One's own books

To clarify the reason for writing this piece I have to start by repeating some already related items of my past. 

In the late 1970s I felt that I was becoming more of a sculptor of large wooden blocks than a painter, when a car accident and a broken wrist forced a change of direction for my creative processes.

  As I had, for years, been importing wine in cask, and bottling it for my own domestic use, and at the same time writing down what I had learned about vines and vinification, and had started two small vineyards of my own, it seemed natural that I might fill the void of journalism at that time concerning supermarket wines. They were then retailing at around £2 a bottle, and no one, to my knowledge, was informing the public about which ones were good to drink and good value to buy.

Starting first with a column in a free newspaper, then a weekly one in a proper, paid-for newspaper, then writing a small book on starting a vineyard in England, then other wine guide books and columns, membership of The Circle of Wine Writers… and on it went. I was enjoying the life of authorship. And it was going well.

The transition process from painting to sculpting and then on to writing had been minimal. They were, after all, much to do with ideas.

I wrote many books and articles over the next 25 years. They were mainly on wine, vines and docks, but other subjects as well.

For the last five books I established my own publishing company as “real” publishers found my target buyers in London’s dockland to be too localised to justify publication. But those five books, with 2,000 initial print runs, each made a profit within three months – somewhat of a record I imagine.

Having said what I wanted to say about wine and the London docks, it was time to return to painting once more.

Preamble over, what I want to say now is the surprising pleasure that I/we have found in getting rid of all the mainly dockland books that were not sold and, being out of print were piled up against a wall in our kitchen.

There have been days when authors gave away their books to the public to encourage reading. This made a wonderful outlet for many of the unsold paperbacks. Some recipients were suspicious, thinking that it was some sort of con or other. But mainly most books were received with pleasure both on our own and their behalf.

Our local Underground station now has a few shelves where books are placed to be read and returned. We have been supplying these shelves with my dockland paperbacks (three different ones at a time), and by the end of each delivery day, all have gone – none to be returned as far as we can see.

Then, whenever we visit such as hospital or dentist, the receptionist, doctor or assistant may be given a copy. Or perhaps a helpful girl on a supermarket check-out counter might be the recipient. They are well received.

Last evening, on returning from St Pancras Station, a far-eastern-looking young man got up in a crowded compartment to give me his seat. He was just finishing a very serious, religious-looking tome, and obviously relishing every gospel word. As a gesture of thanks, I managed to give him a copy of one of my own books. It had the very inappropriate title of “Cooking in Docklands” as he probably ate mostly curries, whereas my book dealt with the suet pudding kind of fare made by the wives of inter-war dockers. The three of us, he, Margreet and I, discussed religion as we progressed. He then gave us the book he had been reading (late 16^th century, heaven above and the devil below stuff), which must have been a treasure to him as the more important parts had been marked with a yellow dye pen. We parted as friends at our joint destination.

It is little incidents like this that have given us quite unexpected pleasures – gained from a pile of unwanted books that are still in pristine condition, but rather in the way.

Secret and Confidential

When throwing away old bank statements have you ever wondered if someone with a criminal mind might find them and use them for untoward activities?

My sister did, giving me a handful once in a while to shred in our domestic-size electric shredder.

This machine would accept three sheets at a time to produce a fluffy mix of finely shredded paper that we would share to add to our respective compost bins.

Not long after I married Margreet, who was working for a foreign embassy, she asked if I would like to shred some secret and confidential documents for, I think, a small remuneration. This I did willingly.

I was an ideal person to do the job of shredding secret government missives as I was quite ignorant of the language in which they were written.

I was able to feed their shredder with more documents at a time than the smaller one at home. Even then it was a slow, painstaking and dull job.

As I progressed, I suddenly saw a document in English. 

I am afraid that curiosity overtook my natural inclinations of confidentiality and probity to take a quick glance at its contents,

Surprisingly, the date on this secret document was somewhere in the 1930s.

My quick and surreptitious look might, I thought, reveal information on which the fate of nations had depended.

Its headline was “The Price of Irish Potatoes”.

The Weather

I have always been keen on the weather – sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes of necessity.

I suppose that I started this interest (which goes with that of aviation) when I was a boy. My father, being a farmer, kept a close eye on the weather for such as rain quantity, sowing, harvesting, planting and the rest.

Our family was keen on aviation, which was then in its infancy, though I believe my father only saw one aeroplane in the sky during WW1 when fighting the Turks in Mesopotamia.

He took us children to fly with Allen Cobham’s Flying Circus, which would take place in a local farmer’s field. On offer were flips in an Avro Tutor for 2/6 and with a loop-the-loop thrown in for 5/-. We also went to the Solent to see Supermarine seaplanes break airspeed records. My flying bible and most treasured book then was The Pictorial Flying Course, written by F/O W.E. Johns, the author of Biggles books. Copiously illustrated with line drawings, it told you almost everything you wanted to know about flying a biplane. As for the weather, avoid clouds. And should you see either snow or fog forming, get home as quickly as you can.

In good weather The King’s Cup Air Race’s flight path went almost over our house at Silchester, near Reading. Its mixture of private, fast and slow aircraft flew so low that one could usually see the pilots in their cockpits.

Kingsford Smith, that famous Australian aviator, was due to fly in to our large chicken field for a visit. So we laid out a landing T with sheets held down with stones, but, being unreliable, he never turned up, even though the weather was fine – a great disappointment.

All grass fields for aeroplanes in those days, had a landing T that ground crew pointed toward the direction from which the wind was blowing (windsocks, too, were also used). I imagine that it is the same now although I have not flown an aeroplane for many a day. Aircraft, even today, always take off or land into wind. This gives them maximum lift for their speed through the air.

In WW2 we used landing Ts and windsocks to determine wind direction when flying from grass fields in England and America. Having joined the RAF in 1942, after signing on, I had to wait for a vacancy for pilot training and took a job as a prop-swinger starting up Tiger Moth engines on an RAF training airfield by swinging their propellers.

We had no meteorological service then, so an instructor would fly upwind to see if the approaching weather was suitable for novice pilots (which meant no clouds). I often went along in the spare cockpit, and it was there that I learned the basic rudiments of flying an aeroplane. 

With those, and more sophisticated machines later, one’s life might well depend on understanding weather patterns and dangerous cloud formations.

That interest in meteorology has continued throughout my life.

Lying in bed early each morning I listen to noises outdoors. Chimes from the church clock may tell me of wind direction, its intensity and thickness of the air. In very cold or hot weather the resonant brittleness of the sound from footsteps on the pavement below gives me a good indication of what the day’s weather will be. Snow produces silence. The sounds of weather are very important.

