All Baloney

 

In 1970, having sold a studio house at the end of Limekiln Dock in Limehouse, London, we needed to cart our selves and a week-old baby, Robert, off to America for my ex-wife to take up a position as Post Doctoral Fellow at Yale.

With air fares sky-high, I looked for an Atlantic crossing by a budget airline (then, in their infancy, through a "bucket shop").

I remember climbing stairs in Lower Regent Street to find a small room where I put a lot of faith, and money at risk, to obtain tickets.

As instructed, we appeared at Gatwick Airport on the allotted day with no idea at all about times, aircraft, airline and much else.

I think an announcement was made, or was it simply word of mouth, summoning us and many lost souls like us, who where hanging around anxiously, to move forward and then to board a Laker Airways 707 bound for New York. (Freddie Laker was then a pioneer in the budget airline business.)

The stewardesses were both charming and efficient. After slinging the baby in a hammock above our seats we set off and arrived safely at New York's La Guardia airport.

With an overworked and poorly paid scientific micro-biologist member in the family, it was my job to run everything else.

Our tiny apartment in New Haven had a large balcony on which I made a most productive garden, using various pots containing subsoil from a local building site and with soiled nappies as fertiliser.

The baby and I needed space in which to play. And in the middle of the town was a grassed square, set among Ivy League university buildings. On the grass I watched as an admiring new father, and Robert learning to crawl.

A large black dog, careering out controle, knocked poor Robert flying. He didn't seem to worry too much and it did not put him off from loving dogs.

Also using the square each day was an ancient old boy (probably of Italian decent) selling balloons. "All baloney", he cried, "all baloney".

He, his ballons, the black dog and Robert in nappies are the subjects of this part of my Autobiography in words and pictures. 

 

Garden Birds and Bumblebees

 Our London terrace of houses is backed by another terrace. Between the two are small gardens, mostly paved, and left sterile by renters. So this is not a bird-friendly place.  And we both love garden birds.

There are advantages though, one of them being that we get to know our few avian residents, and they us.

There have been times when birds have been plentiful, as when an annual count included 27 house sparrows who ran the place and kept us much amused - until one year when they all left, never to return.

We have trained robins to eat from our knees when we have been in our shed at the bottom of our small garden. Blackbirds have been friendly and filled the surrounding air with glorious song. Goldfinches are commonplace, and local visitors have been wrens, greenfinches, dunnocks, blue tits and great tits. 

When there has been a dearth of birds in our vicinity, this seems to have coincided with a plethora of pet cats.

I do everything possible to attract old and new bird friends to our garden, offering food, water, and housing for any who might care to share it with us.

Besides hanging feeders of niger seeds, peanuts and sunflower seeds, there is accommodation aplenty.

High on the back of the house is a sparrow box (just in case), with a tit box at its end, and a concrete house martin's nest attached to it below. 

At the same height and a distance away is a box for swifts in an attempt to lure a couple back who lived two doors down but whose nest hole was filled up by builders. 

Below the swift box is an odd shaped home for bats, bees, butterflies, and any homeseekers.

Low down, and absolutely cat-proof, is our nest box for great tits. This is used every year with success and sometimes failure. As couples, we know each other well.

Then, nearby, is a robin box. This is a bit too vulnerable as one summer a crow ate all the young from it, and during another summer a great spotted woodpecker did the same.

I have just added a new roof to this box to make it a little more proof against villains. Now, screwed up to the underside of it I have made a nesting home or hibernation place for a bumblebee.

I love bumblebees, despite once being stung on the hand and the poison slowly paralysing my arm up to the shoulder.

This nest haven was made from a small tin, sold with bread yeast. With junior hacksaw and tin cutter, a hole was cut into the side of it, forming a little porch roof. And where the bumblebee might enter over sharp metal, a piece of wood has been glued on as a more comfortable sill.

A paste mixture of glue and compost has been used to fill the gaps and, in a rustic way, made the tin blend in with the box's woodwork. A little dried moss has been inserted for the sake of comfort.

All my bird boxes have been camouflaged roughly to represent the cement and brickwork of the house. For this I have used the wax-based oil paint that I used for my paintings of years ago (I use pastel now). It is resilient to weather and sunlight and has a matt finish.

For years I have had a bell in the garden, the handle of which had rotted away. I gave it a new handle - a long one. It hangs from the vine arbour that spans the garden and is there to be tolled in the frozen winter to tell the birds that they can finish their foraging and come to my garden for the freshly offered food and water. 

The bell came in handy when we made noises from the pavement outside our doors to show our gratitude to the overworked men and women tackling the Covid-19 virus. 

Washing machines

 There was a time when clothes washing machines were so unreliable that you would not leave them working when leaving home. Then matters improved. Perhaps some design innovations cut in to stop overflowing water. We could then leave them to go about their rightful business and go shopping.

So it was, with some surprise, that I wandered into our kitchen one morning to find the tiles and part-carpeted floor covered in a layer of water. Our trusted washing machine, with many years of reliable use, had failed us.

The water was turned off and electricity disconnected.

The carpet was dragged to the garden to drain, the water level reduced with the deft use of dustpan and bucket, with the rougher technique employed by brushing water out and over the door sill with a broom. Then it was a case of laying down towels and rubbing them around under foot to sop up the remaining water. 

That done, I worked out that either the drain from the machine had become blocked or some internal pipe connections had come adrift.

I emptied the water-filled drum through its drain filter. The drain appeared to be clear. I ran the machine, which continued to pump out water. A plumber had to be engaged. 

We have an excellent plumber, if a bit rough and ready, who hales from the Lebanon. He dismantled the top of the machine to discover that a conduit of some sort deep inside had perished and parted from its seating.

After much fiddling we decided that was in our interest to replace the 25-year-old washing with a new one. 

A few days later, our plumber appeared to prepare the way to dispose of the old and install the new machinery. The new one was delivered by his mate, another Lebanese who was keen to tell me that he only drank French wine. Château Margaux in particular. At least I didn't have to manhandle the white goods any more as the existing drying machine was lifted onto the new machine by the two strong Lebanese.

The plumbing was connected and a trial laundry of three butchers' aprons, used when we cook or eat on our knees, placed in the drum to be washed. We could at least relax after a tiring period of both body and mind.

As we had not yet read the instruction leaflet properly, about which buttons to press, this seemed to take a long time. When the cycle was over and we could extract the aprons, they were absolutely clean, though no washing powder had been used, but so tangled up that it took at least five minutes for us both to untangle them.

Much of the following day was taken up with taking all the mopping-up towels to the local laundrette and replacing all the bits and pieces that had been moved to facilitate the whole operation. Damp mats were restored to their rightful place to dry slowly indoors and in their place.

When a white wash was tried, having pressed the right buttons this time, all was well.

A dry house, where pipe water is directed to when and where wanted is much to be desired. 

Three Pieces

Quite often as we talk at home under Covid restrictions and I mention certain facets of my life, Margreet will say: "Why don't you write about it?" Well, I may have done so already in a forgotten article or blog. So should I repeat any of the three stories here, I apologise. 

Across a field in front of the house where I was borne in the country, lived the Firths. There was no electricity then, but the Firths made their own in a generating room containing a massive fly wheeled  motor on a floor covered in a series of wet batteries. We would have ours connected to the system for re-charging occasionally so that my father could use it, combined with a large dry battery and a PYE radio, to listen to Test Match cricket from Australia. This important news arrived via an aerial wire that stretched between the top of a nearby tree to the house radio, which was full of bulblike valves.

