Skylark

 It was in the spring of 1944 that I was posted for operational training to the highest airfield in England, RAF Davidstow Moor, in Cornwall.

I was only an AC2 trainee pilot, waiting for a vacancy to become a fully-fledged pilot in a friendly country where the weather was more conducive to novice flying.

Here, for experience of operations at Davidstow, my only job was to take the second pilot's seat in Warwick aircraft to watch out for the four-engined and powerfully armed German Condor aircraft, based in Brittany and operating over the Bay of Biscay.

Even with our plentiful collection of 303 Browning machine guns, we were no match for the bristling canons on the far swifter German aeroplane.

So my extra pair of sharp eyes being directed skyward were of vital importance when the others aboard the Warwick were looking seaward to locate bailed-out or crash-landed aircrew for whom we were prepared to drop, via parachutes, a specially-made lifeboat slung beneath the fuselage.

The sorties were often long ones, one, as I recall, lasting 9 hours. 

We were each given a box of food and drink guaranteed as fried egg on our return to Davidstow. 

The noise on board from our two Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp, radial engines was enormous. So conversation was impossible without use of the intercom. 

Back on land at Davidstow there were several useless plans to keep me busy, if not happy. But life on the station was generally pretty miserable with poor rationed food and infrequent leave.

As having the lowest rank in the RAF (AC2), I mostly had to keep my sleeping space in a multi-bed Nissen hut clean and tidy, trousers pressed, boots shiny, brass burnished and blankets in perfect "bisquit" form. So leave, if only a day's worth, was a delightful break from the land-based monotony. 

My favourite outing was to take a bike ride to Boscastle, a delightful, small and almost miniature unused inlet harbour on Cornwall's north coast.

On the way there or back I would stop, make for a field of grass, lie on my back and gaze into the blue sky to listen to the song, and watch the hovering flight of a skylark. 

A Busy Winter in the Garden

 My normal winter jobs in the garden are simple. In early December I prune the vines and turn the pruning into kindlings for a friend who has a real fire in a fireplace.

When it's cold and no longer pleasant enough to use our summerhouse (the shed), we move the potted lemon tree into it for the winter.

Then comes the distribution of compost from our bin and on to soil in pots, bags, or the small strip of garden soil at the edge of one side of the garden (where we grow alternatively new potatoes or beans).

I then prune our two examples of that wonderful rose called Typhoon, and take a few cuttings of it that I hope will "take", then to give away.

With light pruning of the pear and apple trees in pots, and a trim of the mistletoe on the apple tree, I close up shop and only go out in the cold weather to feed the wild birds. Jobs done.

This year has been different.

Rotten wood above the shed door needed clearing out and replacing. This was done mostly by our Lebanese handyman/plumber with my help.

Then I repainted the roof of the shed with another coat of silver, reflective paint and varnished bits of woodwork around the edge that might be subject to further wet rot. 

In attending to the rot over the door we inadvertently just altered the shape of the door frame, which widened the gap at one side of the door to allow wet and wind to penetrate. So I had to buy some timber to put that to rights.

Another winter job was to strengthen the piano, a bamboo framework that supports our summer crop of runner beans. On a recent blog I have related how I solved the problem when having bought long bamboos, the bus driver for my return journey refused me entry with any object over two metres in length (my bundle was six inched too long).

Now came the trickiest of my winter jobs.

The end of one of the slats of our hardwood garden bench had rotted away. I had tried several make-do methods in the past to correct this - and failed. Other solutions, contrived in ideas of the night, also proved ineffective. So I decided to tear off the rotten slat and replace it with new wood. Not selling hardwood at the wood merchant, I had to settle for the proscribed length of softwood. Then I found that the remaining hardwood slat was so firmly attached to the bench framework that it would be just as good and a lot easier if I simply replaced the rotten end of it. So, having drilled and countersunk screw holes, and coated the softwood twice with protective varnish, I assembled, and then admired my handiwork. Only a little wood filling was necessary and, because the colour of the new wood was too light, a bit of artwork came in handy to complete the job.

We live in an age and society where broken objects are often discarded to be replaced by the new. But I like to repair old and often loved objects, and allow them to continue to serve their purpose and become, in their way, unique.

I'm quite proud of my winter's work in the garden. But at my age it has taken a bit of time, and sometimes deserved a restful beer. 

"Waiting " in the SECOND WORLD WAR (part 2 of 2 parts)

 30/12/1944 - 07/01/1945.  I boarded the New Mauritania liner in Liverpool, bound for Canada. I was put in charge of the fruit store and the distribution of fruit barely seen in rationed England. The store was large and refrigerated. The smell was lovely but the cold unpleasant. Had we been torpedoed my chances of life would have been slim. But ocean liners are quick and it was felt fairly safe from U-boat attack. All was well. 

07/01/1945 - 20/01/1945.  We docked in Moncton, New Brunswick, in Canada, and boarded a train to the USA and Miami, Oklahoma, in America's mid west. On board the train, volunteers showered us with gifts of tobacco, chocolates and much else that seemed unbelievably generous and, to our rationed habits, quite eye-opening. We were now in a land of plenty, and almost treated like heroes.

23/02/1945 - 27/08/1945.  One hundred in our "flight" arrived at 3 BFTS (British Flying Training School) Miami, to learn to fly aeroplanes. I can only conclude it was the custom to make us feel less individualistic and more like canon-fodder, that the lavatory lacked partitions and was simply a long row of lavatory basins. Some of our number were so upset by this arrangement that they would only go there in the dead of night. But we all must have got used to it. Food in the canteen was bountiful and initially much appreciated.  But the American taste and menus seemed to pall after a while. The first type of aeroplane that we flew was a Cornell (PT19). This was a lovely aircraft and a joy to fly. One day some of us left our main airfield and flew from an auxiliary grass field not too far away. The day in question was cold, thawing on the ground and freezing in the air. We flew what was known as a circuits and bumps (taking offs and landings). I had done quite a few and had noticed that the controls were becoming a little stiff. So, after landing and taxiing to the shed where our instructor was sitting with his feet on a stove, I told him of this stickiness and asked his opinion. "Carry on or finish." he told me. The one thing uppermost in our minds was not to be short of flying hours and be left behind to join a later flight. So I decided to carry on. Unknown to me, and I think everyone else, was that this tightening of the controls was due to water splashing up from the ground and freezing to the underside of the wing when in the air, and thus altering its aerofoil section.  When I was turning in to land the controls froze solid. I had the choice of climbing, using top rudder and jumping out with my parachute, or flying the aeroplane into the ground. With a good chance of spinning and killing myself with my first choice, I chose the second. It was an instant choice. The resultant crash broke off both wings as well as the fuselage behind my neck. The broken propeller and engine, with me attached in the cockpit behind, skidded along the muddy turf and stopped. I saw what I thought was smoke rising from fire, but it was steam. Anyhow, having knocked two instruments out of the panel in front of me with my head, and somewhat dazed, I jumped out and ran to safety. On my way by ambulance back to the main airfield I asked the driver what had happened. He did not know. What I really wanted to know was had I perhaps been run down by a bus in London or something else. Anyhow, I recovered in hospital quickly. When the Commanding Officer visited my bedside, he asked me if I wanted to give up after such an accident. "No, sir", I replied, "I just want to get out of this bed and fly." I thought I'd overdone it. On leaving, he said to the Adjutant accompanying him: "That's just the kind of young man we want in the Air Force."