On rising at around 6 o’clock in winter and much earlier in summer, I look out of my studio window over a London landscape of streets, pavements, roofs and trees. I see the direction in which aircraft are landing or taking off from Heathrow airport. This will only indicate if the prevailing wind is roughly from the east or west as the runways there run almost directly east-west. If it is a cross-wind, then the aircraft have to crab in to counteract drift. I look at the bending of twigs or leaves on trees to judge wind speed. Birds land into wind. I can see rime frost on house and car roofs. When aircraft are landing toward the west, if they are below cloud and visible when passing the line of our street, their altitude is 1,800’. Or if in cloud they may appear in sight just before landing at London airport. Then the cloud base is about 800’. If I never see them at all on their approach, then the cloud base is lower still. Gulls leave their feeding grounds on rubbish tips and head for the sea. But if the weather is stormy they fly inland.

As for weather forecasts, experience tells me that weather can change very quickly, fooling the pundits – however sophisticated their equipment. So I dismiss forecasts beyond a day or so, preferring to predict it myself. I rely on wind direction, cloud formation and type (high cirrus clouds, for instance, usually precede a warm front, culminating in low, rain-filled nimbostratus cloud). And with my back to the wind I know that the low pressure area is on my left hand side.

With so much interest to be had from the sky and what inhabits it, I think how lucky I am to live in England where our climate is so splendidly variable and unpredictable.

A Painting

Even before I start writing this piece I feel that it might be a long and very personal one. As it concerns the way I work at present, it could be of no interest to anyone but myself. So be warned should you wish to continue.

I favour working on a series theme. The present one is on “Events”. These may take minutes to complete – or months. All are done from happenings large or small (stories) that I set myself the task of turning thoughts of objects of interest and pleasure into a flat painting of two dimensions to hang on a wall (very old fashioned nowadays, I suppose).

For instance: one was done having witnessed a fight on the ground between a wood pigeon and a carrion crow. The pastel took minutes to do – quite a different matter to the present one that I describe here, which took four months, though interrupted by a bout of acute bronchitis that turned into whooping cough when a fight for life took precedence over artistic output.

My modus operandi is, after deciding on the event(s), or story, is to make drawings of the proposed ideas on scraps of used paper, then to progress to acid-free A4 paper for the application of line and then pastel colour. There may be several of these to retain or discard. Then, if thought to be satisfactory, I will progress to a work on a large, A1 edition (33” x 23 ¼”) (79.5 cm x 59 cm) on card. 

Small works are done usually at my desk in a little room (my studio) at the top of the house. This suits me as I have always favoured working in a small space. For the much larger A1s I kneel beside a bed where the card lies on brown paper pulled from a large roll of it at one end.

Also on the bed are several boxes of large pastels that contain roughly colours of the same kind.

I might at some time in the future abandon “Events” and strike out on another theme. Nature seems to dictate when these changes might happen. But for now it’s events.

At least I am my own master, with no-one asking or demanding what I might do, no galleries to provide for and no corporate artistic bodies to influence my work.

What my eyes have seen is the usual motivation for an event painting. After that everything comes from the brain – the imagination.

This imagination is mine alone, and although each process is very real to me, other people are sometimes mystified by the result. To my mind, that is the way of art. It may be self-indulgent, but it represents the special art world in which I live. What I produce is, I hope, grist to the imagination of others.

The just-finished painting, an A1 size Event, number 48, developed thus.

When our cleaner comes once a week to smarten up the house in her robust and rather forceful Polish way, we leave the house to her and have breakfast in our local, insalubrious café, called The Ritz (where our dustmen take their morning break). We have tried much of the breakfast fare on offer and have settled on a toasted brown bacon sandwich for Margreet and a plain white bacon sandwich for me. We drink builders’ tea.

After one such early breakfast, where we look out over busy, cosmopolitan  King Street, Hammersmith, we attended an evening birthday party, given by a retired banker cousin, at Brooks’s, the height of gentlemen’s clubs in St. James’s Street, off Piccadilly, London. The latter is a club where, in the 18^th century men gambled away their fortunes, estates and even wives.

So this painting (actually pastel), entitled From the Ritz to Brooks’s, was about a day’s event, starting at society’s lowest order and finishing at its highest. Such a contrast not only made a splendid event but an extreme contrast of pleasures that we experienced in one day – an event.

But how to present this as a painting of composition and colour? That was the problem (as it is with all works of art that flow from the mind).

I decided to start with The Ritz, which has its name engraved on the street window, and is seen in reverse from the inside. Across the road, in contrast, is a Sainsbury’s sign, seen as normal. Then there were cars on the street, people on the move, and us in the foreground with our bacon sandwiches and builders’ tea in mugs.

Drawings (compositions) were made, with avenues of thought in the form of lines. Then, on acid-free A4 sheets of paper, further developments, simplifications and colour added.

After those, I felt like combining them with my thoughts on the extremes, working directly on to a large A1 sheet of card.

As I think about the painting in operation night and day, I may suddenly alter and evolve it. Mostly this takes place very early in the morning when the mind and air are fresh and all is still, but can take place at any time.

The Brooks’s part of the painting had to include a grand, red-carpeted staircase, a crowd of people meeting and talking, large portraits of past worthies, long, black limousines and a factotum on watch.

Then, when the piece was finished, it had to be fixed, as pastel chalk would smudge, fall from the board and get everywhere. This I do on dry flagstones in the garden with special spray. As it had rained for a few weeks I had to wait for the weather to change before sealing it.

Then, after the pastel was fixed, the piece had to be signed, dated and studio stamped with the reference code.

From this account the painting sounds like a very complicated one. But it is, in fact, rather simple and stark.

Is it a good, bad, or indifferent work? An artist never knows as we think that each one is good – otherwise we wouldn’t be artists doing what we do as part of our being.

So what is considered to be one’s success (or failure) as an artist? Does it depend on demand and high prices at auction or the number of solo exhibitions achieved? Is it the close connection with a well-known gallery or the number of private buyers interested in their work? Might it be satisfied owners, public purchases, or good reviews? Or could it be income from sales, notoriety, or demand from foreign buyers? Yet again it could be membership of an artistic corporation or consistency of style. It could be any or all of the above that go to form an individual’s or critic’s opinion of success or failure.

As for the artists, they carry on doing their best and, hopefully, enjoying what they do. They can do no more.

Community

I once worked in the theatre painting scenery at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, designing sets for repertory, touring shows, and even pantomime and ice shows.

At some time in this life of illusion I had to deliver a manuscript to Alec Guinness.

He then lived in a late Georgian square in Hammersmith. I was surprised and delighted to discover an area of London that seemed to be an ideal place in which to live. At that time I was in residence and rebuilding a bombed-out house in Fulham, right beside the Chelsea football ground. In time, noise, regular isolation on match days, and then the over-abundance of home games all became drawbacks to life there.

Time passed in many interesting ways until I needed to return to London from life in the Hampshire countryside. But where to look for a home? Why, near to that square in Hammersmith, of course.

A small house in the district suited me. Depending on the approval of my youngest son, I bought it – at a time when property prices were in a trough and, by present standards, low.

There was little to do structurally as the owners had done it up for sale – installing gold taps in the bathrooms, for instance.

