Crossing the Atlantic by Ship in War time

 I crossed the Atlantic Ocean four times during World War 2. Well, the last time was when the European war was over but the Pacific war raged, thus making the fourth Atlantic crossing a safe one.

In 1940, when I was 15 years old and at school, my mother heard of an American family who wanted to give safe shelter to an English refugee. Fearing a Nazi invasion and what went with it, she thought that one of our family should survive and asked me if I wanted to go. I did - and went.

THE FIRST CROSSING (10 days)

On the 24th of July 1940 I took a train alone from London to Liverpool, there to board a liner, The Duchess of Richmond, bound for Canada. We sailed right away.

I shared a cabin with three others, mentioning in my brief notes that there was a very pretty girl next door, that we were all seasick, Camel cigarettes were 7 1/2 for 20, and we passed two envoys at sea. After four hours navigating the scenic St Laurence River we docked in Montreal on the 4th of August 1940, where I was met by kind Mr and Mrs Killorin, who were to care for me in the USA.

So my first crossing of the Atlantic had been uneventful. Although German U-boats prowled the ocean, word had it that the speed of our ship offered safety. Anyhow, a Canadian destroyer kept us company as we neared Canada.

I noted briefly that it seemed funny not to be carrying a gas mask, no air raid shelters were to be seen, and that no one bothered with blackouts. Somaliland had fallen to the Italians. I was far from any conflict, in a peaceful environment and, surprisingly, in a very foreign land.

I met much friendship by those in the New World. Sent to Taft School, peopled by rich American boys, I did not fit in at all. Penniless, I sold magazine subscriptions in my spare time to have enough cash for ice cream and fizzy drinks.  An occasional censored letter arriving from England was my only contact with home.  Not being a smart American, I was sent to a trade school, where I learned how to draw teeth for cog-wheels.

Fortunately I got to know another misfit who played the clarinet and sculpted in wood. He lived nearby above his family's garage. His rather Bohemian life appealed to me. I treasured a friendship that may well have had a bearing on my future life.

At last I was old enough to return to England to join the RAF with a view to becoming a pilot. 

SECOND CROSSING (28 days)

I joined a three-island, Swedish passenger cargo ship, the Axel Johnson, in New York on the14th of June 1942. We sailed north up the East Coast of new England toward Nova Scotia, in Canada. The engine failed off Cape Cod, but we got going again, arriving in Halifax to have a new crankshaft fitted. We then formed up with around 40 other ships on the 29th of June to become part of a motley convoy to cross the Atlantic. Guarded by a Canadian destroyer, we set forth at the speed of the slowest ship (probably one of the old coal-burning vessels).

Having been fairly safe off the American coast, we were now about to venture through seas inhabited by active wolf packs of German submarines. The destroyer returned to Canada. We were unprotected, more so when we broke down yet again and the convoy pushed on over the horizon. But we got going and caught up with the rest. However, our position was now at the outside of the convoy, and thus vulnerable.

I returned for bed on the evening of the 6th of July. On turning up for breakfast on the 7th, there was much commotion. During the night we were attacked by submarines. The passengers and crew boarded the lifeboats and there were many explosions. I had slept through the lot. Many ships with supplies for the UK were no longer with us, presumably sunk with, I'm sure, terrible loss of life.

An English destroyer saw us into Liverpool docks on the 12th of July 1942. I noted in my diary that two years away was "a mighty long time". I was home and about to sign up for action.

THE THIRD CROSSING (9 days)

I was now in the RAF as the lowest form of human life and destined to complete my flying training back in the USA, this time in Oklahoma in the mid-west.

I sailed from Liverpool on the 30th of December 1944 in the New Mauritania as the airman in charge of  the fruit store. It was a cold job, but with plenty of fruit to eat after having experienced strict rationing in England. Again, our speed saved us from falling victim to U-boats, but had there been disaster, my chances of getting out of that fruit store would have been much like getting out of a safe. But all was well. We arrived in Moncton, New Brunswick, on the 7th of January 1945.

In America I was awarded my wings and, fortunately, not asked to join the war in the Pacific. There were many more experienced pilots to do that.

FOURTH CROSSING (6 days)

Now, as a pilot and officer, it was wonderful to be on a great ship. The Queen Elizabeth.  She had been turned into a grey troopship, adorned with no frills whatsoever. Now, with German U-boat captains having surrendered and been sent home, there was a great feeling of satisfaction and relief by all on board. We sailed from New York on the 4th of September 1945 and docked in Southampton on the 10th of September. This last stay in America had, for me, been a very satisfactory milestone in my life, and a fourth Atlantic crossing to savour.  

The last day of my week as cook (Sunday)

 I got up around 6 o'clock, glanced at the studio work in progress, dealt with ablutions and prepared breakfast before walking down the road to buy the paper.

I took breakfast, a dish which might vary from day to day, to Margreet in bed, where we read some of the paper and discuss the forthcoming day. If I haven't a new idea for breakfast, or leftovers to manipulate, we generally have toasted, home-made bread with butter and Marmite.

I go back upstairs to make a mark or two with pastel, then go down to do the washing up from the day before or even longer. This washing up will be of plates, glasses and bowls that will have been soaking in detergent water and thus almost clean already.

I peel potatoes for lunch and boil them for 10 minutes before adding them to the baking tin in which already lies half a free-range chicken coated in yoghurt, garlic and turmeric. The spuds are coated in oil (I use groundnut oil) and pepper and salted to be ready to be cooked in the oven later for lunch.

In the garden I take another look at the sport section of the paper and watch unseen zephyrs of wind moving individual vine leaves, and feel the draught from a bumblebee's wings. We both admire the runner beans - large, no longer for eating, but growing still for next year's seed and, in their dried form, for stews and finger-eating when boiled and coated with garlic and olive oil for "bites" with drinks. 

Margreet had returned the day before with lots of apples from her sister's garden which she peeled before I cut off the "meat". This went into a saucepan to be heated down to pulp with sugar and lemon juice. The pips, cores and skins went into another saucepan to be heated down with brown sugar and sieved to form a coating for the  pies.

Then I made the short crust pastry to line three tins (one pie to eat and two to give away). Into them went the white pulp, and on it was poured the brown, sieved juice. 

Actually I shouldn't have added any baking powder or sodium bicarbonate to the pastry as it rose too much when cooking, which forced up the pulp when hot and absorbed moisture from the pulp when cooling.

I peeled some home-grown shallots, given by Margreet's niece, and added them to the potatoes around the chicken.

It was time for a cold beer in the hot garden.

Oven on. the pies came out after 25 minutes to cool down, and the chicken later in time for Sunday lunch.

After lunch it was snooze time, before watering the plant pots that were suffering in the heat and take the kitchen compost bin down to empty into the large garden bin. To be emptied the following spring, the nicely smelling compost will improve soil quality and provide nourishment to plants.

I tried minimal heat under a frying pan to sear the green part of chard leaves in garlic and olive oil as "bites" for evening aperitifs, but without great success. I'll try again.

In the evening warmth we enjoyed a glass of cold white wine from Eastern Australia and tested an ordinary Rioja. Both were adequate, but not special.

Our supper dish was complicated. It started earlier in my week as a lovely beef stew with tomato juice as its liquid, became a curry, and finally for this evening a stew with stuffed vine leaves added. It was excellent although the vine leaves that I had stuffed a few days before were a little on the chewy side, being made with older, summer leaves. The stuffing was good, using Arborio rice, minced lamb, lemon zest, lemon juice and chopped mint.

We ate some of the apple pie, which was better than I thought it would be.

It was time for bed. I wanted to watch a Formula 1 Grand Prix on television, but racing cars just going around and around send me to sleep. And 95 years olds do need rest.

Tomorrow it will be Margreet's week  to cook. 

Toad-in-the-Hole

Historically, toad-in-the-hole is an ancient British dish. My Dutch wife had never even heard of it and, I imagine the French would turn up their noses at the very thought of toad-in-the-hole (despite relishing frogs' legs) because it is connected with that dreadful reputation of culinary ineptitude in Britain that was once the butt of international jokes. 

Toad-in-the-hole was a favourite of my youth.Now, because of a recently established tradition, it has become the expected main course when a friend is invited to dine with us each year on Christmas Eve.

The snag is that trying many varieties of sausage every year and not being as I really wanted it to be, it is only recently that this hearty dish of sausages in batter has become a total success.

This success is partly due to a piece in one of those coloured newspaper supplements where the cook/author had made a simple dish of it far too elaborately and time-consuming in preparation. But it had a most useful tip concerning the batter.

