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. 

 

WIND SPEED AND DIRECTION

 

Ever since childhood I have been mad on aeroplanes and flying in them. I even still have an early 1930s book I bought on how to fly an aeroplane, written by W.E. Johns (who wrote the Biggles books).  It is called The Pictorial Flying Course.

The principles of flight since then have hardly changed. The aerodynamics still encompass lift, weight, thrust and drag.

In those far off days aeroplanes were biplanes and airports were grass fields (like London’s main airport, Croydon Aerodrome). 

To enable an aeroplane to fly then as now, it needs a wing (or wings) with the curved shape of an aerofoil section to provide lift. And despite immensely powerful jet engines they still use nature’s wind speed for taking off and landing (as do birds).

So, since those Biggles days, pilots have needed to know the wind direction enabling them to take off into the air quickly (into wind) and land slowly and safely (also into wind). So then, as now, a weathervane of some sort is needed.

In those olden grass field days, before landing, a pilot in the air needed to know the wind direction. So someone on the ground looked at a weathervane and rotated a large letter T and pointed the cross-piece toward the breeze. Then the pilot could look down and land into wind. Radio communication now covers the visual side of things, but a weathervane is still needed.

I once had a job as a prop-swinger, starting up the engines of Tigermoth biplanes for trainee pilots.  A weathervane or T indicator mounted just above ground level told us the wind direction for takeoffs and, from the air the T for the pilots to land. With cross winds we might have to run along beside the biplane holding on to the wing-tip to prevent the aircraft from tipping over.

There was no weather forecasting in those wartime days, so to prevent the disaster of  pupils killing themselves, an experienced pilot would refer to a weathervane and fly upwind for a period of time to ensure that good, cloud-free weather would arrive. He would then fly back over the field and stick his arm out into the strong slipstream with his thumb up. Then off would go the students until each could fly solo. (I went through it all later when learning to fly.)

Having bought a house on a hill north of Andover, in Hampshire, and when writing, running a house, garden and children, I decided to design (for myself) some weathervanes using different designs and methods of rotation. 

It was not the first time for me, since soon after the war I designed and helped to built a studio house, and decided to top it off with a weathervane in the shape of a rose (a family flower.) Made of copper, lead and iron rod, it turned out to be too large for the house and was discarded. (Years later it was recovered from a hedge and exists now as a wall decoration in someone’s house.)

My new experimental weathervanes were mainly based on sheet copper, copper tube and reinforcing rod, the most successful being a rather nasty-looking cottage garden or seaside type of a four bladed propeller with a simple vane. It not only worked splendidly but also indicated wind speed, and did both right in my garden for all to see on a fruit cage corner post. 

However, the most interesting and fun one was made from a swivelling plastic drainpipe with a vane at one end and at the other a large plastic funnel, stuck in with glue. It was to attract animal and bird life to the garden and food. To do this an ultrasonic dog whistle was fixed to the funnel’s spout end. Thus, always turning into wind, the air would be scooped in through the funnel’s wide opening to blow the whistle.

The idea was fun but was impossible to discover if it ever worked, as our ears are not tuned into the frequency of noise that wild creatures are able to hear.

But it was successful for one creature - a spider, who strung its web over the funnel’s opening to catch its prey from the incoming wind. But it also made its home in the funnel’s tube, blokking it. This object had succeeded in indicating wind direction and gave a spider an excellent home with its meals blown into its web on the wind. So, in one way, it may have been successful and not in another. 

My weathervanes were as nothing compared with one used by the Admiralty in Whitehall, London. It is a roof weathervane with a spindle stretching downward to the grand ceiling of a room with an internal weathervane on the ceiling directly beneath it. Here, Admirals could see if favourable winds would aid our navy to set sail and beat up the French, Dutch and Spanish Gallions.

I did much the same in my dockland home and added to the ceiling a painted map of the Thames to make wind direction more clearly related to the landscape.

There was, with mine, the added pleasure of attaching Christmas decorations to the internal pointer, swinging silver balls around as the wind outside eddied and changed direction.

Weathervanes are sometimes necessary and their design often imaginative and usually fun. 

A WATERBIRD

I had been invited to stay at a grand country house by a friend high up in the art world and in the City. 

The occasion was a shoot, were the important and rich would set out in the morning after breakfast with their guns, loaders, dogs and wives.

The whole occasion appeared to be rather haphazard, but, in fact, was highly organised.

Breakfast in the “big house” was probably a little more elaborate than was usual. There was kedgeree, bacon, eggs, sausages, cold pheasant and partridge. Porridge, was there, too, for those who might like it, served with local cream.

My place in this jamboree of nature and slaughter was quite clear. I was a beater among locals, yokels and farm workers, but not quite, as I had orders to walk behind the beaters who rattled sticks on trees to make pheasants fly. I was to shoot any birds that cleverly flew away from and not over the invited “guns” but back over me (lucky birds).

We were a merry crowd us beaters from all layers of society and in great spirits.

We were to be traditionally correct by keeping our lines straight, under the orders of the head keeper.

The banter, tapping of trees and bushes with sticks, and voices urgeing birds to fly was all amid the delicious smell of winter woodland, of dead leaves and wet earth. It was just lovely.

The weather was cold and dry, as hoped for, and our dress was appropriate, being Wellingtons, heavy socks, jeans, sweaters, warm coats, and many outrageous hats that gave character to their wearers.

Our host was ahead in his large Range Rover and having trouble getting out of the muddy mire to firmer ground on the far side.

We beaters were perched on straw bales in a wagon towed by a tractor, behind the Range Rover.

We watched as our host’s car wallowed in the mud.

       Then someone noticed that below us and to the side was a wire cage, and inside this cage was a bird - a lovely and exotic-looking dark bird with slightly curved reddish beak and large feet, one that I had never seen before. It was a water rail, now caught in a trap, set for the voracious mink that, during that time, and probably now, was killing off much of England’s natural furred and feathered wildlife. 

We all wanted to relase that lovely creature, but we were under the head keepers orders. 

At last, when our host reached dry land, he was told of the water rail and was furious that no-one had gone to free it.

The head keeper then arranged for someone to set the bird free, which ran away, flapping its wings and with its big feet hanging down, to live another day in the freedom of its boggy world.  

A140