But they had employed a lousy electrician. Although one could switch on the lights to climb the stairs, there was no way of turning them off having reached either the first or second floors.

Our street’s cars were possibly a couple of beat-up Fords. My soft-top VW not only looked rather out of place, but was vulnerable at that time to having its roof slashed by vandals.

I then knew most of the residents who lived in our street, many of whom were renting from a property landlord on a long term, sitting tenant basis.

What has prompted this blog is that Margreet and I have just returned from friends in a neighbouring road who were celebrating having lived there for fifty years.

We were almost newcomers among our fellow guests, having been residents nearby for only 29 years.

I wonder if there are many enclaves in London where residents are as happy as we and they are, and would not think of leaving voluntarily to live in another district.

But there have been naturally many changes over our years of occupancy.

Neighbouring houses have been bought to let. So their temporary occupants move on and have never had time to become part of our community. They are transient. Even those renters who we get to know move on and are lost, except possibly for a welcome Christmas card.

And there have always been at least one, two, or even three complete misfits around (I’m sure every street has them) who, for one reason or another, dislike the neighbours or the close community and continue to live among us, but apart.

One hopes that community bonds of friendship are not formed by class, breeding, nationality, birth, history, fortune, ancestry, accent, race, religion, origins, upbringing, occupation, schooling, or any other such mark of identity.

When I was a child in the country, it was thought that you became part of our village only after living there for at least 25 years.

So perhaps, even today, close communities are still formed mainly by the seemingly outdated idea of long residency.

Salisbury

With this first blog of the year, I would like to wish all my readers a very Happy and Healthy New Year.

Salisbury

The daughter of a couple that met at one of our tennis parties in the country when I was a child, died.

Her memorial service was to take place in Salisbury Cathedral, around which is a lovely Close, where she had lived.

We were asked to say if we were going to attend – in view of the catering arrangements.

The “catering arrangements” part sounded good. But beside our attendance to remember this very nice person, we wanted to visit the Cathedral for Margreet to see the Page-Roberts stained glass window there.

So down we go by rail, have lunch at an inn, and take seats in the body of that wondrous, Early English Gothic, medieval cathedral. Conducting the service were two clerics (not in full drag I’m glad to say).

The choir sang beautifully. The setting was magnificent.

In an address from a pulpit by a son of the deceased, he mentioned that on her death she wanted no fuss. And here we were at about the grandest memorial service one could imagine, in defiance of her wishes. So having been told that we might meet in the afterlife, those who arranged this grand farewell might well approach her in Heaven with caution.

After the service we repaired to a medieval hall to enjoy the catering – of tea and egg or tomato sandwiches. It was nice to meet some old friends.

We retreated, and returned to the cathedral to find the P-R window.

Walk the length on the right hand side until you must turn left, and the window faces you across the nave.

It has the merit of containing much clear glass, so admitting plenty of light. Its pictorial element is of biblical scenes executed in the Pre-Raphaelite manner.

At the bottom of the window it says: To the Glory of God and Remembrance of the Very Reverend Page-Roberts, Dean of the Cathedral from 1908 – 1919, and of his wife Margaret Grace.

That done, we returned to London, parched but not hungry, for a generous and very welcome memorial glass. 

Chance meetings

Meeting new people, however briefly, is one of the pleasures of life.

You may never see them again, but in a short time you are transported to another life, new thoughts, other modes of existence, ideas foreign to your own and so on. Sometimes a longer friendship is formed from a chance meeting or encounter, and they are often the strongest.

It is generally at parties that these meetings take place, but often by absolute chance, on the street, in a queue, at an accident, a waiting room, or just with a congenial-looking stranger.

One such meeting has happened recently.

At a smart auction house’s private view we paused at one of those typical Elizabeth Frink bronze heads, near to a man who was staring at it and smiling.

This person did not seem to be quite the normal posh purchaser of expensive art. So we talked.

He came from the West Country and, as a rugby football enthusiast, had found this sculpted head to be not unlike that of a fellow member in his club’s scrum. He, too, reminded me a bit of a front row scummager.

In asking him about his life he said that he was in London to sell a Churchill. This was information that hardly registered with us in the course of our conversation. 

Anyhow, we got on splendidly. I gave him my card in case he would like a 6 o’clock drink when next he visited the big city. We thought of it no more.

Then an email arrived from our rugby-following acquaintance to say that it was so nice to talk with us at the private view and that he would, one day, take us up on our offer. He had spent several hours reading my blogs and, as he was a countryman, especially enjoyed one when I had, in an open car, been showered with cow’s urine when passing a cattle truck on the road.

A short time afterwards I read a short piece in our newspaper saying that a Sir Winston Churchill painting, with an estimate of eighty thousand pounds had been sold at auction for over three hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

Could our newly-made friend have been the very seller of the last painting done by Sir Winston Churchill, which, before the great man’s death, been given to his personal bodyguard of many years?

We looked at the surname on his email. And, sure enough, he was in all probability the seller of the painting given to his father by Sir Winston.

Yes, meeting new people, however briefly, is one of the pleasures of life.

Mumbo Jumbo?

Other people’s ill health is of great interest to them, but in offering sympathy one is inwardly only too glad not to be suffering the same ailment. And too much detail proffered can become a bore.

So, I am about to bore you with my own case – but with a very good reason. I will be as brief as possible.

I get bronchitis every winter. In 2017 it came early, in late autumn, and was exceptionally bad, with a lot of coughing accompanied by noisy and involuntary gasps – not to mention a profusion of expectoration – horrible.

I awoke early one morning at about 3.30 o’clock unable to either breathe or speak. Margreet woke to find me unable to communicate and thought I had gone mad. I really thought it was my end. When it cleared, after quite a few seconds that felt like minutes, we rushed to A&E to discover the position and the chance of further blockage re-appearing. I was told to take an anti-biotic and sent home.

The same thing happened three more times over the next few days, the last after I had eaten some halva.

Nights were miserable and sleepless. I walked wrote, read, drew – all to keep as clear as possible from the expectoration that was non-stop when lying down.

Now, Margreet is a qualified reflexologist among other attributes. She had given me this foot massage in the past and afterwards it produced a lovely feeling of floating on air when I walked. She suggested that she give me treatment directed at lungs and throat.

I regret to say that however nice the treatment had been in the past, I had rather thought it to be a bit mumbo jumbo. But I welcomed a try.

After the first evening session I was able to sleep a bit. After the next I could sleep more. After the third I could sleep through the full night. And the expectoration was greatly reduced.

If I was sceptical before about the benefits of reflexology, I am no longer. That’s what I wanted to say. 

As for the related blockages – well, that, as I wrote initially, is someone else’s boring health problem.

Cars

In a magazine section of a current newspaper there is a piece about people and the cars they have owned. And although I have taken a rough interest in the mechanics of the cars that I have owned, it is the happenings connected with those cars that are of more interest.

After the war, in the late 1940s, my brother, an engineer, was working in a town where a mechanic was assembling cars from more or less whatever automotive parts that came to hand. I asked if he could make a sort of sports car for me. Which he did, and I bought it.

