An artist, like myself, who uses imagination in preference to producing pictures derived from what is in front of me, spends much time, night and day, in thought. And those thoughts are not always connected with the art in progress, but are often triggered by it or perhaps by general conversation. So there is a lot going on in an artist's head when he or she is not actually painting, sculpting or whatever.
Yesterday, for instance, my thoughts crossed from bidets to old aeroplanes to punishment, besides deciding that I would have to clean several pastels after finishing a composition that relates to a dog knocking over my first baby.
When using or just looking at a bidet, I keep reminding myself what a wonderful object it is. The French have realised this for years.
As an impecunious student I would seek out saucy 18th century coloured French prints of the goings on in bedchambers, often aided by a maid with a hidden gentleman looking on. Framed, they adorned my lavatory in the country. I bought them for a pittance from those sort-of sheds on the banks of the Seine in Paris. Many scenes featured a bidet, and used, as had always been the case, primarily to refresh and clean one's intimate parts. When leaving the countryside to return to London, these coloured prints fetched a surprisingly grand sum at auction.
The house I acquired in Hammersmith did not have a bidet, but a woman in the adjoining street, who had also bought at the same time, did have one, which she thoroughly disliked. So I had it plumbed in to my house - to our mutual satisfaction.
Not all French people find bidets essential to lower-body cleanliness, as the owner of the hotel in which we always stayed in Dieppe, had all the bidets in his hotel dispensed with. We have not returned there.
I then found myself thinking about weather and aeroplanes (they are close connected, but not in any way with bidets).
I rise early in the mornings, earlier in summer, and look out at the weather. I want to see what is happening with wind direction and speed, rain, clouds, frost, snow, ice, dew, the changing seasons, birds, and especially aeroplanes. I like to know which runway is in use when aircraft approach Heathrow from the East. Once a pilot, such observations become habitual and at times life-dependant.
Sadly, the shapes and variety of aircraft are merging into the form of an elegant body and two jet engines. Those with four engines seem to be out of favour as being less commercially economical.
I was pondering about which aircraft I had flown or been flown in that were a pleasure to the eye. I settled on the 1938, four-engined Ensign - now virtually forgotten. And for glorious eccentricity the obvious choice would be the 1931 HP 42, four-engined biplane. The large machine, that always looked to me as if it was a bit bent in the middle, flew from Croydon Aerodrome in London to Le Bourget in Paris. It travelled at a stately 100 miles an hour, giving its 40 passengers plenty of time to be served Champagne by the stewards. These aeroplanes were utterly reliable, but had one been in trouble it could have easily landed in a field, be mended, and then taken off again.
I suppose that thinking of 1930s aeroplanes took my mind back to school when I first took to the air as a child passenger in an Avro Tutor.
The water to flush the tiled urinary wall at school was housed high up in an iron cistern. With strong stomach muscles I was able to pee into it from floor level (boys will be boys). Word must have reached the headmaster about this misdemeanour. I was summoned to his office, short trousers down, bend over, swish, swish, swish, pain, trousers back on and return to class.
The red and blue welts crossing one's behind were almost a badge of courage and pride, being much admired by ones fellow students.
Some schools, founded in times past, were geared not just to educate but to toughen up the boys (no girls at this school) to prepare them for running the Empire. Margreet. who is Dutch, thought that this treatment was most barbaric. We accepted it - had to.