The search for a successful batter and how to cook it is not the advice once given me by a Yorkshireman, who said that it should be put together just before the dish was to go in the oven. That it should rest beforehand, learned from this article, would seem now to be essential. So make the batter at least an hour or more before cooking the toad. Let's deal with the batter first, based on my own pancake mix. The volumes are enough for two people, with possibly some batter not consumed, which can be heated up and eaten later. 

In a bowl put three and a half dessert spoonfuls of plain flour, a pinch of turmeric (for colour only and not at all essential) and a little salt. Whisk it together. Make a well in the middle and into it break two eggs. Break up the eggs with the whisk and slowly add a quarter of a pint of milk as you whisk it. The batter will be formed. Make sure that you beat out all the lumps. Put this batter aside to rest and, should you pass by it, give it another whisk for good measure.

Now for the sausages. Before it became fashionable for sausages to be filled mostly with meat and be rather solid, the old British banger was harder to find, blander, and made of finely minced pork, plenty of fat (lard) a few spices and a lot of rusk. I buy a packet of Richmond 12 Thick Pork Sausages. These complement the batter as the batter complements the sausages.

Now you will need a baking tin in which to put plenty of oil (I use groundnut) and, if wanted and available, some lard (make sure that the sides of the tin are coated as well). Add and arrange the sausages (two a person) on the oil. To cook the dish you will need to remember only two numbers 

- 20 and 200. 

That's it. That's all. 

Re-Cycling

We tend to think that re-cycling is suddenly of importance. In fact it was far more prevalent when I was younger.

In the late 1920s to early 1930s in the country, our bottles were always returned to the wine merchant who had delivered them beforehand. They were re-cycled.

After the war (WW2) I bought my wine from Berry's, Robert James, The Army and Navy Stores, but mostly from Lyons. These merchants chose their wines carefully, importing them in cask, as most did, and bottled them in the UK.  For example. Take J.Lyons (of Lyons Corner House fame) who had premises in The Hop Exchange, Southwark, London. They, like others, bottled from cask, corked, labelled and capsuled at this London headquarters. They had the knack, or expertise, of choosing extremely well. Their Chateau Cantanac Brown 1959 was the best red wine that I ever tasted, and, accordingly bought and stored as much as I could afford.

Those who dealt with these splendid people at The Hop Exchange, always returned the empty bottles. They had the labels soaked off and were washed in a great circular machine that made a lot of metallic, glass and water noises. The labels, usually supplied by the makers of the wine, were stuck on to the bottles by the hand of a lady who used cold water paste as glue (most did as bottles were used again, and the label thus came off easily). Capsules (tin/lead - this soft material prevented the bottle inadvertently chipping the rim of a glass), to cover the cork were, again, added by hand, before the bottles were stacked in readiness for sale.

The bottles were English heavyweight, with the diameter beneath the neck being greater than that near the punt. These had the disadvantage of having to be stacked one layer above another with a slip of wood beneath the lesser diameter end. This was to stop them from sliding forward and crashing to the floor. The cold water paste used for the labels enabled the wine's origins to be altered easily by just cooking them off in a bath of water. Then the bottles could be re-labelled (there were no rules then), as when plain Hock could lose its modest provenance and have the royal insignia label substituted for its grander consumption at the Palace. Hotels and restaurants did not have time for staff to select and re-cycle their empty bottles, so left them outside to be collected by an East End organisation, who sold the acceptable ones back to wine merchants and smashed the rest. They did quite well, as the bottles were free to them and they made good money by re-cycling those in demand.

I know this as I had imported a hogshead of Rioja from Bilbainas, in Spain, and needed 350 bottles. The re-cycling merchants wanted too much money for them. So I did what they did, and around 4 in the morning cruised the restaurants and hotels to select the bottles I wanted.

I was very lucky to have lived through the 1950s and 1960s before the wine departments at supermarkets really got going. It was a time when drinking the occasional bottle of really good Bordeaux from the most famous vineyards was within one's means, and minor chateaux claret was one's every day wine.

Then in came bulk wine, disposable lightweight bottles, supermarket abundance, and bottling abroad. 

As wine selling is now a major business, so the re-cycling of bottles for it no longer applies. Bottles are now just glass, possibly to be re-cycled but more probably buried as landfill.

But at least I did re-cycle wine bottles when it made sense and it really mattered. And there was something really nice about handling an English heavyweight bottle and knowing that something delicious was lying inside. 

Dealing in Shares

 I am innumerate - so much so that almost anything involving a number goes into one ear, gets mangled and scrambled somewhere in my brain, and does not reappear in an intelligent form.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses, numbers happening to be one of my major failings. But I am lucky by nature. 

Years ago an uncle started a factory that made hurricane lamps. I was told that he could flood the world’s markets with two weeks production.

The company had shares, and I must have been given or bequeathed some of them. I certainly never bought any. Once or twice we did get a modest dividend. So I viewed the shares as pretty well worthless and rather forgot about them.

I am told that private companies are run mainly for the good of the owners, so I never expected much from my holdings.

However, the present owner wanted to have all the shares held within his immediate family, and bought me out. With no skill whatsoever, I did well.

Robert Adeane, (later “Sir”) was a collector and patron of art and, I believe, Director of the Tate Gallery. He may have had a vote when the Tate bought one of my early dock landscapes for the Ministry of Works (now The National Collection) from the Leicester Gallery. He became a friend in Art School days, and when I told him that I was selling my ex-bombed-out house and going around the world to draw, he advised that I invest the money in certain shares, which I did. On my return a year later the shares had at least doubled in value. So I was able to build a studio house in the country. That very successful share dealing had nothing to do with MySky  skill in financial matters.

I had at least an hour or two to wait in a queue at Lord’s Cricket Ground to see a day’s play of a Test Match. Beside me was a man with whom I got on very well. As we were about to enter the ground, he said, in a loud voice: “I like the cut of your jib. Why don’t you buy some shares in my company?”

Something told me that the important part of dealing in shares was knowing when to sell. So I asked him and he told me.

A few years later when the target price had been reached, we sold and spent the money on a holiday in Sicily. We sent words of thanks to him from the magnificent open-air Greek theatre that overlooks the belching Etna volcano.

So, for someone with no ability whatsoever in dealing with numbers, I have, in a small way, done rather well with my share dealings - an occupation that I believe is best left to professionals.

Blue Paint

Our front door in London is coated with Oxford Blue paint. It is good paint, and one to be used with great care because it is so penetratingly blue, and thus hard to be rid of if falling unwanted on any surface. For that reason I handle it in surgical rubber gloves and with apprehension.

With it I aim to obtain that lovely crusty surface that adorns the streetside woodwork of Berry Brothers and Rudd, those venerable wine merchants in St James' Street, London, where the paint and overpaint may have been applied since the 18th century.

On a summer's day, when watching cricket, I sat next to a house painter who gave me the great tip of how to prevent a dried surface from forming on the top of the contents of a tin of opened paint by simply storing the closed tin upside down. This has stood me in good stead, that was, until the following episode.

After I last painted my front door, I stored the blue paint, for some unknown reason, not right side up and next to my household tools as usual, but with other paints in the loft that were all stored upside down. 

It was springtime, and possibly after our 2019 red wine harvest had passed its malolactic fermentation

in our loft, we decided to bottle the modest vintage. After using a ladder to recover the demijohns behind the pots of paint, I found that the lid of the blue tin had not been closed adequately and that some of its contents had not only leaked out but almost glued the lid to the boards beneath. So, when moving the pot, the lid stayed behind where it had become stuck, allowing what paint remained in the tin to flow out and all around the place. I had to think quickly. 

Perched on the ladder it would have been almost impossible to tackle the disaster on my own. So Margreet brought me some surgical rubber gloves, a basket lined with a refuse bag liner and countless balls of crumpled newspaper. So the mopping up was under way. Tins were wiped and moved, a bag of painting kit put on newspaper to dry, and the paint mopped up.

Bottling the wine had to be abandoned until a later date when the spilled blue paint would be dry.

And we managed it all with only a dab of paint spilled on my wrist and another on Margreet's hand - both of which were dealt with using white spirit.

It was quite a colourful saga I can tell you. 

What do you want to do ?