This car was constructed mainly from Austin 7 parts – triangular chassis, engine, steering and brakes. It could seat two, had a rudimentary canvas roof, and an outside exhaust that ducted the gasses close to the ear of my passenger. Girls would climb in at the peril of being burnt. The car represented freedom, fun, sometimes envy, and often incredulity. I added a sign on the radiator “Austin of England” and replaced the radiator-filling cap with an antique temperature gauge, visible from the driver’s seat. It went like a bomb (or rather felt like it) but was the very devil to stop – so a bit dangerous. Brakes were not too good in those days, and in an Austin 7 particularly so.

I had been invited to stay in Norfolk, and was passing an open truck where cows had been packed athwartships, when one of them decided to relieve herself. I was soaked in herbivore urine. It was not an ideal way for a guest to arrive for the weekend.

Still owning the same car, I had entertained fellow ushers at a London wedding, and was leading them on the road to the evening’s festivities, when a lamp post jumped out in front of me. I left the car where it stood and now cannot remember how it was returned to me. The car was never the same again, becoming unstable at speed.

I then belonged to the 750 Formula Motor Club and, at a meeting of enthusiasts, asked Colin Chapman, of Lotus, if he could diagnose the trouble. But he was unable to do so.

I sold the car to someone in the City, being rather fearful that there would be recriminations. The buyer contacted me on a small matter, so I asked him how he was getting along with the car and how fast he had taken it. “I don’t go over 30 miles an hour”, he replied.  

My next car was a very early MG, given to me by a cousin. It was a real sports car, but unreliable. I was rather proud of myself in substituting a tin disk instead of an open universal joint, to stop oil from leaking from an overhead camshaft into its magneto. This was an effective cure, but made rather an oily mess inside the bonnet. I got tired of having to stop and tinker with it with girls aboard, and gave it away in the spirit with which I had received it. The car went to a Norfolk family and disappeared.

I was working on painting scenery for theatrical touring shows, The Royal Opera House, television (in black and white then), children’s theatre and repertory, which gave me a chance in between jobs to create an all-purpose vehicle to take on a grand tour of Europe.

The basis for this rather unique vehicle was a well-used Ford 8, builder’s flat-back van. On it I attached a moulded covering of ply and, on the roof above the most comfortably designed of two seats, I attached ships’ ventilation air scoops made of copper. They faced forward to duct in air (if uncorked) and backward when it rained.

The car, unused to the post-war rough roads of Europe, needed fairly regular mechanical help from local peasantry – countrymen who exhibited a wonderful range of basic skills. Which was a fine way of meeting people.

After France and Spain, I was driving across northern Italy on a hot day, when a bee was scooped up by an overhead air duct and ended up in my shorts. A quick look in the rear-view mirror revealed several distressed cyclists.

The car was fitted out with sleeping and cooking facilities, food, wine and all the rest. But, after a while, starting the engine was a problem. This meant that nights had to be endured at an angle on steep slopes – to get the car moving in order to start the engine in the morning.

An emergency pot of money, left with a friend in Paris, went with her on holiday. So I had to sell things to be able to re-cross the Channel on my way home.

I had been painting scenery for a pantomime in York and was in a rush to get back to London. Now it so happened that I painted in an all-covering garment that I had cut from theatre canvas and stuck together with rubber adhesive. It was my paint-spattered, scenery-painting costume, and had the air of religion about it. Also, when painting scenery I used colour from old china chamber pots, as they were designed not to spill. Dressed in this painting kit and with pots of liquid paint aboard, I set off for home directly after work on a cold and snowy day. A moronic lorry driver decided to turn his truck around on a main road and right in front of me. Jamming on the brakes on an icy surface hardly slowed me down. So there was a bang, and paint shot everywhere from those pots, including over me. I imagine that the sight surprised the helpful witnesses.

The car took the fancy of a Scottish laird, who bought it for his estate.

A Citroën 2CV came next as it coped beautifully with the rough and overgrown lane leading to my studio house in the Berkshire Downs (and it whistled to the south of France and back, loving its own native country).

Then later, as I was working toward an exhibition of large sculptures in elm wood, a Citroën Ami 8 was able to do the same as the 2CV but with much more room for works of art. So I swapped it for its sister car, a station wagon type that had all the imaginative, idiosyncratic and innovative ideas of its predecessor, but without the centrifugal clutch. This did me well until a lorry driver, entering my main road from a side road, failed to see me behind his rear-view mirror. He was most apologetic and took full responsibility for the accident. But it left me with a broken wrist, which was the jumping-off point for a change of career. I then wrote articles and books for the next 25 years.

My last car was a splendid VW cabriolet that somehow retained the pleasant scent of its previous owner. The car’s only fault was its dislike of dealing with deep puddles – when the engine became flooded and cut out. It impressed a Russian eye specialist with its speed on our smooth roads. And when viewing the thatched houses of the rich from its open top, thought that the owners of these abodes must be peasants who could only afford to cover their houses with straw.

In London, some 30 years ago, in a street of perhaps a battered Ford or two, the VW’s soft-top was susceptible to vandalism. So, with excellent public transport nearby, and with Margreet’s Embassy number-plates on her own car, I gave the VW to my elder son. Of its demise I heard nothing.

Since Margreet’s retirement we also did away with the RAV4 after many years of smooth driving. 

Cars have their stories. 

Residual sugar in wine

On the advice of a merchant I bought (for me) a fairly expensive red wine, made in Australia’s Barossa Valley.

Looking at the back label, with its customary descriptive blurb of “berry fruits”, “plum”, “blackberries”, “chocolate”, “vanilla” and all the rest that someone thought up, I saw that the alcohol content was a stonking 14.5%.

In my view that is too high, with the alcohol overpowering those “berry fruits”. It was dry on the palate.

I took its residual sugar content. This was 8%, which should have made it a normally balanced wine. It was the tannin content that made it taste like a dry red wine.

Unaware of the tannin content, I had bought a wine that was happier to be more of a laying-down wine than one for present-day drinking. They might have mentioned this with the “berry” fruits business. Its tannins would have softened in time and brought the wine into balance, making it a fine wine.

It must have been very hot in the Barossa Valley that vintage year, with the grapes producing a lot of sugar. Even if the winemakers had stopped the fermentation earlier to reduce alcohol content, the resultant wine would have been too sweet on the palate. So 14.5% it was.

In Europe, we seldom get the very hot weather that produces too much sugar in the grapes. Here it is often the opposite, demanding added sugar to produce enough alcohol for pleasurable drinking and preservation.

I usually add sugar to my own vintages in London, aiming for around 22% before vinification (Port is about 20%), and fermenting the wine out to contain about 6% residual sugar.

I could stop fermentation of the sweetened must for the wine to contain more sweetness and less alcohol by adding sulphur, or even fine filtering (to get rid of the yeast) if I had the equipment. But I rather like to leave the whole process to nature.