 On a short leave a friend and I set out to see some of America. So we set out to hitchhike first south to Dallas (then rather a small town), and west to Albuquerque, north to Denver (the Mile High City), and back east to Kansas City before south to Miami once more. A doctor who gave us a lift was curious as to why we kept turning our heads to right and left.  It was a habit we had acquired when constantly on the lookout in the air for other aircraft. We had not trouble in obtaining lifts, being in our RAF uniforms, but lady drivers declined to stop until we learned that when we saw it was a woman driver approaching, and when she had seen us, we dropped our arms and turned away from the road. Now they would usually stop. One man stopped, gave us his car key, told us of his far destination and went to sleep in the back seat. In eight days we travelled 2,425 miles (3903 km) at a cost of 21 dollars. 

From the charming Cornell training aeroplane I qualified as a pilot in the powerful advanced training aeroplane, the Harvard. This now enabled me to go straight on to fly Spitfires, Hurricanes or conversion to multi-engined bombers. But the European war had just finished and, although the war in the Pacific raged, there were enough skilled pilots available to take part in it. Out of the 100 aspiring pilots in my flight, only 50 completed the course to be awarded wings. Some had given up, some failed and some were killed. I was awarded my wings and a commission. 

28/08/1945 - 04/09/1945. Fort Hamilton. I see that I was posted there but cannot recall why.

04/09/1945 - 10/09/1945. I boarded the Queen Elizabeth in New York as a Pilot Officer on my way to Southampton and an England finally at peace.

11/09/1945 - 17/10/1945.  I was waiting again, now in Harrogate.

17/10/1945 - 13/11/1945. At Hereford, I took part in a course for newly appointed officers on how to conduct ourselves appropriately. We were lectured on subjects such as law (how to arrange a Court Martial), language (on joining up I heard for the first time the word "absofuckinglutely"), and other such as manners (not to raise aloft one's knife and fork when at the table - except when delivering food to the mouth, of course).

The rest of my time in the RAF consisted of waiting, then training as a Photographic Intelligence Officer at RAF  Medmenham, then interpreting German aerial photographs of oil installations north of the Caspian Sea at RAF Nuneham Park. Lack of food and heat at Nuneham in 1947 probably caused my TB (there was no cure at that time). Then came discharge to recuperate. The war was over. My war was over. Had I been born a year earlier I doubt if I would have survived it. Even all the waiting may have helped to save my life. But then I have always been lucky. 

"Waiting" in the SECOND WORLD WAR (in two parts. Part 1)

 Just as nowadays much of our time is wasted in "waiting" for such as deliveries, the post, appointments with doctors, dentists, opticians, telephone answering, and even jabs, so my days in the RAF as a wartime volunteer, and after, also involving waiting, but on a different, larger, and sometimes life-altering scale.

As I was complaining to myself recently about so much waste of time in life, I came to think and mentally record the same seemingly endless waiting around in the RAF both before and after gaining my wings in the USA.

So I have recovered a piece of dog-eared paper (now some 80 years old) on which I recorded the various stations with their now long-forgotten acronyms of purpose on my journey from joining up in 1942 wartime and being invalided out of the RAF with Tuberculosis (TB) in 1947.

If anything of note happened during this saga of billeting I will add a word or two on it for the sake of interest. So here goes.

1942. Having been a refugee in the USA, and now, at 17 years old, I crossed the Atlantic from New York to Liverpool in a convoy as I was at last old enough to join the RAF in England. I signed up right away in Oxford (why Oxford I have no idea).  Disappointed, I was told to await a vacancy for pilot training. So, thinking that one day in the future I might become a farmer like my father, and now fully aware of food shortages, I took a job as a farm labourer to learn and help with the national effort. It was a hard life, which I embraced, but one of worry, which rather put me off the whole idea. I then heard of a job vacancy at RAF Theale, some five miles away from my digs, where a prop-swinger was wanted. Within bicycling distance, I took the job of starting up the engines of Tiger Moth biplanes. With no meteorology available at that time, an instructor would fly up-wind to see if the oncoming weather was suitable for safe flying. As the second cockpit was unused, and I was known to also be in the RAF, I had some gratis instruction in how to fly. This was valuable later when I came to my first solo flight. Then came the welcome news that I could start my training. This period of waiting in civilian life had been frustrating but put to excellent use.

06/09/1943 - 23/09/1943 at St John's Wood, London. This was where we were issued with uniforms and given a collection of inoculations before gathering at Lord's Cricket Ground beneath the corrugated roof of a single story stand where the Warner Stand now exists. One of our number blew up a condom and let it sail out over the hallowed ground to much laughter. We were given a patriotic lecture.

25/09/1943 - 06/01/1944. I was posted to RAF Paignton, Devon, where we were put through the unbelievably harsh training to become airmen and fit men. The non-commissioned officer who chastised us was known as "Chan". Some of our number swore to get even with him after the war. Life was miserable, my fountain pen was stolen and I had not the money from our meagre pay to buy another. On the bright side was the rough cider served in a thatched, woodland pub. Those unused to this drink might fall flat on their faces when leaving the pub. Fellow airmen who had been brought up close to home and mommy-coddled, had a dreadful time of this harsh training/bullying. Those few who had experienced tough boarding school life were far more able to deal with it. It was wonderfully enlightening to mix with people from every walk of life - something for which I have been eternally grateful.

07/01/1944 - 04/02/1944 at RAF Shellingford. This was just a few huts, a farmer's field, and Tiger Moth biplanes in which we learnt initial flying techniques up to the stage when we flew our first solo flights over the Berkshire countryside. It was a magical experience to have now flown an aeroplane alone. Local girls were much in demand by American soldiers stationed in the district. Silk stockings were the reward for sex, but condoms had been pierced by needles - leading to an increase in the local population.

18/02/1944 - 28/02/1944. Heaton Park, Manchester, was a holding distribution station. I can only recall a crowd of us airmen waiting on one railway station platform when three girls walked on to another platform opposite - to much whistling. Showing the airmen some hidden areas of flesh drew enormous shouts of approval. 

28/02/1944 - 14/03/1944. I was in Scarborough but for why I cannot recall, except that it must have included more waiting.

15/03/1944 - 16/05/1944.  RAF Davidstow Moor, in Cornwall was, I believe, the highest airfield in England, so quite often interesting aeroplanes would land there when other airfields were fogbound. After a Wellington squadron was based there, the station became an air/sea rescue unit of Coastal Command flying twin-engined Warwick aircraft. These failures as bomber aircraft had specially made lifeboats slung beneath the fuselage to be dropped beneath parachutes to save fellow airmen in the Bay of Biscay. I have written elsewhere of my experiences flying in the second pilot's seat, only as another pair of excellent eyes. My 20 hours in these Warwicks were my only operational flights in the war - one in particular being extremely dangerous when we managed to avoid the attentions of a powerfully armed, four-engined German Condor aircraft.

17/05/1944 - 07/06/1944. I was back at Heaton Park for more waiting.

07/06/1944 - 17/08/1944. Now I was on a Lancaster bomber airfield. RAF Skellingthorpe, just outside Lincoln. It was very much operational with its aircraft regularly missing from night time raids over Germany. It was not uncommon for those returning from bombing missions to have the vulnerable rear gunner dead and hosed out of their turrets. One day a returned Lancaster had to have a Merlin engine replaced after it had been destroyed in combat. So the new engine installed had to be tested in a flight up to Scotland and back. The rear gunner was, for some reason, unable to fly on this test flight, so I was asked to take his place. Now, at my fingertips I had four Browning machine guns fully armed up and ready. With a twist of the hands I could swing the turret from side to side and the guns up and down. It was possible, but improbable, that a German aircraft could cross the North Sea and beat us up. And I was ready. My only task, when asked by the navigator, was to take the drift (aeroplanes are subject to side winds, and this is drift). I would line up my guns with the landscape beneath and read off the drift on a scaled indicator at floor level on the right hand side of the turret. I would give him the information on the intercom. All was well. The new engine worked. No German aircraft appeared. Then, for the landing, those aboard, except the pilot, would gather around the main spar amidships that connected the wings. I had now flown in a Lancaster which, at the time was exciting enough, and, in recollection, a memorable stroke of wartime luck and experience.