New mail

Food from two cultures

I count myself lucky to have a Dutch wife. And as we take alternate weeks to cook, another culture's cuisine dominates our menu ideas every seven days.
Margreet's approach stems not from personal experience, as her past in the Dutch Foreign Service deemed that others did the cooking for her. So dishes are as she remembered them from childhood, when shortages were part of post-war Dutch life - difficult times, but very Dutch food.
However, like birds making the same kind of nest as their parents, and with no instructions, so types of national cooking would seem to be inbred.
My first experience of eating her kind of food was as a supernumerary on Dutch coasters. And very basic it was. The cook, sober or not, kept a sort of missionary's cauldron full of meat chunks in liquid ("jus"). This was served up in quantity with boiled potatoes combined with the liquor in which the meat was cooked. Sometimes another vegetable came as well. But whatever was served, it was covered in grated nutmeg. That was about it, and not very satisfactory if the sea was rough.
When briefly ashore in Holland, the crew and I savoured those specialities that can make eating there a wonderful experience. This trio of delights were - and are - raw herring (when in season), smoked eel, best in skin and both eaten in the fingers, and pancakes (bacon ones being my favourite).
Generally, though, plates of food are piled high, often mixed, as once in a restaurant when all three courses were served at one time and on one plate.
Quantity is the Dutch theme - I suppose to fill their large selves and keep out the cold and the rain.
So Margreet, probably without really knowing it, piles the food high, often in such quantity (and mixture) that leaves plenty over to chop up and add to our ever-changing and excellent soup.
My own upbringing in England was one where I took little notice of food. At home we had a blackened anthracite-fired range that supplied hot water and cooking facility for the house day and night. On it, Constance, our maid, turned out staid and solid English fare of roasts, pies, overcooked vegetables, suet puddings, dumplings and cakes - the latter made with many eggs as my father had a chicken farm. We children could have what we liked for our birthdays and always chose roast chicken. In those days chickens were all free-range, ours roaming around our fields. Our choice was sensible English. We did not know much about fancy foods anyhow.
RAF food in the war was substantial and plain, changing abruptly in the great post-war freeze-up of 1947 when anything to eat was scarce, so much so that I contracted TB, probably through lack of it.
But revelations in the enjoyment of food were just around the piecetime corner when we were allowed out of our severely rationed country to reach France and eat as though the war had never happened. Café fare was served separately in small quantities, varied, unadorned, delicious and simple - the style of which I have tried to adhere to ever since.
So, roughly speaking, for now it is hearty and filling one week and light and simple the next.
This could hardly be bettered. Vive la difference!

Brushes with Farming

I was the son of a sport-loving farmer. I inherited his love of sport, but was farming in my blood?

After agricultural college my father went to Egypt (then a British Protectorate) to, I believe but not know, to teach how to irrigate the desert with Nile water.

The evidence he left indicated that he spoke and wrote Arabic.

When the 1914-1918 war was about to break out, he returned to England, joined his territorial regiment, became an officer on Salisbury Plain and was sent to India. From there he fought in the very nasty Mesopotamia Campaign, was badly wounded, and returned to England to recover.

He started a chicken farm.

I was born in 1925 and spent, I suppose, an ideal childhood of countrypersuits on that farm.

The great depression descended upon us. Cheap eggs from Poland destroyed the chicken and eggs business. So he abandoned chickens for mushrooms - without success. He was unaware of successful business practice, so times were hard for us. He died through being given the cure-all of the time - radium.

The 1939-1945 war came. I went to America and returned when old enough to join the RAF as a potential pilot. Having been enrolled I had to wait for flying training. So, with the views I could help with food production in that time of rationing and that I wanted experience in farming, I took a job as a farm labourer. The constant worries of weather, dealing with cart-horses, rather primitive machinery, cattle and all the rest, convinced me that a post-war future in farming was not enticing.

I obtained a job as a prop-swinger and gained enough piloting experience to know that I would make a good pilot and a poor farmer.

The war over and, seeing the kind of person applying for permanency in the RAF and some of the bloodiness of returning aircrew from raids over Germany, I chose medicine. But two bouts of TB put an end to that.

Living now in the country, I was befriended by a farmer well known for his skill in making a fortune from hard-nosed farming combined with journalism. We would meet almost weekly to drink red wine and swap ideas. Through his auspices I wrote for a national newspaper and conducted a Gardeners' World programme on my garden and vineyard for the BBC.

The thought of farming never entered my head again, despite watching television programmes of lovely people with lovely farms and friendly animals making a farming life seem so pleasant.

I had not found it to be such, and glad that I never chose it as a career.

Life in a Day (Part two, pm)

My afternoon job (pleasure) is to prepare food for our evening meal. It was interrupted today as I take, as a blood thinner, Warfarin (used also to kill rats - or did). A doctor at my health centre tried to wean me off it and on to a substitute called something like Rivaroxaban. This sent me to two stays in hospital because of constant and unpleasant bleeding. As soon as this new thinner was stopped - so did the bleeding. I have now returned to old-fashioned Warfarin, which unfortunately needs a blood assessment every few weeks. So the doorbell rang and my doctor, standing outside on the pavement, changed into a sort of medical space suit. She then came in doors just to jab my finger and take a little blood sample. She then put the finger-pricking device into our kitchen rubbish bin and returned to the pavement to disrobe and put her protective outer clothing into a plastic bag for disposal. I am no expert, but feel that the operation could have been conducted on the windowsill outside with less cost, trouble and risk of virus infection. But rules are rules, I supposed. And they must be adhered to.
I like to cook beans, and in these times of difficulties they seem to me to be a most important source of nourishment. From my supply of dried red kidney beans a quantity is soaked overnight in water and pressure cooked for 35 minutes. They are then used in such as soups, stews and chilli-con-carne. I make the chilli-con-carne powder by mixing in a bowl the following: 3 measures of powdered cumin, 1 measure of chilli powder, 3 measures of dried oregano, 4 measures of paprika, 1 measure of garlic powder, and 1 measure of salt.
First courses are often made of lettuce, garnished with sardines, tuna, or brined anchovies - for  visitors (in those days) the latter on little slices of bread fried in olive oil. Barely cooked mushrooms "a la Grecque" is a popular dish, as is cucumber or cooked beetroot in chopped shallot, oil and vinegar. One of our constant favourite hors d'oeuvres is tomato salad. This is simply sliced tomato, garnished with chopped shallot, pepper and salt, vinegar and olive oil and topped with (it should be chopped parsley) fresh coriander.
For a large chicken (in non-virus times I buy them from a Halal butcher in the market) my procedure is thus: I cut off the legs with thighs and bag them for the freezer for roasting, curries, and stew type dishes. I do the same with its wings, cut from the carcass with some breast meat. From the remainder I carve off one breast for roasting and the other for frying. The carcass is then broken up and pressure-cooked in water and spices for at least one hour - usually more with a stock cube or two. The stock it makes is strained and used for the start of or topping up of soup.
I had to make space in the rather too small deep freezer part of our drinks refrigerator for a chicken treated as above. For this I removed a box of fish fingers. These we enjoy with home-made mayonnaise. I have made mayonnaise for years and only once has it failed. I find that any temperature of the ingredients work together happily. In a small bowl goes an egg yolk and half its quantity of Dijon mustard. With a wooden spoon and stirring in the same direction I add a steady stream of olive and vegetable oil (I use groundnut - for everything). When the mayonnaise has reached the thickness desired, a little lemon juice is added and a dash of cold water. Job done - with ease and pleasure.
In the kitchen we have a lidded compost bin. When a bit heavy, this is emptied into the larger bin at the bottom of the garden. Compost-making is such a pleasure, with all compostable kitchen waste put to good use. Early each spring I empty the bottom part of this large bin of friable and plant-nourishing compost and distribute it around plants and soil in the garden - and all from unwanted waste.
Then there was the fruit bowl to top up. This bowl is covered with a plate, kept in the refrigerator, and contains any fruit in season, covered in spirit, sherry, vermouth or such. A spoonful of its contents makes a wonderful dessert. And it is a fine way to use up any old spirit that may have been given as a present and seldom used.
Which pretty well brings us to evening drinks time - always welcome and taken by us in the shed if the weather is warm. We like just a little to eat with our first glass of white wine, or Pernod. Most popular are crisp rice crackers with Roquefort beurre on top. This topping was always on café menus in my student days in Paris but now seems to have disappeared. It is simply Roquefort cheese with butter, blended with a fork. It needs to be taken out of the refrigerator well before use, just to soften it.
Other festive drinks are taken in our shed are Champagne cocktails. These are simply put together on a large lump of ice, adding a measure of Cognac, four or five dashes of Angostura bitters and topped with any sparkling wine.
In our shed it is food, drink, radio music, laughter and talk before the routine of retiring, television, pill-taking, reading, ablutions (don't forget the bidet) the undoing of the bra and sleep until the early morning. As usual it has been quite a day.

Life in a Day (Part One, am)

Even with people we know well we are unaware of their activities from waking in the morning to sleeping at night. Except for the ablutions part of the day's routine, an old artist's day might be of interest. So I made notes on a day's activity which I will now try and put together.