As for the adding of sugar at fermentation time, French authorities, when I wrote professionally on wine anyway, designated that those winemakers below a certain latitude, were not allowed to add it. At that time, a pied noir, kicked out of Algeria, bought a vineyard in Bas Médoc, well south of the designated latitude, and  wondered why his wines were not as good as those made by his neighbours. That was, until he was woken at night by sugar tankers passing by to help improve those neighbour’s wines. He then started to make good wine.

Wine is often blended at source. I do as well, as my own red gets down to around 6% sugar. That is a bit too dry for it, so I have no compunction about mixing it in a decanter with a sweeter red – to the benefit of both.

Commercial winemaking is just another business where the weather is a major element and fortunes can be made or lost. So a certain amount of manipulation by the professional and the amateur when making wine is commonplace.

Dry whites and rosé wines usually have around 7% residual sugar content, reds anything between 6% to 9% - the successful results depending on body, tannin, sweetness and acidity. As for the wine’s acidity, this can also be added to wine, especially in hot climates, in order to produce a successful product.

Out of all this, it seems extraordinary to me that, combined with other factors, the differences between dryness and sweetness in table wines should depend upon such small differences (about 6%) in the wines’ residual sugar content.V

Fear in War

It was when applying for another war medal (one that was never sent to me, and not one for gallantry) that I was asked if I had ever been frightened during my wartime service in the RAF.

My first encounter with the enemy was when, after joining up and waiting for flying training, I took a job as a farm labourer. Food was in short supply. I was helping the war effort and experiencing farm life.

When hoeing weeds in the middle of a field, a German JU88 bomber flew over me at just above treetop level and banked on its way to bomb Reading railway station (it actually missed the station and destroyed a school and killed many children). I could see the pilot and rear cockpit gunner quite clearly. The gunner must equally have seen me. But they were trying to navigate in foreign territory at low level so had little time to waste by shooting up a simple farm labourer. It all happened so quickly. Was I frightened? It was far too sudden and unexpected an incident to generate fear.

Then, going on leave to London, and near to the capital, the train I was in came to a halt in an air raid. Searchlights scanned the night sky to look for the enemy  bombers. Anti-aircraft guns were in action. But no bombs fell nearby. Was I frightened? I wrote about it to a friend in America saying that I would not have missed it for anything. So I certainly could not have been frightened then.

Waiting at RAF Hornchurch, on the fringes of London in Essex, while waiting for a posting to Flying Training School in America, I volunteered to mend roofs in the much-bombed East End, London district of Plumstead. I was on a slate roof mending it when one of the first German rockets landed in the vicinity. It was just a loud bang. The rocket, being supersonic, the swooshing noise of its arrival came after the rocket’s ground explosion. Was I frightened? I didn’t even know then that the explosion was caused by a rocket.

On leave in London, buzzbombs detonated around with some regularity.

These flying bombs were powered by a pulse jet engine and made a loud, pulsating, growling sound.

If one was still making its noise when overhead, all was well. It would land elsewhere. But if the engine cut out just before arriving, you took shelter – in our case, when living in a flat in Victoria, under a strong table. In a bath one just hoped to hear the bomb fly over. Was I afraid? Sometimes apprehensive for sure.

Crashing a PT19 training aircraft in Oklahoma, USA, was a time when I could have expected to be frightened. But I imagine that trying to work out how to get down in one piece gave me little time for fear. I landed in one piece, the aeroplane in several.

Flying in Coastal Command from RAF Davidstow Moor, Cornwall, in twin-engined Vickers Warwick aircraft, and blessed with wonderful eyesight, I spotted a German Fokke-Wulf aeroplane as a dot in the far distance. Alerting those on board through the intercom, we dived to just above sea level and headed for home. They can’t have seen us. With our 303 machineguns we were virtually defenceless and no match whatsoever for such a fast and powerful enemy aircraft bristling with substantial cannons. Was I afraid? It was simply part of a job that I loved doing, and it did break up the monotony of long operational flights in a very noisy and cumbersome machine. I don’t think that any of us on board experienced fear. And after each sortie we were guaranteed a fried egg in the mess on our return.

On RAF airfields, latrines were in huts dotted around the place (some for men, some for women). One day, at Davidstow Moor, I was going about my business and had need of a lavatory. There was one nearby, which turned out to be the cleanest that I had so far encountered on the station. After sitting down I heard a woman cough in a nearby cubicle. Now, being caught in a women’s lavatory was a court martial offence. It could have been the end of my RAF career if I was discovered. I dressed, crept to the door, exited, and walked away as nonchalantly as possible. No one saw me.

So yes. I really did experience fear in wartime – in a ladies lavatory.

Mistletoe update

You might recall my blog on mistletoe. It told how, without success, I tried over the years to “plant” the soft berries of this parasite into junctures of spurs growing from our small apple tree in a pot.

I then, two months after Christmas, found some dried berries clinging to mistletoe twigs in a builder’s skip, and planted them – again without success. So I reluctantly gave up the struggle.

Then, two years later, a small mistletoe shoot sprang out through the tree’s bark an inch or two below where I had planted seed toward the top of the tree.

It was a great day – a celebration day. I had succeeded after many years of failure. But there were no berries attached to the branch.

Twelve months later another bunch of mistletoe appeared below the first one. And after yet another year a third lot appeared low down near to the earth in the pot. But there were still no berries.

Fast-forward another three years – until this 2017 spring. And there, at last, on the lowest and most recent branch, lovely little flowers were opening where new growth usually takes place.

Mistletoe clearly has a mind of its own, and likes to surprise – even hiding its sex for a while.

Anyhow, it looks as if one of those dried berries was a female one. Roll on 

Christmas.

Art, to Birds, to Moths, to Soup

My art goes in tangents. A theme comes to me and I create pictures on the subject until I have squeezed out all the imaginative and often rather abstract ideas that I have about it. Immediately I begin to tire of the theme I stop. Then I wait until another theme presents itself.

The last series was tremendous fun – enjoyment being essential. It was called “Events”.

It started when Margreet and I witnessed a fight on the street between a carrion crow and a wood pigeon. It was an extraordinary event, with the pigeon giving as good as it got. We think that the crow was trying to rob the pigeon’s nest of eggs or young. We were unable to stay for the result.

Then I made a mobile of brightly delineated fish for Margreet’s niece’s baby. The variously-designed, almost pantomime fish, were suspended on strings from a corrugated cardboard rectangle. They dived and climbed as the cardboard was twisted. On top were painted clouds and an aeroplane with its wings being formed from an old stuck-on address label. To distract the baby with swimming fish at changing time represented an event. 

Then I made another of flying birds for another baby.

With these two mobiles being the core of the series. I added silhouettes of both of us, and of a television friend and myself playing with a Stirling engine. Interesting compositions of multiple events were beginning to appear.