Harry Firth, whose athletic Cambridge Blue brothers died early, and was the runt of his wealthy (stainless steel) family, lived among the comforts of life, liking one of the non physical games, such as bridge, with my parents being part of that coterie.

Harry kept a well-stocked cellar, Graham's vintage port being one of his favourite wines.

He very seldom entered his cellar, leaving its contents in the hands of Sherard, his trusted butler of many years' service.

One day Harry decided to view his collection of bottles, descended to the cellar, where he found Sherard drinking some of his favourite port out of a teacup. Had Sherard been drinking from a glass, perhaps all would have been forgiven, but a TEACUP! No! He sacked Sherard on the spot. 

I think Sherard emigrated to Australia.

In the early 1960s, I worked as a supernumerary on coasters. I travelled, drew and sometimes helped out by taking watch or feeding us when the Dutch cook was drunk.

For this particular voyage we had collected bags of fertiliser from Antwerp bound for Cork in Eire.

On docking there a young lady came straight aboard and was locked in the Stuurman's cabin -  one that had no plumbing connections.  

I was the only outsider allowed in - just to make a drawing of this Irish woman. 

She was married to a Danish sailor who was at sea much of the time. 

Our cargo had been sold before we docked, and was offloaded on to a stream of horse-drawn wagons driven by Irish farmers. This took several days.

When finally offloaded and new cargo aboard, the Stuurman's lady was allowed out. She walked down the gangplan on to the dockside. When free of connection with the dock, we were off once more to the open sea.

Some time in late 1943, I was in a train returning to London on leave from an RAF pilot training station, when we came to a halt in the outskirts of the city. An air raid from German bombers was in progress.

The sky was clear and dark - very dark. Even the lighting of a cigarette was banned in the blackout.

Except for the occasional distant rumble of bombs exploding or anti-aircraft fire from the East End some distance away, it was eerily silent - as silent as it was dark.

The drama came from the beams of light made by searchlights scanning the sky in search of Nazi aircraft so that our anti-aircraft guns could open fire. 

Although we knew that our lives might be in danger, I doubt if many, or any of us, were at all afraid. We were transfixed by the pictorial and tranquil scene and its possible sudden transformation from peacefulness to violence.

On a censored postcard I described this small episode of war to a friend in the USA.

He sent me the card after the war as a souvenir. On it I had written that I wouldn't have missed the air raid for the world.

This was before the advent of the nasty German VI Buzzbombs and V2 rockets which really did fall around our ears when I was in the capital. And we had virtually no defence against them.

 

Rubens, Peace and War

I write this as I am working on a painting (pastel) of Rubens's Peace and War, or Minerva Protects Pax from Mars.

It is one of my present series of Autobiography in Pictures, in other words, recollections of incidents in my past with a written piece and a picture to go with it - or a picture with a written piece to go with it.

So how does a Rubens enter the fray?

When I bought a bombed-out house just after the war near Chelsea Football Ground, London, and rebuilt it to the height of the second floor, incorporating a studio, I had ample wall space to cover. Why not cover one wall with a large mural of Rubens, just to enter a corner of his mind when he painted this particular picture, now in the National Gallery?

It would be an interesting artistic experience for one comparatively new to professional art, having just been to art school and painting landscape and designing for the theater?

Within all my pictures are related shapes that form a basic design. 

This particular painting is a conglomeration of naked ladies, cherubs, soldier, leopard, drapery, and hidden shapes in dark stormy clouds. It is fun, but to me a difficult composition, ripe to unravel with my present eye and memory.

Soon after I had completed the mural, in about 1953 perhaps, I decided (or was commissioned, I don't recall) to paint a large self-portrait, in the background of which was my Rubens on the studio wall.

Now, in 2021, I am pulling my interpreted mural apart and including myself as an artist within the picture. It has taken me four A4 size pastels to see what to keep, what to discard and what to re-design. You muck around with a Rubens at your peril. This has taken some weeks.

Now I have got to the stage of drawing my design in pencil on an A1 size card. This, too, has been altered many times. Now it is time to add colour. At this stage it is a momentous move and I am shaking a bit.

With my coloured composition in a satisfactory state the time has come -as is my wont - to paint a mount around it. And within this mount I also not only want to give the painting a setting within the studio, but also to incorporate within it the impression that there is a tall double studio door at one side of the room and a window on the other, I turned over several ideas in my brain and finally settled on a single angle line on either side. 

I made a few very minor alterations before taking the work outside, to lay it down in the garden and spray it well with fixative.

Next came signing it and giving it a studio stamp enclosing its reference number, and then finding a frame once used to hold an aeroplane picture exhibited at the Mayor Gallery in Cork Street.

The painting now hangs on a downstairs wall at home.

I really don't know if anyone will want it, but this whole series is primarily done for myself, recalling parts of my life in paintings and words.

Ducting Air

I think I'm right in saying that atmospheric pressure decreases with height. Thus, the air inside the top of a tall chimney is of a lower pressure than that inside the bottom of the chimney. So nature and brickwork can provide an up draught of air at no cost or use of machinery.

In a very small way I wanted to use this principle twice in a house that I was designing for myself in the early 1960s.

In one instance, I ducted outside air beneath floor level to below a fire's grate, controlling its volume with a butterfly valve, also below floor level, allowing nature to cause an up draught for the fire's smoke (aided, of course, by heat generated by the fire itself). To make fire work efficiently a draught is necessary. In a house this arrives generally through ill-fitting doors and windows. So the underfloor method prevents unwanted draughts and stiff necks.

Therefore I designed and built a second chimney right next to the fire's chimney. For this one I also ducted in air beneath the floor from outside to be warmed by the real chimney's heat. This transfer-heated air was directed straight into a bedroom above, controlled there by an adjustable grill.

Openings for the vent pipes outside had to be vermin-proofed with wire mesh. 

I sold the house to Francis Bacon, the painter, when I decided that I had cut myself off too severely from metropolitan life. Even a blue tit had decided to roost in my bedroom.

Francis was bewildered by the above chimney innovations and ducts, so invited me to visit and explain them to him. We got on so well that he invited me to stay, but with only one bedroom and an internal balcony, and his boy friend George Dyer in residence, I declined the offer.

But I went there again for lunch of raw kippers, decorated with raw onion rings, with Champagne to drink.

Perhaps not being one of his coterie in any way and not being on the make, we became good friends.

Buyers Beware

 With the lockdown imposed to tackle the Covid-19 virus, we watch a little more television than usual.

One of the programmes that Margreet enjoys is when potential buyers of property are shown around houses by presenters who adhere to a formula and sometimes emulate estate agents.

It is fascinating to notice that buyers, especially those who are interested in moving to the country from town, are almost invariably impressed by BEAMS. Beams are simply items of construction, seen inside more often when exposed by the lack of such as plasterboard covering. Beams are for holding up roofs, supporting floors and, in some old properties (and brand new ones), forming the very framework of the building itself. The gaps between timbers of an old wooden framework may be filled with bricks or some sort of plaster-alike substance, depending on the prevailing methods of its period or district availability.

What fascinates me, and is yet to be mentioned by any presenter that I have seen or heard, are those usually black-painted Xs, round discs or S-shaped additions, apparently stuck to the wall of an old house at random.

They are not mentioned for a very good reason (on the part of the salesman or -woman) because they are there to prevent a bulging wall from bulging further or even collapsing. They should be a warning to potential buyers that either the wall itself is faulty or, having bulged outwards, come away in some degree from the internal floor joists directly behind them.

These, usually cast iron "plates", are attached to either end of metal tie rods that lie close to ceiling joists and pass from one side of the house to the other.

