, because of her contributing wealth, had all her children christened with Page as their last given name.

Then, when one son, a Reverend, became The Very Reverend Dean of Salisbury and married a baroness around the very early 1900s, he paid to have a hyphen added between the Page and the Roberts, and a coat of arms created. That was a start to the hyphen business.

His brother (my grandfather) was also a Reverend. He was the chairman of The National Rose Society and had a famous rose named after him. He was clearly reluctant to add the hyphen to his name at the same time as his brother, because in my research into his printed writings he does not use the hyphen until later. (For the horticulturally inclined, there was also a Dorothy Page-Roberts rose – a simple, wild-looking one, now lost, and last seen in the mid west of the USA at a sort of garden centre in 1943 and correctly named, with hyphen.)

When it comes to how we name ourselves, my ex-wife later married a Mr Jones but kept to her previous married name of Page-Roberts.

The family name gets increased with marriages and retained through partnerships and liaisons by those who are happy with it.

But there are losses, too. My youngest son, a musician and postman by calling, discarded the family name in favour of Pete Page, as he considered his longer name to be a drawback in his work. And I notice that the other son, a prop master in Hollywood, has discarded the hyphen. Perhaps the younger one was also influenced by all the new double barrelled names appearing in the poorer areas of his postal distribution. Sportspeople, too, now seem to favour the two barrels.

Margreet, my wife, is Dutch, coming from a country where it is customary to conjoin your given and married names. So really she should have a triple barrelled name, which is clearly far too cumbersome. (When women divorce in Holland, their married name is usually abandoned.)

A double name has its difficulties, especially when such as records and prescriptions and the like are concerned.

Other than a change of name at the time of marriage, some change their name to that of their partner for convenience or the happiness of their children. But if changing one’s name for other reasons, do you go for a long, cumbersome and grander one, or a simple and speedily-written shorter one. Most just keep to the ones they were born with and get on with it.

Garden Update - early 2018

Some write about art, on writing, of children, work, philosophy … and on it goes. I want to write, in simple terms, about my garden – difficult to visualise if not actually there, but I try.

Like many, those of us who have grown up close to nature and have learned to love almost everything that grows in a garden under our care, we like to share our experiences with others.

I’ll try to be brief, but even in my 5 ½ by 15 paces, walled London garden, I could talk or write about it for hours. That is the way when one knows almost every flower or weed that grows or should not grow in it – all mainly in pots, the configuration of which is changed quite often.

I’ll go around the garden from left to right, starting from a hidden compost bin and our glazed, octagonal “shed” at the end of the mainly flagstoned, walled plot, and below a theatrically perspective arbour of grapevines that span an area from wall to wall.

So, on the north-facing wall, first comes a sad looking mahonia in a pot. It may be ending its life. I hope not, as our Mrs Blackbird dearly loves its autumnal fruit, despite having to be somewhat of an acrobat to reach them and suffering from its prickly leaves.

Then comes a more than life-size sculpture of a pair of lovers. Originally of elm wood, and still as such, but hollowed out by rot and mice over the years and is now held together by its thin, wooden skin, coated in a black mastic waterproofing substance used generally for waterproofing roofs. Between the lovers’ legs at ground level is a plastic box with holes at either end for mice to eat the poisoned bait inside. My seeds and seedlings are now safe from their predations.

Then comes a hibiscus in a green pot, next to where a paving stone has been lifted in the past to accommodate firstly a morello cherry tree and then a damson – neither of which has been a success – nor has the attempt to grow snowdrops in its earth. On the soil, and around the existing damson trunk, is a section of the cast iron, Victorian water main, recovered when the original was replaced in our street by a larger one of yellow plastic.

Then there is a fern that softens the lines of a pear tree’s blue pot, some chervil, and then an apple in a pot, with its trunk sprouting three branches of mistletoe of my planting. Another fern grows in a pot, and lying beyond it, alongside the garden wall, stands an earthenware trough, holding early spring mini-daffodils.

Lastly, on that north-facing wall is a large thermometer, canted away from the wall. This is large enough to be seen easily from inside the house and is constantly referred to, summer and winter.

Beside a back door leading from a utility passage is a rainwater butt. I use this water when giving my plants their weekly tonic. Touching it is an old bay tree that has lived in its almost bonzai pot for possibly 40 years. The roots get a thorough drip-water soaking once in a while, and the weekly tonic.

On the house wall that faces east is a home-made bird box that is used successfully each year by a pair of great tits. Their constant comings and goings become our garden mobile, and when the young have fledged the place seems quite still.

Where the south-facing wall meets the house there is a small bricked-in bed where potting soil lies fallow, then to have peat added, sieved, and used again. In the corner of it is that wonderful rose called Typhoon. Difficult to find, I cannot think of a better one – disease-free, vigorous, early orangey buds, perfect open flowers and a blowsy finish in early winter. And it smells nice, too. Two examples supply us from early spring to late autumn with a constant stream of long-stemmed flowers for the house.

At the back of that bed are Triomphe d’Alsace vine cuttings for anyone who might want one in the winter.

This “fallow” bed narrows to about a foot wide beneath the wall and holds either runner or broad beans on alternate years, the other ground for this rotation is three large plastic bags of soil.

Above where the beans grow is a framework of bamboo that looks a bit like the inside of a grand piano. The beans are either tied to or clamber over this construction. And birds love to perch on it.

From the wall, and sticking out over the flagstone garden is a peninsular of pots, arranged at various heights and in changeable configurations. The pots rest on old bricks or pottery occulonae (like Roman hypocaust bricks). In the middle of it is a large, raised, strawberry pot, but instead of strawberries, geraniums grow out of the holes, I have had to block the unused holes at the rear to prevent water from escaping with soil. Resting on top of this pot is a large, and very rustic earthenware bird bath. 

The peninsular pots consist of those for rosemary, agapanthus, hosta, flox, lemon, pieris (what a wonderful garden plant that is), geranium, pelargonium, chive, parsley, coriander, thyme, petunia, impatiens, New Guinea, asparagus, Christmas rose, mint, ivy, buddleia, daisy, fuchsia, lily, fig, lavender, Bolivian begonia, pots of daffodils and a dahlia.  