A series of glasses were broken at home. A chessboard was knocked over with the pieces all over the place. So on it went with combined events, starting from that pigeon fight and ending with a remembrance of a friend and neighbour who loved catching salmon in her lifetime. This last work has a “real” salmon, as opposed to my stylised fish, much in evidence. Being of greater importance than the “mobile” fish, it crashes into the picture dispersing fish and birds, chessboard and pieces.

Good art should involve the imagination of the artist and that of the viewer. Now I have just given away rather too many of my thoughts on this particular tangent.

So here I am, with a theme ended, and putting pen to paper before another tangential theme comes to mind to be interpreted in I hope an imaginative way, bright in colour, and pleasing in design.

*****

Each year a pair of great tits nest in a box that I made, painted as brickwork, and attached to the wall on the Eastern side of our London house. So it was most upsetting this year when our regular pair started their nesting rituals and then deserted. Perhaps one, or both, were killed by cats.

With the box unused, I cleared out what little grassy stuff had been used, on the assumption that if another pair would fancy using the box in late spring, the female partner might not want to share the same bedding as the previous incumbent. And lo and behold, when almost summer, and with other nestlings beginning to take wing, a new pair of great tits took over the abode. Perhaps their earlier nest of eggs or young had been robbed by bird or beast. Anyhow, once more we had a couple to share our home with us. And we are very pleased about it.

*****  

Followers of these blogs will recall my contest with clothes moths.

Early last year, having seen only one or two moths flying around, I distributed pheromone-impregnated sticky pad traps around the house, and caught 158 moths all together from March to March. But the count from only March to May this year has already totalled 131. This would imply that springtime is the most active time (mating presumably) for clothes moths to be on the wing, and that by catching so many this year already, they are still in control. And I thought that by catching a good quantity of males, females or both last year I was getting near to solving the problem. Yet despite there being so many moths around the place, only a very few holes, eaten by their maggots, have been found among our clothes. What’s happening?

The success of the pads would seem to depend upon where they are positioned in a room, with one being more successful than the others.

*****

Our soups are much enjoyed by all who partake of them.

They are made and eaten throughout the winter and much of the rest of the year. So they are generally on the hob.

These delicious brews almost always start with chopped onion or leek, braised in plenty of butter. This is done in a large pressure cooker. The leek, or onion, or both, is followed by finely cubed potatoes, stock or crumbled stock cubes, pepper and salt and water. I give it 20 minutes under pressure. That's it. A friend of years ago (Bernard Venables, the fisherman) ate this soup every day of his life, but with mace added.

That is the basic soup, and excellent it is. But it is the additions that make it exceptional. These consist of about every dish that has not been finished – like the remains of sauces, gravy, water used for boiling other things, the washing out of Marmite and Bovril pots, vegetables, leftovers from stews and casseroles, pan juices, mayonnaise, pasta, rice, peanut butter, and all possible remainders that might add flavour or consistency.

When meat or roughage food is to be added, I put it through the soup Mouli first. This allows juices to be squeezed out of fibrous matter (it might need chopping up first with kitchen scissors). The fibre, being almost flavourless, is discarded – or composted if not derivative of meat (which could attract vermin).

To thicken soup I sometimes use a Mouli or liquidiser on some or all of its volume. Or, if it is a white soup, I make and add some white sauce.

If you are making a mushroom soup, and cooking chopped onion and chopped mushrooms with some chopped potato with stock before boiling it, make a white sauce and whisk this in when the initial soup has been cooked.

And should you have tomato soup in mind, use chopped tomatoes from a can and tomato purée with stock cubes or stock, possibly adding white sauce to make it a creamy one. But remember to add a little sugar when using tomato purée.

Should flour or cereal (like pearl barley) be part of your soup, stir it regularly when heating it up to stop it from catching. And the soup must be brought to the boil each day to prevent fermentation. Should you forget to do this daily chore, and wild yeasts have started their work, bring the soup to the rolling boil, and, as Mrs.Beeton wrote: ”Scum it clear as anything rises”.

Many of our soups end as a sort of Mulligatawny by adding curry powder to it.

Stock is important. I might add several cubes, both beef and chicken. But my favourite stock and start to a soup is to buy pigs’ trotters and pressure cook them in water with flavourings for about an hour and a half. In this case, when the liquid is cool, strain off the solids from the liquid stock and separate the gelatinous flesh from bones. Put this meat into a bread tin with chopped onion, capers, sliced cornichons, and pepper and salt. Reduce some soup liquid by adding a little vinegar, boiling and evaporating it, and pouring the result over the trotter meat. Eat this cold and solid with a little olive oil and chopped fresh coriander. Or put it into sandwiches. This rustic dish is not to everyone’s taste. Margreet dares hardly to even look at it. But she agrees that the stock made in this way is wonderful. 

Daymaking

It is extraordinary how the little and often unusual things of life define a day.

I go to Lord’s Cricket Ground each summer for three days of watching Test cricket.

I talk to my neighbour spectators who want to talk (and they are sometimes very interesting), but are just as happy to have non-talkers next to me.

When we made room for another cricket-lover in our row to pass by, my neighbour saw that this man had a fly button undone. We questioned if we should tell the undressed person of his condition. But the unknowing spectator had already passed by. And we could not decide what we should or should not have done anyway.

As a boy, should any of our number of males have a fly button undone, someone would introduce the words “Olga Polosky” into the conversation. Then we males would lower our eyes to see who might be the unfortunate.

Then, on the very next day, I sat down in the Underground train on my way to cricket, only to discover that three of my own fly buttons were not done up.

Fortunately I had a newspaper to cover my undress and surreptitiously managed to do up one button before other passengers might see what I was doing and think that I was an exposeur (if there is such a word).

At the station of my destination, Victoria, I did manage to do up the rest behind the newspaper as I walked along the platform.

Nowadays this would probably not happen as the trousers that I found to wear that day were probably made before the advent of reliable zip fasteners.

I had made the same journey to Lord’s for many years – Stamford Brook to Victoria by Underground, then 82 bus to Lord’s Ground.

Where I normally boarded the 82 bus is a stop where several busses stop at the same time. So it is wise to stand around the middle of them to be able to rush either way to catch the 82. This time, busses came and went, but an 82 was not to be seen. I waited for probably 15 minutes, then took an alternative bus that involved a longer walk to reach Lord’s at the other end. I asked the driver what might be holding up the 82. “It’s been discontinued, mate. The number 13 has taken its place.” So I took the 13 next day and all was well – and I hope will be in the future.

It is an accumulation of small things like these that are unexpected and define a day.

Paintings' History

I was lying in bed this morning thinking about the painting that I was working on and the history of paintings – their provenance, the history being a very important part of them.

The story about one of my own, I thought, qualified for the re-telling. 

I had come out of the war as a pilot with TB, started medicine study, TB took hold once more (there was no cure in those days), then gone to art school (The Central under artist Bernard Meninsky) and after that The Old Vic School to learn about theatre design. In the meantime I had settled in two very small Council rooms above the railway lines at Victoria Station (steam trains, then).