From the very early hours I lie in bed and think of the present painting and possible writing, waking and possibly rising at around 6 o'clock - nearer 5 in summer. From my bed I have already listened to the local church clock and from its sound and resonance guessed the wind direction and air clarity.

In dressing gown I go to my studio at the top of the house to look at the previous day's painting (actually pastel) and stand by the window for some time looking outside.

I have always been keen on the weather, especially since my days as a pilot when one's life could depend on it. I look at the clouds, condensation trails left by passing aircraft, rain, wind direction, wind speed, the direction in which aircraft and birds are landing, birds sorting out their territories, signs of frost, people's clothing and visibility. I might then do a bit of art or writing (like this). It is a wonderful time for me - no noise, no interruptions, clear thoughts (hopefully) and clear air.

Then it is ablution time. The bidet is a wonderful object. When one has used them one wonders how you could ever have done without them. This particular model came from a near neighbour who thought them to be disgusting and was throwing hers out. I took it and had it plumbed in. 

As I always cut my own hair, I check it, and cut off more in hot weather. Then I dress, take my pills and fix hearing aids - matters that arrive with old age.

Getting breakfast comes next. On my way down I check the water level in the vase in Margreet's shower toom. I aim to always have a flower there in a vase that is narrow at its top, so the water level drops fast.

There is tea to be made in excellent Dutch insulated tumblers, and toast, made with our own bread on to which I try and vary flavours. But Margreet likes Marmite on her toast, or inside Arab bread. I might then fry my toast in olive oil, or fill the pitta bread with marmelade devilled eggs, bacon or sausage. I have just made pancakes out of some leftover flour from coating fried chicken the night before.

Actually it made four pancakes, two of which we had for breakfast and two were wrapped around cheese, later to become lunch. Today there is cooked batter left over from last night's toad-in-the-hole. I heat it up a little in a frying pan and spread some Marmite over it. I like to make a surprise breakfast for Margreet every so often.

Another lovely breakfast surprise is clear tea with slices of our own lemons, harvested from the garden. When cut, a lemon will scent the air all around it. 

As for that toad-in-the-hole, I have, at last mastered it. For two of us the batter should be made at least an hour beforehand and consist of 3 1/2 dessert spoons of plain flour, a pinch of salt, two eggs and 1/4 of a pint of milk. Beat it all together to rid it of any lumps - however small. Then, using the cheapest English type sausages that contain plenty of fat, rusk and some head meat, place them in a baking pan with plenty of oil and give them 20 minutes in the oven set at 200 degrees. Then, after giving the batter another whisk, add it over and around the sausages. After another 20 minutes your toad will be perfect. 

It is time to wake Margreet and we eat in and on the bed, waiting for the paper to be brought to our doorstep, now by another kind neighbour as the first one had to isolate because of her contact with a carrier of the Covid-19 virus. 

I might go into the garden to water it, keeping an eye on all plants and making sure that the large birdbath is full with clean water.

The paper arrives and we read it on the bed, which we have made together now that Margreet's arm is stronger. As she still can't reach it, I have to hook up her bra - and get a kiss for my trouble.

Aside: When I started this blogpost I thought that I could get it all complete in one piece. Now I see that it must be the first part of two.

For some of her relaxing time, Margreet has started a very complicated jigsaw of a map of Greater London. I am delighted if I can fit in a piece when passing by.

I have an interest in this jigsaw, as when finished (if all the pieces are there), I plan to turn it over and paint something on the reverse - as another jigsaw.

To provide a friend with a mother of vinegar, I delved into my red wine vinegar jar (3 litres) and found only a sulking mother at the bottom of it. There were no expected daughters to give away. So I tore off part of my mother and put it in a jam jar for her. I just hope that this gluey/rubbery piece develops into a proper mother and turns wine into vinegar, and that my own mother survives my surgery. The recipient collected her piece later.

I get lunch (normally we have one week each at cooking), but with Margreet's bad arm I am doing most of it. Lunch is always soup, which is kept on the hob and varies depending upon what leftovers go into it. This was Margreet's own make, and is delicious. With it we eat cheese (the Dutch cannot live without it). Today we added a home-made cream cheese, made with curds (from a mistake) mixed with salt and cream. It is a bit bland. Today it was wrapped in a pancake, as mentioned earlier. I have a small beer with lunch to help me snooze in the afternoon.

I will have done the washing up at any time, often singing my little protest song of "Putting away, putting away, dad is always just putting away" to clear away the dried plates and cutlery beforehand. It has been my lot in every household to have to "put away". The actual washing up I don't mind at all, which I do only having soaked everything well in detergenty water well beforehand.

After lunch we retire for a short snooze and I may read some of Hilary Mantell's third and rather overlong book on Cromwell. After Margreet's favourite show on television, I start the second half of my day. 

Garden under Virus

Had it been another time of war, I would have lifted the flagstones that almost cover our four paces by 16 pace London garden and turned it into an allotment. But at the present time of virus it will stay as it is. With this virus that no one seems to know much about, I might well have to make it more productive.
As the soil beneath the flagstones must be much the same as a 1' wide strip of soil up to one side that I first encountered 30 years ago, it would take even more compost from our excellent bin to get it into a condition that would grow anything at all. Thirty years ago this strip of soil was black and dead from absorbing years of coal-smoke-laden pollution. Now, thanks to our compost, it is light and friable. So I would have to work hard, possibly turning the recovered soil into a potato patch at first, to be able to use it productively.
As it is, I continue to grow flowers and trees in pots, some stacked high on occuloni and ironstone bricks once used to store heat, but culinarily unproductive.
On the north-facing wall, where a flowering quince is doing well in a space where a flagstone has been lifted, I have now planted shallots and garlic - in the hope that they will survive and grow without sunshine.
Some rocket that lasted the winter is our only green leaf vegetable. Its leaves are barely enough for a very small salad, but its simple four petalled flowers are a delight to the eye and insect life. For herbs we grow the flavourings of mint, rosemary and bay leaves to enhance the repertoire of our cooking.
Our lemon tree would not contribute much in a pandemic emergency, but the fruit, when harvested and freshly sliced, exude the most wonderful aroma and taste, and then become just an ordinary sliced lemon by the next day.
Above all, and of most importance to us, are runner beans. We make much of them as they climb up vertical bamboos and over a "roof" of the same material. I grow them from seed gathered the previous year in pots on the kitchen windowsill, and then plant them out when they are able to climb unaided.
We eat their large crop initially as 4" beans, only top and tailing them before giving them five minutes in boiling water. They are usually served with butter and garlic, and are a real treat.
Each year we purposefully miss picking some of the runners that would normally need stringing and chopping. We let them rip. As long pods containing large fat beans, we harvest them before they start to rot on the vine, and then dry them on racks in the kitchen. When crispy dry they are podded.
These dried beans are eaten in the winter after an overnight soak and 35 minutes in the pressure cooker. Eaten as a first course with, perhaps chopped shallot and vinaigrette, they also find their way into stews and soup. As for taste and texture they are as good as beans get.
And what do we drink with our produce? Red wine, of course, and from our own vines.
In an emergency I would return to the configuration of our predominately Triomphe d'Alsace vine that covered our arbour and garden walls. We once made 66 bottles from this arrangement. But now, because of age, I fear I have reduced coverage to just the arbour, and make but a dozen or two bottles of red from it. But it is excellent wine, known by others as Hammersmith red, but to us - just our red wine. If the virus takes over, we have plans. 

"Mothers"

We make our own vinegar with a "mother", using a 3 litre, wooden-tapped jar for red wine vinegar and another like jar for milder vinegar. Both vinegars are superior to anything you could buy.
Nowadays I wait until the red vinegar is sharp and the cider one soft and easy, then bottle one and a half litres of each in various shaped bottles for home use and gifts.
I write on this wonderful practise as a friend has just asked for a "mother".
Mothers produce daughters who become the new mothers. I have to dispose of the old ones every so often to keep them from clogging up the tap. I have to roll up my sleeve to do it, delving in and selecting the old for disposal.
To select a gift sample I was surprised to find only one mature mother - sulking at the bottom of her jar. Perhaps I had neglected to feed her with fresh wine. So I had to act the surgeon and tear off part of her body.
I now hope that the gift piece will generate vinegar and produce daughters as it should, and that my own crudely torn mother will recover her normal circular shape and virility. I have faith in her. 