After the peninsular is a hardwood garden bench, behind which grow the vines for the vine arbour and, in front, a marble-topped table.

Finally, almost back to the shed, come buckets of potatoes, rose cuttings in a pot, Peruvian lily, primrose, masses of self-sown morning glory, another bay tree in a pot and a camellia.

Hanging from the vine arbour are various dispensers of food for wild birds.

There is a narrow allyway at the end of the garden behind our shed where once night soil was taken away and coal delivered, It now holds garden stuff.

We spend a lot of time in the shed, eating, drinking and looking at the garden as it changes throughout the seasons.

Paradise? I think so, and so does Margreet.

Flood

We were having breakfast at the Ritz. We usually do when our daily comes to clean the house once a week.

I should add that it was not at The Ritz, but our local greasy-spoon café, The Ritz.

We finished our breakfasts of brown, toasted bacon sandwich for Margreet and two poached eggs on fried bread for me. When our mugs of workman’s tea were empty we parted company on the pavement outside for Margreet to tend to her sister in Chiswick and for me to return home to continue the tedious work of dealing with my income tax. Actually, the task seemed less taxing this year as I had been selling rather well to private collectors i.e. no gallery or auction house commission to pay.

At home, I had barely started on my calculations when the cleaner rushed in to where I was working, shouting “emergency, emergency, emergency”. I followed her down to the floor below to see a cascade of water flowing from a join in the plasterboard ceiling above and out from overhead electric light fittings.

Connecting in my mind that house floods usually come from storm water penetrating the roof, I rushed to the garden to collect half a dozen black plastic buckets that are normally for garden and grape harvest use. En route, I discovered that water had passed through the floor and ceiling above the ground floor as well and flooded the kitchen.

With buckets in place I did what I should have done in the first place, namely, isolate upper house water from the main water supply. This I did. Even then, the water that was still held between the space above plasterboard ceilings and floors continued to fall.

The next move was to locate our plumber to mend the broken pipe. I had made a guess as to its position and the fact that it was not connected to the central heating, which was still under pressure. Also, being warm, it must be connected to a hot water supply. But we had no reply from our plumber.

In the house there was now no heat, hot or cold water above ground floor level, and with only bucket water to flush lavatories. We mopped up the kitchen floor.

Before 6 o’clock the following morning I contacted the insurance company’s emergency number (John Lewis), which, in retrospect, I should have done immediately after turning off the water. Almost right away they sent their in-house plumber to solve the problem.

To locate the break, this excellent Portuguese plumber asked me to turn on the water once more (to cause another mini flood) so that he could put his ear to the floor to locate the noise of water flowing from the break. It did not take long but it was an unpleasant experience to see water once more flowing from plasterboard ceiling joints. Having located almost the exact area, it was then a case of lifting the carpet, cutting out a section of floorboard and finding that a right-angled, brass, compression joint fitting had come apart from a hot water pipe.

With the pipe mended, we could return to partial normality, but in a very wet house. As I write we await assessors to estimate the damage as wet carpets start to give out a mouldy smell.

What immense good fortune it was that someone was “at home” when the flow began, as without an immediate response, with doors and windows sealed against winter draughts, the house might well have just filled up with water.

And although pictures almost completely cover our walls, not one was damaged. And the electric lights, despite being soaked, continue to function normally.

Before leaving homes on a visit or holiday, people might think of turning off the mains water supply. Yet all of the above flooding happened when Margreet and I had just been out for a quick breakfast. It was sheer luck that someone was able to deal with it.

A pipe breaking like that must be a rare happening. But it did.

One's own books

To clarify the reason for writing this piece I have to start by repeating some already related items of my past. 

In the late 1970s I felt that I was becoming more of a sculptor of large wooden blocks than a painter, when a car accident and a broken wrist forced a change of direction for my creative processes.

  As I had, for years, been importing wine in cask, and bottling it for my own domestic use, and at the same time writing down what I had learned about vines and vinification, and had started two small vineyards of my own, it seemed natural that I might fill the void of journalism at that time concerning supermarket wines. They were then retailing at around £2 a bottle, and no one, to my knowledge, was informing the public about which ones were good to drink and good value to buy.

Starting first with a column in a free newspaper, then a weekly one in a proper, paid-for newspaper, then writing a small book on starting a vineyard in England, then other wine guide books and columns, membership of The Circle of Wine Writers… and on it went. I was enjoying the life of authorship. And it was going well.

The transition process from painting to sculpting and then on to writing had been minimal. They were, after all, much to do with ideas.

I wrote many books and articles over the next 25 years. They were mainly on wine, vines and docks, but other subjects as well.

For the last five books I established my own publishing company as “real” publishers found my target buyers in London’s dockland to be too localised to justify publication. But those five books, with 2,000 initial print runs, each made a profit within three months – somewhat of a record I imagine.

Having said what I wanted to say about wine and the London docks, it was time to return to painting once more.

Preamble over, what I want to say now is the surprising pleasure that I/we have found in getting rid of all the mainly dockland books that were not sold and, being out of print were piled up against a wall in our kitchen.

There have been days when authors gave away their books to the public to encourage reading. This made a wonderful outlet for many of the unsold paperbacks. Some recipients were suspicious, thinking that it was some sort of con or other. But mainly most books were received with pleasure both on our own and their behalf.

Our local Underground station now has a few shelves where books are placed to be read and returned. We have been supplying these shelves with my dockland paperbacks (three different ones at a time), and by the end of each delivery day, all have gone – none to be returned as far as we can see.

Then, whenever we visit such as hospital or dentist, the receptionist, doctor or assistant may be given a copy. Or perhaps a helpful girl on a supermarket check-out counter might be the recipient. They are well received.

Last evening, on returning from St Pancras Station, a far-eastern-looking young man got up in a crowded compartment to give me his seat. He was just finishing a very serious, religious-looking tome, and obviously relishing every gospel word. As a gesture of thanks, I managed to give him a copy of one of my own books. It had the very inappropriate title of “Cooking in Docklands” as he probably ate mostly curries, whereas my book dealt with the suet pudding kind of fare made by the wives of inter-war dockers. The three of us, he, Margreet and I, discussed religion as we progressed. He then gave us the book he had been reading (late 16^th century, heaven above and the devil below stuff), which must have been a treasure to him as the more important parts had been marked with a yellow dye pen. We parted as friends at our joint destination.