17/08/1944 - 05/09/1944.  I was back at Heaton Park - waiting once again.

05/09/1944 - 21/11/1944. I was posted to RAF Hornchurch a fighter airfield on the outskirts of London - again to wait. So I volunteered to mend bombed roofs in the East End south of the river Thames in Plumstead. Given a mate, the simple equipment, and an hour or so training by a professional slater, I crossed the river on the Woolwich ferry to start mending broken roofs with rather poor quality Welsh slates. It was a filthy job as the terraced slums were Victorian, with their soot, dirt and bits of slate accumulated in the roof space over the years, seemed to penetrate my clothing. The new slates had to have two holes tapped out of them with the point of my slater's hammer and then nailed into position on the slats attached to the rafters (I hope I have the nomenclature right). I must have made three or four bombed houses rainproof. It was such a deprived district that a lovely girl in one of the houses I worked on, smiled only to expose a mouthful of rotten teeth. The inhabitants were not only extremely grateful for the work done but would generously offer us tea and buns from their meagre rations. One day when I was up on a roof I heard a loud a loud explosion, followed by a strange swooshing noise. Later, I learned that is was made by one of the first German V2 rocket bombs to strike London. The noise of it arriving through the air followed the sound of its explosion. 

21/11/1944 -30/12/1944.  Back to Heaton Park once more to wait. Now, at last, important advances were about to happen. 

Bamboos

The quest was simple. I needed some five foot bamboos to mend and strengthen the construction we call "the piano" over which we grow runner beans in the summer. I also wanted two four or five foot bamboos for a new idea of vines in pots, to be grown rather like larger Bonsais with an umbrella-like top of leaves and fruit. So I set out one morning to buy bamboos - all simple enough. Surprisingly, our local garden centre does not stock them. This meant I had to take a bus to a much larger garden centre about an hour's distance away. 

All was well and good when the bus, which normally goes straight on near the garden centre, turned, rather suddenly left. I lost my footing and fell on part of the bus, which was to give me a nasty bruise on the thigh, but no broken bones.

At the garden centre there were plenty of bamboos for sale in bundles of ten, but the shortest were seven feet tall - too long, I felt, for travelling back by bus. But I took a chance and bought a bundle.

At the bus stop for my return journey the driver, who came to a stop at my request, refused me entry. "Two metres is the maximum length allowed for the likes of that", he said. After a short discussion, he agreed to take me to the nearest main line railway station for me to continue my journey by rail. I boarded and managed to arrange my bundle of bamboos to just touch the plastic ceiling but not to damage it. 

Then I realised that the railway would deposit me in central London, and I would be far worse off. Perhaps if I shortened the bamboos all would be well. 

So, at a stop near shops, I disembarked with the idea of either borrowing a saw or buying a cheap one, cutting and shortening the bamboos, possibly on the pavement or in a bus shelter.

Two ladies in a Pound shop did not know what a saw was and directed me to a sweet counter. I returned to the pavement to further enquire if there might be a hardware merchant in the district. After a short walk I found a branch of Screw fix, in a small shop where pre-orders were dealt with by young men behind plastic screens. 

A most helpful assistant produced a small Junior Hacksaw from below the counter, and with a measure (seemingly in feet and inches) we measured roughly what two metres would be. With the bundle taking up rather a lot of room, I started to saw, with the counter as my workbench.

As the bundle swung around a bit and might have upset trade, the boss appeared, heard my tale and took me and the bamboos to a nearby office. Not only that, but he volunteered to cut the remaining bamboos for me. 

What lovely and understanding people they had been. A proffered reward was declined. 

Now, with a bundle of roughly two metre bamboos, I was on my way home - without dispute.

Francis Bacon (A piece to accompany my autobiographical 2021 paintings and covered comprehensively in my previIn 1958 In 1958 ous blogs of 29 November 2015 and 25 March 2017.)

In 1958 I decided to sell my house beside Chelsea Football Ground in London's Fulham Road, to travel and to draw on my way toward the Far East where wonderful Japanese woodcut prints had been produced in the 18th Century. 

But I somehow felt that I still wanted roots in England to confirm in my mind that I still belonged to the country were I was born.

So I advertised in local Hampshire and Berkshire newspapers for a barn to return to. 

"Artist wants to buy a barn for work and life, etc. "

Several farmers and landowners replied, offering me barns - but only to  dismantle and take them away.

One lady, a Mrs Rampling of Chieveley near Andover, offered me a tumbledown thatched cottage on the Berkshire Downs for a ridiculously low sum. I met her. We took to each other. I loved the site with its mouldering wreck, and bought it.

She lived next door in a small cottage surrounded by the kind of garden displayed colourfully on biscuit tins. There was no plumbing in the house that she shared with her First World War veteran husband who had been gassed in the fighting. Effluent went into a trench to grow the following year's runner beans. They were country people at their best, and would look after my new possession when I was away.

I returned a year later after making several thousand paintings, had an exhibition of them at the Reid Gallery in London's Cork Street, and set about designing my new studio and living quarters, using ideas and proportions gleaned from a circumnavigation of the globe. 

Although I might have been able to rebuild the wattle and daub structure and its remaining rodent-infested thatch, I agreed with Mrs Rampling that it would be best to burn it down to the ground and start to build from scratch.

When the wind was in the right direction I telephoned the local fire brigade, told them not to bother, and put a lighted match to the upwind corner of the thatch. In a couple of hours there where only two chimney stacks to demolish. I had already designed the new building, and could now start - but to construct only half of its gull-winged roof design for economic reasons.

The studio house that rose in place of the old structure was, to me, lovely.

I lived there in great contentment and at one with nature. Even a blue tit roosted in my bedroom, and a mother blackbird would virtually leave her first brood for me to look after while she was busy with new fledgelings.

But after a year's drawing abroad I had the greatest difficulty in being able to return to using paint - even with the paint that I had always ground for myself and the wax medium that I had been so used to using, I had vegetated.

In my struggles I turned to making collages out of coloured paper to be able to see my way out of this impasse. They are now popular with collectors. Anyhow, it was time to return to the metropolis, to galleries and a speedier way of life.  So I had to sell the house I loved.

In 1961, after the local estate agent said that he could never sell a house with only one bedroom, I set about advertising it. I chose two nationals. The Times and Telegraph. I was contacted by a Telegraph reader who wanted to see the house. His name was Francis Bacon. He saw the house. It was just what he wanted. There was no negotiation except that I tried to get one of his paintings as part of the deal. It was his London gallery financing him. They declined.

With no fixed address I took various digs and the offers of beds with friends as I looked for my next place as studio and abode. And, quite surprisingly, it was a great period for my art as I returned to painting again, mainly concentrating on the shapes in London dockland, especially around Limehouse where I sometimes worked as a matelot supernumerary on coasters.

Seeing a warehouse for sale at auction, and discovering it had its own river wall by cleaning a patch in a dirty window at the rear, I made the winning bid and got it. 

With no fixed address, a letter reached me via my bank in Regent Street from Francis. Would I come for the day or a weekend? Of course I would. What would be there in my old house with Francis Bacon in residence? 

I arrived to find virtually nothing had been changed from the house I had left. But I could now see why Francis had bought it. The bare walls were still the pinkish, unadorned plaster, slightly varying in texture and colour. The marble floor of the studio was still laid with the collection of Victorian washstand tops that I had been buying and saving for years, and the small room beside the studio was still partly surrounded by a low platform of cloth-covered soft rubber. There were no art materials to be seen in the studio and no pictures hanging on the walls. In fact, the only items missing to make up a Bacon painting were a grotesque central figure and chrome tubing that he once used  when making furniture and was depicted occasionally in his paintings. 

