Kingsford Smith and Co-Aviators

In the record books and from details taken from Kingsford Smith’s logbooks is the following:

1931 (24 September –16 December) Australia-England. First all-Australian airmail flight to England. Avro Ten trimotor Southern Star (VH - UMG). Co-pilot, Scotty Allen: engineer, Wyndham Hewitt. Time: 17 days. Route: Sydney – Brisbane – Cloncurry – Camooweal – Darwin – Kupang – Surabaya – Alur Setar – Bangkok – Rangoon – Calcutta – Gaya – Allahabad – Jhodpur – Karachi – Jask – Bushire – Bagdad – Aleppo – Athens – Rome – Lyon – Le Touquet (beach) – London.

Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, as he became, was a pioneer Australian aviator. He was the first to fly across the Pacific Ocean, and in both directions, crossed the Tasman Sea, and made the first successful westbound crossing of the Atlantic by air, mostly in a Fokker Trimotor (Avro built them under licence in England) that he called “my old bus”.
These were the days when aeroplanes were “stringbags”, flown by pilots and navigators “by the seat of their pants”. They were flimsy aircraft, unreliable, often dangerous, and with no navigational aids. It was also a time of opening up international air routes.
Kingsford Smith, surprisingly for a long-distance aviator, was terrified by the fear of the sea after a near drowning accident as a boy. He was also prone to panic attacks in the air and mysterious illnesses before epic flights – thought later to possibly be alcohol related.
He was a much loved international hero, especially so in Australia where crowds of 200,000 or more greeted him after his exploits in the air by hoisting him shoulder high in admiration and awe.
So who were those other two record-breaking aviators? “Scotty” Allen was also a famous Australian pilot, flying as reserve pilot with Kingsford Smith and Wyndham Hewitt (chief engineer) in the famous Avro trimotor Southern Cross - all, on one occasion, flying to Keepang, Timor, to collect air mail from England from the City of Cairo aircraft that had crashed there – a headline-breaking newspaper story of the time.
My own special interest in these early aviation days was that as a boy I was mad about aeroplanes and flying. In April 1932, at the age of 7, Kingsford Smith, a year after the aforementioned Australia-England record flight, was about to fly myself, brother and sister around London from the newly-opened Croydon Aerodrome in his ‘plane. Unfortunately the tail skid broke and a wooden replacement failed. So another pilot flew us around London in a Klemm Bat instead.
Why should Kingsford Smith volunteer to pilot us around London? It was because Wyndham Hewitt, the engineer on that epic flight was my uncle and friend of the great Australian aviator.
Wyndham, sent to South Africa after some misdemeanour or other, was next heard of in Australia. He was generally in trouble concerning women, cars and money, having kept a mistress in London in his schooldays (but those are other stories not for this blog). However, Wyn was a brilliant mechanic, completely at home with engines and their workings. So to Kingsford Smith he was invaluable when aircraft motors were unreliable and, in record-breaking exploits, under considerable stress for duration and ever-changing climatic conditions.
On the record occasion mentioned, The Southern Star and its three occupants landed at Croydon in record time with the Christmas mail from Australia, to be greeted by Sir Sefton Brancker (director of civil aviation), a congratulatory telegram from King George V, and jubilant crowds - aviation then being a new frontier to conquer and of enormous interest generally.
Although heralded as an all-Australian record trip, Wyndham Hewitt was English, which accounts for his name not featuring greatly, other than in the record books. Also not mentioned was that the aircraft had hit the top of a telegraph pole when landing in Darwin, nearly killing Kingsford Smith “and his engineer”.
Wyndham went on to found a successful engineering company and to race cars, dying in his 90s an unliked person, his several wives having been couture models and his cars the fastest models.
Kingsford Smith died, aged 38, crashing into the sea that he feared so much off Burma in 1935. He was attempting yet another England-Australia record.
I am proud to be in some remote way connected to so great an aviator as Kingsford Smith – even though he never did fly me around London from Croydon in 1932 or land in our field at Silchester where we had laid out sheets to indicate wind direction.
The truth is that Kingsford Smith was notoriously unreliable, and interested mainly in flying (of which he was a complete master), wenching and drink. However, he charmed everyone with his radiant personality and with his splendid songs accompanied by a ukulele.
Throughout his life he wanted to break records and, to make money, establish airlines. But, for the latter, other than using his name to good effect, the humdrum life as an executive and airline pilot bored him – so most were doomed to failure.
It was flying records he wanted and, appropriately I suppose, it was an attempted record that ended his life.

Ship Shapes series

 
 
 

Ship Shape series

 

A Faithful Friend

In 1657, Rembrandt’s pupil and close friend, Gerbrand van der Eeckhout, was commissioned to paint a group portrait of Four Officers of the Amsterdam Cooper’s and Wine-Rackers’ Guild. The four Amsterdam burghers sit at a table on which are important-looking books and a document with a round, red wax seal.
Three of these important men wear tall, wide-brimmed black hats, and except for the Master are dressed in black with broad, white collars. The Master, whose importance is accentuated by posing in front of a white background, also wears black clothing, but sports a white ruff – giving him a certain gravitas.
They are serious men, important and wealthy, secure in their positions of power in Holland’s Golden Age.
They are there to be recorded for posterity, and have succeeded in life. The proof of this success on the part of the artist and his sitters is that we are now able to admire the picture, hanging in room 22 of London’s National Gallery, in Trafalgar Square. But it is not the Officers that steal the show, it is a dog.
This small, long-legged creature with short ears sits at his master’s feet, the Master, in the lower left-hand corner of the painting. He has a small tail, is pale brown with areas of white, and is marked by a V-shaped white patch on his head.
Dogs are happy with a job to do, and this dog does it splendidly. His duty is to keep an eye on everyone who might upset his master in any way. So he watches you, trusting no one.
Stand in front of the painting, wherever you will, and his eyes are on you. Walk across in front of him and he will follow you with his attentive gaze. There is no escape from his beady eyes. He might well bite should you get too near.
So the rope around the painting is not for its safety, it is for yours.