It is little incidents like this that have given us quite unexpected pleasures – gained from a pile of unwanted books that are still in pristine condition, but rather in the way.

Secret and Confidential

When throwing away old bank statements have you ever wondered if someone with a criminal mind might find them and use them for untoward activities?

My sister did, giving me a handful once in a while to shred in our domestic-size electric shredder.

This machine would accept three sheets at a time to produce a fluffy mix of finely shredded paper that we would share to add to our respective compost bins.

Not long after I married Margreet, who was working for a foreign embassy, she asked if I would like to shred some secret and confidential documents for, I think, a small remuneration. This I did willingly.

I was an ideal person to do the job of shredding secret government missives as I was quite ignorant of the language in which they were written.

I was able to feed their shredder with more documents at a time than the smaller one at home. Even then it was a slow, painstaking and dull job.

As I progressed, I suddenly saw a document in English. 

I am afraid that curiosity overtook my natural inclinations of confidentiality and probity to take a quick glance at its contents,

Surprisingly, the date on this secret document was somewhere in the 1930s.

My quick and surreptitious look might, I thought, reveal information on which the fate of nations had depended.

Its headline was “The Price of Irish Potatoes”.

The Weather

I have always been keen on the weather – sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes of necessity.

I suppose that I started this interest (which goes with that of aviation) when I was a boy. My father, being a farmer, kept a close eye on the weather for such as rain quantity, sowing, harvesting, planting and the rest.

Our family was keen on aviation, which was then in its infancy, though I believe my father only saw one aeroplane in the sky during WW1 when fighting the Turks in Mesopotamia.

He took us children to fly with Allen Cobham’s Flying Circus, which would take place in a local farmer’s field. On offer were flips in an Avro Tutor for 2/6 and with a loop-the-loop thrown in for 5/-. We also went to the Solent to see Supermarine seaplanes break airspeed records. My flying bible and most treasured book then was The Pictorial Flying Course, written by F/O W.E. Johns, the author of Biggles books. Copiously illustrated with line drawings, it told you almost everything you wanted to know about flying a biplane. As for the weather, avoid clouds. And should you see either snow or fog forming, get home as quickly as you can.

In good weather The King’s Cup Air Race’s flight path went almost over our house at Silchester, near Reading. Its mixture of private, fast and slow aircraft flew so low that one could usually see the pilots in their cockpits.

Kingsford Smith, that famous Australian aviator, was due to fly in to our large chicken field for a visit. So we laid out a landing T with sheets held down with stones, but, being unreliable, he never turned up, even though the weather was fine – a great disappointment.

All grass fields for aeroplanes in those days, had a landing T that ground crew pointed toward the direction from which the wind was blowing (windsocks, too, were also used). I imagine that it is the same now although I have not flown an aeroplane for many a day. Aircraft, even today, always take off or land into wind. This gives them maximum lift for their speed through the air.

In WW2 we used landing Ts and windsocks to determine wind direction when flying from grass fields in England and America. Having joined the RAF in 1942, after signing on, I had to wait for a vacancy for pilot training and took a job as a prop-swinger starting up Tiger Moth engines on an RAF training airfield by swinging their propellers.

We had no meteorological service then, so an instructor would fly upwind to see if the approaching weather was suitable for novice pilots (which meant no clouds). I often went along in the spare cockpit, and it was there that I learned the basic rudiments of flying an aeroplane. 

With those, and more sophisticated machines later, one’s life might well depend on understanding weather patterns and dangerous cloud formations.

That interest in meteorology has continued throughout my life.

Lying in bed early each morning I listen to noises outdoors. Chimes from the church clock may tell me of wind direction, its intensity and thickness of the air. In very cold or hot weather the resonant brittleness of the sound from footsteps on the pavement below gives me a good indication of what the day’s weather will be. Snow produces silence. The sounds of weather are very important.

On rising at around 6 o’clock in winter and much earlier in summer, I look out of my studio window over a London landscape of streets, pavements, roofs and trees. I see the direction in which aircraft are landing or taking off from Heathrow airport. This will only indicate if the prevailing wind is roughly from the east or west as the runways there run almost directly east-west. If it is a cross-wind, then the aircraft have to crab in to counteract drift. I look at the bending of twigs or leaves on trees to judge wind speed. Birds land into wind. I can see rime frost on house and car roofs. When aircraft are landing toward the west, if they are below cloud and visible when passing the line of our street, their altitude is 1,800’. Or if in cloud they may appear in sight just before landing at London airport. Then the cloud base is about 800’. If I never see them at all on their approach, then the cloud base is lower still. Gulls leave their feeding grounds on rubbish tips and head for the sea. But if the weather is stormy they fly inland.

As for weather forecasts, experience tells me that weather can change very quickly, fooling the pundits – however sophisticated their equipment. So I dismiss forecasts beyond a day or so, preferring to predict it myself. I rely on wind direction, cloud formation and type (high cirrus clouds, for instance, usually precede a warm front, culminating in low, rain-filled nimbostratus cloud). And with my back to the wind I know that the low pressure area is on my left hand side.

With so much interest to be had from the sky and what inhabits it, I think how lucky I am to live in England where our climate is so splendidly variable and unpredictable.

A Painting

Even before I start writing this piece I feel that it might be a long and very personal one. As it concerns the way I work at present, it could be of no interest to anyone but myself. So be warned should you wish to continue.

I favour working on a series theme. The present one is on “Events”. These may take minutes to complete – or months. All are done from happenings large or small (stories) that I set myself the task of turning thoughts of objects of interest and pleasure into a flat painting of two dimensions to hang on a wall (very old fashioned nowadays, I suppose).

For instance: one was done having witnessed a fight on the ground between a wood pigeon and a carrion crow. The pastel took minutes to do – quite a different matter to the present one that I describe here, which took four months, though interrupted by a bout of acute bronchitis that turned into whooping cough when a fight for life took precedence over artistic output.