The plates are attached to a tie rod's screw-threaded ends by nuts on washers.

I wondered if these faulty walls might be flattened by the nuts being tightened over time. But I believe that this course of action is not to be recommended. With frail bricks or stonework, one could see why.

Buyers beware.

My History in the Air

 I have written on some of the following items in previous blogs. Here they are in a different context.

From flying in biplanes of canvas and wire with air-cooled piston engines making much noise in the wind around open cockpits, to now boarding an aircraft the kind of which is not revealed until reading the "escape" manual on board. I have been lucky enough to witness and live through times of enormous change in aviation.

As a schoolboy I made exact models of aircraft from "Skybird" bits. In these boxes were pieces of wood, some thread, a lead casting of a pilot, a piece of mica for the windshield, a propeller and two wheels. Included was a set of plans. The rest was up to you. One learned a lot about aeroplanes that way.

For the practical side of flying, a pilot, F/O W.E. Johns, wrote an illustrated book called The Pictorial Flying Course. It was my bible. He went on to write the highly successful Biggles books.

In 1932, aged seven, I first flew in an Avro Tutor with Allan Cobham's Flying Circus, from a farmer's field rented by Cobham near Rye, in Hampshire.

My parents had paid extra (7/6 in all) for me to experience a loop-the-loop, which was done over the sea.

A year earlier (1931), Kingsford Smith, with Wyndham Hewitt (my uncle) as flight engineer, flew the first all-Australian airmail flight from Australia to England in an Avro 10 Trimotor (Southern Star). It took them 17 days. Although much publicised as having an all-Australian crew, it wasn't, as my uncle was about as English as they come.

Because of my uncle's friendship with Kingsford Smith, my brother and myself were offered a flying trip around London, taking off from Croydon Aerodrome. But because of Kingsford Smith's unreliability, or that the tail skid on his aeroplane had broken, we were taken aloft (loose in the open rear cockpit and with caps back to front) in a very modern German low wing monoplane, called a Klemm Bat. Then, except for flying in a Dominie and a Gypsy Moth, it was not until I had joined the RAF in 1942 and, in waiting for a posting, that I took a temporary job as a prop swinger at RAF There. It was there that I flew in an Oxford and an Anson. But it was mostly in DH 82s (Tiger Moths) that I obtained flying instruction - usually on weather flights upwind with a sympathetic pilot from the airfield in charge. There was no meteorology then so these flights were to see what weather was in store.

My brother-in-law, Ian MacNaughton, in his army AOP Auster, flew Generals around battlefields. So he flew with no rules and often under very adverse circumstances. He landed crosswind at These, much to the displeasure of the authorities there, to fly me over Silchester to see the house where I was born. He supplied his mess with eggs (then a rare commodity) by finding a farm with a driveway, landing on it and parking at the front door of the house. The farmers were so surprised to find an aeroplane on their doorstep that his mess was seldom short of eggs.

It was during this time that two matters of interest took place above my head. The first was a German Ju 88 flying low in front of me on its way to bomb Reading. The other was when I heard a strange sound from above and looking up to see a smallish and fast aircraft flying with no propeller at the front or rear. It was our first jet aircraft, the Gloster E 28/39. I was with others on the airfield at Theale when it flew over. None of us could quite believe what we had seen.

My first solo flight was in a Tiger Moth at RAF Shellingford, in Berkshire. The station consisted of a few huts and a farmer's field. For me it was a watershed occasion, even though I already had some experience in the air. But I was now on my way as a real pilot.

Like other trainee pilots we were given operational experience to give us an idea of what was to come. I was sent to RAF Davidstow Moor (now of cheese fame), in Cornwall, and one of the RAF's high altitude airfields.

From it we flew Warwick aircraft, a twin-engined bomber failure but still of use in Coastal Comma with a specially made lifeboat strapped to its belly. Our job was to look for baled-out aircrew in the Bay of Biscay and drop our lifeboat suspended through the air by six parachutes. In the 20 hours of my time there on operations we never found anyone to save. Bur I did have my uses. My job was to keep an eye out for German Condor aircraft, which were powerfully armed with cannon. We were no match, being poorly armed by comparison. From the second pilot's seat I did see one at a great distance from us. So we dived down to just above sea level and headed for home.

Years later there was an interesting sequel to this episode. It transpired that the deceased father of my picture framer was a Warwick pilot, at Davidstow Moor, and at the same time as I was there. I might have flown with him. So we looked at his logbook to see if my name was mentioned. If I was one of his aircrew, the entry described me only as "passenger". Had I lost my life on one of those sorties, I wonder if my demise would have even been noticed at all?

Also for experience I was posted to a Lancaster squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe, just outside Lincoln. One day the rear gunner of a bomber was unable to be aboard one of the Lancasters flying on an engine test to Scotland and back, before leaving to bomb Germany at night. So I took his place in the rear turret with four Browning machine guns loaded and ready. It was unlikely that a German aircraft would cross the North Sea to shoot us down. But I was ready. My only job aboard was to line up my guns on the landscape below and read off the aircraft's drift on a gauge. This I relayed to the navigator at his request via the intercom.

When my real training took place it was in Oklahoma, in the mid-west of America where the weather was generally good. The aircraft for those of us starting was a Cornell (PT 19). When water sprayed up from a wet satellite field on to the control surfaces of my aeroplane and froze, I crashed it. It was a lovely aircraft. Then I flew Harvards (AT 6s) until awarded my wings and commission.

Returning from America once after the war, I crossed the Atlantic in a four, turbo prop engined Britannia - it being much cheaper than the newly introduced Boeing 707 jet. I expect that the Britannia was a lot quieter.

In the 1950s there was only one civilised way of getting to France by car. Waiting on the grass at Lydd airport on the Kent coast would be a propeller-driven, high wing Bristol Freighter aircraft, its jaws wide open. Your car, with two others, would be driven into the freighter and secured. The jaws would close and the passengers allowed aloft to sit with the pilot. Then the aeroplane would trundle over the grass to fly just above the waves of the English Channel and land at Le Touquet. There the jaws would be opened, the cars driven out, and away we would drive through France. 

To travel that way was something special - and fun.

Twice in the Far East I was a passenger on ex-wartime Dakotas (DC 3s). One rattled as part of its construction undid itself and then reversed the process. In the other, wires were hanging down from the cabin ceiling. But they worked. What a wonderful aircraft it was - and probably still is. 

BEa's 3 jet Trident aircraft pioneered Autoland in the 1960s. It was great then to land at Paris's Le Bourget airport in dense fog. That was real aviation progress.

Nowadays, when close to passenger aircraft that look as if, and do weigh tons, I wonder how on earth they can fly, let alone with freight, luggage and passengers aboard. I know the principles of flight and have had experience of them for years, but it is still somehow magic to me that these metallic hulks can take off and fly at all. 

Dreams of Paradise

 I was staying in a small fishing village that was just connected with the land but mainly rested on wooden stilts over the tidal waters of the Mekong estuary.

The dwellings were simple huts of woven bamboo with atap roofing. There was no machinery of any sort around, no electricity, no telephones, and no water other than that which ran back and forth with the tides beneath the village huts.

Fishing kept the inhabitants alive and occupied, but they did make a special crab soup that local people came to buy.

That was why I was there - to taste the soup and see how it was made.

The locally famous dish was concocted in a "missionary" cauldron above burning wood sticks, and consisted of salted water and crabs. Two kinds of crab were used, virtually filling the pot. The larger variety was placed above a smaller kind. 