A Lost Weathervane

I wrote recently in this blog of a lost copper and wood 1962 sculpture, found with worm-eaten and rotten wood support sides in a neighbour’s garden. The piece has since been restored. Through that written account, another lost “sculpture” has surfaced. Let me explain.
In 1962, a completed studio house, that I designed and helped to build in downland north of Newbury in Berkshire, needed a weathervane. Clouds and weather conditions were once most important to me since my life would sometimes depend upon them when I flew aeroplanes in the war. I still take great interest in what happens in the sky.
So I designed and made this weathervane out of copper sheet, ironwork and balancing lead, to form the shape of a Reverend F. Page-Roberts rose.
Although I had done drawings of the house with its proposed weathervane, when I came to install it, the proportions were wrong. It was too large (2’ 10” x 4’ 9”).
So I took it down, and can not recall what happened to it, except that, due to its size, it was rather in the way.
A reader of my blog, Judy George, contacted me, having read my piece on a lost sculpture. The weathervane exists, and it is hers.
It seems that my then cottager neighbour, the charming Mrs Rampling, found the weathervane in a hedge and gave it to Bill and Judy George, who owned the house after Francis Bacon’s tenure there.
The weathervane no longer tells of the direction from which the wind blows, but hangs on a wall as decoration. It has found a home and a use. I am delighted.
I wonder: Are there any other sculpted pieces of mine hiding somewhere?

Suzanne Valadon

It was not easy to be a woman, let alone a woman artist, in the late 19th century and early 20th century. But in France there were four great women painters who rightly rose to fame despite the obstacles in their path. They were Mary Cassatt (actually American), Marie Laurencin, Berthe Morisot, and Suzanne Valadon.

I have never been over enthusiastic about the first three, but Suzanne Valadon could draw as no one else – and I have loved her drawings from an early age.

Suzanne Valadon (born Marie-Clémentine Valadon in 1865) was the illegitimate daughter of an alcoholic sewing maid. And at that time illegitimacy was hardly acceptable (yet there must have been many such infants before the advent of modern contraception).

Suzanne was a self-sufficient tomboy, small, athletic and strong. She had no artistic background.

With a mother concentrating on survival in a hostile Paris, Suzanne had to live by her wits, with only a sympathetic grandmother to whom she could turn to in times of adversity.

Apprenticed as a seamstress, her first real employment was with a private circus, where she turned her hand to any needed task, graduating to become a circus performer. But, falling from a trapeze, she hurt her back and was unable to continue with circus life.

She was, however, by her late teens, very pretty and well fashioned. So, to become a model (mainly in the nude) for Montmartre artists beckoned. Moreover, she was able to hold a pose for long periods of time.

Posing for many artists, it was Puvis de Chavannes, then probably the most famous artist in France, who gave her regular employment. This provided her with temporary financial stability and the illuminating company of artists, their circle of friends, dealers and patrons.

Word soon spread of her ability, and lust for life. When she was not posing she drew, learning by observation.

When working for Degas, he chanced upon some of her drawings and was astounded by her decisive line and bold work, several examples of which he bought over the following years. He pinned some of her work to the wall in his studio and invited comment. This was most favourable, and by those who had no idea that the artist was unknown – and a woman. Degas promoted her interests and gave her instruction and advice.

Suzanne was a favourite model and companion, especially of Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, appearing in many of their paintings.

In 1883, she had an illegitimate son – father unknown. At that time she adopted her professional name of Suzanne Valadon.

Mainly because her son being frail and in poor health, she contemplated marriage with a rich suitor, who asked her the name of the boy’s father. She told him that it was either Puvis de Chavannes or Renoir. “Two fine artists,” he replied, and they were married. In fact, throughout her life she never divulged the name of her son’s father. It could have been several, but possibly a drunken sailor who raped her.

With marriage she virtually gave up her artistic work, but it was not long before she was hankering for the freedom and abandonment of her previous bohemian life in Montmartre.

Her son was the painter Maurice Utrillo, given the name of Utrillo by a Spanish journalist of that name who “acknowledged” Maurice as his son.

Maurice became an extreme alcoholic, drug addict, rabble-rouser and mental case. He was a drain on Suzanne’s purse and patience throughout most of her life, drunkenly fighting, or incarcerated in either jail, institutions, or even behind bars in his own home.

But under Suzanne’s guidance, in an effort to give him stability in life, he became an innovative painter, establishing a style of depicting the streets and alleyways of Montmartre that were much copied - as they still are today.

Then Suzanne fell in love for the first time with her son’s artist and womaniser friend, André Utter. He was some 21 years her junior. They married, just before he went to war against the Germans in 1915.

After the Great War, Utter, who had recovered from a bullet wound in the chest, exhibited successfully with Suzanne, and with Suzanne and Utrillo.

Utrillo continued with his volatile, alcoholic life, often paying barmen with his paintings when his debts had not been settled by Suzanne.

As Utrillo’s work now became famous and of considerable value, these barmen found themselves with valuable works to sell. They naturally encouraged his alcoholism – which hardly needed encouragement.

Suzanne, meanwhile, was at last accepted as an artist of note by dealers, gallery owners, and by those who controlled salons of importance. But her successful personal and professional liaison with Utter lasted for barely 12 years before they drifted apart. However, during that often tempestuous marriage, both Utrillo and Valadon reached dizzy heights of fame and fortune, with Valadon notorious for her extreme generosity.

In 1938 Suzanne Valadon, recognised as a great artist, collapsed at her easel and died in hospital.