My modus operandi is, after deciding on the event(s), or story, is to make drawings of the proposed ideas on scraps of used paper, then to progress to acid-free A4 paper for the application of line and then pastel colour. There may be several of these to retain or discard. Then, if thought to be satisfactory, I will progress to a work on a large, A1 edition (33” x 23 ¼”) (79.5 cm x 59 cm) on card. 

Small works are done usually at my desk in a little room (my studio) at the top of the house. This suits me as I have always favoured working in a small space. For the much larger A1s I kneel beside a bed where the card lies on brown paper pulled from a large roll of it at one end.

Also on the bed are several boxes of large pastels that contain roughly colours of the same kind.

I might at some time in the future abandon “Events” and strike out on another theme. Nature seems to dictate when these changes might happen. But for now it’s events.

At least I am my own master, with no-one asking or demanding what I might do, no galleries to provide for and no corporate artistic bodies to influence my work.

What my eyes have seen is the usual motivation for an event painting. After that everything comes from the brain – the imagination.

This imagination is mine alone, and although each process is very real to me, other people are sometimes mystified by the result. To my mind, that is the way of art. It may be self-indulgent, but it represents the special art world in which I live. What I produce is, I hope, grist to the imagination of others.

The just-finished painting, an A1 size Event, number 48, developed thus.

When our cleaner comes once a week to smarten up the house in her robust and rather forceful Polish way, we leave the house to her and have breakfast in our local, insalubrious café, called The Ritz (where our dustmen take their morning break). We have tried much of the breakfast fare on offer and have settled on a toasted brown bacon sandwich for Margreet and a plain white bacon sandwich for me. We drink builders’ tea.

After one such early breakfast, where we look out over busy, cosmopolitan  King Street, Hammersmith, we attended an evening birthday party, given by a retired banker cousin, at Brooks’s, the height of gentlemen’s clubs in St. James’s Street, off Piccadilly, London. The latter is a club where, in the 18^th century men gambled away their fortunes, estates and even wives.

So this painting (actually pastel), entitled From the Ritz to Brooks’s, was about a day’s event, starting at society’s lowest order and finishing at its highest. Such a contrast not only made a splendid event but an extreme contrast of pleasures that we experienced in one day – an event.

But how to present this as a painting of composition and colour? That was the problem (as it is with all works of art that flow from the mind).

I decided to start with The Ritz, which has its name engraved on the street window, and is seen in reverse from the inside. Across the road, in contrast, is a Sainsbury’s sign, seen as normal. Then there were cars on the street, people on the move, and us in the foreground with our bacon sandwiches and builders’ tea in mugs.

Drawings (compositions) were made, with avenues of thought in the form of lines. Then, on acid-free A4 sheets of paper, further developments, simplifications and colour added.

After those, I felt like combining them with my thoughts on the extremes, working directly on to a large A1 sheet of card.

As I think about the painting in operation night and day, I may suddenly alter and evolve it. Mostly this takes place very early in the morning when the mind and air are fresh and all is still, but can take place at any time.

The Brooks’s part of the painting had to include a grand, red-carpeted staircase, a crowd of people meeting and talking, large portraits of past worthies, long, black limousines and a factotum on watch.

Then, when the piece was finished, it had to be fixed, as pastel chalk would smudge, fall from the board and get everywhere. This I do on dry flagstones in the garden with special spray. As it had rained for a few weeks I had to wait for the weather to change before sealing it.

Then, after the pastel was fixed, the piece had to be signed, dated and studio stamped with the reference code.

From this account the painting sounds like a very complicated one. But it is, in fact, rather simple and stark.

Is it a good, bad, or indifferent work? An artist never knows as we think that each one is good – otherwise we wouldn’t be artists doing what we do as part of our being.

So what is considered to be one’s success (or failure) as an artist? Does it depend on demand and high prices at auction or the number of solo exhibitions achieved? Is it the close connection with a well-known gallery or the number of private buyers interested in their work? Might it be satisfied owners, public purchases, or good reviews? Or could it be income from sales, notoriety, or demand from foreign buyers? Yet again it could be membership of an artistic corporation or consistency of style. It could be any or all of the above that go to form an individual’s or critic’s opinion of success or failure.

As for the artists, they carry on doing their best and, hopefully, enjoying what they do. They can do no more.

Community

I once worked in the theatre painting scenery at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, designing sets for repertory, touring shows, and even pantomime and ice shows.

At some time in this life of illusion I had to deliver a manuscript to Alec Guinness.

He then lived in a late Georgian square in Hammersmith. I was surprised and delighted to discover an area of London that seemed to be an ideal place in which to live. At that time I was in residence and rebuilding a bombed-out house in Fulham, right beside the Chelsea football ground. In time, noise, regular isolation on match days, and then the over-abundance of home games all became drawbacks to life there.

Time passed in many interesting ways until I needed to return to London from life in the Hampshire countryside. But where to look for a home? Why, near to that square in Hammersmith, of course.

A small house in the district suited me. Depending on the approval of my youngest son, I bought it – at a time when property prices were in a trough and, by present standards, low.

There was little to do structurally as the owners had done it up for sale – installing gold taps in the bathrooms, for instance.

But they had employed a lousy electrician. Although one could switch on the lights to climb the stairs, there was no way of turning them off having reached either the first or second floors.

Our street’s cars were possibly a couple of beat-up Fords. My soft-top VW not only looked rather out of place, but was vulnerable at that time to having its roof slashed by vandals.

I then knew most of the residents who lived in our street, many of whom were renting from a property landlord on a long term, sitting tenant basis.

What has prompted this blog is that Margreet and I have just returned from friends in a neighbouring road who were celebrating having lived there for fifty years.

We were almost newcomers among our fellow guests, having been residents nearby for only 29 years.

I wonder if there are many enclaves in London where residents are as happy as we and they are, and would not think of leaving voluntarily to live in another district.

But there have been naturally many changes over our years of occupancy.

Neighbouring houses have been bought to let. So their temporary occupants move on and have never had time to become part of our community. They are transient. Even those renters who we get to know move on and are lost, except possibly for a welcome Christmas card.