After the initial cooking, the larger crabs were taken from the liquid to be dried in the sun, and the smaller ones to have their meat extracted and returned to the soup. The shells of the smaller ones were then pulverised into a paste which was also added to the soup. A small bowl, full of secret ingredients, was tipped in to form the complete dish.

It was when the old and wizened lady cook was about to tip in the secret stuff, and possibly disclose some or all of its ingredients, when a young Englishman interrupted my observations. He wanted my advise (possibly because of my age). He was of the English Public School mould, tall, fair, well spoken and somewhat too well dressed for the surroundings and the heat. No sooner had he arrived, than a young lady fisherwoman appeared. She was quite stunning in appearance, tall, willowy, elegant and graceful. She would have starred on the finest cat-walks of the grandest fashion houses of the world.

The two were obviously in love, touching each other, gazing into each other's eyes and quite lost in that euphoric state that engulfs young lovers. They wanted my advice on their future. 

I had to point out, possibly too bluntly, the obvious difficulties of language and cultures, and the obstacles that they and their children would encounter, summed up in the words "roots" and "acceptance".

Having put these ideas before them I noticed tears in their love-sick eyes and felt some in my own as well. I ended by saying that should they part they would always look back on this period of their lives and remember them as their time in paradise.

I kept in touch with both, the man who then joined the ranks of the expected and orderly by marrying and bringing up a family, and the girl, who continued life in her fishing community, unaware, perhaps, that to western eyes she was a striking beauty.

Both revealed that they recalled their days in paradise, wondering what their lives together might have been.

My contact with the girl ceased abruptly. A tsunami had swept away her village with no one surviving the catastrophic upheaval of nature.

And the soup? I never did discover what was added to it from that bowl of secret ingredients.

You see, in times of virus pandemic and lockdown when not much happens, I have begun to take interest in, and to remember and record dreams like this one. 

People and Things

 My wife, Margreet, who has been checking my rather extensive autobiography, says that she would like to know more about the people in it. That failing is because I am more at home and comfortable with inanimate things rather than people. With things, situations, and places, I know more or less what to do or not to do, or make note of. With people I am not so sure and do not like to offend. Moreover, they are extremely complex.

So I got to thinking about some of the people who have influenced my life in major or minor ways. 

Arthur Keep was gardener to my grandfather and later worked on our Silchester chicken farm. 

When grandfather bought a car, he asked "Keep" if he would abandon gardening to become the chauffeur. Arthur Keep drove the car to the end of the rather long drive, didn't like it, dismounted, and remained gardener.

He and I, though he was much older, got on well. So from him, and my father in a different way, I learned the ways of the country and countryfolk.

Arthur Keep recalled later that as a small boy I would go to his dwelling and ask for "half a nana", and I presume was given it. And when he retired to a small cottage near Aldermaston, and where I would sometimes stay when painting landscape in the district, he taught me how to eat a tomato in the hands by making a hole in the skin, sucking out some pulp, replacing it with vinegar salt and plenty of pepper and consuming it with bread and butter. And outside in the sunshine, with the tomato warm and straight from the vine, it was quite delicious.

In his old age he would take a great delight in watching black and white children's television.

It was probably that having taken me rather under his wing that I was happy catching newts with the village boys (bad form) and drinking nettle tea with our lengthman - a man in charge of the surface and drainage of road (also bad form). But on his advice I avoided the Tadley gypsies (good form). I did once visit Tadley to meet our maid's family. When the door opened, there, hanging from the wall, was a large black pig, dead and cold, ready for butchery (one remembers these things).

Sights like that were normal, as was the baking of bread in most villages. This bread was baked in such ways that other peoples bread was always different and seemed to taste better than our own. It was something to relish, as was the bread and butter consumed at Arthur Keep's cottage with ripe tomatoes. 

With WW 2 well under way (I'm sure it should be "weigh"), I disembarked from a liner in Montreal, in Canada, as a pubescent 15 year old refugee. I was being possibly the only member of my family to survive the imminent Nazi invasion of the UK. 

My kind hosts, the Killorins, collected me and we drove down to Watertown, Connecticut where my host worked with a brass factory and my hostess in the very smart Taft School. I soon came to realise that I had landed in a very foreign country and that I was a misfit in it.

Because of my adopted family's connections with the school I was enrolled there, where I excelled only in sport. So I was sent by bus each day to a Trade School in Torrington, Connecticut. There I learned to draw cog wheels and had difficulty with the over-befriending headmaster who thought I might be a good match for his plain daughter.

With no money, except for the magazine subscriptions that I sold locally, life was a bit bleak.

That was, until I met a person called Souther Buttrick, a fellow, but American misfit.

Souther did not fit in with the almost ritualistic American way of life. Older than me by several years, he lived alone above his parents' garage as a wood sculptor, clarinet player, furniture mender, Bull Durham smoker and whisky drinker. His chaotic eyrie smelled of smoke, freshly-cut wood and Bourbon. There was a most pleasant haze about it.

Souther didn't speak a lot and got on with his creative processes. 

In the room where I lived I designed and made a musical instrument, helped in the garden, and dug us out of the enormous snow-drifts that piled up outside each winter. 

In Souther's place I was happy and felt at home. And what I learned there about wood and wood sculpture has stood me in good stead ever since.

Unbeknown to Souther, he did me a most useful service by giving me too much Bourbon one evening. I lived a short distance away from his hideaway, and to cover the distance on this occasion I recall resorting to all fours. Regaining my room, the bed tried to tip me on to the floor as the walls around moved in all directions. I have been in many a tipsy state since but never one like that. The lesson learned had been a  memorable one. 

When once I returned to America it was important to me that I locate Souther to say how much I had appreciated his company during early wartime before returning to fly in the RAF, and to tell him how he had influenced my future.

I did find him, living alone in the countryside, mending antique wooden furniture.

He had forgotten me.

The Hand - Written Word

My age alone entitles me to be a Luddite. I'm of a period where pencils, pens, inkwells, and ledgers were once the normal. I should embrace the electronic age, but I don't. And in not doing so I take great pleasure in seeing those who rely almost entirely on their collection of magical, electronic gadgets suddenly find that all their personal and business details have been swallowed up by the machinery. Or thieves, cleverer than them, may have caused ruination, when just a backup with pen on paper with passwords and "how it was done" information might have saved a lot of anguish.

The world has moved on and I have been standing still, painting, blogging (actually using a Windows 95 as a word-processor), and handing on my words to Margreet who bounces them off satellites to be harvested by those who are interested and have the means to capture them.

To even imagine abolishing electronics is quite ridiculous, even for a Luddite like me, as most people on earth now depend on them for their very livelihoods.

The time-saving in using the internet for gleaning information is astounding and wonderful. Yet the time and money wasted in using them and trying to get them to work, updated or repaired, is also enormous - as  is their consumption of paper.

Even I would find life to be much duller without access to Margreet's electronic expertise.

I had started writing this piece when executing my annual, post-Christmas letters, replying to friends from far afield, seldom met, and who have sent cards.

At least, Christmas cards now generally have a piece that is hand-written inside along with the printed greetings. That is nice, and hopeful, inasmuch as I see pen put to card - though I would rather receive the written bit without the expensive, wasteful cards with their often bland and meaningless, non-Christmassy decoration. And cards with printed greetings that are signed with only "Bill and Sue" are also almost as insulting as having their names printed as well. Who are Bill and Sue anyway?

A pen and ink communication indicates to me that someone has taken time (and now almost skill) to do it. A letter or even a newsy postcard arriving through the letterbox is a sort of return to fundamental values.