Utrillo outlived her, having married and given up his wayward life.

It has been possible to fake Utrillos ever since he painted his groundbreaking scenes of the streets, steps, and picturesque paths of Montmartre. On the other hand, no one, but no one, could recreate a drawing with the power and strength of line of a Suzanne Valadon.

A Sculpture's Life (so far)

In 1962, I was having difficulty in returning to painting after a year-long, round-the –world voyage of drawing, followed by the building of a studio house in the country (later bought by Francis Bacon).

          I just couldn’t get going again without the interest of artistic progression.

          I then struck upon the idea of help by creating simple collages of card with stuck-on coloured paper, paper combined with paint, paint alone in the form of collage, and sculpture of painted copper on wood that was also closely related to the said collages.

          And it worked. Interest and creativity returned and, incidentally, interest to others as well, as one of them sold at Christie’s in late 2010 to a collector who took down a Matisse to make room for it.

A small one of those sculptures in wood and painted copper I still own. It was exhibited in a cabinet at The Mayor Gallery, Cork Street, London, at the time of my successful show there of Aircraft Shadows.

My London neighbour, Wilma, recovered from a decline in her life, and decided to spruce up her house and to restore a back garden that had by then become a veritable jungle.

I looked out of a window to see what horticultural progress had been made. And there, beneath two prostrate builders’ ladders was one of my (7 ½” x 13”)1962 copper and wood sculptures. – a painted Uffington White Horse on a copper, olive/green downland setting with a cut-out painted figure.

I had completely forgotten about this particular sculpture, and could find no photograph, or a record of it in my files. How then was I to discover how it came to be next door and abandoned in the garden?

So, when my neighbour was standing outside her front door, I tackled her, telling of what I had seen and asking permission to photograph the piece.

Then, later that day, as Margreet was about to enter our house, the sculpture was given back to us as the neighbour was ridding herself of unnecessary clutter.

The shape and colour is as if it had never been exposed to the elements. But, for a decade or more, the woodwork had become delicious grub for many a hungry woodworm.

There is preservation and restoration to be done, with its patina of age hopefully retained (created in 1962 and restored by the artist in 2011). I relish the opportunity to do it.

It materialised that some time ago, when my neighbour broke her leg in the district of the Uffington White Horse, I had given the piece to her as a commemorative present.

So its title is now: Wilma and the Uffington White Horse.

Whether she will thank me for this description is problematical, as it clearly depicts the painted image of that famous downland white chalk horse, and the raised form in painted copper of a fulsome naked lady cavorting nearby over the historic grass.

A BREADMAKING DEVELOPMENT

Simplicity is the key to happiness – in all aspects of life, electronics, cooking, art, and on it goes. With simplicity goes timesaving.

I cook as I breathe – always have done. And unless I have simplified the cooking of a dish down to its bare minimum of fuss, ingredients and time taken, I work on it – even if I think I can hardly improve on it.

Breadmaking is one of those dark arts that need to be brought into the light. After all, if you can eat a really good loaf at less than a third of the price of a bought, polystyrene-like object, why not make bread yourself, by hand – if you do not already have an expensive machine and use electricity to run it.

Every time I come to make bread, there will be a new slant on it – simplicity and time taken being the main variables.

So I write this after only one experiment because I am so pleased with what happened, and delighted with the result.

The basics are the same – 1 ½ kilos of bread flour, salt, a hint of turmeric (only for colour), sugar (I used to use honey but can taste no difference when using sugar), a dribble of olive oil (I don’t know why), some dried yeast, and 1 ½ pints of warm water.

Normally I make the mix, knead it, allow the dough to rise in a warm place (sometimes twice), knead again, divide it into three well-buttered bread tins (never letting the metal to go near water), wait for the dough to rise in the tins, then bake the result in a hot oven for 1/2 an hour, followed by another 1/2 an hour at a medium to low setting.

The dough-rising bit has, until this experiment, taken place on a small area that is of under-floor heated.

In winter this was ideal. But in summer the floor is cold and unsuitable. So where was I to find a warm place - in the oven, of course.

So, when kneading, I switched on the oven enough to warm it, divided the kneaded dough into three bread tins, and watched the dough rise to the top of the tins in the oven, checking and sometimes adjusting the warmth about every quarter of an hour. And there they were, ready to bake, with no fuss, no unnecessary movement of tins, and no trouble. The resulting bread was wonderful.

Actually, I make six loaves at a time, filling the oven, then freezing the bread that’s not wanted when it has cooled.

So to re-cap – for three loaves. Empty a 1 1/2 kilo bag of bread flour into a large bowl. Add some salt and a trace of turmeric. Stir it around.

Take a Pyrex pint glass measure. In it put a heaped teaspoon of sugar. Pour in boiling water to the half-pint mark. Melt the sugar. Add cold water up to the pint mark. Test it for blood-heat warmth. Stir in one and a half teaspoons of dried yeast.

Place this measuring jar of liquid in the centre of the flour in its bowl, and cover the surface of the yeasty liquid with a little of the surrounding flour.

In a while the yeast will react with the sugar and bubble up through the flour. Whisk it all together. A creamy foam will result.

Pour this yeast mixture into the flour, adding another half-pint of warmed water and a dribble of olive oil. Stir it together with a wooden spoon until the mixture forms into a rough ball that you can lift out and knead.

Knead the dough by using your fingers and the heel of your hands. The dough might be a little sticky to start with, but will firm up. Keep at it for about five minutes. This is a most satisfactory process.

Roll the dough with your hands into a sausage shape, divide into three, and put these into the buttered bread tins, scoring into the top of the dough from end to end with a knife.

Put the tins of dough into your warmed oven and proceed as directed above.