And there have always been at least one, two, or even three complete misfits around (I’m sure every street has them) who, for one reason or another, dislike the neighbours or the close community and continue to live among us, but apart.

One hopes that community bonds of friendship are not formed by class, breeding, nationality, birth, history, fortune, ancestry, accent, race, religion, origins, upbringing, occupation, schooling, or any other such mark of identity.

When I was a child in the country, it was thought that you became part of our village only after living there for at least 25 years.

So perhaps, even today, close communities are still formed mainly by the seemingly outdated idea of long residency.

Salisbury

With this first blog of the year, I would like to wish all my readers a very Happy and Healthy New Year.

Salisbury

The daughter of a couple that met at one of our tennis parties in the country when I was a child, died.

Her memorial service was to take place in Salisbury Cathedral, around which is a lovely Close, where she had lived.

We were asked to say if we were going to attend – in view of the catering arrangements.

The “catering arrangements” part sounded good. But beside our attendance to remember this very nice person, we wanted to visit the Cathedral for Margreet to see the Page-Roberts stained glass window there.

So down we go by rail, have lunch at an inn, and take seats in the body of that wondrous, Early English Gothic, medieval cathedral. Conducting the service were two clerics (not in full drag I’m glad to say).

The choir sang beautifully. The setting was magnificent.

In an address from a pulpit by a son of the deceased, he mentioned that on her death she wanted no fuss. And here we were at about the grandest memorial service one could imagine, in defiance of her wishes. So having been told that we might meet in the afterlife, those who arranged this grand farewell might well approach her in Heaven with caution.

After the service we repaired to a medieval hall to enjoy the catering – of tea and egg or tomato sandwiches. It was nice to meet some old friends.

We retreated, and returned to the cathedral to find the P-R window.

Walk the length on the right hand side until you must turn left, and the window faces you across the nave.

It has the merit of containing much clear glass, so admitting plenty of light. Its pictorial element is of biblical scenes executed in the Pre-Raphaelite manner.

At the bottom of the window it says: To the Glory of God and Remembrance of the Very Reverend Page-Roberts, Dean of the Cathedral from 1908 – 1919, and of his wife Margaret Grace.

That done, we returned to London, parched but not hungry, for a generous and very welcome memorial glass. 

Chance meetings

Meeting new people, however briefly, is one of the pleasures of life.

You may never see them again, but in a short time you are transported to another life, new thoughts, other modes of existence, ideas foreign to your own and so on. Sometimes a longer friendship is formed from a chance meeting or encounter, and they are often the strongest.

It is generally at parties that these meetings take place, but often by absolute chance, on the street, in a queue, at an accident, a waiting room, or just with a congenial-looking stranger.

One such meeting has happened recently.

At a smart auction house’s private view we paused at one of those typical Elizabeth Frink bronze heads, near to a man who was staring at it and smiling.

This person did not seem to be quite the normal posh purchaser of expensive art. So we talked.

He came from the West Country and, as a rugby football enthusiast, had found this sculpted head to be not unlike that of a fellow member in his club’s scrum. He, too, reminded me a bit of a front row scummager.

In asking him about his life he said that he was in London to sell a Churchill. This was information that hardly registered with us in the course of our conversation. 

Anyhow, we got on splendidly. I gave him my card in case he would like a 6 o’clock drink when next he visited the big city. We thought of it no more.

Then an email arrived from our rugby-following acquaintance to say that it was so nice to talk with us at the private view and that he would, one day, take us up on our offer. He had spent several hours reading my blogs and, as he was a countryman, especially enjoyed one when I had, in an open car, been showered with cow’s urine when passing a cattle truck on the road.

A short time afterwards I read a short piece in our newspaper saying that a Sir Winston Churchill painting, with an estimate of eighty thousand pounds had been sold at auction for over three hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

Could our newly-made friend have been the very seller of the last painting done by Sir Winston Churchill, which, before the great man’s death, been given to his personal bodyguard of many years?

We looked at the surname on his email. And, sure enough, he was in all probability the seller of the painting given to his father by Sir Winston.

Yes, meeting new people, however briefly, is one of the pleasures of life.

Mumbo Jumbo?

Other people’s ill health is of great interest to them, but in offering sympathy one is inwardly only too glad not to be suffering the same ailment. And too much detail proffered can become a bore.

So, I am about to bore you with my own case – but with a very good reason. I will be as brief as possible.

I get bronchitis every winter. In 2017 it came early, in late autumn, and was exceptionally bad, with a lot of coughing accompanied by noisy and involuntary gasps – not to mention a profusion of expectoration – horrible.

I awoke early one morning at about 3.30 o’clock unable to either breathe or speak. Margreet woke to find me unable to communicate and thought I had gone mad. I really thought it was my end. When it cleared, after quite a few seconds that felt like minutes, we rushed to A&E to discover the position and the chance of further blockage re-appearing. I was told to take an anti-biotic and sent home.

The same thing happened three more times over the next few days, the last after I had eaten some halva.

Nights were miserable and sleepless. I walked wrote, read, drew – all to keep as clear as possible from the expectoration that was non-stop when lying down.

Now, Margreet is a qualified reflexologist among other attributes. She had given me this foot massage in the past and afterwards it produced a lovely feeling of floating on air when I walked. She suggested that she give me treatment directed at lungs and throat.

I regret to say that however nice the treatment had been in the past, I had rather thought it to be a bit mumbo jumbo. But I welcomed a try.

After the first evening session I was able to sleep a bit. After the next I could sleep more. After the third I could sleep through the full night. And the expectoration was greatly reduced.

If I was sceptical before about the benefits of reflexology, I am no longer. That’s what I wanted to say. 

As for the related blockages – well, that, as I wrote initially, is someone else’s boring health problem.

Cars

In a magazine section of a current newspaper there is a piece about people and the cars they have owned. And although I have taken a rough interest in the mechanics of the cars that I have owned, it is the happenings connected with those cars that are of more interest.

After the war, in the late 1940s, my brother, an engineer, was working in a town where a mechanic was assembling cars from more or less whatever automotive parts that came to hand. I asked if he could make a sort of sports car for me. Which he did, and I bought it.