But the missing figure really was there in the room next to the studio, curled up in a corner of the soft rubber platform. It was the contorted body shape of George Dyer, combing his greasy black hair. 

Now, in the centre of the studio, with one of its walls mainly of glass overlooking the garden and Downs, was a small table on which were laid out for lunch of raw kippers covered in raw onion rings, and Champagne. With no pictures anywhere on the walls, this table constituted a small but powerful decoration.

George took very little part of our conversations, but Francis and I were both very aware of the success of chance of painting, and many subjects were covered. 

Sexually we were worlds apart, but he was very insistent that people believed that homosexuals lived in a twilight world, which he emphasised was quite untrue.

Of the two paintings that did feature in my visits to Chieveley, one was an image that I once saw in some publication or other of Bacon's painting of George, curled up in his corner, just as I had first seen him. (I later looked in the Bacon Catalogue Raisonné to find out more about it, but it was not included.) And the other was one given to Mrs Rampling next door. It was of thick impasto paint of Mont Ventoux - almost childlike in its bright colours, simplicity and directness. I do not know what happened to it, even if it had been painted by Francis.

Whereas there was no clutter, pictures or paint to be seen at Horsemoor Studio in Chieveley, other than a painting I had done on a bedroom door to represent a bookcase (which he praised), the contrast was extreme when compared with his Reece  Mews abode in London which was cluttered up with paint tubes, colour, pots, brushes, easels, pictures, scrap paper and much else that forms a messy studio. I was invited there once to meet James Baldwin, who had just arrived from America to launch a new book over here. I was most surprised to see fellow guests who appeared to be mostly young man from the city in city suits and very much "presenting" themselves. 

I had expected an artistic-looking crowd. A more arty crowd was at a pub party given by Francis near the Theater Royal in London, where a fellow guest remarked that Francis was unaware that George was gay - whatever that meant.

Francis wrote to me later (in 1966), thanking me for seeds and that he was selling the Chieveley house. (I thought he had given it to George before George killed himself. Perhaps it came back to him.) He wanted me to explain about the house's idiosyncratic bits so that he could inform the new owner. These were mainly to do with drains and the septic tank. But the house had other hidden features, such as a central, frost-proof core in which all drainpipes, tanks, water piping and cisterns were housed. No pipes were to be seen anywhere. And there was under floor heating, a pipe for air to enter the house beneath the floor to give draught air to the fireplace, and a fake chimney that took in outside air to be heated by the real chimney next to it and then deliver its warmed air to the only bedroom through an adjustable grille.

After this sale I met Francis several times in London, and he would always stop to talk with me.

I suppose that our relationship hinged on the facts that we naturally got on well together, I was not in awe of him, and  that I would not take advantage of our friendship.

As he always seemed to me to be so youthful in looks and mind, it was quite a shock when I learned that he had died.

He was a friend.

Ideas for Slow Cooking

 The trouble with writing recipes is to cover the variables satisfactory. 

All us family cooks have our favourite pans and know their limitations from years of use. We know the settings for our ovens, slow cookers and gas or electric adjustments. Owners of them know their drawbacks.

But we don't know what preservatives have been added to food to increase shelf life, the amount of water injected into meat, or the chemicals used for curing meat - such as for sausages, hams and bacon. And what is used to dye and smoke the meat and fish? Might these be bad for your health?

The times needed to soak dried beans, chick peas and lentils will depend on their age. It is difficult to tell by looking at them. So we have to interpret a lot to get matters right.

Thus, when I write that a dish takes such and such a time to cook, I may know when using my own kit, but with yours it may be different. 

One's own judgment of quantities and timings is what counts, and mine rely on "throwing in" this or that and timing rather roughly. Others have to, and are happy, to measure everything.

As I belong to the "throw in" brigade - I expect surprises and inconsistencies - and delight in them. 

The following two slow-cooking recipes come very much under this approach to cooking.

I think that lamb or mutton shoulder is tougher and certainly fattier than leg.  But a shoulder, or half of one, laid on a bed of thickly sliced potatoes and all covered with plenty of garlic and chopped rosemary (I use a hand-operated Mouli for that), pepper and salt and all moistened with a good glass of wine or beer containing some lemon zest, lemon juice chopped preserved lemon, will produce a splendid dish if given half an hour in a hot oven, followed by an hour or two at 130 degrees

The top part of the cooked joint may be what is now known as "pulled" (stringy), the lower part being more for slicing. The potatoes will melt in the mouth.

Oven settings will vary on the oven make, the height at which food is placed in it, and if others in the district are using the same power source at the same time. And then, of course, timing will depend on the meat, game, stews, fish or vegetables being cooked.  That's when a certain amount of guesswork comes in as well as the occasional glance at the proceedings. Extra liquid may be in order, in which case it is best to heat up the liquid before adding it.

Before serving, pop the plates in the oven for a short time to warm. But keep an eye on them as they can get too hot quite quickly. 

My slow cooker is rather tinny and ancient, but throw into it any sort of meat and surround this with almost any desired vegetable, then pouring over some stock, wine or beer, some pepper and salt and perhaps a herb or spice, and out will come a delicious meal in an hour's time, having set the heat (in my case) at the 1 and a half setting.

I might add that when I last cooked shin of beef in this way (one and a half hours) I used whole potatoes and Brussels sprouts as the vegetables. Should you try this (the sprouts are delicious), add more spuds and sprouts than wanted at the time. Then mash the leftover vegetables to form excellent bubble and squeak.

Cooking can then be so easy and fun.

Mistletoe Surprise

 

And as if to provide us with a Christmas surprise for 2021, out, from the topmost and most vigorous carbuncle (apologies to the Prince of Wales) comes a brave new shoot.

So happy, and vigorous have been our mistletoe bunches on such a small apple tree in a pot, that I have had, for the first time, to prune them back and give away some locally (Hammersmith) grown mistletoe to local inhabitants. 

We wish all our readers a Merry Christmas and a virus-free New Year. 

Planting Trees Safely

There has been much talk - and action - recently on planting trees to aid the environment. What seems to be missing is where they may be planted safely near buildings. No such information seems to be forthcoming.

In my unpublished autobiography, not to be confused with my present project of producing an autobiography in words and pictures, I cover the subject in a chapter entitled How to Run a Happy Household. In this I advise on distances from a house where one might plant a tree without undermining its foundations, causing cracks and damp, etc. 

This is what I wrote:

Trees near to a house can not only cause subsidence, but may fall in a storm and damage the roof if not more. The roots of willow trees travel a great distance and can undermine foundations. So plant them no nearer than 50 metres away from the house. Plant horse chestnuts oaks, planes, poplars and elms no nearer than 25 metres away. Spruce, pine, yew and magnolia can come a little closer, but not too close. I am for keeping house walls and their immediate vicinity clear of any green growth, to allow air to flow around freely to keep stone and brickwork dry. Outside walls are then easier to maintain in good condition, whether coated, tiled, painted or pointed. 

Look after a house and it will look after you.

A Seedy and Friendly House

 I suppose that I am anti-perfection. I like things to be a little seedy, comfortable, and even a little stained. Imperfection is something to be desired in my life - just are straight lines. I don't feel right among the sparkling clean, where an accidental spillage of red wine, for instance, can be disaster and an embarrassment. 

I like to think that if you look after a house it will look after you. With that in mind I have been recently patching up our house a little. I leave electricity, plumbing and boiler work to professionals. The rest is between the house and me.

Sine the 1830s our house has been altered and repaired many times - sometimes only to improve parts of it for looks, possibly for sale, and often using inferior materials. 

So part of it are rotting or have rotted over the years. And those parts have also usually been patched up rather than replaced. 