Tip out the baked loaves onto a wire mesh surface, allow the bread to cool, then eat one freshly baked and freeze the rest.

London bird life, spring 2011

Those in other countries may see garden birds as food for the table, but the British (the Irish used to kill wrens) treasure them for their song, friendliness in the case of robins and sometimes blackbirds, and the charm and mobility they provide for our gardens.

Because we love them, we feed them. And, in return, they grace us with their presence.

I have owned gardens that were the habitat of many birds. Some of these birds one got to know, like the swallows that returned annually to a stable, flying in and out through a partly opened window. Their return each spring, as with those dapper little birds, the house martins, heralded the oncoming summer.

Of course there were villains, like the magpies that perched and waited to see a parent returning to its nest with food for young, pounced, and made off with a chick in its beak to tear it apart on a branch or chimney pot.

A sparrow hawk would wait atop a post and chase a blue tit through the thickest of undergrowth to catch its prey – and then tear out the feathers before consuming it. Eventually I asked it to leave – and it did.

My smallest garden is my present London one. And although the variety of birds that inhabit it are far fewer than in the country, it does have the advantage that our resident birds become known to us.

We have our villains in town, too. The magpies lie in wait. And once a great spotted woodpecker (rarely seen) robbed a robin’s nest box on our house of all its young. (Afterwards the robins unmade their nest, throwing all of it to the ground.)

A hen blackbird inhabited our garden and enjoyed our offerings of Cheddar for, perhaps, 15 years. She once managed to escape the clutches of a cat (probably James May’s Fusker, who, when alive, was a great predator of birds) and could barely walk with a useless leg and hardly fly with many feathers missing. But she was a survivor, always producing two broods nearby each spring. Her successor has yet to gain confidence in us.

Robins have nested near at hand – usually in the house robin box – each year, except this one. And a tame robin (trained with morsels of cheese) has always been our intimate friend, summer and winter. They have eaten from my hand or on my knee, and given visiting children and adults much astonishment and pleasure – but not this year. One has passed through a couple of times, looked us over, and gone on.

But the absence of a fiercely territorial robin has at least allowed a pair of great tits to live unmolested as they nested in a box on the house and brought up a family of young. And, at the same time, a blue tit pair has done the same in a box above the great tit family.

Our garden is a small one of several in a row, much enclosed by houses. So, it is not what one might call ideal bird territory. But a few birds have chosen it. And because their number is small, we are much closer to them than those people offering more generous amenities. In that respect we are lucky indeed.

A LITTLE ABOUT MY COUSIN FRED SCOTT

The newspaper announcement of my cousin Fred Scott’s death was brief, and submitted by part of his family. It was headed: Freddy Scott (MC). There has since been an obituary in The Daily Telegraph (25 April 2011).

As a very junior officer, Fred landed in German-held Normandy (between Caen and the sea) on D-Day with his platoon in a Horsa glider.

The Germans, being an orderly race, had positioned anti-glider spikes in straight lines where he was to land.

His pilots were rank novices, so Fred, who knew about map-reading, directed them in. And noticing the spikes in straight lines, ordered a landing so that the wings of his glider broke off on the obstructions, leaving the fuselage and all inside, shaken but unscathed.

He went on to achieve his objectives, pushing through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, gaining rank and the Military Cross for valour (presented by Field Marshall Montgomery) en route. He ended in preventing the Russians from entering Denmark, mainly, in his account, by out-drinking them in vodka.

There are two stories about Fred that always please me.

When selling tobacco in Malaya for the company for which he worked before the war, his eccentric wife, Millie, was left a fine collection of pearls by her wealthy family in America.

Unable to receive them in the tropics, those in charge of this fine legacy were instructed to send them to Harrods, in London, for temporary safekeeping.

When Fred and Millie returned to England, they went to collect the goodies.

When the box was opened, all were aghast to find that due to being in a safe and unworn for many years, all were dead. Fred said that they looked absolutely horrible.

Harrods bought the many diamond clasps – and one string of dead pearls, just to show unbelievers what can happen to pearls that are locked away and not worn.



The other story I pared right down to send to the “Lives Remembered” column of The Times, should an obituary appear in that newspaper. It reads:



My cousin, Major Fred Scott MC, walked into a recruiting office and joined the wartime army as a Private soldier. He was put in charge of men who had passed through Courts of Justice and as punishment been given the choice of the mines or the army.

Fred was unable to open his locker as he had lost the key. He was given his own piece of wire and instructed by one of his charges in the art of how to gain entry.

His father, a Brigadier, newly stationed in the district, arranged to see his son. The Adjutant and others were dismissed from the room. Fred and his father were alone.

“And what have you learned in the army, Fred?”

“I’ve learned how to pick locks, sir.”

“Then open up that gas meter.”

Half crowns and florins fell to the floor.

“Now pick up those coins and lock it up again.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” replied Fred. “I have only learned to unpick locks.”

London Garden Update, Spring 2011

The great advantage of growing most things in pots on a flagstone surface is that it is possible to create a much re-shaped garden each year. And a quantity of bricks and building blocks enables you to raise or lower tubs of flowers and vegetable crops.

A not-too-successful feature last year was a focal-point pot, designed with side apertures for growing strawberries. For strawberries it was somewhat of a failure. For trailing geraniums it was a modest success. Now, for real geraniums (actually pelargoniums) I have higher hopes. Before, I have planted flowers in its open top. This is now capped with a rustic pottery birdbath – one that used to lie on the ground.

When this bath was on the flagstones, and partly shielded by pots of rocket, herbs and busy lizzies, the bathing birds were vulnerable to surprise cat attack. Now, at the cost of privacy, they can have an all-round view when bathing, to see if predators lurk to pounce.