This car was constructed mainly from Austin 7 parts – triangular chassis, engine, steering and brakes. It could seat two, had a rudimentary canvas roof, and an outside exhaust that ducted the gasses close to the ear of my passenger. Girls would climb in at the peril of being burnt. The car represented freedom, fun, sometimes envy, and often incredulity. I added a sign on the radiator “Austin of England” and replaced the radiator-filling cap with an antique temperature gauge, visible from the driver’s seat. It went like a bomb (or rather felt like it) but was the very devil to stop – so a bit dangerous. Brakes were not too good in those days, and in an Austin 7 particularly so.

I had been invited to stay in Norfolk, and was passing an open truck where cows had been packed athwartships, when one of them decided to relieve herself. I was soaked in herbivore urine. It was not an ideal way for a guest to arrive for the weekend.

Still owning the same car, I had entertained fellow ushers at a London wedding, and was leading them on the road to the evening’s festivities, when a lamp post jumped out in front of me. I left the car where it stood and now cannot remember how it was returned to me. The car was never the same again, becoming unstable at speed.

I then belonged to the 750 Formula Motor Club and, at a meeting of enthusiasts, asked Colin Chapman, of Lotus, if he could diagnose the trouble. But he was unable to do so.

I sold the car to someone in the City, being rather fearful that there would be recriminations. The buyer contacted me on a small matter, so I asked him how he was getting along with the car and how fast he had taken it. “I don’t go over 30 miles an hour”, he replied.  

My next car was a very early MG, given to me by a cousin. It was a real sports car, but unreliable. I was rather proud of myself in substituting a tin disk instead of an open universal joint, to stop oil from leaking from an overhead camshaft into its magneto. This was an effective cure, but made rather an oily mess inside the bonnet. I got tired of having to stop and tinker with it with girls aboard, and gave it away in the spirit with which I had received it. The car went to a Norfolk family and disappeared.

I was working on painting scenery for theatrical touring shows, The Royal Opera House, television (in black and white then), children’s theatre and repertory, which gave me a chance in between jobs to create an all-purpose vehicle to take on a grand tour of Europe.

The basis for this rather unique vehicle was a well-used Ford 8, builder’s flat-back van. On it I attached a moulded covering of ply and, on the roof above the most comfortably designed of two seats, I attached ships’ ventilation air scoops made of copper. They faced forward to duct in air (if uncorked) and backward when it rained.

The car, unused to the post-war rough roads of Europe, needed fairly regular mechanical help from local peasantry – countrymen who exhibited a wonderful range of basic skills. Which was a fine way of meeting people.

After France and Spain, I was driving across northern Italy on a hot day, when a bee was scooped up by an overhead air duct and ended up in my shorts. A quick look in the rear-view mirror revealed several distressed cyclists.

The car was fitted out with sleeping and cooking facilities, food, wine and all the rest. But, after a while, starting the engine was a problem. This meant that nights had to be endured at an angle on steep slopes – to get the car moving in order to start the engine in the morning.

An emergency pot of money, left with a friend in Paris, went with her on holiday. So I had to sell things to be able to re-cross the Channel on my way home.

I had been painting scenery for a pantomime in York and was in a rush to get back to London. Now it so happened that I painted in an all-covering garment that I had cut from theatre canvas and stuck together with rubber adhesive. It was my paint-spattered, scenery-painting costume, and had the air of religion about it. Also, when painting scenery I used colour from old china chamber pots, as they were designed not to spill. Dressed in this painting kit and with pots of liquid paint aboard, I set off for home directly after work on a cold and snowy day. A moronic lorry driver decided to turn his truck around on a main road and right in front of me. Jamming on the brakes on an icy surface hardly slowed me down. So there was a bang, and paint shot everywhere from those pots, including over me. I imagine that the sight surprised the helpful witnesses.

The car took the fancy of a Scottish laird, who bought it for his estate.

A Citroën 2CV came next as it coped beautifully with the rough and overgrown lane leading to my studio house in the Berkshire Downs (and it whistled to the south of France and back, loving its own native country).

Then later, as I was working toward an exhibition of large sculptures in elm wood, a Citroën Ami 8 was able to do the same as the 2CV but with much more room for works of art. So I swapped it for its sister car, a station wagon type that had all the imaginative, idiosyncratic and innovative ideas of its predecessor, but without the centrifugal clutch. This did me well until a lorry driver, entering my main road from a side road, failed to see me behind his rear-view mirror. He was most apologetic and took full responsibility for the accident. But it left me with a broken wrist, which was the jumping-off point for a change of career. I then wrote articles and books for the next 25 years.

My last car was a splendid VW cabriolet that somehow retained the pleasant scent of its previous owner. The car’s only fault was its dislike of dealing with deep puddles – when the engine became flooded and cut out. It impressed a Russian eye specialist with its speed on our smooth roads. And when viewing the thatched houses of the rich from its open top, thought that the owners of these abodes must be peasants who could only afford to cover their houses with straw.

In London, some 30 years ago, in a street of perhaps a battered Ford or two, the VW’s soft-top was susceptible to vandalism. So, with excellent public transport nearby, and with Margreet’s Embassy number-plates on her own car, I gave the VW to my elder son. Of its demise I heard nothing.

Since Margreet’s retirement we also did away with the RAV4 after many years of smooth driving. 

Cars have their stories. 

Residual sugar in wine

On the advice of a merchant I bought (for me) a fairly expensive red wine, made in Australia’s Barossa Valley.

Looking at the back label, with its customary descriptive blurb of “berry fruits”, “plum”, “blackberries”, “chocolate”, “vanilla” and all the rest that someone thought up, I saw that the alcohol content was a stonking 14.5%.

In my view that is too high, with the alcohol overpowering those “berry fruits”. It was dry on the palate.

I took its residual sugar content. This was 8%, which should have made it a normally balanced wine. It was the tannin content that made it taste like a dry red wine.

Unaware of the tannin content, I had bought a wine that was happier to be more of a laying-down wine than one for present-day drinking. They might have mentioned this with the “berry” fruits business. Its tannins would have softened in time and brought the wine into balance, making it a fine wine.