Cramped, and polluted by smoke, steam and smuts from the railway engines below, coupled with the dense fogs that they engendered, I gathered together bits of money and bought a wartime bombed-out house next to The Chelsea Football Ground on the Fulham Road. A developer was repairing it with the aid of a grant. He had got as far as putting a roof over the first floor.

I made the place habitable. The RAF Benevolent Association kindly paid for the carpet for stairs and landing.

Between designing jobs in the theatre and painting scenery at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, I taught myself a little more about art by painting landscapes, using a large, home-made easel and paints that I ground myself.

Being right next to the football ground offered landscape possibilities.

So, in 1954, I set up my kit on a gravel mound (where the Christie’s box now stands – or stood), and painted two 2’ x  4’ (61 cm x 122 cm) paintings of a match between Chelsea and Wolves.

One of these paintings was of Peter Sillet scoring a penalty for Chelsea at the western end of the ground. The other included what was known as “The Shed”. It portrayed a bit of the pitch, the crowd, the Shed and buildings in the background outside the ground.

The “penalty” painting I sold right away for £5 (when I had added the “ref”, who I had forgotten to include) to the electrician, then helping me repair the house.

The other painting, entitled “Neighbours on Saturdays” (football was then played only on Saturdays) I exhibited with “The Daily Express Exhibition of Young Artists”, and later in a one-man exhibition at The Gallerie de Seine in West Halkin Street, Belgravia, London. It did not sell.

Over the years that painting either travelled with me to homes around England or was put into store when I was abroad.

When moving from the country to London in 1989 it was hung on the wall of the spare bedroom/studio at the top of my Hammersmith house.

Learning that Mr Abramovich, who owned Chelsea Football Club, was keen on paintings, I sent an image of mine with a letter to his secretary, offering it at £1,000. There was no reply.

My wife Margreet’s niece was about to be married and, although her husband- to-be be was an Arsenal fan, we thought that they might like the painting as a wedding present. The wedding did not take place. So the painting remained on the wall until, in 2006, a Christie’s man saw it and asked if we might like to sell it at his auction house. Yes, we would. Off it went with a reserve of £1,000 - £1,500.

A man soon contacted me to say that he was prepared to go to (I think) £3,000 at auction so would be sure to obtain it. He would then have coloured reproductions made and would pay me for my signature on them – or some such deal.

This was good news. Now I knew that it would sell.

I then heard from Christie’s that the painting might even reach £5,000. This was even better news.

So along I go to the auction.

“Lot number 122,” said the auctioneer. “There is interest in this painting by James Page-Roberts. I can start the bidding at £2,000.”

From £2,000 it rose quickly to £5,000, when some bidders opted out. At £10,000 most had given up, except for two bidders. One was a lady, who we learned later had a Chelsea fan as a husband and wanted to give it to him as a Christmas present. The other bidder was probably Mr Abramovich’s agent.

The bidding went on, with the lady keeping her hand up until it was hers – for £28,000. Christie’s quote the price, with commission added, as £33,600. It was what is known in gallery jargon as “the top lot”.

So what happened to the painting’s pair?

I still had the electrician’s home address. So I decided to track him down.

And if I did locate the man and painting, what was I going to do? Should I tell him all? Should I offer a small or large amount for it so that I could hang it on my wall, with its fun provenance? Should I buy and then sell it, giving him ….? I didn’t really know what I would or should do. I would simply have to play it by ear if I did find it. 

So off I go to his address south of the river to a substantial house in Battersea somewhere. I rang the doorbell.

Two gay men appeared, who had lived there for more than 20 years. They had never heard of my man. Perhaps he had been bombed out of the East End of London  in the war and had been given temporary accommodation in this house and moved on.

That was the start and end of my quest for the second painting, except that I put a piece in the Chelsea Club’s Fanzine, hoping for a response. There was none.

Those are two paintings with provenance.

Air Currents at work

Cirrus clouds are very high clouds made up of ice crystals. And when they form to look like horses’ tails, their frozen droplets are being driven by the jet stream (high, strong currents of air that have an effect on the weather beneath). So this is moving air that you are actually able to see, because of the ice crystals. Looking at the passage of clouds tells you much the same as they are moved by wind.

When leaving Granada, in Spain, by air, we had to skirt around the lower parts of forming cumulonimbus clouds. These particular clouds are made by violent up-currents of air, blowing moisture high up (generally from a wet surface below, like a lake) with such power that cloud moisture forms into raindrops. Heavy rainstorms may result.

As these raindrops rise in the up-currents they may freeze in the cold of altitude and form into hailstones. These fall under their own weight, either as small hailstones or get sent aloft again by the up-currents of air to gather more moisture and freeze once more, making larger hailstones – and so on.

In learning meteorology as a trainee pilot in the war, the instructor told us that these cumulonimbus clouds were most interesting clouds. They must be, he said, as airmen had flown into them and never come out again.

Ice forming on aeroplanes’ wings can be deadly, but is now dealt with efficiently by the heated leading edges of aeroplanes’ wings. But it was splashed water from the ground that once froze to ice under the wing of my aeroplane that caused it (and me) to crash – rather violently.

So the pilot from Granada was wise as he flew around those dangerous clouds when leaving southern Spain. And the view of them from the aeroplane’s windows was magnificent.

We are unable to see the upward-rising air currents in these clouds, but we can see the outside movement at work as they billow aloft. This was such an occasion.

Even on a very still day of no wind or breeze you may see a leaf on the ground or in a bush suddenly move, telling that there are nearly always air currents around, sometimes minute ones, even on the stillest of days.

One of the best ways to “see” air currents is when they are combined with smoke.

Aircraft land against the wind. This slows down the landing speed, making it safer.

When flying training years ago, you always wanted to know wind direction when in the air – just in case of engine failure and a forced landing necessary. To look at the direction of chimney smoke or bonfire smoke was always a good indication of it. But nowadays there is not much smoke to be seen and, thankfully, aviation in all its aspects has advanced enormously.

Granada

Margreet and I flew from London City Airport to Granada, in southern Spain, for a family wedding in the summer of 2017.

I like small airports. Probably the last time that I flew from one was from Lydd to Le Touquet with my car in a Bristol Freighter during the early 1950s. Three cars were driven aboard through the gaping front of the Bristol Hercules-engined aircraft. The loading doors were closed. Then the drivers and passengers climbed aboard to sit with the pilot. The two propellers churned up the air as we bumped across the grass and lifted off to cross the Channel, flying close to the water. From the field at Le Touquet we cleared the perfunctory Customs affairs and drove away through France.

So I rather expected that London City Airport, being small, and we heard friendly, would have much the same feeling about it as flying in those days of yore. Not so. Small and friendly it may be, but present-day security has put paid to simple and pleasant air travel.