Panels in our porch, for instance, were constructed using inferior composite, pressed board. These and their attachments have moved with the seasons of hot and cold, which has allowed rainwater to penetrate, soften and rot the wood.

To replace the whole of the construction would not only be disruptive but unnecessarily expensive. So I have dug away and extracted rotten bits, replaced some of it with hardwood, and filled gaps with plaster filler, with deeper areas backed with bubblewrap. 

To arrest further rot, holes have been drilled in specific places to allow air to flow in to dry filler and any remaining damp wood. Come the summer heat, those holes will help warm air to circulate where needed.

To stop further destruction by rainwater, outside cracks and crannies have been filled and then coated with mastic before being coated with paint.

But this is an old house resting on scant foundations over clay, so cracks tend to open and close with the weather. These are left to their own devices. And probably I am the only one who notices them.

Carpets and flooring surfaces are no longer wool and food for moths, but man-made fibres - with the exception of colourful Middle Eastern rugs (where red wine stains only complement the exotic patterns).

The house is well warmed in winter, but certain draughts from sash windows are allowed - only to let in fresh outside air to blend with and freshen the warm air inside. 

I allow this, as having once built a house in London's dockland and installed triple glazing facing the river Thames, patches of mould appear in the stagnant air inside and be the very devil to deal with. 

Here we have installed replacement windows at the top of the house with wonderful, double glazed, anodised aluminium windows. With the latest insulation under our newly slated roof, these improvements have made a great difference to heat insulation and retention in the house.

Our inside walls have not been touched for years as they hide behind paintings galore - mostly mine - and shelves of books.

A coating of pictures, and books read or unread, make a wonderful background to my preference for a certain amount of seediness and comfort in a house.

Bumblebees

Artists create things. That's the way we are.

This particular artist loves bumblebees, despite having been stung and partly paralysed by one in my youth.

However, they are almost essential for the pollination of crops both in wild nature and inside greenhouses. An angry one, caught in a window perhaps, can be nasty, but to have a peaceful one crawling over one's hand is a pleasure.

So I look after them, large or small, welcome them, and cherish them.

When Margreet looked through some internet search engines, we learned that in spring, pregnant bumblebees like a reasonably large nest box to bring up their brood of worker bees. Yet, when we were observing them pollinating fruit in Dutch greenhouses, the offered quarters there were small. But why?

Perhaps these small houses were only for when the bees wanted to hibernate in winter. We saw no breeding boxes where the pregnant queens, having left their winter quarters in springtime, are being offered large enough breeding hideaways to form a nest in which to bring up young.

So, having tried to entice them unsuccessfully in the past with papier-maché homes, I have now made hibernation places from a tin, a flower pot saucer, screwed to an outside wall, and an almost shoe box size wooden breeding home. These are waterproof, camouflaged, and made comfortable inside with cotton wool. 

Making the wooden bee house posed some problems as the wood, acquired from a rubbish dump, had once been moulded skirting board in a house.

But my design, using only available materials of sawn wood, nails glue, hinge and screws and a filling mixture of sawdust, sand and glue, took several days to construct and paint. With an entrance hole having a small landing platform outside it, I'm hoping for the best.

I like making homes for birds and insects. Sometimes they are even used, and hopefully appreciated. A brood of great tits flew the nest box successfully this year. 

Mistletoe Saga continued

Some years ago I wrote my first blog on Mistletoe, that magical mysterious and idiosyncratic parasitic plant. It was about how I tried, since childhood, to establish mistletoe on apple trees - and always failed in my endeavours.

Around the year 2000 my son, Pete, gave us an apple tree in a pot to adorn our London garden. Even though the tree was a small one (some 6' tall and slim), it did give me yet another chance to attain my goal of having live mistletoe in the garden and evergreen stems and leaves to look at in the wintertime, not to mention the decorative white berries.

2008.  This was the year when I started by harvesting sticky fresh berries from a Christmas bunch of mistletoe and pressing them into the junctures of trunk and spur. I used several methods to secure them and protect them from being bird food (even though there are no mistle thrushes in my part of London). I waited for the following summer and  autumn to see if any had "taken". None had.

2009.  I tried again. Still no luck (or was it lack of skills?). I let the matter rest.

2010.  I was passing a skip of rubbish and noticed that on it was a bunch of dried mistletoe left over from someone's Christmas festivities. There were plenty of berry seeds still adhering to its branches, but they were shrivelled and brown. Why not try again? Perhaps these dry seeds might take when the sticky white ones had failed? I would have another shot.

Soon after discovering these seeds on the skip I tied some to the base of apple tree spurs with string - sometimes on dry bark, others on cut bark, and lastly in bark lifted to have a seed inserted beneath the bark (as best I could). As the string was white and unsightly, I coated it with rubber solution (Copydex) and on it rubbed earth. The result made my "plantings" almost invisible. 2011 came and went, as did 2012. I had obviously failed once more. I lost enthusiasm for the project and decided to give up. BUT...

2013.  Three small mistletoe sproutings appeared from the bark - high up and about two inches from where I had planted the seed three years earlier. It was a Champagne moment. Success at last. But it was the only one from many "plantings".

2014.  Another sprout appeared - this time half way up the pillar-shaped tree. 

2015.  And yet another sprout pushed through the bark - this time near the bottom of the small apple tree.

Although all three parasite successes grew well on the moisture running up beneath the bark of their host tree, there was not a sigh of a berry. The bunches must, then, all be male. This was a disappointment.

2019.  Two berries appeared on the lowest bunch. We had one female. But no berries at all formed during the following year (2020).

2021.  In the late summer, and for the first time, a few berries appeared on the topmost and most vigorous bunch. Had this bunch suddenly changed sex, or just been reluctant to come out?

What on earth was happening to this parasite's temperamental lifestyle? Does its decision-making and sexuality have any pattern at all? Or is it just being in line with humanity's present-day gender-bending, intersex confusion?

Autumn 2021 Update

Having written recently a blog on the extraordinary lifestyle of our mistletoe, I will not repeat it. But since I established mistletoe on an apple tree in a pot some years ago, it has been the focus of our attention with its absurdly unconventional lifestyle. Its life and habits continue to astound us.

To reinvigorate the soil where our runner beans had been planted in 2020, I bought a packet of Charlotte potatoes in the spring from a supermarket, chitted them on a windowsill in the kitchen, and planted them beside flagstones in the only exposed soil we have in the form of a strip beneath a garden wall. They have provided us with melted butter, salt and chopped mint.

Our mainly Triomphe d'Alsace vines in the arbour gave us cooling shade in the hotter spells during the summer and a dozen bottles worth of very dry red wine when bottled from demijohns in the spring of 2022. 

Our ancient (40 years possibly) bay tree in a pot has been pruned to become an umbrella bay tree and seems to love its new configuration of showing off its decorative branch construction.

The other bay tree in a pot, which was given to us by a lady of religious persuasion who died, has turned into a ball shape from its previous pointer to heaven form.

Flowers, especially Impatiens and New Guineas, have given us red colours throughout the summer, augmented by pots of black and white pelargoniums. 

Self-sown Morning Glories flourish, but our many pantings of it by plant and seed in a local square failed, due possibly by being trampled on by children and dogs. 

Our Flowering Quince (Chaenomeles) lost its leaves and played dead, but has now grown them back again. Hopefully, it will still come into autumn flower.

In the bird world, great tits brought up two broods successfully in their usual home on the house.

Structurally, I have repaired our hardwood garden bench and varnished it. And the marble-topped garden table has been given new rubber ferrules as feet.

A huge change has been the demise and then destruction on my over-life-size elm wood lovers. After many attempts to make the sculpture weatherproof, it sank slowly as its base rotted - due to fungus, mice and insects. I managed to actually pull it apart by hand and hammer before calling the Council to cart away the bits. It had given much pleasure and an object of conversation over the years. It has now returned to nature.