It must have been very hot in the Barossa Valley that vintage year, with the grapes producing a lot of sugar. Even if the winemakers had stopped the fermentation earlier to reduce alcohol content, the resultant wine would have been too sweet on the palate. So 14.5% it was.

In Europe, we seldom get the very hot weather that produces too much sugar in the grapes. Here it is often the opposite, demanding added sugar to produce enough alcohol for pleasurable drinking and preservation.

I usually add sugar to my own vintages in London, aiming for around 22% before vinification (Port is about 20%), and fermenting the wine out to contain about 6% residual sugar.

I could stop fermentation of the sweetened must for the wine to contain more sweetness and less alcohol by adding sulphur, or even fine filtering (to get rid of the yeast) if I had the equipment. But I rather like to leave the whole process to nature.

As for the adding of sugar at fermentation time, French authorities, when I wrote professionally on wine anyway, designated that those winemakers below a certain latitude, were not allowed to add it. At that time, a pied noir, kicked out of Algeria, bought a vineyard in Bas Médoc, well south of the designated latitude, and  wondered why his wines were not as good as those made by his neighbours. That was, until he was woken at night by sugar tankers passing by to help improve those neighbour’s wines. He then started to make good wine.

Wine is often blended at source. I do as well, as my own red gets down to around 6% sugar. That is a bit too dry for it, so I have no compunction about mixing it in a decanter with a sweeter red – to the benefit of both.

Commercial winemaking is just another business where the weather is a major element and fortunes can be made or lost. So a certain amount of manipulation by the professional and the amateur when making wine is commonplace.

Dry whites and rosé wines usually have around 7% residual sugar content, reds anything between 6% to 9% - the successful results depending on body, tannin, sweetness and acidity. As for the wine’s acidity, this can also be added to wine, especially in hot climates, in order to produce a successful product.

Out of all this, it seems extraordinary to me that, combined with other factors, the differences between dryness and sweetness in table wines should depend upon such small differences (about 6%) in the wines’ residual sugar content.V

Fear in War

It was when applying for another war medal (one that was never sent to me, and not one for gallantry) that I was asked if I had ever been frightened during my wartime service in the RAF.

My first encounter with the enemy was when, after joining up and waiting for flying training, I took a job as a farm labourer. Food was in short supply. I was helping the war effort and experiencing farm life.

When hoeing weeds in the middle of a field, a German JU88 bomber flew over me at just above treetop level and banked on its way to bomb Reading railway station (it actually missed the station and destroyed a school and killed many children). I could see the pilot and rear cockpit gunner quite clearly. The gunner must equally have seen me. But they were trying to navigate in foreign territory at low level so had little time to waste by shooting up a simple farm labourer. It all happened so quickly. Was I frightened? It was far too sudden and unexpected an incident to generate fear.

Then, going on leave to London, and near to the capital, the train I was in came to a halt in an air raid. Searchlights scanned the night sky to look for the enemy  bombers. Anti-aircraft guns were in action. But no bombs fell nearby. Was I frightened? I wrote about it to a friend in America saying that I would not have missed it for anything. So I certainly could not have been frightened then.

Waiting at RAF Hornchurch, on the fringes of London in Essex, while waiting for a posting to Flying Training School in America, I volunteered to mend roofs in the much-bombed East End, London district of Plumstead. I was on a slate roof mending it when one of the first German rockets landed in the vicinity. It was just a loud bang. The rocket, being supersonic, the swooshing noise of its arrival came after the rocket’s ground explosion. Was I frightened? I didn’t even know then that the explosion was caused by a rocket.

On leave in London, buzzbombs detonated around with some regularity.

These flying bombs were powered by a pulse jet engine and made a loud, pulsating, growling sound.

If one was still making its noise when overhead, all was well. It would land elsewhere. But if the engine cut out just before arriving, you took shelter – in our case, when living in a flat in Victoria, under a strong table. In a bath one just hoped to hear the bomb fly over. Was I afraid? Sometimes apprehensive for sure.

Crashing a PT19 training aircraft in Oklahoma, USA, was a time when I could have expected to be frightened. But I imagine that trying to work out how to get down in one piece gave me little time for fear. I landed in one piece, the aeroplane in several.

Flying in Coastal Command from RAF Davidstow Moor, Cornwall, in twin-engined Vickers Warwick aircraft, and blessed with wonderful eyesight, I spotted a German Fokke-Wulf aeroplane as a dot in the far distance. Alerting those on board through the intercom, we dived to just above sea level and headed for home. They can’t have seen us. With our 303 machineguns we were virtually defenceless and no match whatsoever for such a fast and powerful enemy aircraft bristling with substantial cannons. Was I afraid? It was simply part of a job that I loved doing, and it did break up the monotony of long operational flights in a very noisy and cumbersome machine. I don’t think that any of us on board experienced fear. And after each sortie we were guaranteed a fried egg in the mess on our return.

On RAF airfields, latrines were in huts dotted around the place (some for men, some for women). One day, at Davidstow Moor, I was going about my business and had need of a lavatory. There was one nearby, which turned out to be the cleanest that I had so far encountered on the station. After sitting down I heard a woman cough in a nearby cubicle. Now, being caught in a women’s lavatory was a court martial offence. It could have been the end of my RAF career if I was discovered. I dressed, crept to the door, exited, and walked away as nonchalantly as possible. No one saw me.

So yes. I really did experience fear in wartime – in a ladies lavatory.

Mistletoe update

You might recall my blog on mistletoe. It told how, without success, I tried over the years to “plant” the soft berries of this parasite into junctures of spurs growing from our small apple tree in a pot.

I then, two months after Christmas, found some dried berries clinging to mistletoe twigs in a builder’s skip, and planted them – again without success. So I reluctantly gave up the struggle.

Then, two years later, a small mistletoe shoot sprang out through the tree’s bark an inch or two below where I had planted seed toward the top of the tree.

It was a great day – a celebration day. I had succeeded after many years of failure. But there were no berries attached to the branch.

Twelve months later another bunch of mistletoe appeared below the first one. And after yet another year a third lot appeared low down near to the earth in the pot. But there were still no berries.

Fast-forward another three years – until this 2017 spring. And there, at last, on the lowest and most recent branch, lovely little flowers were opening where new growth usually takes place.