I might shout: "Luddites unite". No chance, because here I am, actually relying on computers to tell you, more or less, what I am thinking. 

Cars

I was brought up in an era of mechanical unreliability. Cars were always breaking down, punctures were commonplace, engines consumed and leaked oil, a grease gun was part of the maintenance kit, and passengers were sometimes required to help push a car up steep hills. So just to make cars work was part of life, despite the advertisements of the day showing happy people driving around an ideal countryside with hair in the slipstream and smiles on faces. It was not usually like that.

I suppose because they needed so much attention, and there were comparatively few cars about, they seemed to form personalities of their own, sometimes volatile ones. You loved them or hated them, but you could not ignore them. Or if you did so, it was at your peril. Even people with no bent for mechanical matters, soon acquired some essential knowledge of how cars worked and how to deal with trouble.

A good example was my first car, a twenty year old 1929/1930 MG Type M Midget, given to me by a cousin. It was open, sporty, and just the kind enjoyed by girl friends - except when it broke down. I had to learn how to cure an oil leak from its overhead camshaft, about its SU carburettor, the Autovac, and how to treat the slipping clutch by squirting fluid from its Pyrene fire extinguisher into the clutch housing. To own it was an adventure too far. So, as it had been a gift, I gave it away to a Norfolk family of friends, where it may still languish in a shed or barn.

 My brother was an engineer who knew a man who made up Austin 7 cars from bits of others. I asked if he would make me a sporting version, which he did. Two seats, crab-tracked, lousy brakes, and hot exhaust burns if you were not careful when climbing in or out, it was a fun car, except when I was once just managing to pass a lorry of cows when one of them relieved herself and soaked me.

Then came a wedding where I entertained fellow ushers on the way to the reception, when a lamp-post jumped out in front of me. I left the car where it fell. Recovered somehow, it became unstable at speed. Not even Colin Chapman, of Lotus, could find anything wrong. So I sold it to a suited man from the City with fear that he might sue me for something. He did telephone to ask about some aspect of the car. I asked how fast he had managed to take it, to be told that it was something like 35 miles per hour. 

I was painting from nature, often from the banks of rivers. And selling the results rather well. So I thought that a vehicle in which I could transport a fibreglass pram dinghy would be an ideal way to explore and paint river scenes. It might also be good as a camper. So I had a coach builder make a body to fit onto a Volkswagen flat-back. It was a job to handle the dinghy in and out of the van, and river banks often consist of deep mud. It was a failure and had to go.

As a stage designer I was asked to join a man, called van Bunnens, to paint pantomime scenery on ice. It was a cold job but I had retained my wartime flying boots. At least my feet were warm. The pay was good and I had spare time to buy a clapped-out builder's Ford 8 flat-back, and create a streamlined body with ply and canvas roof. In mind was a camping grand tour of Europe. As this proposed journey was in the summer, and hot, I fixed two air scoops on to the roof - the kind of ventilators on old-fashioned ships to cool the boiler room. When wet, the scoops would be turned to point backward and two corks sealed them off. I added a mighty air-blasting horn (the kind used in intercontinental lorries), a compass and an aircraft altimeter that told of the car's altitude and also acted as the weather forecasting barometer. The seat of canvas-covered foam rubber was canted up in the front, and the back rest leant backward. It was made to measure (for me) and extremely comfortable. For liquid effluent a funnel lead to a tube that lead to the road beneath.

Toward the end of the grant tour, the engine was reluctant to start in the mornings. So it was necessary to park for the night on steep downward slopes for a rolling start each day - which also meant me sleeping at the same angle as the car.

Although the space in the wheel arches that I gave for the wheels to rise over bumps in England were quite adequate, for the dreadful roads in Europe at that time (1952) they were not. So, often the smell of scoured rubber would follow the noise of tyres hitting the wooden wheel arches. Yet, after three months and three days, with 5,227 miles of driving on the clock, there was no sign of wear on the Michelin tyres. I sold the car to a titled Scottish laird, and for all I know that car is still frightening the hell out of highland sheep.

The Citroen 2 CV that I next owned I loved for its simplicity and originality. Air-cooling was sensible, centrifugal clutch, clever. The suspension, when the front wheels told the rear ones what to expect, was mightily original, even if it tilted the bodywork when negotiating a corner. And if one changed the two spark plugs each autumn, it started first time in all weathers.

Needing a bit more space for painting kit I moved on to an Ami 8. This was simply a 2 CV with a station wagon body. Rust was its only problem.

A Volkswagen Golf Cabriolet came next. And what a lovely car it was - in all weathers. The only snag was driving through pools of water of unknown depth in the road. A good splash allowed water to reach the electronics, when the engine stopped. I gave it to a son who, I believe, crashed it.

Lastly came an automatic Toyota RAV 4. This is still in the family. And after 24 years of life on the road has not missed a beat.

So, from a 1929 MG M Series to the automatic RAV 4, I have experience not only a lot of highs and lows, but the pleasure of seeing an enormous advance in automotive engineering. 

Food and Wine (haphazard, meandering recollections) Part 2

 I used to plan solo trips through France, Spain and Italy to pass through or stay in wine-growing areas, making notes on the growing of vines, their grapes and the results of vinification methods. My notes were to help me eventually establish a vineyard in England.

To eat I would buy a drink at a well-established café and ask the waiter to where he would take his family out for a meal. It was a great way to discover sometimes unmarked establishments that might not have a menu or even cost of dishes displayed. But they would invariably be excellent and modestly priced. 

One meal started with a dozen oysters, another with cauliflower, garlic and toasted breadcrumbs. Yet another set out with some raw baby artichokes, which I had no idea about how to tackle. I still wouldn't. And so on.

I now find the ordinary wines of Bordeaux to be disappointing. It is extraordinary how the same area can produce among the finest wines in the world (at a price) and also some of the dullest. But I was there in happier times and took up residence in Bas Médoc (now just Médoc). My room was a hut at the edge of woodland, and when asking where I might find 'le toilette', was directed in the general direction of the trees. The establishment actually did have such a facility, but it was, shall we say, nasty.

Food of a good simple kind was available, but only if either the mother or daughter of the establishment were not occupied with more carnal skills. The house red wine (practically no white was made in the region at this time) was delicious. It came from the co-operative in Prignac. I went to investigate to find a winery thick with fruit flies. But I ordered a hogshead to be shipped to London, where we bottled it and drank a red that coloured the mouth and tongue a bright purple colour. It was delicious. To import a hogshead of wine from France in those days was comparatively easy, but not a bone. Having enjoyed a wonderful rib of beef in a railway station café I asked if I could take the bone back to England for a dog. NON. The law about taking food away from restaurants forbade it. But by underhand means I did get the bone back, much to the dog's delight.

It was much later, when I had established two experimental vineyards and gathered enough information of growing grapes and choosing and importing wine that I started to write on the subject for newspapers and magazines. In so doing and sending my printed words to the people who mattered, I was asked to join an elite band of writers on wine.

I was now invited to travel and eat and drink wine in opulence. But whereas my fellows were interested in the upper layers of the market, I was concentrating on the lower end. So with the grand offerings I asked to taste the local 'ordinaires' - sometimes lowering the tone, I fear. My wines were of interest to the supermarket buyers, and it was for them and their supermarket consumers that I was writing. This was a great learning curve for myself and for those who read my columns. Actually, the high life did have its drawbacks. Nouvelle cuisine was in vogue. After a meal, when we might have been offered such as a prawn in a sea of blackcurrant juice with a few sage leaves floating around in it, it seemed obligatory to shake the chef's clammy hand as he walked around the table to be congratulated.