And nature begins to close down our garden for the year. 

Cat-minding

There can be more to cat-minding than you might think.

Our only instructions were for a two-day stint of unlocking a thief-proof house, feeding three cats with a fishy kind of paté, top up feeders with dry cat food, give clear water, and leave a tap dripping as the cats liked to drink it that way. 

And there was the matter of litter mess to be extracted from two covered litter boxes and disposed of. This was my job as Margreet did the rest.

Well, that was all pretty clear and simple. Moreover our reward consisted of two bottles of good red wine.

On the second of our two visits we noticed that some sliding glass doors were held apart by a spacer on the lower rail, leaving just enough room for cats to squeeze through to reach a high-walled courtyard - considered to be too high for a cat to climb.

We hadn't noticed this gap before, so we telephone the owner to ask if this was intended. It was. All was well.

The owners arrived from the country the following day to find that one cat was missing. 

This one happened to be the one I liked best and, when I was sitting down, would lie on my upper legs and purr. So we were friends.

The search was on. The owners and I scoured the district, and Margreet rattled a tin of the dry cat food.

The cat had been seen and even turfed out into the street by the owner of a garden into which it has probably escaped.

Tired of leg and of calling "Jigsaw", we all retired as darkness fell, with the cat still at large.

With daylight the following morning came rain - thick, heavy, penetrating rain.

I telephoned the owners to find out where might be the best area for search.

So, with umbrella aloft, I was once more peering into gardens and below bushes. 

I was getting a bit wet, when, glory be, there was Jigsaw under the cover of the porch of an industrial building, looking sad and miserable.

I folded my umbrella and picked her up. Cradling her like a baby we set off for her rightful home.

Unable to hold the cat safely and the umbrella aloft at the same time, we both became thoroughly soaked.

Just to see the joy on her owner's face as she hugged Jigsaw made it all worth while. 

So, should you be asked to cat-sit at some future date, there may be more to it than you think.

Two adapted magazine recipes

 I never watch cookery programmes on TV as, generally speaking, I like to make up my own culinary concoctions. That's the fun of cooking.

In a like manner, I only give magazine recipes a glance, knowing that the authors of them have to provide the editor with so many words to fill the space, usually too many and too time-consuming to follow and cook. And the chefs also seem to like to add an ingredient or two that you do not have at hand, or possibly not even heard of. 

So I was surprised to see two recipes in a glossy magazine that I could relate to. They were both unnecessarily lengthy and time-consuming as expected, but easy to condense and simplify.

The first was a heated-through salad that involved frying garlic pieces in olive oil until just browning before adding pepper and salt, chopped fresh tomatoes and chopped red pepper flesh. The interesting part was to add finely chopped lemon that had been boiled beforehand. I have since used some chipped pickled lemon with equal success. For fresh and lovely lemons I grow a small tree in a pot in the garden. It does not produce a great crop, but those it does produce have a wonderful taste. I suppose it is because the lemons are freshly picked. The dish, when heated through gently in a frying pan with the lid on, is left to get cold before being consumed.

The second recipe was a way of forming a spaghetti sauce. Into a frying pan put plenty of olive oil, pepper, salt, lots of chopped garlic, plenty of black olives, with their stones out, then chopped, and anchovies. I have to go to the Portuguese quarter of London to find the kind of anchovies I like, in brine,  pale and shiny. But the dark tinned ones will do just as well. Cook this sauce for a short time to amalgamate the tastes, and add it to hot spaghetti (12 minutes boiling). 

To be in line with the "glossy" chefs who are inclined to use an unusual item, I do add to both of these recipes and many others, my own secret ingredient (it may not be secret at all). They are pickled peppercorns. Just put ordinary black peppercorns in a glass jar with a non-corrosive lid and cover well with vinegar. (I use my own home-made variety with a "mother of vinegar". But that's another matter.) When softening, they add a tasty crunch to many a dish. 

Sculpture of Lovers in Elm Wood

In about 1982 three elm trees died in my Cambridgeshire garden. I marked pieces for sculpture before the dead trees were felled.

One large bole was turned into two clasping lovers.

A friend saw them and asked if he might see the "action" parts, which I had omitted to carve, but then did (and added a little colour for the fun of it).

The next time he came around I said that it would now cost him a pint of beer to have a look. "Good God," he said when he looked at it. "That's worth a bottle of whisky".

The piece was always housed in the open, mainly because of its size.

It came to my London garden in 1992, where it deteriorated to become the home of mice, insects and internal wet rot.

I was all for letting it return to nature as dust, but Margreet wanted me to restore it, which was just possible using thick dowel rods, waterproof glue, wood preservative, gauze, plaster, and black roofing solution. The "action" part of the sculpture had rotted away well before this restoration work.

In 2021, after heaven knows how much restoring work, it started to subside, sinking slowly toward the ground. The lovers' lives had sadly come to their irreparable end. 

What was left had to go.

Although enormous, but fairly hollow, I managed to hammer and pull it apart, enough to dispose of it.  

I contacted the Council, who asked for a photograph of the pieces. This we sent, with next to them a 96-year-old with hammer in hand. They enjoyed the depiction of my efforts and, for a small sum, took the pieces to toss them into the rear of a rubbish vehicle - which made a good crunching noise as it consumed the wood.

So the sculpture would, in the end, have finished up as dust. 

After giving much pleasure during its lifetime, it returned to nature. 

Cruelty and the enjoyment of Beef

 We were celebrating Margreet's birthday in one of our favourite restaurants where we usually start with 3 oysters each and then share a rib of beef.

After a perusal of the menu, when we enjoy a leisurely glas of the house white wine, we decided this time to have the chef's gravadlax as our first course. And excellent it was.

Ribera del Duero red wine at this restaurant is our choice, but as they were out of it when we last ate there we settled for their Cote du Rhone, which we liked so much that we ordered it again to go with our meat. We then happened to talk about beef and its smell.

It was when I did the grand tour shortly after the war in an old Ford 9 flat-backed van that, with some imagination, I converted into mobile living quarters.

I was in Spain, in this instance, at a bullfight, sitting in the sunny side of the bullring, and in great heat.

It was not the spear-piercing of the bull's body by a Spaniard on a horse, or even the barbed wands that were later jabbed into the bull's shoulders by a more elaborately dressed Spaniard that I recall so well. But it certainly was the densely perfumed air of the heavy scent worn by my male neighbours that, mixed with the smell of the bull's blood, made me feel a bit queasy. 

So when our rib of beef appeared, I forgot the smell that once went with beef in Spain and tucked in with plenty of the splendid horseradish sauce that was served with it.

We were unable to eat all the meat on the dish, so I asked the French waitress if we might take what was left home with us in a doggy bag, mentioning that our dogs would be absolutely delighted with it.

When she returned with the wrapped-up meat, she enquired about the names of our dogs. "Jim and Margreet", say I. "And what breed of dogs are they?" she asked. "Human," I replied.

The answer seemed to take her by surprise as she retreated in fits of laughter. 

Class and Privilege

 It was on seeing an old photograph of my mother in India at the time of the Raj, sunshade aloft, and sitting in some kind of chair which was suspended on two poles, and being carried by four orderlies, that I realised I must have spent my childhood in a somewhat privileged environment.

I was born near the very important town at Silchester, in Berkshire. Our local doctor brought me into this world and never charged the family for his services as my grandfather had got him out of some scrape or other at Cambridge when they were studying there. 

The society I entered was not an ordinary one. One grandfather was a medical Knight for the royal household, the other a country vicar and President of the National Rose Society. Then there was a knighted uncle in politics and a great uncle the Dean of Salisbury. With such connections we were accepted in privileged society. But we were poor.