A Virus Day at Home

At the time of writing we have no idea about the Covid-19 virus and how it will affect everyone's and the earth's future.
Already it has altered nearly all of our lives.
Because of age and health issues we have self-isolated, but for how long? What one can say is that for many people life has worsened a lot. We consider ourselves to be among the lucky ones.
With our 8 pm Thursday recognition of all those fighting for other people's lives, we have not only clapped hands and rung bells, but have met at our door, in a deserted street, and keeping our distance, new friends from the vicinity and exchanged ideas and gossip with neighbours.
Entrance to these open formations is simply to arrive with a glass and a bottle - that is, if you are allowed out.
Our house is not as clean as before because our once-a-week cleaner also has had to self-isolate, but the garden, where we weed, trim and exercise, is as smart as it has ever been.
One imagined that there would be less lawlessness in the present circumstances, but a disguised bottle of Champagne, left on our doorstep for half an hour as thanks for the kind lady who delivered our newspaper, was stolen. It seemed to be an inappropriate misdemeanour in these times of extra friendliness and consideration.
Some modest stores, kept by us for a possible far off emergency, now remain untouched as, because of our priority we have been given a supermarket delivery slot. The "alternatives", supplied because of shortage, have only added to our interest and imagination.
If it really ever comes to the pinch, dried sausages (pemmican) that have hung in the kitchen for some 30 years as real emergency rations, will be consumed as last resort nourishment.
Garden colour, in the form of emerging roses and pelargoniums, brighten the landscape seen from our octagonal glazed shed, but the usually bought seedlings of Busy Lizzies and New Guineas will be missing from it this year.
For some reason there has been a shortage of bird life in the garden this spring, but there are plenty of cantankerous goldfinches and large wood pigeons clinging like trapeze artists to bird feeders to amuse us. They have become garden mobiles. 

Hair Clips

We are self-isolating during the plague of Covid-19 virus. For me life is almost as usual with art on the go, writing, cooking and mucking about in our small garden, which has seldom been as neat and tidy.
Margreet has embarked on a horribly difficult jigsaw puzzle of Greater London.
Due to age and lung problems we have managed at last to obtain a supermarket delivery slot. So we have enough to eat and drink.
Just before we voluntarily locked ourselves in, as we were all told anyway, Margreet wanted a hair clip - one of those multi-toothed, fake tortoise shell, sprung clips. Primark sold them, not singly, but many on a card. She bought the cardsworth - at the expected cost of a single clip.
At that time I was sealing up partly used plastic packages of such as dried beans, frozen peas and other things, and clumsily using large paper clips to do it. Then along came those hair clips. They have turned out to be quite wonderful for the clipping together of partly-used plastic bags. I recommend them. 

Bell Noise

In self-imposed isolation to, in turn, isolate the Covid-19 virus, it was time to show how appreciative we all are of those who risk their lives to save others. It was 8 pm o'clock on a Thursday evening that we ventured to open our front door to clap - not that many would hear us but the gesture was a good one.
As we only clapped our hands, a TV presenter living nearby was making far more noise with the help of kitchen utensils.
So when the following Thursday came around, I intended to make more sound, this time with a bell from the garden, used to tell birds in freezing conditions that food was being put out for them.
And true enough, my bell made a wonderful sound. But the handle had rotted away, and after a few rings, I was left with the handle in my hand and the bell part rolling down the road. I de-isolated myself to retrieve it.
It is a strange bell, with the striker hitting the inside and the bell itself rocking on a now rusted and broken spindle in the handle - a double action. So how to mend it? Difficult.
I tried to rejuvenate the old handle with nylon cord, waterproof glue and bits of wood. It was not possible.
So I cut a handle from some broomstick-size dowel rod, used a bow saw to cut a wide groove in one end, and drilled holes to accommodate a brass screw that would pass through the wood and a hole in the bell's casting. Then it was a case of adding glue, inserting the casting and screwing it all together.
Now it is just a bell, screwed and glued to a painted handle. It is certainly not as fancy as before, but it makes a good sound and will, I hope, last for many a "noise of appreciation".

Wine Blends

I have been writing on wine, growing grapes and making wine for some years. Many wines are blended at source, so we blend wines as well - mainly in a two-bottle carafe.
In our last virus-related delivery slot some "near" substitutes were included, one being a recently-harvested Australian Shiraz. We found that it was too sweet for pleasurable drinking.
In our bin of "daily wines" was the final bottle of Hammersmith, Triomphe d'Alsace red of our 2010 vintage. This we knew to be a bit too dry for pleasurable drinking. The blend of the two was excellent - most pleasurable.
When so much blending goes on in foreign wineries, why are we, as customers of it, so loath to, in our turn, do some blending as well? We should. 

Mistletoe

It is usually with apprehension that I have written in past blogs on my desire, since childhood in the country, to establish mistletoe on an orchard tree. All my attempts had been failures.
Now I have come to the final episode of this saga. It goes like this.
Trying to get mistletoe to grow on either or both of my London apple or pear trees in pots has been a constant quest, but a fascinating one.
In about 2008, I used fresh mistletoe seeds from Christmas decorations, forcing the berries into the base of fruit spurs, using tape, and combinations of string, glue, rubber solution, roofing sealant and earth. Hoping for a sign of any "taking", I had no luck. I tried the same in 2009 - still no success. I gave up.
In 2010 I was passing a rubbish skip in March and saw a bunch of discarded mistletoe that was covered with dried-out berries. Why not try them?
Using what I thought was the most natural-looking method, I tied them in to the base of many spurs, using string, rubber solution and earth. This surgery blended in well with the trees' bark and was almost invisible. 2011 came and went. 2012 passed. I had failed again. I gave up once more. 2013 came around, and to my utter disbelief a mistletoe sprout appeared at a topmost spur on the apple tree. We drank Champagne. For me it was a gardening triumph.
Next year, 2014, another sprout appeared halfway up the tree. And in 2015 a third growth appeared low down.
But there were no berries to be seen despite the flower-like new growth at the tip of each twig. However, in some 12 years I had achieved success. That was enough.
Then, just in time for Christmas in 2019 two berries appeared on the lowest bunch of branches.
I'm so happy, and rather pleased with myself.

Shed and Virus

We have a garden shed. It has eight on sides, six of which are glazed. We love it as an escape place, almost as a second-home-in-the-country, like the owners of such who are now using theirs to escape the coronavirus plague.
In this garden retreat of ours, other than in the cold weather, we eat, drink, write and listen to the radio. From it we look out onto a small, walled, London garden, its arbour of vines, flowers, trees in pots - and our pets.
Having no dog as an excuse to go out, we have chosen self-imposed isolation, as is recommended for old and vulnerable people during the period when the dreaded virus is rife. And because we have no tame pets to exercise, we take extra pleasure in our wild ones - animals that look after themselves (with a little help from us).
Our garden robin shares our shed where it eats grated cheese, goldfinches guzzle niger seeds from two feeders, a pair of great tits nest in a box each year, wrens, blue tits, blackbirds and wood pigeons visit and, nest nearby. I rather miss meeting the fox on my way to get the paper at 7 am, now that I am not allowed out.
But we do have one unusual pet. One day, I heard squeals from across the road where a dentist friend found a toad on his doorstep. I put this creature in our garden, intending to ask around if anyone with more space and a pond would take it. But it disappeared.
A year later, as we sat in our shed during a downpour, what should appear but our pet toad. It marched across the garden over wet flagstones. Then it disappeared until the following year, appearing once again in a rainstorm. And we  saw it again the year after that.
It lives somewhere among the loose bricks and cascade of flowerpots, eating, presumably, slugs, worms and snails.
It is a useful pet, and happily oblivious of the goings-on around it that are peculiar to the human race.
It could even outlive us.

Virus

Writing in early 2020 as the Coronavirus is engulfing the world, I think of Vesuvius and Titanic when the people involved were oblivious of what was to come. They enjoyed their food and wine in the  normal way, not knowing that the end was nigh. Today we can but guess what might occur, be it a hiccup or cataclysm. In so doing, I certainly have doubled my enjoyment of the food and drink available.
Nature has a way of balancing unsustainable populations by reducing numbers with a plague of this or that. So this particular plague in which we are involved is really a natural, global, phenomenon which, in its way, should be welcome.
How was this virus so clever as to almost instantly spread itself around the globe?
What did we all breathe or handle about the same time? To my mind the availability of cheap travel is one, others are currency and the post. We may never know. But by whatever means it has been a very clever virus.
Outcomes will be both good and bad. Bonds, especially self-isolating us, we have been both surprised and delighted by so many of our near and not so near  neighbours offering help. Such generosity of people's time and the risks they have taken, have been examples of human kindness at its best. We give them our heartfelt thanks.
These really are fascinating times. 