It was seeing grapes entering a winery in Cahors that were covered with blue copper spray that determined me to find grape varieties that needed no spray at all. I managed this before giving up wine-writing, also at a time when others realised that their readers did not all drink fine wine.

But not all venues for us privileged writers were grand. In Pisa we were taken to a sort of souvenir shop near to the leaning tower that had a small restaurant at the rear. That was when the only wine on offer was local, which was delicious and just the kind I like.

When on my own in Italy and determined to reach Certaldo where Boccaccio sheltered from the plague and wrote the Decameron, I not only found the lovely villa on a hilltop, but saw that in almost every doorway sat old ladies weaving rushes around Chianti fiascos. I bought two large ones for washing water. By soaking the rushes in water the contents of the bottles cooled down by the latent heat of evaporation.

Later, in Sienna, I was given most wonderful red wine made by the patron's family of the café were I was eating. So I returned to my camping kind of car - a vehicle that I designed for the voyage - emptied the fiascos of their water and had it replaced with the café's red wine.

With the old car breaking down every so often in Spain and Italy it was a lovely experience to meet helpers and kind people with natural mechanical skills. 

That was the way it was.

My writing on wine needed no expert knowledge, unlike my fellow wine writers. But over the years I had kept my eyes open with a view to one day establishing a vineyard. I had tasted many a wine and imported quite a lot in cask from France and Spain to bottle at home, study and drink. I possessed an acute sense of smell - for wine and even people. And I had written several books on the subject and countless articles with the theme of "wine is natural and healthy, Let's learn together".

Of course wine and food can be treated in a most exulted manner by anyone. But really wine is just a very nice drink with food and food with wine - especially in Italy when one seems to be made to go with the other. Any wine you like will surely go with any food you like. Balance is necessary. Your body accepts it and will be tolerant, as mine has been for 95 years. 

Food and Wine (haphazard, meandering recollection in two parts)

 Part 1

Cooking for wife and children to fit in with the other facets of my life, has dictated that my dishes are of a simple kind - "throw in this or that" and, if the results do not always look like magazine photographs, the taste would be fine. So the French style of simple café and peasant cooking (small, plain, separate and unadorned) has been my theme at home and in both of my cookbooks.

This was exemplified when, looking after a recuperating friend of a friend, he announced at a meal: "This is peasant cooking." He was right.

As a child in the country, cooking was done for me. When even during those times of depression we were able to breed, harvest and preserve much of what we ate. Our chicken farm provided birds and eggs, and I was allowed to shoot or snare rabbits and decoy pigeons. Food was nourishing and plain with neither of my parents taking much of an interest in it. Wine was sparingly drunk by my parents. My father drank  "Tolly" beer, and we children were surprisingly allowed to drink cider - which must have given me a lifelong interest in alcoholic drinks.

I knew how to paunch, skin and cut up a rabbit and was astounded when my very grand grandmother, who came to stay, rolled up her city sleeves and did the same. I had the feeling then that handling meat might be in my genes. We never did find out about her Irish origins, wondering if she might, among other things, have been a butcher's daughter.

I was not inspired by school food, except for sausages. So, when I was living on my own during school holidays, I mainly ate fried food (eggs especially) cooked in butter over a gas ring. Oil was never used.

Food in America (where I learned to fly in the war) seemed wonderful and plentiful after UK rationing, but it palled after a while, through its blandness. I think that much of it came out of tins opened in the airfield's kitchen.

Back in peacetime England we were allowed out of the country with £20. And it was with that modest amount of money for hotel room and food that I could escape rationing and come to know and really enjoy the simple, if repetitive menus of French cafés.

A salade tomates was always a delicious way to start a meal. Then came steak (tough skirt as a rule), pommes frites, pork chop, tête de veau, boudin noir (always cooked in a tomato and onion sauce), fish, simply served, casseroles and a limited but excellent choice of main dishes. Vegetables and plain lettuce salads were always serves separately, which to me make sense. Plain salad with cheese, eaten with knife and fork, and Roquefort beurre, when one minced the two together on the plate to eat with bread, I offer to this day. And Mont Blanc (chestnut purée topped with sour cream) made a fitting end to many a meal. The house red was the only one ordered. This was either the cheapest plonk or a wine with which the patron was well acquainted with and proud of.

Eating out was special, but most food was consumed either in the room or in the Jardin des Plantes nearby. It was baguette bread, saucisson sec and red wine.

The hotel that I favoured in which to stay, usually with a current girl friend, was situated opposite a school. Carved into its wall in large capitals was: LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE, DEFENCE D'URINER. 

The hotel, although without restaurant, did have a connection with food. A man kept his mistress there, and each Friday on his returning home he would stop off for his liaison. His mistress, beforehand, would well fry an egg and pin it to her blouse. He would appear, take a levered fountain pen from his pocket,  aim it at the egg and squirt the ink at it.  The pen would be returned to his pocket and he departed. 

Acting

 I could never be an actor, firstly because I would be unable to remember my lines, and secondly because I could not spend my life being other people. And yet, I have been a "professional" actor twice.

The first time was having been at Art School, the Old Vic School, and painted scenery at The Royal Opera House, I took my first job as set designer at High Wycombe Repertory Theater. Being weekly rep, I would have to read a play three weeks in advance, draw up a ground plan and model of the set for the producer, select and paint flats, and later, as prop master, before each Monday's "curtain up", assemble and decorate the scene(s) with rented or borrowed artefacts. As you may imagine, for one person to do all this was quite a job.

For a particular play the company was short of an actor. So I volunteered, and even had my name in the programme. I was "second ambulance man". If not exactly Oscar material, at least I didn't drop my end of the stretcher.

The second time I was an actor was on much grander scale in a Peter Greenaway film.

As I was at that time writing a weekly wine column for a newspaper, and knowing that the scene I was to be involved in was eating and drinking, I thought it might be of interest to my readers to know what film stars actually drank on set.

All that was required of me was to dress in a dinner jacket and appear at a certain location, there to be transported with other extras to studios in North London. No payment was to be offered.

For the part I was to play, the requirement was to sit at a dinner table with a few others and pretend (act) to eat, drink and talk. As we did so, the famous principal actors argued over their meal and came to blows with one piercing the other's cheeks with a knife, or perhaps it was a fork.

The food I was supposed to be eating was a single freshwater crayfish, looking rather small on my plate and which smelled pretty horrible when we started filming. It gave off the most dread smell by the end of the day's "takes".

Filming over, and five minutes of actual film accomplished, I discovered that the liquid offered as wine to the famous actors was apple juice for white and Ribena for red - which was not much inside information for my readers.

Then we were all given fish and chips in paper bags and thanked for our contribution. We would be invited to a preview of the film. Was stardom beckoning? 

When the film was screened some months later, I think I saw the back of my head  - well, I'm not sure it was my head. 

And I can still smell that rotting crayfish.

Acting is not for me.

New mail

These Times (a very limited, fragmented, personal and idiosyncratic view)

 I often wonder what defines the period in which we live.

Obviously, as I write, the Covid-19 virus that almost instantaneously surfaced around the globe defines this particular period of time. The virus lasts, and probably mutates because no one knows much about it or how to combat it. Even if inoculation and vaccination work, it has a head start on us. It manifests itself even in the bodies of people who hope that by keeping distances apart, washing hands and wearing masks will be of help in avoiding it. At least these prophylactic measures are things we can all actually do.

With the virus has come the demise in the use of paper currency and coinage, and with it the reliance on internet banking with all its pitfalls - like scamming theft. 