Another good reason for positioning the bath high up on its brick-based strawberry pot as the centre point, is that the more vigorous bathers, like blackbirds, spray the water down on to growing plants around it, instead of the useless watering of flagstones.

The pelargoniums, bought as small plants, are now growing in the place of strawberries, though very young, look happy already. I will rotate the pot during the summer, to give all plants in its circumference a measure of sunshine (our garden only getting morning sun).

The other major change this year is that we are growing more runner beans, having discovered that when harvested at under 6” long they are the tastiest and tenderest of beans.

For them this year I have constructed a bamboo arbour. The beans will grow up 9 bamboos on a wall, then move south over the top of the bamboo arbour, which, because of its asymmetry, looks not unlike the strings of a grand piano. The beans will then be harvested from below.

The “piano” is supported on one side by the 9 wall bamboos, and on the other by 6 vertical bamboos (making it asymmetrical) that rise from sacks of soil in which tomatoes will be grown. These are still in pots, having been grown indoors from seed since March.

The pieris (always our ever-changing and spectacular plant) had become a bit straggly over the years. It has been pruned right back, leaving a few branches of yellow/green leaves in the hope that new bushy growth will spring from low down.

The same treatment has been meted out to the mahonia – for the same reason – hoping for new bushy growth to appear.

It has been somewhat of a winter of violence, as major grapevine rods have been dispensed with, and the apple and pear trees (both in pots) have been cut back severely.

So this season will be one of re-growth for several specimens. Tulips are no longer grown. There are more carrots. And there is one bucket-experiment of main crop potatoes (pink fir apple), besides the successful two of past years for new potatoes (charlotte).

My large wooden sculpture in the garden of lovers was found to be standing on hardwood slats that had rotted. These supports have been replaced by angle aluminium (sprayed brown).

Inspection beneath the sculpture revealed much hidden rot. A lot of this has been extracted, and the wood hardened and treated. It was mainly the heartwood that had rotted. I took out as much of this crumbling rotted wood as I could, sticking my arm up, roughly in the way that we see vets on television doing at the nether regions of cows.

(Delayed) travel blog to Dieppe in September 2010

Do you mind travelling with us again?

I often think how nice it would be to ask people on a Channel crossing who they were and why they were crossing.

The majority of passengers are in pairs, looking, at this time of year when schools have started again, like grandparents in need of a break and a rest. The couples look very much alike.

An elderly bald-headed man in rust coloured sweater reads a paper with deep concentration. His female companion has hair that stands up like bristles on a broom.

Their food tray is bereft of anything edible. The plastic sandwich cover lies open and empty. Several little milk pots rest where they fell near to two empty cups.

A pen and two spectacle cases lie on the table next to a dog-eared copy of a book of crossword puzzles.

Beside these items lies a new novel that has been partly read by a person who does not respect a book’s binding. So some of its pages look as if they have seen better days, and the unread part remains pristine as if direct from the publishers.

A part filled plastic bottle of water stands next to an open handbag made of fake ostrich skin.

The French coast has appeared on the horizon, but they are unaware of it.

There must be a draught falling down inside a large, rain-spattered sheet of glass behind them because she has donned a pullover/cardigan to add warmth to the rough-knitted under garment of many colours. This multi-coloured under-top confection looks not unlike cotton waste, used by engineers to wipe away grease.

Where are they going? Who knows.

Looking down over a balcony to the deck beneath, two travellers have laid out sleeping bags on the floor. Arab-looking, they appear as if they might wake up from their slumbers and start a fire to heat mint tea. Perhaps they are on their way to Morocco. But they are not there for long. Stewards have told them to behave and sit down.

A mackintosh-clad granny talks to a young girl dressed in blue jeans, orange top and fake fur jacket. They could be going home to France. They, too, have a crossword book open. It might be in French.

As one peers around, people look rather drab. Where are those elegant English we sometimes see on their way to a farmhouse in the Dordogne or villa in Provence? We see none aboard, even those with cabins for the journey who appear just before landing to await orders to regain their cars deep below.

In Dieppe we only see the unstylish and the dull – all black and brown. Where is this much-vaunted French chic? I did query this state of affairs once on Paris, to be told that the good-looking Parisienne ladies are not seen abroad, but are ferried to their shopping expeditions and smart homes by chauffeurs in grand cars.

In this new France I miss the past pungent smell of yellow Gitanes cigarettes and corridor and restaurant WCs, where one stood feet apart and hoped that nothing would drop into the large hole beneath and be lost to those famous French sewers.

BUT, fleas do still exist in France. Margreet was bitten almost as soon as we set foot in Dieppe.

We rather pride ourselves on locating good food in France at a reasonable price. We returned first to a favourite restaurant at the side of the yachting marina. But the waitress there had turned surly. There was none of the usual smiling service. How sad. The staff were angry with each other. And it showed. Of course, this attitude was reflected in their service. It rather spoiled our meal. But if one restaurant is crossed off our list, another is sure to appear to take its place. And there remains our favourite – and the cheapest – where we eat lunch early with scrubbed-up workmen. The meal consists of four courses and unlimited red wine and cider - for just over £10 a head. This shed-like eating place is in the bleak badlands of Dieppe, where the docks are sterile with only a pile of coal and some wind generator blades to hint of commerce.

But change does take place. A favourite restaurant of old was being taken over by new owners after many years of a lovely couple providing us with real French café/restaurant food. It will not be the same place without them, and being a little out of the way I don’t expect we will even give it a trial.

We chose to visit Dieppe this time just after the Retro festival of old cars, and before the International Kite Festival. Both are great fun but it is sometimes difficult to get a room during the festivities, and the port is crowded.