More Dreams

I was a new reporter for a local newspaper.
A theft had occurred in the local village hall where a wedding reception was to be held on the following day. I was sent to write on the present position.
Lined up with the cake were lots and lots of glasses, half of which had been drained by the thieves and the other half still charged with Cognac and Angostura bitters in readiness for cold sparkling wine to be added for them to become Champagne cocktails for the wedding guests.
The local policeman was already in the hall, apprehending the usual suspects, any of whom he hoped might admit to the theft if having the smell of alcohol on their breath.
I wondered if the thieves might have also have drunk from the charged glasses and substituted water for some of the Cognac. So these had to be tested.
It occurred to me that if I drank too much, then my piece might become incomprehensible. But that would be fun to do. So I tested a few and wrote my report containing slurred words and drunken phrases. And to add some legitimacy I added, as if from the editor, the fact that I was not available to answer for my drunken effort because of a monumental hangover, and that my bicycle had been found abandoned in a ditch. He printed my piece word for word.
Readers, used to the usual dull reports, laughed and loved it. My reputation as a journalist, and, even humorist, had been established. 

Dreams

I suppose that I have dreams much the same as anyone else but dismiss them as of little or no consequence. But if any amusing ones turn up, I make a point of remembering them to tell Margreet. Two such have surfaced recently.

I was investigating the current plague of Coronavirus and inspecting the dead body of a man who had died of it. I noticed that there was a black substance between his toes, so had a sample of it added to a petri dish of the live virus. The black stuff killed the virus immediately. I became very famous and immensely rich - two states of life that I will do my very best to avoid.

We had a bet. I said that there was no rail link between England and Ireland. Margreet said there was. On looking at my map of the UK, I saw a dotted rail line across the Irish Sea. I'd lost.
We took the train to Ireland. It was through a single-track tunnel, just wide enough for the human frame. We sat, each on a board, one behind the other. The driver pulled on a string, which rang a bell to tell those in the half-way central station under the Irish Sea that we were on our way. Two hours later we arrived at that station to find the train from the Irish half of the system had already arrived, with its Irish passengers waiting to take our vacated seats to continue their voyage to England. "All change". Our original driver changed ends and pulled the string to ring the bell in England. They were off. We boarded the vacated train for Ireland. The string was pulled, and two hours later we were in The Emerald Isle, where we were greeted with steaming mugs of tea and currant buns. 

A Cabbage and Frankfurter Dish

Around my way greengrocers' market stalls offer part of their stock in metal bowls at £1 a time. This was, I believe, originally to sell their fruit and vegetables to those who do not know our language. So no words were needed to buy goods. This is fine, as any purchaser can now see exactly what they are getting for their £1.
It so happened that I saw two fine cabbages in such a bowl, and bought them. With the cores and outer leaves discarded and put in the compost bin, the cabbages were cut up finely and put into an iron casserole with salt, pepper, olive oil and white wine. This mixture was turned around by hand until all the cabbage was glistening.
It also so happens that our German-owned supermarkets sell excellent frankfurters at a very reasonable price. So all those from a packet were laid on top of the cabbage and a layer of chopped potato placed on top of it all.
Into the oven went the casserole, and two hours later out came a most delicious dish or two, or more.
Any cabbage left over became the start of a soup. 

Recipes

It so happened that immediately after penning my return to blog-writing I wanted to describe our first dinner - nothing special but nice. This is it.

The main course consisted of king prawns and brown rice. The prawns came from a fishmonger in my nearest market. They are fresh (his most popular item), delicious, ridiculously cheap, and shelled for you on the spot (6 each is enough). They bear little in common with the supermarket, processed variety.

I cook them in a pre-cooked sauce of olive oil, grated fresh ginger, grated garlic, powered chilli and salt. They were served with brown rice (some rice leftover became the basis for the salad the following day). The prawns in their sauce took but a few minutes to cook, and the rice 25.

That was preceded by a tomato salad. This particular one was made with cold, fried, halved plum tomatoes cooked in olive oil, covered with plenty of chopped, peppered, salted, a dash of home-made, sharp red wine vinegar, and topped with flat parsley leaves.

To finish was our oft-enjoyed dessert of seasonal fruit, chopped into a bowl, and steeped in spirit (any). We are, at present, using a gift of Cointreau for its liquid content. 

Re-blogging

I am asked why I have no longer written for my blog. The answer is simple. My Windows 95 computer has broken and will no longer allow me to form a new document without deleting it. This is a shame, as when I reach a difficult passage of painting, I have, in the past, been able, as a change of creativity, to write something on the computer instead.
What I have missed most is writing recipes - dishes which are seldom made the same way and often from my imagination.
Armchair philosophy, too, is a pleasure to record. These opinions are based on tenets, one of which is "everything is missable". Another is "never become too rich or too famous". A contentious one, though often agreed with, is "children steal your life".
I believe that to enjoy life it should be simplified as much as possible. All one really needs is a roof over one's head to keep off the rain, warmth in the winter, and to be able to eat and drink reasonably well. Of course there are many objects that help or hinder, like marriage, health, children, education, birth, death, and all the rest - much depending on choice, luck, work and attitude.
It is also worth remembering that everyone you meet or see on the street, in the country, bus, underground, train or aeroplane, is that their life to them is just as important as yours is to you.
I cannot see why our wonderful National Health Service, staffed by dedicated people, is so maligned. I think it is one of the best things that has ever happened to this country, having seen the poverty and unavailability of medical care in other lands. I can still recall many years ago seeing and being shocked at someone spitting blood in the street in "God's Own Country", the USA, and, more recently, the countryside in the Far East.

For those who "follow" me, Margreet will kindly now put my occasional longhand words into the ether via her more modern electronic equipment.

My new series of painting (pastels actually) is an autobiography in pictures. Each one has an explanatory piece attached to it.
As I have just finished an A4 on when I designed for television, I thought I'd restart my blog with its description.

After working in Children's Theater, I was asked by the BBC to design some programmes for the young. This was in the days of black and white broadcast live from Alexandra Palace.

The design work was rather boring, being mostly drawing up ground plans around the scenery of grey-painted flats to prevent the wheels below cameras from running over cables.

For this particular scene, the funny man was to fall into a fireplace as if from the chimney flue.
I arranged for a flat, painted with a mirror, to rest on a fireplace surround and be well secured. It was time for rehearsal.
The producer stood in front of the fireplace. The funny man jumped down from his stool, as if from the chimney. Soft bricks and soot substitute were ready to follow his entry to the scene.
The flat with painted mirror came loose from its moorings and fell on the producer, who was unhurt but carted off to hospital as a precaution. Except for him, all were delighted. The assistant producer became the producer, the assistant to the assistant became the assistant and so on.
In such an organisation someone had to be blamed.
It was my last job for television.

A Compressed Life

A Compressed Life

I have   written a fairly comprehensive unpublished account of my life from the late 1920s until the very early 2000s. So here I want to have fun in compressing that life into as short a written space as possible, occasionally recalling events that have appealed to me. 

My father was a farmer who was showing the Egyptians how to water the desert from the Nile when WW1 was about to start. He returned to England, joined his Territorial Regiment, was sent to Mesopotamia where, after a terrible time fighting the wily Turks in the marshes, where many of his officer colleagues were killed, was badly wounded. He had charged the enemy at the Battle of Hanna with a sword in one hand and a revolver in the other. He never really recovered, and certainly never again to play cricket for his county. Madame Curie discovered radium, a cure-all of the time. He had treatment with it, which destroyed his blood and then him.

My mother, brought up in court circles, pretty and vivacious, found that being a chicken farmer’s wife was not really to her liking.

Well connected, but very poor, my sister, brother and I (unwanted) led an ideal life close to animals and nature.

WW2 has started when I was at school, and my mother, now high up in WVS (Women’s Voluntary Services), heard of an American family who wanted an English refugee. Wanting one of us to survive, I jumped at the opportunity.  At 15, I took a train to Liverpool and boarded the Duchess of Richmond bound for Montreal.

Kind though my American hosts were, I did not really fit in with their way of life. From the elitist Taft School I was sent to a trade school where I learned how to draw the teeth on cog wheels.

When old enough to join the RAF, I boarded the M/V Axel Johnson in New York. We sailed northwards toward Halifax, Nova Scotia, to join a convoy across the Atlantic, breaking down on the way.

When enough ships were ready to leave, we were escorted out by a Canadian destroyer. It was slow going as convoys can go no faster than the slowest vessel.

In mid Atlantic German U-boats were waiting for us and, during the night, many of our ships were sunk. I had not been woken from my bunk and was surprised to hind our few passengers and crew still standing by the lifeboats at dawn.

Joining the RAF soon after landing in Liverpool, I was told to return to civvy street to await flying training. I took a job as a farm labourer to learn a bit about farming and to help feed the nation during strict rationing.