At this time, computers and mobile telephones have become even more important in business and at home. We no longer wonder why people seem to be talking to themselves in the street, or suddenly stopping mid-pavement to concentrate on a telephone conversation.

With this reliance on the computer comes awareness that we are in the hands of powerful forces about which or whom we know little, except that in dealing with the internet we play into their greedy hands. Their gadgets cause much unhappiness, time-wasting and frustration. The electronic items seem to fail too often, with the users needing assistance, consuming yet more time. And when at home or office there are all those connecting wires to sort out and deal with. 

More and more the "takeaway" takes over from proper home cooking. Pizza reigns. At least there are few  short cuts when consuming alcoholic drinks, some of which contain elements that are clearly beneficial to health.

The art world continues to be run by the power of the salesroom, gallery owners, promoters, critics, and often gullible customers. Thus, some second rate artists are boosted far beyond their real worth.  But the buyer is wise - until coming to sell the objects bought. Sculptors shine, certainly in the form of work by Gormley and Kapoor. But large does not alway mean good.

Architecture prospers more in countries that are willing to take a chance in the lust for progress. Except in London for Renzo's Chard, it must be committees of old codgers that turned down the building of Libeskind's V & A extension yet allowed the monstrous National Gallery extension to go ahead. For imaginative architecture one must look abroad. I still like the I.M. Pei Bank of China Tower building in Hong Kong for its simplicity and power.

It is fashionable at this present time for young men to sport beards. They may think that they look more distinctive with one, but they are beginning to all look  rather alike.

As for women's fashion, originality is essential in their world, but most women only keep an eye on high fashion, buying clothes, with a nod to fashion, that suit them personally. Most must be glad that there is not an overwhelming style to almost have to follow - like "the new look" was in its time.

Fossil fuel is becoming a dirty word, with renewable energy sources and non-polluting methods of power and heat much to the forefront. Wind farms and windmills, natural gas, solar panels, pollution-free wood burning stoves, heat pumps and hydrogen are all promoted. Electricity suffers from difficult storage and heavy batteries. I favour hydrogen power from water to make electricity, and using geothermal heat when right below us is an endless source of power if we could only tap it economically. But the two inventions that would surely make the world a better place are: extracting hydrogen from water easily and economically, and creating compact, lightweight, and easily produced storage for quantities of electricity. 

Air, sea and land travel will continue to lure business people and holidaymakers toward foreign lands and customs, despite there being conflicts of one kind or another throughout the world. But plagues, like the present virus one, will make people more aware of the pleasures to be gained from their own countries and be only too pleased to have an excuse for avoiding the palaver of airports, customs, handling luggage, currency, mosquitoes, unpleasant creatures, and diseases that are rife elsewhere. 

When overburdened with the cares that surround us at every turn during this period of civilisation, I believe that it is essential to completely relax once in a while. This means sitting or lying still and eliminating all thoughts from your brain and, at the same time relaxing every muscle in your body. We might call it total relaxation or mindfulness. The Dutch call it 'Niksen'. 

Art and Light in the early 1930s

I have been thinking about art and that any painting worth its salt must be one of imagination on the artist's behalf and on that of the viewer. Also, that the composition of the work, whatever form it might take, in any age, needs the utmost compositional skill on the part of the artist for a successful reward. 

As I spend many hours of composing with drawings before the actual process of painting (now in pastel), I was thinking about how my art had changed over the years, other than from 1960 working from my head rather than my eye. So I thought it might be of interest to look at a watercolour that I did in 1932 when I was seven years old. This work was in the form of a Christmas card. The subject of which as Father Christmas on his sleigh delivering presents at night.

If I gave myself the same task today, there would be striking similarities. 

There was a simple band of white for snow on which a sleigh, laden with parcels, sported the prow of a Viking ship. The sleigh of goodies was drawn through a black night with a full moon by a single reindeer. Santa, holding the reins, sits on a chair. I would have a job to improve on it as a Christmas card. But there was one main and interesting difference between then and now - the lamp on the sleigh. In the painting, this sleigh light does not carry far. It stops rather suddenly in the blackness of the night - why?

Unlike modern battery and generated electricity vehicle lights, that can shine, blink, and illuminate the path ahead, this one does not.

In a time when we made our own gas to light the downstairs of our house (electricity had yet to reach us), and used candles to light our way upstairs to bed, carbide lamps were used for the road.

In a carbide lamp the lower part was the container for dry carbide. Above it was another container for water. And in between was a device to allow drips of water to fall on to the carbide to produce acetylene  gas. This inflammable gas was emitted through a ceramic jet and lit with a match. Behind the flame was a reflector. By present day standards this form of lighting was abysmally poor. But with it we could ride a bicycle at night. And if it was good enough for bicycles then, it was also good enough for Santa's sleigh. 

Duffus

The war had ended. My services as a pilot were no longer of importance and, in the shockingly cold winder of 1947, through lack of heat and food, I had contacted TB. So instead of being demobilised when my service time was up, I was invalided out of the RAF. As a medical student later I was struck down by the same affliction. 

I had little money and no prospects.

I took a room in the less salubrious area near Victoria Station, where, having left it for two council rooms, fellow pilots came to see me, only to be told: "he's gone". They presumed that I had died of TB (there was no cure at that time). Miraculously for them (and I suppose for me, too), I re-appeared alive years later on television, doing a Gardener's World programme for the BBC.

I obtained the two very small council rooms, possibly because of my poor health or war record. The one (living) room looked out over the railway lines of Victoria station, the window of which was never opened because of smoke from engines parked beneath and the noise of steam jets punctuating the air day and night. I even added to the existing pollution of soot and smog by heating this room, by the only means  available then, from a coal-burning fireplace. But I am a cook, and could happily feed myself and friends for a week or so with several recipes using a cheap pig's head. The rooms became known as my "Murky Chambers". Fortunately, my grandfather, who had been knighted, left a wife who was not averse to flaunting her title. Through her, I suppose, my name was added to a social register - or something of that order.

Rich parents, with often plain daughters, were keen to give parties and balls for their coming-out, debutante offspring. For these occasions there was a need for young men of "breeding" to be part of the scene.

Johnny Coates (later of Yellow Submarine fame), being a relation of Lord Rank, was also on the same register. We became "party" friends. Many an invitation came our way. All we needed was a dinner jacket.

Because of my menial abode I was quite unable to return this welcome hospitality. I could offer cheap Algerian red wine aplenty, but a pig's head, though delicious, was hardly adequate fare. And the murky chambers were far too small.

The one invitation that we enjoyed especially, came from the debonair Duffus of Dalclaverhouse.

It so happened that to make these parties more fun, I would sometimes adopt the name of Sir George ffortescue-Williamson, Could Duffus, with his splendid name, be doing the same?

Duffus lived in Knightsbridge where he presided over his generous hospitality.  We liked him. Later I learned that he was deeply in debt, borrowing on the strength of his name and the prospect of a great inheritance that never materialised. Which was a shame. And he really did own his grand, Scottish name - unlike my own: Sir George....

So I thank Duffus very much. And if he still lives (most of that generation "have gone") I wish him well.

Public Speaking

 I have managed in a long life to avoid speaking in public - except twice.

The first time was for the editor of a newspaper where I had a weekly column. He asked me to give a talk to his club. I think it was called The Lions. I did my best to decline, but we were friends and the continuation of my column was important to me. So I agreed.

For my talk I wore a country-designed jacket that incorporated several ordinary pockets and two large poacher's pockets. 

I was expected to talk about wine, which was the subject of my column. So I started off with a bit about the nonsense of wine language by critics and the blurb on bottles, and that wine you like will almost certainly go with the food you like. This debunking approach to the subject was expected of me. 