After many years (probably 60 for me) of staying in a room overlooking the town, we have now upgraded to one that overlooks the sea and any festival that is positioned on the enormous grass-covered plage. Because it is generally windy in Dieppe, there are usually kites flying between us and the sea. Moreover, on this occasion there was the added bonus sight from our panoramic windows of over a hundred geese flying south – in a rather ragged formation. And there were four late-migrating swallows jagging past our window – also going south. To the west the sun sets over the sea, creating glorious patterns and colours in the sky as it sinks below the horizon. When the sky is overcast, the colour of the sea is yellow near to the stony shore, changing to pale green, and then blue on the horizon. Sometimes all or some of this panorama disappears behind the rain from storm clouds. When we have eaten too much lunch we may have an evening picnic in our room, now with a fascinating and changing land and seascape as a backdrop.

For choice of restaurant food, I always pick at least one plateful of fruits de mer (mixed shellfish, cooked and raw), and being in a port famous for its fish, a fish of the day. Preferring carralet (plaice), I tried sea bream this time, but found it to have too many bones. Margreet often chooses steak, which, true to French custom, is tasty but chewy. We did once select an expensive wine, but the carafe white and red is always adequate. At least no one says “enjoy” when food is delivered to the table.

One of the main reasons for our short holiday trips across the Channel is to stock up on wine for home consumption. Whereas costs of most things in France escalate (and to worry about it would spoil a holiday break), wine is still splendid value. We buy a selection for £2.50 or less per bottle at one supermarket and even cheaper wine at another. To this we add some Normandy cider to feed the cider vinegar jar at home, and a selection of olive oil, though French oil is hard to come by.

On our last day, with little room left in the car, we bought freshly made Neufchâtel cheese from Olivier’s shop, and this time, some Pelure d’Oignon rosé from a supermarket at £1.50 a bottle. These items were squeezed in beneath the car’s seats.

It is seldom that we make a restaurant mistake. But before we left, and with time for lunch, we selected a place specialising in turbot. The fish was excellent, but the potatoes were rock hard. The chef had appeared late, we were told, but more probably drunk.

As we parked our car in readiness to leave France on the only ship now on the crossing, a van drew up alongside that was registered in England. I wanted to know about the possibility of renting a van for our wine-buying trips abroad. The renter of this van worked in England while his wife and son lived in Charante, in Cognac country, between Bordeaux and La Rochelle. The living there was much cheaper than in England, and having spent a lot of money doing up an old farmhouse he intended to retire to Charante and possibly return to England in old age.

This man had been a baker, so we talked about bread making, with him insisting that I knock down the dough to make the best bread. I mentioned that I never let water near to my bread tins, to which he replied that one should also never let water near to Yorkshire pudding tins either (something that I was unaware of).

He was on his way back having bought two wood-burning stoves in England for his French house, as they were much better and cheaper than in France. Surely, I queried, you don’t need heating so far south? I then learned that Charante is known for its extremes of temperature – freezing in winter and scorching in summer.

What, I asked, did he take back to France that is not possible to buy there. Baked beans and Cheddar cheese was the reply.

We return to England with wine and freshly-made Neufchatel cheese.

Robin training

We had not seen our very tame and friendly robin for at least a month. She liked to sit with us, eat from our knees, completely trusting, fearless, and generally treating us like garden furniture.

When sitting in the garden and vinifying by stripping grapes from their stems into fermentation bins, she suddenly re-appeared, treating us as she always had. It was lovely to see her again, having worried that perhaps a cat might have caused her demise. She has not re-appeared.

In the meantime another robin has fancied himself as king of our territory. He is a wild fellow – dashingly active.

If this newcomer (“The Intruder”) is to become our “house” robin, he is to be trained – that is, to be trained to eat with us in our shed (which is not really a shed but a small, glazed, octagonal summerhouse).

Instruction is conducted in four stages.

For the first stage it must be established that Cheddar cheese is good grub for robins. So morsels are thrown out on to flagstones for the robin to enjoy without having to become too familiar with us.

For the second stage, a morsel is thrown out on to the flagstones and a couple of pieces placed, very visibly, on the sill of the shed door. This bait, when taken, shows the robin that it is safe to be near us.

Stage three involves putting bait on the sill and more on the shed’s carpeted floor. The robin will then know that it is completely safe to be under our feet (we have to be careful when standing up).

The final stage is to bait the floor as well as the top of three boxes of bird food that stand next to my knee.

When the robin flies in, directly or indirectly, to take food from the boxes, it has been trained.

Later, as entertainment for guests, and our own pleasure, the bird will take morsels from our knees – more readily when feeding young, when both parents seem to cast caution aside.

There is something about a wild bird standing on one’s knee that is very pleasing.

Pork Chops and Cauliflower

I don’t know just how I came to make this dish, except that there was a cauliflower and two pork chops to be used up. Anyhow, the result was delicious, and the remaining cauliflower in its flavoured sauce just as good the following day (even without chops). It can be prepared well before wanted at the table, and will take half an hour to prepare and ¾ of an hour to complete. But one point I have discovered is that real pork chops – meat, fat and bone, are essential. Fat-free, lean, foreign, water-injected pork will produce a much inferior result.


PORK – Pork Chops and Cauliflower


You will need:

1 Cauliflower

Pork chops (one per person)

Ingredients for this (or any) white sauce - butter, plain flour, stock cube, Dijon mustard (optional), grated cheese (optional), pepper and salt, milk, or milk and water

Chilli powder (optional), turmeric (optional for extra colour)

Paprika (to sprinkle on top)


Depending on the thickness of the chops, cook them in a baking tin with a little oil in a hot oven for half an hour (for thick ones).

As you put them in the oven, rest a cauliflower in a little water in a saucepan and boil/steam it for 20 minutes. Make sure that the water does not boil away.