My father, after Wye Agricultural College was working in the British Protectorate of Egypt when the WW1 was about to take place. He returned to England to join his Territorial Regiment and was sent to India and Mesopotamia. There, in the battle of Hanna, he was shot by Turks in the Ottoman Empire's army and returned to England where he never really recovered.

We had a chicken farm and he had a war pension for income. But I think most of our money for living, education and the like must have come from relations.

My mother, used to court circles, found being a farmer's wife difficult. I remember her being in tears when the local band appeared in our drive at Christmastime to sing carols. We had not a penny to give hem. Perhaps they were given eggs. 

My parents played a lot of bridge. Should they lose, fellow players would always volunteer to pay their debts. That was the way it was. Being in financial straits was accepted. It was who you were that counted.

We children, unaware of the family's plight, grew up with nature, riding horses and bicycles, fishing in ponds and rivers, swimming, dancing (we had a sprung floor) balls, tennis parties (we had a lovely grass court), and generally living an ideal life.

We had a maid called Constance who smelled of Lifeboy soap. She cooked good English fare on a blackened, coal burning range that also heated water. We made our own gas to light the house. Open fires provided warmth. Two wells provided water for the tank in the roof. There was a Swift petrol engine that did the pumping, but when we couldn't get it started (which was often) we took turns at the hand-operated pump in the kitchen. We grew and preserved most of our food, stored in a larder on the north side of the house (there was no electricity for refrigeration). I remember the pheasants there that were hung from the two longest tail feathers. When the birds fell to the floor they were ready to cook. I recall their horrible smell. But that was the way they were treated and enjoyed in those days.

That kind of life was coming to an end just before the Second World War. The chicken business collapsed because of fowl pest and the import of cheap eggs from Poland. My father was dying from treatment of the cure-all of the day, radium, and tried, unsuccessful to grow mushrooms. We sold the house, but not before turning the barns into a thatched cottage, where I sometimes lived alone as my mother moved to London to succeed quickly and become the Chief Welfare Officer for the WVS (Women's Voluntary Service).  She took in lodgers (I remember a deaf General and a retired ambassador) at a time when German buzzbombs were landing indiscriminately on London.

The idyllic and privileged country days for me were over. I went to the USA as a war refugee and returned in 1942 to join the RAF and become a pilot. The war changed our way of life and the way we dealt with it and with our fellow human beings. I barely had an education, but learned much from my time in the Air Force and post-war, the thirst for missed knowledge.

The privileged country days of yore had been wonderful for me, though largely unappreciated. My goodness, how lucky I had been to grow up in such circumstances. 

It seems like an age ago. And I suppose it is an age ago.

Triptych

 This is a hodgepodge of a blog. It is to do with food, communication and bumblebee homes (again).

Food 

In our house we like an early evening drink with a small bite or two to go with it. These morsels are seldom the same. Recently it has been a slice of our home-made bread, cut into small cubes and dried to a crispy state in olive oil. Added before or after have been garlic, chilli, Worcester sauce (after), celery salt, powdered ginger and such. But don't leave the stove when frying these bits as they can be spoiled so easily. Keep turning them. The sound will tell you when they are just right. A second or two later and they will burn.

I have just made some hummus, so that will become a many-flavoured dip with heated pitta bread in slices to dip into it.

And if he oven is on, cook aubergine slices, coated in olive oil, as bites, perhaps with a smear of chilli sauce and half a small plum tomato on top for looks.

When using salt, sea salt adds something special, like the sea saltiness and crunch. 

I have written before how splendid are freshly shelled prawns, cooked quickly in olive oil with a mixture of grated garlic, grated chilli and grated fresh ginger. If the prawns are cut in half, this combination of taste and texture makes a splendid sauce for pasta.

Communication

In my old fashioned and old aged kind of way, distant communication should be by landline/telephone or hand-written letters. But today is different. 

Margreet has moved with the times and communicates with things like text message (sms), e-mail, Whatsapp, Messenger, Spam, Zoom, Face time, browser, Google, Safari, Wikipedia and probably others. There seem to be so many. This is wonderful. But with all these methods, communication (possibly even vital ones) can get lost. Progress with modern communications often involves confusion, usually time-wasting, and also waste of paper. I find much of it beyond me, but essential for my blogs, for instance, when my words leave this keyboard and fly into the ether - thanks to Margreet and her know-how.

Bumblebee Boxes 

I have written, I'm sure, on the value and charm of bumblebees. They pollinate, and do so in all weathers in farmers' fields, gardens and commercial greenhouses. So we must look after them in any way possible.

I have designed and made recently two small winter-hibernating retreats for bees - hopefully bumblebees. I wanted a box where a pregnant bumblebee, in early springtime, could make a nest to bring up a family of young.

So I found a discarded piece of moulded, wooden skirting board, and with saw, nails, and glue made such a possible home - lining it with cotton wool.

What I had been seeking before this construction was a suitable wooden box and not found one.

Then, when collecting the early morning newspaper, and passing houses in our street, there, outside one of them, was an ideal wooden box (probably for jewellery) for someone to take away - which I did. All I had to do then was to drill a hole, make a small landing platform and waterproof it.

So now I have two possible breeding boxes, when a week ago I had none.

Come bumblebees to pollinate our runner beans and reproduce with us next spring - like our great tits did - with two broods. 

Red Kidney Beans

 It was my week for cooking and I thought I would make up the menus with the theme of red kidney beans in mind. These beans are excellent, cheap, nutritious and versatile. They are easier to deal with if bought tinned, but more expensive and less environmentally friendly.

So, on Sunday, I soaked plenty of dried beans overnight with a view to boiling them on Monday to form dishes for the week.  Cooking in large quantities (more than for one meal) may make the food a little repetitive (however good), but saves a lot of time and effort. And alterations can always be made.

On Monday I shopped at an Irish butcher's shop and the nearby market for ingredients.

The rough plan was to cook chilli-con-carne, a beef stew (to have the cooked beans added later), and a bean salad. Excess beans would be added to a "never-ending" soup - one that is on the go for most of the time, usually with occasional additions of superfluous food. When this soup has been finished, it is started again with a leek or onion and potato foundation, adding water, stock cubes pepper and salt.

I usually cook soaked beans in a pressure cooker, but cooking them needs different timings, depending on how dry the beans are in the first place. So now I favour fast boiling, followed by slow boiling - looking at them after 30 minutes and every so often after that. They need to be drained when the insides of the beans are soft and the outer part firm.  Strained well, they are put into a bowl and coated with olive oil to keep them from drying out. When cold they keep well in the refrigerator.

The stew is simply made of cubed stewing beef with any connective tissue cut away and discarded. I start with chopped onions and garlic cooked in groundnut oil until the onions are transparant, adding the beef, some flour, stock cubes, possibly tomato pureé, gravy browning (for looks), a herb or spice of some sort, and potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes. This cooks slowly for an hour or more until the beef is tender. It can now be eaten right away or wait until wanted, improving over time. But it must be brought to boil every day. Use only one herb or spice, otherwise should you add your favourite mixture each time the food will lose its individuality.

Now the chilli-con-carne. In plenty of groundnut oil (or other oil) cook minced meat of any kind until it has browned and the lumps been broken up. Add the chilli-con-carne powder, a stock cube, salt and water. Cook this slowly on the hob for it to become united. Then add the cooked beans. Again, heat it through each day until wanted, possibly adding water if it becomes too dry. Be generous with the oil.

I make my own chill-con-carne powder in a bowl with dry ingredients. I combine one measure of salt (I use a dessert spoon as my measure), one of chilli powder, one of powdered garlic, three of ground cumin, four of paprika, and three of oregano/marjoram. This is stirred together and kept in a sealed jar until wanted.