It was when in the middle of a field hoeing weeds that there was the noise of approaching engines. And suddenly, just above me, was a German JU 88 bomber banking on its way to bomb Reading Railway Station. The gunner declined to kill me, but their bombs missed the station, killing many children in school. It was the nearest that I came to the enemy during the war.

Then I heard of a job going five miles away at RAF There as a prop swinger, which I took. 

My job was to swing the propellers of Tiger Moth biplanes for those just starting to learn to fly. As there was no such thing as weather forecasting, an instructor would fly upwind to see that the oncoming weather was fit for students. The second cockpit was unused. Knowing that I was in the RAF and waiting to fly, I was often given this spare seat. Soon I was flying the aircraft. So when I was recalled to train, my records rightly stated that I had little experience in the air. I now had that initial experience and flew my first solo flight in what was thought to be record time. I was off to a good start. 

There was a lot of waiting around to do as pilot training schools in suitable climates where congested. So we were posted to airfields for operational experience. One of these was RAF Davidstow Moor, in Cornwall. Here I did 20 hours operational flying in the second pilot’s seat of Warwick aeroplanes, just to keep an eye out for a nasty German four-engined convoy buster called a Condor. Our slow and very noisy twin-engined aircraft was a failure as a bomber and used in this instance to save bailed-out aircrew with a lifeboat slung beneath to drop to the Bay of Biscay on 6 parachutes.

We never saw anyone in such an expanse of sea, but, with wonderful eyesight, I did see a Condor as a speck in the distance. As we were absolute mincemeat for its speed and cannon fire, we dived to just above sea level and headed hotfoot home - where we were each guaranteed an egg. 

At another RAF airfield near Lincoln, Skellingthorpe, the rear gunner of a Lancaster bomber was unable to fly, so I was asked if I would like to go on an engine test up the coast to Scotland in his place in the tail turret. My job was to line up the guns with the landscape beneath, read off the drift on a scale, and report it to the navigator via the intercom. With four fully armed-up Browning machine guns to fire at the press of a button I was fully prepared to use them should a German aircraft cross the North Sea. But none did.

Still waiting for flying training and based at RAF Northolt, I volunteered to mend bombed roofs in Plumstead. One of the first German V2 rockets landed in the district.

Then I was crossing the Atlantic by sea for there third time in the war, this  time in the Mauritania, to Oklahoma, where I wrote off a lovely PT19, Cornell aeroplane (not my fault) and gain my wings flying Harvards.

Although the was ended in Europe, many of our more experienced pilots continued flying in Pacific operations. I crossed the Atlantic for the fourth time, now heading for home as an officer and in safety on the Queen Elizabeth.

Until invalided out with TB, I became Photographic Intelligence Officer, using captured German aerial photographs of the northern Caspian to see what had interested them in the region. My war was truly over. 

I lasted a year as a medical student. Then the TB returned. There was no cure at that time. Rest was recommended but you either lived of died. To rest my lung, atmospheric air was introduced through a tick needle inserted between ribs to a gap between lung and rib cage. Never pleasant, it was a weekly inconvenience for some seven years. 

I went to Central School of Art and worked with the artist Bernard Meninsky, also taking the theatre design course, to be followed by the design course at the Old Vic School.

I was lucky enough to buy a bombed out house in Fulham, London, to rebuild and live in.

My first theater jobs were to paint scenery at the Royal Opera House, and then to design for repertory and touring shows. After repainting pantomime scenery in York in the costume I made for the job out of scene canvas and rubber solution, I made off for home. Transporting my basic paints in chamber pots (ideal and plentiful at the time) in the back of my van, an accident on an icy road decanted much of the paint over me in my monk-looking habit. Bystanders were surprised.

The big design jobs were not coming my way, being of a different sexual orientation to those in power. As the war had interrupted my education a Grand Tour around Europe seemed in order.

For this I bought an old Ford 8 flat-back vehicle and built a body on it.  Its fun features were two, brass, nautical air scoops on to of the cab, a compass, an altimeter and a horn that would waken the dead. I lived in it to travel around France, Spain and Italy, selling it eventually to some Scottish Laird.

A replacement VW van, designed so that I could paint landscape from water in a small pram dinghy that it held, followed. When the Russians invaded Hungary, Anna de Goguel and I filled it with blankets and clothes to take to the refugees in Austria. We contacted the Red Cross in Vienna and were told to deposit our clothes in their warehouse. A local newspaper told us that refugees were entering Austria in Eisenstadt. On reaching it we found people shivering in a straw-strewn farmyard. We backed the van into the yard and distributed our collection to the people who really needed it. In doing so I learned a lot about charity.

The mid to latter part of the 1950s were mainly rebuilding the Fulham house, working in the theatre and exhibiting mainly landscape paintings with some success. But I was feeling my lack of education again and thought that to see the world would be in order.

So I bought a medieval wreck of a house in the Berkshire Downs north of Newbury, sold my London house and set off to see and draw around the world. It was a wonderful time to travel, there being virtually no international conflicts going on. Costing a thousand pounds I spent most part of a year travelling around the globe, mainly in the far east. Out of it I held an exhibition of drawings and paintings in London’s Cork Street, a further show in Japan, and later, and the illustrated book: ”Harbours, Girls and a Slumbering World”.

My next job was to deal with that medieval wreck I had bought outside Chieveley. It had a thatched roof. So, in league with my lovely cottage neighbour, I telephoned the Newbury fire brigade, told them not to come out, and put a match to the downwind corner. A chimney stack  remained.

I designed and got a Polish builder to construct a studio sed my bedroom house with one bedroom. I vegetated there, to the extend that a blue tit used my bedroom as its roost. I somehow lost my way with painting. This I rectified by making collages, which have now become popular. I had to return to London’s art life, so sold the house to Francis Bacon, a charming fellow.

In the 1950’s, I had worked on coaster ships as a supernumerary. These sometimes left London from Limehouse. It was a part of dockland that appealed to me, with its close-knit dockers’ world and artisan community. So, in 1965, I bid at auction for a warehouse off Limekiln dock, got it, and, with yet another Pole, Max Jarnot, turned it into accommodation of two studios that overlooked the Thames. It was at that time I made most of my dockland paintings. 

Then marriage, first son, a few years at Yale, where I ran the home and made a garden from soiled nappies and subsoil, back to England and off to Great Chishill, in Cambridgeshire, to form a vineyard, run a house and garden, paint and sculpt large pieces of elm wood.

My next home move was to Tangley, just north of Andover in Berkshire. Again it was my job to bring up two children, cook, garden (another vineyard), make a press for cider and wined-making and continue to sculpt large elm logs. Unfortunately, I broke my wrist in a car accident and could no longer sculpt. 

Now was the time for another tack. No one was telling us then about supermarket wines. My knowledge was of importing it in cask for home bottling and making wine for my own vineyards. So I started to write - over 700 articles and 14 books over the next 25 years. And I did the first of two “Gardener’s World” programmes for the BBC.

Then my wife left to make her fame and fortune and I, with one son, returned to London, where I had the best of fortunes to meet and marry my charming Dutch wife.

Two matters goaded me back to painting (actual pastels). One was losing a delightful Matthew Smith painting with the divorce and emulating his style with “Homage to Matthew Smith” written on it boldly, and next selling a 1954 painting at Christie’s for an obscenely large sum of money when two people desperately wanted it. Working on that “homage” pastel started me off to make pictures once more.

I now sell mainly to private collectors with as much success as I want. And I write a blog. Well, this may the last blog as my trusty Windows 95 has taken on a mind of its own. I no longer understand it.

Hernia

This is just another piece about a hospital operation, an occurrence that always gives one time to think and scribble a few words – words that the squeamish might well pass by.

Some time in the middle of 2017 I suggested to a doctor that I might have a hernia. No, I hadn’t. Later, another doctor said: Yes, I had.

So the wonderful National Health Service system, in which I believe so wholeheartedly, put their wheels in motion.

I saw a specialist in hospital. And after some months was given a date for a pre-op and another for the operation.

In the meantime I had bought a truss from a local chemist and fitted it to my body. This was an enormous help in pushing my guts back into my belly. By hand it had been a rather unpleasant experience.

Unfortunately, this tight-fitting appliance caused soreness and some fungal infection – the latter cured by Margreet after referring to the medical diagnostic part of her computer.

Then came some lateral thinking. These minor afflictions were caused when the truss structure was next to the skin. Why did I not put on pants first and the truss outside them? This I did, and with a daily change of fresh pants I had no further trouble.

The pre-op was to discover what pills I was taking, my medical history, and that of my family. This was followed by a lady anaesthetist who advised me on the injections that I was to give myself before the operation instead of taking my regular Warfarin tablets. 

The trouble with this was that the dose was only part of the volume in each syringe, and its markings in red were almost impossible for me to see.