Now make a generous amount of white sauce. Do this in the normal way by melting a large lump of butter in a saucepan into which put 3 heaped dessert spoons of plain flour. Work the flour into the butter. Add to it 1 ½ pints of cold milk, or a mixture of milk and water. Whisk it all together to rid it of lumps, making sure to include the mixture at the angle where the sides of the pan meet the base (a metal spoon run around will draw this in). Keep whisking.

Add to this white sauce a dollop of Dijon mustard (if you have any at hand), a pinch of chilli powder (again, if you have any), a pinch of turmeric (if you have any and want a more glowing colour to the sauce), some grated cheese (optional, but for extra flavour), a stock cube of your choice, and plenty of salt and pepper. Keep whisking. Soon the sauce will start to bubble and be ready to use. Take it off the heat.

The cauliflower will be ready next (having been steam/boiled for 20 minutes). Strain it, using some of the water if you think the sauce needs a little thinning. Use a knife to cut up the drained cauliflower in its saucepan. Cut it into small pieces.

Add the white sauce to the chopped cauliflower and, when the chops are done, use the cauliflower/white sauce to cover and surround them in the baking tin. Sprinkle a little paprika over the top (for looks).

Finish cooking this dish right away with ¾ of an hour or more in a medium oven or, if kept until cold (even until the next day) at least an hour.

The above may sound complicated. But really all it says is this. Bake chops in the oven. Boil a cauliflower. Make a white sauce. Combine the lot. Cook.

Book Week

It was quite by chance that we saw the tail of a television programme about the giving-away of books in Trafalgar Square. We understood from what we saw that it was the start of a week when new books were given away for free.

Only a few days before, we had closed down our own Mudlark Press as, with no further publicity, and no distribution, not to mention that several dockland books were a little out of date, orders had declined. In fact, it had come to the state when the nearly 100% increase in the cost of our P.O. Box number almost outweighed our annual income.

This left us with quite a few books that we had stored around the house – now taking up room. Here, surely, was just the chance to give away much of our “timeless” stock as encouragement for others to take pleasure in the printed word, and thus to indirectly help our beleaguered libraries.

I put half a dozen copies of “Harbours, Girls and a Slumbering World” in my bag before I walked a short distance down our road to buy the morning newspaper, and came back with the bag empty.

“It’s give-away-a-book-week,” I said in accosting anyone who might be conversant with our language.

All were most grateful and delighted with the book, and the idea behind it.

And that was only the start.

There were only a few refusals by people naturally suspicious of being offered something for nothing, and one or two who had too many books already and just wanted to chat.

But generally speaking, most were extremely happy and considered themselves to be very lucky.

I was sometimes asked if I was the author, and even asked to sign a few copies.

And for Margreet and I the whole process was a delight, especially to see people suddenly change from their workaday demeanour to a smiling one on accepting our gift.

Now we have more room in the house – and a somewhat glowing feeling inside.

Rissoles

My memory for earlier times tells me that rissoles were once leftover food, and served mainly to children. Leftover food they may be, and now delicious for adults as well.


I have just made rissoles that were as excellent as many a recent dish.

They were constructed with beef that was fine when roast, a bit chewy when cold, and then, when put through the mincer and turned into rissoles – deliciously flavoursome with crisp and soft textures. And they are simple to make.



BEEF – ROAST BEEF RISSOLES



You will need:

Minced roast beef

Cold mashed potato

Pepper and salt

Amoy chilli sauce or another kind (a little)

Chopped coriander leaves (a few)

Flour

Olive oil



Mix the above ingredients together thoroughly. Then form rissoles with your hands. Dip the rissoles into flour, giving them a generous top and bottom coating of it.

Fry the rissoles slowly in olive oil until both sides are brown and crisp.

That’s it.

Publishing

Despite a series of successful books published, no one in 1992 wanted to print my illustrated guide to London’s dockland. Publishers loved it, but thought that limited interest in a guide to such a parochial subject precluded financial success.

The photographs to illustrate the book (GUIDE TO A DOCKLAND OF CHANGE) were taken by me from the riverside road from Tower Bridge to Limehouse from 1949 – 1969. They were never taken with publication in mind, but were of black and white shapes as seen through the primitive viewfinders of several Baby Brownie cameras. They were to help with my vision as a painter. The words were my own from research, observation, and from talking to dockland people over that period of time.

The area was of a dockland very familiar to me as an artist, a supernumerary on coasters leaving from that part of the Thames, and, eventually, when I rebuilt a warehouse to live in at the head of Limekiln Dock in Limehouse.

Unable to interest publishers, there was only one option left – to publish the book myself.

We, that is my son Pete, my wife Margreet, and I, then had a lot to learn about the publishing trade, and much work to do.

Good distribution is a key to the successful publication of books. We were to do our own throughout the whole of the dockland area. Another key to success is to have a target readership. We had those living in dockland. Yet another essential is publicity. For this the editors of dockland newspapers and journals liked our book and quickly came in on our side with glowing reviews.

For the rest it was dealing with the mechanics of publishing, extensive leafleting and, for me, the writing of further books.

In all, we produced, wrote, illustrated, and sold 5 titles over a 3-year period.

Extensive leafleting bore fruit as Pete and I posted book information and prices through thousands of dockland letterboxes. In came the orders. We mailed the books, and sometimes delivered them by hand. Doing this resulted in many an adventure and considerable exhaustion and aching limbs, not to mention the odd dog bite. We made many a friend as we toiled, and even received Christmas cards from readers who felt they were part of our endeavour.

Each of our books was paid for and in profit within three months of publication – perhaps a record of some kind.

Then we had other important things to do. Dockland changed, the books became a bit dated, and sales tailed off. We didn’t mind at all.

It had been a splendid and rewarding period in all of our lives.

So, in February 2011, The Mudlark Press came to an end.