For the bean salad, I put the cooked beans into a bowl and add finely chopped shallot, some grated root ginger, some chopped fresh coriander leaves, with olive oil, vinegar (mine is home-made), pepper and salt.

If there are any beans left over from the above dishes, add them to the stew, the chilli, the soup or the salad.

As you may be making enough of each dish for a couple of meals, it will be time to sit back and think of different things. But of course other dishes will be fitting in between, like hot grilled lamb chops with a cold sharp salad, steamed cauliflower with a white cheese sauce, oven cooked with toasted breadcrumbs on top, or thick pork chops with well-scored skin and held together like a roast with wooden skewers. For this there will be no need to carve as if it was a joint, and the crackling should be perfect if the oven is good and hot.

You might like little bites with drinks before dinner. If you cut up a slice of bread (home-made is by far the best) into small cubes, fry them in olive oil with a pinch of chilli powder, turning them around all the time until crisp. Sprinkle sea salt over them before serving.

My week of cooking went quite well, and any unserved food left over went through the Mouli and into the soup.

Cooking is such fun - but it does take time.

Triggered thoughts

 An artist, like myself, who uses imagination in preference to producing pictures derived from what is in front of me, spends much time, night and day, in thought. And those thoughts are not always connected with the art in progress, but are often triggered by it or perhaps by general conversation. So there is a lot going on in an artist's head when he or she is not actually painting, sculpting or whatever.

Yesterday, for instance, my thoughts crossed from bidets to old aeroplanes to punishment, besides deciding that I would have to clean several pastels after finishing a composition that relates to a dog knocking over my first baby.

When using or just looking at a bidet, I keep reminding myself what a wonderful object it is. The French have realised this for years. 

As an impecunious student I would seek out saucy 18th century coloured French prints of the goings on in bedchambers, often aided by a maid with a hidden gentleman looking on. Framed, they adorned my  lavatory in the country. I bought them for a pittance from those sort-of sheds on the banks of the Seine in Paris. Many scenes featured a bidet, and used, as had always been the case, primarily to refresh and clean one's intimate parts. When leaving the countryside to return to London, these coloured prints fetched a surprisingly grand sum at auction.

The house I acquired in Hammersmith did not have a bidet, but a woman in the adjoining street, who had also bought at the same time, did have one, which she thoroughly disliked. So I had it plumbed in to my house - to our mutual satisfaction.

Not all French people find bidets essential to lower-body cleanliness, as the owner of the hotel in which we always stayed in Dieppe, had all the bidets in his hotel dispensed with. We have not returned there.

I then found myself thinking about weather and aeroplanes (they are close connected, but not in any way with bidets).

I rise early in the mornings, earlier in summer, and look out at the weather. I want to see what is happening with wind direction and speed, rain, clouds, frost, snow, ice, dew, the changing seasons, birds, and especially aeroplanes. I like to know which runway is in use when aircraft approach Heathrow from the East. Once a pilot, such observations become habitual and at times life-dependant.

Sadly, the shapes and variety of aircraft are merging into the form of an elegant body and two jet engines. Those with four engines seem to be out of favour as being less commercially economical.

I was pondering about which aircraft I had flown or been flown in that were a pleasure to the eye. I settled on the 1938, four-engined Ensign - now virtually forgotten. And for glorious eccentricity the obvious choice would be the 1931 HP 42, four-engined biplane. The large machine, that always looked to me as if it was a bit bent in the middle, flew from Croydon Aerodrome in London to Le Bourget in Paris. It travelled at a stately 100 miles an hour, giving its 40 passengers plenty of time to be served Champagne by the stewards. These aeroplanes were utterly reliable, but had one been in trouble it could have easily landed in a field, be mended, and then taken off again.

I suppose that thinking of 1930s aeroplanes took my mind back to school when I first took to the air as a child passenger in an Avro Tutor.

The water to flush the tiled urinary wall at school was housed high up in an iron cistern. With strong stomach muscles I was able to pee into it from floor level (boys will be boys). Word must have reached the headmaster about this misdemeanour. I was summoned to his office, short trousers down, bend over, swish, swish, swish, pain, trousers back on and return to class.

The red and blue welts crossing one's behind were almost a badge of courage and pride, being much admired by ones fellow students. 

Some schools, founded in times past, were geared not just to educate but to toughen up the boys (no girls at this school) to prepare them for running the Empire. Margreet. who is Dutch, thought that this treatment was most barbaric. We accepted it - had to. 

Aromas

 We are involved with smells from birth to death. They are mostly taken for granted and unnoticed unless especially odorous or malodorous, depending on the sensitivity of our brains.

As a child I was most receptive to the smell and taste of wine and happy about it until caught and punished for consuming the dregs in bottles (and flies, too, probably) left out for collection by our wine merchant. Emptied bottles were washed and re-used by the wine merchant in those far off days.

I certainly did not like the smell of rabbits that I had caught in snares or shot, and then paunched and skinned for the pot.

At the time of my youth I had no idea that my senses of smell and taste were so acute.I knew people by their smell and even knew when women were enduring their periods.

I put these abilities to good use later when I wrote on wine for newspapers and magazines. At tastings I was known for my direction and force of expectoration.

I remember that in middle age, and thus many years after schooldays, a man passed by me as I sat in a London bus. He had the smell of a school classmate. I felt obliged to confirm it by passing by him and turning around to get a sight of him. I was right - no doubt about it. I did not feel like renewing our acquaintance.

Again on a bus, I was aware of an unusual male perfume arriving behind me. It came from two American men whose voices had that degree of penetration peculiar to the race. But it was their conversation that made me forget their fragrance and listen to them. In considerable detail one relayed how his sister was invited to the White House in Washington and seduced by President Kennedy. As this was well before the President's peccadilloes had become common knowledge. It was fascinating information - far more interesting than the young men's aftershave.

My acuteness of smell decreased in my mid-eighties, so when I became aware of a new smell in the house in my mid-nineties, I thought that it possibly come from me. And at that time I had a dream that only people of my age and beyond were able and privileged to experience the exotic perfumes used by the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt. So, with this illusive smell around, was I being somehow influenced by such ridiculous dreams? 

And there were also the daily aromas to join in with the confusion of now and the past.These other perfumed aromas emanate from Margreet's den every morning. Some of her more recently acquired scents come from the Middle or Far East. They are heady and lustrous. Her French ones are finer and more sophisticated in their complexity. But do they or any others in their freshness or decline have any bearing on this illusive smell that sometimes surrounds me? What is it, I wonder? 

I think I'll run the bath. 

Wine in 2021

Sometimes I would like to write on wine again - even without the regular tastings laid on by the trade.

When I did write on it, I belonged to a clique of wine writers who were, at that time, interested mainly on smart and expensive wines for smart and wealthy readers (some still are). Actually, most of us plebeian drinkers were shopping around for drinkable plonk at reasonable prices in those supermarkets that were beginning to offer wine with their other commodities. So I saw a niche as a wine writer, and filled it.

Really good wines for me are a great treat, but like those early times of writing on the subject, when £2 was about the usual price per bottle for recommended wines in my articles and books, I am still on the search for good everyday house wine at a reasonable price. And they are certainly there for those of us who look what's on offer and drink regularly and with pleasure.

I feel that the French have rather overpriced their wines and that their co-operative bottled examples from famous areas do not live up to the grand labels. And for the money asked by the French, I now favour the high quality and much lower priced wines from such as Argentina, Chile, Australia, South Africa, and now Portugal. 

Aldi is at present our favoured supermarket for wine. Let us hope that they don't become too high-class or greedy.

I am suspicious of the sellers of wine who use the same, plastic branded corks for much of their range. But then I am a bit of a cork fanatic, though I love screw tops. 

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.