So I used a black dye marker to make it easier to see when I should stop injecting the solution. This was a rather haphazard procedure as I plunged the needle into folds on my stomach. But what’s a millilitre or two more or less?

Finally the great day arrived. I appeared at the hospital around 6.30 in the morning and was conducted to a cubicle with a bed on which lay a surgical smock, surgical stockings in a packet that was very hard to penetrate and a pair of slippers-cum-socks.

I enquired if the dress should be open at the back or front – the back. If my blood pressure was normal beforehand, struggling to put on the surgical stockings must have raised it a notch or two.

The first of the blue-costumed and clogged personal to appear was the anaesthetist. To ensure that he would not kill me I mentioned, in passing, that my grandfather was a pioneer and the first anaesthetist to be knighted. But I’m sure it made no difference.

Then came the surgeon and the Big Boss who was dressed in a city suit.

I gave them all out-of-date copies of some of my books. This gesture always goes down well as people seem to think that even having written but one book makes you someone of note.

Then I was led to the anaesthetic room on foot to lie down on the operating trolley and have stickers with wires applied to my skin and needles shoved into it.

        Then I was wheeled across a corridor to the surgery where the surgeon barked out a few orders before I woke up with the operation concluded.

It was curious that I should recover from a total anaesthetic rather than the local one proposed. And when I came to take off the dressing a few days later there was no sign of the keyhole surgery promised but an incision needing eighteen stitches. So I now consider myself to be rather lucky that the surgeon who operated on my hernia had not changed his mind again and dealt with some other unsuspecting body part.

Anyhow, a post-op room came next, and then another from which I was released with an instruction that after taking off the dressing I was to leave the stitched wound to dry and heal uncovered – a procedure of which I most thoroughly approve. 

Margreet came to collect and take me home 5 ½ hours after I was admitted to the hospital.

I had had a hernia sewn up some 70 years before when I was a medical student, and remember the weeks of pain before I could stand up straight. As I was taken home, with the effects of the anaesthetic wearing off, I realised that this time it might well be just as bad.

A bottle of Morgon 2010 that evening, donated by a grateful neighbour, helped, but pain-killers were needed. Even adapting the now worthless truss to something that would keep the dressing temporarily in place was of little help and rightfully abandoned.

With the stitches out ten days after the operation, I was committed to weeks of discomfort and inactivity. But at least I had the wonderful feeling of freedom again.

Corn and Garlic (Mussels, too)

There were two out-of-season sections of sweetcorn in the refrigerator. Feasts of in-season corn, eaten with butter and salt from the cob is one thing, but what should one do with two sections that were supermarket wrapped? I boiled them for 20 minutes and cut the corn from the cob with a sharp knife. The corn was then broken up and put into bowls containing pressed garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, vinegar and Tabasco. They were ease itself to consume, unlike the rather messy way of chewing off the corn from its cob, when bits are inclined to get stuck between the teeth. I did the same later with mussels that had been bearded, steamed open, and separated from their shells. That, too, was a delicious dish when eaten with crusty bread.

CORN AND GARLIC (MUSSELS, TOO)

You will need:

Corn on the cob (or mussels)

Garlic

Olive oil

Pepper and salt

Vinegar

Tabasco

Boil the corn on the cob for 20 – 25 minutes and, when cool, hold the cob upright in the middle of a large plate and cut off the corn from its sides with a sharp knife (the thinner the blade the better). Break the corn up with the fingers and combine it with the ingredients already mentioned.

*****

Roofing

Heaven knows when our slate roof was last laid. Anyhow, over the years there have been leaks, broken and disintegrating slates, wood rot and deteriorating lead work. It was a mess. It was time for renovation.

Difficult to access myself, I had, in the past, employed various people to execute spot repairs. And using a long pole with a paintbrush tied to the end, I had manoeuvred roofing mastic into holes and craters to keep the rainwater out. But all this was only patching up an old roof.

Then a big leak appeared, soaking a ceiling, and needing buckets on the carpets to catch the minor cascade, eased a bit by the hole I drilled to duct most of the water into a single bucket below it.

We decided that it was time to bring the entire roof up to date.

The insurance company was reluctant to pay for repairs as the roof was old and in a poor state, but would make a small contribution toward the cost of a new one.

I contacted a well-established local, family-run roofing firm that I had known for some 30 years. They looked aghast at the condition of nearly everything that should have been keeping the elements at bay.

As Health and Safety now insist on expensive scaffolding being used for such work, a “patching up” of the roof seemed out of the question. So a brand new roof was commissioned.

The roofing firm’s own scaffolders constructed some platforms and a hoist, giving their entire construction unbelievable rigidity and strength. Then off came the old roof and its slates (that had been second hand already when installed), leaving only sound rafters remaining.

Dry weather was much on our wish list – and it came, only raining for about an hour during the entire three weeks of roof replacement.

Insulation, in the form of thick foam sheets silver foiled on either side, was installed between the rafters throughout.

Old slates and decaying lead work were cast off from on high into the back of a flat-back vehicle below. Reconstruction could begin.

New slates, from Spain, arrived with rolls of lead sheet, treated wooden battens, guttering, thick ply board, copper nails and all the bits and pieces needed for the new structure. They were delivered and stored on the several scaffolder’s platforms.

Battens in place and roofing felt laid, the slates were positioned so close together that gaps between hem barely showed. This work was combined with lead flashing, with insulation and new lead work fitted around each of the dormers.

Our gang of Charlie, Garry and Allan worked from 08.30 to 3 o’clock, each knowing what the others were doing and co-ordinating their jobs so that progression could be continued without disruption.

With the roof lining installed, the house was watertight during construction should showers fall.

The tea-boy (me), supplied endless cups to keep the roofers happy (perhaps delaying their work a little). And when our electric kettle broke (in two pieces at the same time – that’s planned obsolescence for you) I was most surprised to discover how long it took to boil water in a saucepan.

The dormers seemed to take a lot of time to renovate, but insulation and beautiful lead work cannot be rushed by such craftsmen.

It now remained for only the flashing and guttering to be completed.

So, with a gift of a letter of thanks, wine and a selection of my books as a topping out present to each man, the job was complete.

Neighbours, who might have been inconvenienced by vans or noise, were invited for evening drinks as our own topping-out ceremony.

Roll on rain, frost, snow and wind. We will be snug inside from now on.

But that was not the end of it. Hardly had the roof’s ridge tiles been laid than a watchful and helpful neighbour telephoned to say that red tiles had been laid and, being in a conservation area, there would be complaints for sure. Fortunately the scaffolding was still in place so that the roofers could return to change the red tiles for black – like the rest of the neighbouring ridge tiles. Job done.

. 

A Compressed Life

In the hot summer of 2018 we are sitting on a garden bench beneath our vine arbour with ripening grapes hanging from above.

In front of our seat is a table-top slice of marble resting on metal legs.

But the marble is not just a marble top, but also a beautiful object in its own right. How could ancient volcanic action produce such a myriad design of glowing chestnut colours with white streaks running through it in all directions?

I once designed for the theatre and painting marble for the scenery was always a pleasure. I laid on a background of colour, that probably related to the action of the play and, with a brush full of colour (or white) pushed the bristles against the way in which one would usually use a brush. The result was theatrical marble for columns and walls that to the audience looked much like our garden table-top. 

This marble top was never a table-top but once a washstand top.

After the war the emerging generation wanted to be rid of the old and start afresh in a world at peace.

Washstands were old hat. They once held a basin and matching water jug for washing one’s face and neck (usually with cold water). Times had changed to hot water from a tap and basins that would empty just from pulling out the plug. So those old-fashioned washstands with their marble tops were thrown away or sold for a pittance.

So how did I come by the lovely table-top beneath the grape vines?

Thinking in advance in life, I saw the marble on those washstands becoming the future surface of a marble floor. So I bought them wherever I found them (5 quid max but mainly a lot less, or free), burned the wood for heat, and had the marble stored for future use.

That future came to fruition when I built a country studio house. The rectangular slabs were positioned, levelled, and bedded down above underfloor heating. The marble quality was not of the finest but the combinations of colour and pattern delightful. From this floor one could look out through floor-to-ceiling windows on to the Berkshire Downs. My washstand tops had, at last, come into their own.

But of all the slabs to be used there was one odd one out. It had rounded ends. And you cannot fit a round-ended slab with rectangular ones.

So I kept it aside and had a table frame and legs made for it using reinforcing rod.

And that is the story of my lovely slab of marble that gives so much pleasure beneath the grapes. It is a delight. And I hope that the long-dead cutter of it (number D 8 8 3, carved on the reverse) would also be pleased.