Penne, Ham and Garlic

I had bought two slices of ham and was thinking about how to use them when a packet of penne dried pasta fell from a shelf in the kitchen. And as I had recently brought garlic back from France and found butter that I particularly liked, this simple dish was born (to me anyway, though I’m sure its like is universally enjoyed).


PENNE, HAM AND GARLIC

You will need:

Penne

Ham

Garlic

Butter

Salt

As the penne is boiling for its 20 minutes, cut the ham into small squares. Have a large clove of garlic ready in the press and a good lump of butter softening outside the refrigerator.

Strain the cooked penne and return it to the saucepan. Add the lump of butter and press in the garlic. Add the ham pieces and salt to taste. Stir until the butter has melted. Serve.

All this will have taken less than 30 minutes.

A medical emergency

One can laugh at it all now, but as events unfolded it was a serious and frightening matter for all concerned.

We do not usually attend an annual get-together for members of our local Residents’ Association. This winter we did.

With our bought ticket came a drink, to be followed (much later on this evening) by small bites. With this in mind, we had enjoyed a bowl of soup beforehand, hoping for more substantial fare at the party.

My selection from the drinks on offer was a pint of Guinness which, with another half a pint lasted the one and a half hours that I stood, making the usual conversation that one does on such occasions.

Then, when enough was enough, I indicated to Margreet that perhaps we should make a move toward home.

So I passed her on my way to the door, where I suddenly felt a bit faint. So I sat down. She saw my plight and we left.

What I had not realised was, that standing for so long and with a comparatively empty stomach, and with one and a half pints of the black stuff inside, the blood in my body had drained downward, depriving my brain of enough of it to sustain normal life.

As the pub venue was near to our home, I had not bothered to wear a coat – even on this cold evening. The low temperature of outside air, after the very hot interior of the bar room, should have been bracing enough for full recovery.

It seems that I moved rather slowly toward home, where, having unlocked the house door with some difficulty and help, I fainted, collapsing from my considerable height to form a pile of limbs, set in a pool of blood from the head.

Margreet, in trying to keep me upright, fell on top of me. I had passed out, to a state of complete unawareness.

On regaining consciousness, I heard Margreet shout for help. She thought I was dying.

Neighbours rushed from their houses, and Margreet, beating on a nearby doctor’s door without success, left bloody stains on the paintwork in the process.

One neighbour, unknown to us as a doctor, recommended that I lie still until help, in the form of an ambulance, arrived.

Not only very cold as I lay uncovered on freezing flagstones, I was now a little damp in the lower regions.

The ambulance men helped me aboard their vehicle and tested me to decide on which hospital I should be taken to. Charing Cross was decided upon.

There, with equal courtesy, compassion and professionalism, I was subjected to a variety of tests for brain and lung function – and sewn up with stitches at the source of blood from my head.

Doctors recommended an overnight stay to check on brain damage. There was no sign of any. (After all, on crashing an aircraft in the war, my head had knocked two instruments out of the instrument panel without ill effect.)

Margreet collected me in the morning, and I continued life just as before, but with some aching joints, and awareness that at future “dos” I should be prepared to sit occasionally and to eat well beforehand.

Out of it all came the added awareness, if it was not already quite plain, that I have a wonderful wife, and that our National Health Service is, in an emergency, beyond reproach.

Except, one item did surprise me. When being allowed to depart from the hospital, a doctor wondered aloud what to record as the reason for my admission to Casualty. On reading from my hospital notes that I had consumed a pint and a half of Guinness, she decided that the reason for my trouble was alcohol.

So, when next you read a statistic that hospital casualty departments have admitted a certain large number of alcoholic cases for emergency treatment, please deduct one from the total.

Dumplings

Dumplings are a joy to eat for most people. They are simplicity itself to make, economical, filling and nutritious. By adding them to a soup (or stew) you will enhance it and turn a modest dish into a meal. They are especially good in winter when soups and stews seem to be at their most welcome. Come in from cold blasts over land, river or sea to a dish with dumplings and you will soon be warmed right through. Children love them.




DUMPLINGS FOR SOUP (and stews)



You will need:

Flour (plain or self-raising)

Suet (that is, finely chopped or minced beef fat. Atora is a brand of it)

Salt and pepper

Herbal flavourings



Make your dumplings in the same way as suet crust pastry by combining twice the amount of flour, by weight or volume, to suet. Add some salt and pepper, stir together and then add cold water to form a stiff dough. Form this into balls, roughly the size of walnuts to golf balls, and drop them into the boiling soup or stew for 20 minutes to half an hour. They will then be ready to serve with the soup or stew. If you use self-raising flour the dumplings will be fluffier. With plain, they will take up less space and be chewier.

Consider putting lots of very small dumplings into soup. Two dessertspoons of flour to one of fat, with salt, when turned into dumpling mix with water will make 12 little dumplings. Two dessert spoons of flour to one of fat will make enough for two.

So good are dumplings that there will almost certainly be calls for more from a hungry family. So it is a good idea to add some more to the soup (or stew) as soon as you have served the first helping. Then, in 20 minutes or so, there will be more of them ready.

Plain dumplings may be best, but I favour them mixed with flavourings, like fresh or dried herbs, curry powder, chilli-con-carne powder, chopped onion, pressed garlic, English mustard, caraway seeds, cumin seeds, paprika, turmeric, chopped parsley, lemon or orange zest, and almost any dried herb or spice on your kitchen shelves. So here is an area in which to experiment. But start with plain ones.

Should you make too many for a meal, dumplings will heat up and be just as delicious when you want to eat the soup again.

Remember to boil up the soup every day – especially in warm weather. And keep adding to it any leftovers chopped-up, or the remains of stews or curries cut up with kitchen scissors. For extra liquid, add tea from the pot (not milked or sugared). And the addition of a stock cube may be necessary every so often.