Then I manoeuvred my talk around to food, singing the praises of a classic tomato salad, an ideal dish with which to start almost any meal. "You may," I continued, "like to know how to make it the way they do in France."

From one of my poacher's pockets I produced a large plate. Then from another pocket a thin bladed and very sharp knife, and from the third, a large tomato. These I placed on a tall stool that I had arranged to stand next to me.

I halved, cut away the firm centre, and then thinly sliced the tomato. There was a slightly astonished look on the faces of my audience.

Next from the pockets came two small pots of pepper and salt, then a bottle of home-produced vinegar, and one of olive oil. With these I dressed the tomato slices (being generous with the oil and frugal with the vinegar).

From yet another hiding place I produced a small onion and chopped some of it finely before scattering some of the small pieces over the tomato slices. 

Lastly out came a bunch of parsley and scissors with which to cut a sprinkling of the herb over the lot. 

That was the end of my "speech". There was laughter and much applause.

Then I produced every fork that I owned so that my audience could sample the result of my talk.

The second speech was in quite a different setting, and very much grander.

There were so many of my paintings in an exhibition at Guildhall Art Gallery, where other contributors were given single offerings, that I was asked to give a speech and formally open the exhibition in front of friends, critics and the public.

The show was a commemorative one concerning Tower Bridge. And as I had lived in dockland, painted and written books on it, I had many a tale to tell. But not liking the idea of a major speech, I practised and practised it for weeks beforehand. I even dreamed of it. I could think of almost nothing else. But I was committed and had to go through with it. Could I remember my 15 minute oration? 

Before my speech was due I was preceded by a Guildhall official who was very much an accomplished speaker.

My turn came. I was introduced on to the stage. I was off.

My tales were obviously popular and were greeted with laughter. Then I forgot my story plan and stopped talking, soon to take up again and reach the end, when I cut the tape and pronounced the exhibition OPEN. There was much applause. One listener thought that my mid-speech stumble was done on purpose for effect.

I hope never again to go through such an ordeal, but should I have to - at a wedding for instance - I have a story planned. It will be directed at the groom to illustrate that as much as we men love women, some take a little understanding at times. 

The Life of Trees

 In the garden of a house that I bought near Andover, in Hampshire, there were two larch tree saplings growing wild in an unsuitable place in the garden. So I moved them to an out-of-the-way spot where they could grow, in freedom without overcrowding or casting unwanted shadows. Though small, they were staked firmly and planted fairly close to each other.

When they had grown into real trees, one bore beautiful little blue flowers on its branches, the other none. So, presumably, they were female and male. 

When I last saw them from the nearby lane, they looked very grand, very tall, and very fine. I felt the pleasure of having become a successful larch tree matchmaker.

A friend of some years ago was dying of cancer. Before she died she turned strongly religious. She died.

Before that she gave us a small cutting of a bay tree. This was planted in a suitable pot and allowed to form a five foot high bare trunk with its fragrant leaves on top. 

Because she was so keen on God, we named her "Elizabeth's Tree" and formed the top into a cone shape, like an arrow pointing to heaven, where she presumably went.

Perhaps because of its position it thrived initially but went into decline. So I moved it, still in its original pot to another place in our small London garden. In doing so I pruned it with excessive vigour into a proposed ball-shape. This it loved and has now become a thick ball of aromatic leaves atop its bare trunk. It is a fine tree that enhances our garden in its new position.

I don't know if there is any religious significance in all this - me being an atheist and all. 

Waiting and Luck in the war

 In parallel with modern-day waiting, like for deliveries, taxis, post, queues and such, a lot of my war was  waiting, but on a larger scale, mainly for the nsext posting on my way to becoming a pilot. Tedious it may have been but, in looking back, it was often accompanied by good luck.

On returning from America to join the RAF in 1942 in a convoy when we were attacked by German U-boats, I was accepted into the AF, given a number and told to wait.

Just that I managed to get back to England instated and in one piece was luck. The RAF was much in need of pints at that time, but conditions for learning to fly in England were meteorologically not conducive for novices. So I had to wait for a pilot-training vacancy abroad where the weather was free of clouds.

Not yet in uniform, I took a job as a farm labourer to help, in a very small way, to feed the nation. And in doing this very manual work I came nearest to the enemy in the entire war. Weeding in the middle of a field one day, a German Ju88 twin-engined bomber flew low and so close to my head that I could see the pilot and gunner quite clearly. They were on their mission to bomb the railway station at Reading. That I am able to write this is that the gunner failed to pull the trigger and shoot me dead. That was a real slice of luck during a wait.

My next job was as a prop-swinger at the RAF Theale. Dangerous I am sure it was in starting aeroplane engines by swinging the propeller and falling back at the same time. But through good luck I not only survived but also had the luck to obtain flying experience in the second pilot's cockpit when it was available.

Wait over, I was at last in uniform and flying my first solo flight at RAF Shellingford, which consisted of no more than a farmer's grass field.  No luck was needed there as I now had some experience in the air.

The next wait was, I suppose, the most dangerous.

To give trainee pilots a taste of real combative action was to farm us out to operational RAF stations to experience the real thing. My first and most interesting posting was to RAF  Davidstowe Moor in Cornwall to fly in the second pilot's seat in twin-engined Warwick aircraft. Each sortie was to fly out over the Bay of Biscay to find and then drop a lifeboat to save downed aircrew. Whereas pilot, gunners and all were looking down at the sea, my job was to keep an eye out for German, four-engined Condors for which we were no match. I did see one before they saw us. We were slow and poorly armed by comparison, but escaped unhurt. That was a real stroke of luck.

After another wait, I was posted to RAF Skellingthorpe, in Lincolnshire. This was one of the airfields from which Lancaster bombers left to bomb Germany at night. I took the place of a rear gunner in an engine-testing flight up to Scotland and back. Except for the remote chance that a German raider could intercept us, it was a case of not needing much luck, but luck it was.

Another posting was to RAF Hornchurch and another wait, where I volunteered to mend slate roofs in   Plumstead that had been broken in German bombing raids. 

One of the first V2 rocket-propelled bombs to land in England fell within earshot. It was luck that I was a good distance away, just as I had been from Buzzbombs falling in central London when I was on leave.

At last the Hornchurch wait was over and I was off to America to become a pilot in Oklahoma. 

This was my third wartime crossing of the Atlantic by ship in a sea thick with Nazi U-boats. Not to have been torpedoed was real luck.

I write this just after the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the television pictures of which I found very interesting and joyful. Referring to my logbook I see that on that particular day in America we were given a day off, flying in formation the day before and in the Link Trainer the day after.

Pilots were no longer needed in Europe, but for the Americans the Pacific war was very much in progress. Fortunately there were enough of our skilled pilots to fly in the fight against Japan, so novice pilots like me were redundant. Luck again.

I returned to England by sea and became a Photographic Intelligent Officer until my turn came to be demobilised. My task held no risk as it was a desk and stereoscope job concerned with why the Germans had taken so many aerial photographs of oil installations in the area close to the north of the Caspian Sea. During this wait period I qualified to become a medical student but on release from the RAF it was found that I had TB of the lung (then incurable). So my luck rather ran out then.

I never liked having to wait so much in wartime.  But I did like the good luck that seemed to coincide with it.

And I have always thought that had I been born a year earlier I would almost certainly have been killed in flying operations over Germany, such was the mortality rate of aircrew. So perhaps all this waiting did, in fact, help to save my life. 

That's luck alright.

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. 

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