Mistletoe clearly has a mind of its own, and likes to surprise – even hiding its sex for a while.

Anyhow, it looks as if one of those dried berries was a female one. Roll on 

Christmas.

Art, to Birds, to Moths, to Soup

My art goes in tangents. A theme comes to me and I create pictures on the subject until I have squeezed out all the imaginative and often rather abstract ideas that I have about it. Immediately I begin to tire of the theme I stop. Then I wait until another theme presents itself.

The last series was tremendous fun – enjoyment being essential. It was called “Events”.

It started when Margreet and I witnessed a fight on the street between a carrion crow and a wood pigeon. It was an extraordinary event, with the pigeon giving as good as it got. We think that the crow was trying to rob the pigeon’s nest of eggs or young. We were unable to stay for the result.

Then I made a mobile of brightly delineated fish for Margreet’s niece’s baby. The variously-designed, almost pantomime fish, were suspended on strings from a corrugated cardboard rectangle. They dived and climbed as the cardboard was twisted. On top were painted clouds and an aeroplane with its wings being formed from an old stuck-on address label. To distract the baby with swimming fish at changing time represented an event. 

Then I made another of flying birds for another baby.

With these two mobiles being the core of the series. I added silhouettes of both of us, and of a television friend and myself playing with a Stirling engine. Interesting compositions of multiple events were beginning to appear.

A series of glasses were broken at home. A chessboard was knocked over with the pieces all over the place. So on it went with combined events, starting from that pigeon fight and ending with a remembrance of a friend and neighbour who loved catching salmon in her lifetime. This last work has a “real” salmon, as opposed to my stylised fish, much in evidence. Being of greater importance than the “mobile” fish, it crashes into the picture dispersing fish and birds, chessboard and pieces.

Good art should involve the imagination of the artist and that of the viewer. Now I have just given away rather too many of my thoughts on this particular tangent.

So here I am, with a theme ended, and putting pen to paper before another tangential theme comes to mind to be interpreted in I hope an imaginative way, bright in colour, and pleasing in design.

*****

Each year a pair of great tits nest in a box that I made, painted as brickwork, and attached to the wall on the Eastern side of our London house. So it was most upsetting this year when our regular pair started their nesting rituals and then deserted. Perhaps one, or both, were killed by cats.

With the box unused, I cleared out what little grassy stuff had been used, on the assumption that if another pair would fancy using the box in late spring, the female partner might not want to share the same bedding as the previous incumbent. And lo and behold, when almost summer, and with other nestlings beginning to take wing, a new pair of great tits took over the abode. Perhaps their earlier nest of eggs or young had been robbed by bird or beast. Anyhow, once more we had a couple to share our home with us. And we are very pleased about it.

*****  

Followers of these blogs will recall my contest with clothes moths.

Early last year, having seen only one or two moths flying around, I distributed pheromone-impregnated sticky pad traps around the house, and caught 158 moths all together from March to March. But the count from only March to May this year has already totalled 131. This would imply that springtime is the most active time (mating presumably) for clothes moths to be on the wing, and that by catching so many this year already, they are still in control. And I thought that by catching a good quantity of males, females or both last year I was getting near to solving the problem. Yet despite there being so many moths around the place, only a very few holes, eaten by their maggots, have been found among our clothes. What’s happening?

The success of the pads would seem to depend upon where they are positioned in a room, with one being more successful than the others.

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Our soups are much enjoyed by all who partake of them.

They are made and eaten throughout the winter and much of the rest of the year. So they are generally on the hob.

These delicious brews almost always start with chopped onion or leek, braised in plenty of butter. This is done in a large pressure cooker. The leek, or onion, or both, is followed by finely cubed potatoes, stock or crumbled stock cubes, pepper and salt and water. I give it 20 minutes under pressure. That's it. A friend of years ago (Bernard Venables, the fisherman) ate this soup every day of his life, but with mace added.

That is the basic soup, and excellent it is. But it is the additions that make it exceptional. These consist of about every dish that has not been finished – like the remains of sauces, gravy, water used for boiling other things, the washing out of Marmite and Bovril pots, vegetables, leftovers from stews and casseroles, pan juices, mayonnaise, pasta, rice, peanut butter, and all possible remainders that might add flavour or consistency.

When meat or roughage food is to be added, I put it through the soup Mouli first. This allows juices to be squeezed out of fibrous matter (it might need chopping up first with kitchen scissors). The fibre, being almost flavourless, is discarded – or composted if not derivative of meat (which could attract vermin).

To thicken soup I sometimes use a Mouli or liquidiser on some or all of its volume. Or, if it is a white soup, I make and add some white sauce.

If you are making a mushroom soup, and cooking chopped onion and chopped mushrooms with some chopped potato with stock before boiling it, make a white sauce and whisk this in when the initial soup has been cooked.

And should you have tomato soup in mind, use chopped tomatoes from a can and tomato purée with stock cubes or stock, possibly adding white sauce to make it a creamy one. But remember to add a little sugar when using tomato purée.

Should flour or cereal (like pearl barley) be part of your soup, stir it regularly when heating it up to stop it from catching. And the soup must be brought to the boil each day to prevent fermentation. Should you forget to do this daily chore, and wild yeasts have started their work, bring the soup to the rolling boil, and, as Mrs.Beeton wrote: ”Scum it clear as anything rises”.

Many of our soups end as a sort of Mulligatawny by adding curry powder to it.

Stock is important. I might add several cubes, both beef and chicken. But my favourite stock and start to a soup is to buy pigs’ trotters and pressure cook them in water with flavourings for about an hour and a half. In this case, when the liquid is cool, strain off the solids from the liquid stock and separate the gelatinous flesh from bones. Put this meat into a bread tin with chopped onion, capers, sliced cornichons, and pepper and salt. Reduce some soup liquid by adding a little vinegar, boiling and evaporating it, and pouring the result over the trotter meat. Eat this cold and solid with a little olive oil and chopped fresh coriander. Or put it into sandwiches. This rustic dish is not to everyone’s taste. Margreet dares hardly to even look at it. But she agrees that the stock made in this way is wonderful.