But we flew in a comfortable Embraer 190 and arrived in Granada’s airport. Ours was the only aircraft around. And we passengers were the only ones to be seen. So exiting, though done with Spanish speed, did have a bit of the old feel about it. (Leaving after a week’s stay was quite another matter when, in the general chaos, with one hand holding up beltless trousers, my portable, long time companion corkscrew was confiscated as an offensive weapon.)

We were prepared for the daytime temperature to be around the 40 degree mark – and it was, with the difference in temperature between sun and shade being considerable. The sun heated up the ground and buildings so much that even the evening temperatures were very hot with radiant heat being given off from pavement below and walls all around. Shade was generally available from orange and other trees, and in the lea of buildings in narrow streets. And because it was possible to find shade, sun creams and even sun hats were not essential, though sunglasses helped to dim the glare from the mainly white buildings. Ice creams were popular to cool the palate, fans were in general use by women (we did see one man using one), and in some bars and eating places a fine mist of cold water was distributed from above, looking like the vapour from dry ice. Margreet bought a fan, which came apart on one spine. I bought glue to mend it, only to discover, almost too late, that it was superglue, which gushed out from a rather free-flowing dispenser. So I prized my fingers apart just in time to allow the glue to dry on each finger and eventually to peel off the skin. But the fan had been fixed.

Of course liquid refreshment in quantity was essential. The excellent local beer and wine provided it, though the wine, usually being the choice of good local white and either Rioja or Ribera (del Duero) red, came in large glasses holding only a small measure. The red varied in temperature from cold, to chilled (excellent) to rather too warm. To see a whole bottle of wine on a table was a rarity. Thus it was difficult to find a stopper for a partly-drunk bottle in our room. We only managed to find some in a souvenir shop with “Granada” printed on their sides.

With these liquids, tapas were usually provided gratis. So, with heat precluding large meals, a constant supply of tapas supplied most of one’s needs for food. Our favourite lunchtime venue was the covered fish market, where not only the freshest of fish was on offer, but olive oil, ham, cheese, garlic and much else. Here we would sit at a tall, small table to be served possibly beer, Manzanilla or white wine, with our choice of a delicious tapas with each drink. So, of course, an afternoon siesta later during the excessive heat was an essential element of life. During this time the city simply closed down. And rightly so.

Some might like to judge a country by the kind of loo paper on offer. Generally this was absorbent and thin, and sometimes in a café non-existent. Once it was not to be put down the lavatory after use and binned. In the fish market conveniences, Margreet found that before entering a cubicle it was necessary to select the anticipated quantity of loo paper beforehand.

A City Tour was provided by a sort of land train of an engine truck drawing two open carriages. So good a method of getting a feeling for Granada was this train that we took it several times, sometimes to simply see the city and sometimes to reach a recommended destination. With ancient and often very uneven cobbled road surfaces, it was a bone-shaking experience, but tremendous fun as it wound its way up, down and around the most varied of urban landscapes.

The road and pavement surfaces were of great interest. Sometimes they were of marble, sometimes tile, often cobbles in straight or of imaginative design, and also as mosaic in small defined areas of white pebbles and what looked like chips of slate on end. One could so easily imagine the Conquistadors treading the very same surfaces all those years ago.

The red bricks in use were longer and thinner than those used in England. And the mortar between them much thicker and coarser. Was this something to do with the country’s Roman heritage?

Because the streets were often quite narrow, pedestrians on the pavements of varying width were protected from traffic by rows of low, cast bronze bollards with a simple design representing pomegranates.

Above eye level in rooms, the close-together, glowing and impressive wood beams held the weight of heavy floor tiles above. To look upwards outside, the blue sky was crowded with swifts, acrobatically screaming their way around the tall, ancient, and mostly, impressive religious buildings. If only some of those magical birds would carry on in their migration from Africa to inhabit the London skies where so few exist, we would be very happy. Chattering starlings crowded into the tall trees to roost in one of the few verdant squares. Sparrows flew low beneath tables to find scraps of food for their young.

There were many dogs in Granada, yet we seldom saw a mess or anyone clearing one up.

We had (not by design) arrived in Granada at fiesta time. Twice we witnessed solemn religious processions crawling through the streets. In the march were drummers, trumpeters, choirs, effigies both large and small, and many of the religious populous in sombre dress and sometimes mantillas. Many carried banners, rods and long, lighted candles.  The music was uplifting for us and, no doubt, much more so for the participants.    

Enough of Granada impressions. The famous sights would last until a cooler season. We were there for a family wedding.

Three busloads of guests were picked up in the noonday heat to travel to the wedding venue high up in the Sierra Nevada. The road was a tortuous one, with barely a fence between the tarmac and the chasms to the side of it. The arid, cactus-strewn landscape of rocks and scrub occasionally held a smallholding of olive trees. There was no sign of bird or four-footed animal.

The venue was a long low building outside of which were tables laid for a feast under shaded awnings. Below that was another sitting area of covered straw bales, laid out for the wedding ceremony with a drinks bar at the side. Below that again was a mountain stream, cascading over rocks to deposit its ice-cold water into a dammed pool for those wanting to swim and cool off. It made a lovely setting for nuptials.

The self-devised wedding ceremony, with the bride wearing a red dress and white mantilla, and the several bridesmaids in pure white, was conducted with speeches, though we were too far away to hear them. Then, after the exchange of rings, the bride and groom divested themselves of most of their clothing, the groom lifted up the bride, and together they plunged into the ice-cold water. Drinks (excellent Rioja) flowed as we wished them well.

The dinner feast was of prawns served to each person in half a scooped-out pineapple, steak so generous and tender that it could have come straight from the bullring, and a lovely cheesecake with crushed fruit. Copious amounts of wine were readily available. Then there was Flamenco dancing and singing, and dancing into the night.

It had been a glorious occasion, a unique one, and a very memorable one.

So we left Granada, Spain and a happy, handsome, and most generous couple with lovely memories and, as is the case nowadays – photographs galore.

Moths and Robins

MOTHS

From March 2016 to March 2017 we caught 158 clothes moths on sticky pheromone pads when we had thought to have almost eliminated them.

Moths, being nocturnal, we had not realised that they were so numerous.

There were not many “catches” during the winter months, but with the onset of spring, carcasses began to adorn new sticky pads.

I feel that if we persevere, then both male and female numbers will be much reduced or eliminated. Our woollen clothes will then no longer be tasty food for their maggots.

ROBINS

We like a tame robin in the garden. And we like it to join us in the shed (a small summerhouse) to eat grated Cheddar cheese from our home-designed feeder and perhaps to stand on my knee.

But robins die off or are eaten by cats, and new ones have to be trained.

Our friendly bird of last year disappeared in the autumn, and its place was taken by a very wild one, probably a blow-in from Scandinavia.

The chances of training this new arrival before we closed the shed for the winter were slim. But just before the cold weather set in we managed it. We had made friends. Then the shed was closed until the spring. Would it remember its training?

All was well. It continued to fly in for cheese. Our new robin turned out to be female by making a nest nearby and sitting on eggs. And even her rather scruffy mate has come in for a bite. 

Mo