Pernod Pears

From a market stall I bought a bowl of pears for £1. In it were 14 of that fruit, and in perfect condition. What a bargain it was. As time past, the last few to be eaten were on the decline. So I peeled them, cut them up, and added Pernod. In a day the spirit had been absorbed, and the result, with a dollop of Cornish cream, was – well, delicious.

PERNOD PEARS

You will need;

Pears

Pernod or another aniseed spirit

Cream

Peel and cut up the pears, discarding only the stems and pips.

Place the pieces in a bowl, add a little Pernod, and turn it around. Refrigerate the fruit until wanted.

*****

Saucisson Sec Skin

Dry sausages that are generally made in France and Belgium, when cut in thin slices, make an ideal accompaniment for drinks (especially when served with small gherkins (cornichons). But there is a snag – the sausage skin.

To peel the skin from some sausages is easy – especially when they are not too dry. But when they are hard and at their best, the problem is considerable. When being consumed, the skin from these hard slices remains in the mouth and has to be disposed of or swallowed.

We are given a delicious example of this type of sausage from Belgium, with instructions to allow it to dry out in the refrigerator until quite hard. To skin it then is almost impossible – even after the slices have been cut.

One night, I was giving some thought to this problem and came up with an idea.

My plan was to slice the sausage, then, with every slice on a board, cut them across in the middle. It should then be easy to peel each half slice.

So I tried it the next day and my plan worked beautifully – but was a little time-consuming.

Half slices may not look as nice as whole ones, but the pleasure of eating  saucisson sec without the skin adds tremendously to its charm.

Two Lost Francis Bacon Paintings

I wake early in the morning – well, as late as 6.30 or so in the winter but 5 o’clock or earlier in the summer.

This gives me solo time to spend in the studio room at the top of our house to think, paint, draw, or write. The air is clean and clear, as is the light. London lies below almost silent. There is little to disturb me. It is a wonderful time of day.

At times I wake even earlier and lie in bed thinking of the past, present and future – future of whatever painting or writing that I happen to be interested in at the time.

It was during one of these latter periods of thought (this morning to be exact) that I recalled a period in my life when I had vegetated in a country studio that I had built, and realised that I must leave my self-indulgent rural life for a move back to vibrant London.

Funnily enough, the artistic work that I found then to be transitory is much sought-after today.

Somehow I saved quite a few of those struggles when freeing myself from a year’s drawing around the world to return to using paint. I managed it, strangely enough, mainly through the medium of coloured paper collages.

Anyhow, I approached an estate agent who said he’d never be able to sell a one-bedroom house, and that I should advertise it myself.

Francis Bacon answered my advertisement in, of all strange papers for him to be reading, the Daily Telegraph.

He came, saw, and bought the house immediately. I enquired, as part of the financial negotiation, if a Bacon painting might be part of the deal. The Marlborough Gallery, who presumably paid for the house, declined my proposal.

What did Francis see in my rather simple and stark studio house? It was quite the opposite of his chaotic and messy studio in Reece Mews, South Kensington, London.

Perhaps it was its undecorated, original, pink-plastered walls and simple lines – lines much like the “cages” that appear so often in his work. 

Anyhow, he and I got on well and I visited him to explain such items of my construction, like the separate chimney running next to the real one. This fake chimney was connected to the outside air at ground level and conducted heat-exchanged warm air up to the only bedroom.

We discussed mainly the value of chance in painting. And on homosexuality he opined that “people think we live in a twilight world. We certainly do not”.

The only neighbours were a lovely cottager couple, Mr and Mrs Rampling (Mrs Ramp). She kept an eye on the house when I was not there, as she did for Francis. Her lovely garden, nourished by human waste, was like those depicted on Victorian biscuit tins.

George Dyer was in residence with Francis when I went to the house. He would curl up, greasy black hair, almost cowering in a corner of the sitting room – and silent. He joined us for salad, raw kippers and Champagne.

In the newspapers one day I saw a photograph of a Bacon painting of George, sitting in that very same corner, just as he had when I was there.

Move on now from 1964 to 2016. I was watching cricket at Lord’s when a man sat next to me. He was a well-known barrister, art critic, and authority on post-WW1 English 20^th century art.

This writer was most interested in my account of meetings with Francis Bacon, especially of those at my old studio house in the country. This was because in all the records of Bacon’s life there is hardly a mention of the Chieveley studio house that I had built and he had bought.

When the barrister came to see me to learn more and to see the letters that Francis had sent to me, he brought with him the Bacon Catalogue Raisonné to find the painting of George that I had seen in the newspaper. I could recall it clearly. But it was not included. So where could it be? Lost? In a bank vault? Anyhow, it may be one lost Bacon.

When I visited Francis Bacon in that country studio house, I always looked in on my old friend and ex-neighbour, Mrs Rampling. She wanted to give me a present. I think that her choice was between a painting (probably given to her by Francis Bacon) of Mount Ventoux, or a much more prized possession which was her well-used gardening book, “The English Flower Garden”, 1901, printed by John Murray, in which it was recorded that gardeners in London should grow cannabis. There is a piece in it on Eremurus Robustus, written by my grandfather (the Reverend F. Page-Roberts, the great rosarian), with a splendid engraving of him standing next to Eremurus Robustus plants that tower above him. She chose to give me the book.

Now, that Mount Ventoux painting? Did Francis paint it? Although it hardly looked like his work. Or was it someone else’s effort? The canvas was in pristine condition, not having been recovered from a rubbish heap or anything like that. I can see it now – bright, impasto, oil paint almost as if squeezed straight from the tube, and direct – like a clever child had painted it, and impressive in its way.

Where is that painting now?

That’s two lost Francis Bacon paintings with which I have somehow been connected.

Freezer Contents

We have a small freezer, or rather, a three-drawer section of a normal refrigerator. So there is no space for large quantities of anything, as when, in the country, I might buy the side of a pig in Smithfield market at 4 a.m., butcher it, and bag it up for a chest-type freezer.

So what I freeze now is minimal, but the items have a regular turnover. What do I freeze?

Ice is one item – for drinks, especially Champagne cocktails (using any fizz) and for our own grape juice, put through a straining bag and drunk with vodka.

I knead bread and make six loaves at a time. These take up space, but are well worth it, making bought bread seem like eating polystyrene (with making toasted breadcrumbs from bought white being an exception).

Basic meat sauce (minced beef and tomato purée), made in quantity over a few hours and bagged up for future dishes (like chilli-con-carne, spaghetti sauce, shepherds pie and such) is a freezer winner.

I have just made and frozen moules farcie. I steam mussels open, place each on a half shell and coat it with soft butter, pressed garlic, salt and chopped parsley. They have to be frozen separately on a tray before being put into one bag to be extracted as wanted for the grill. They are then eaten like hot oysters, with bread to sop up the delicious juices. 

Another constant turnaround item is chicken. I buy two roasters at a time from a Halal butcher and cut off limbs and breasts-on-the-bone to freeze in bags. These items are used for roasting, curries and stews. The bones are pressure-cooked for stock and soup liquid.

A kind neighbour has just given us a load of windfall apples. In one saucepan I have put the flesh and in another the pips, cores and skins. To both I have added sugar and a very little water. The pips and skins have been boiled down and sieved, the resultant pinkish pulp being then added to the white purée made from the fleshy part. This all takes up room in the freezer, so I intend to use it quickly, giving some away, making pies, and having the pulp with raw oats and cream for breakfast.

A few other items are also put into the freezer, like ice cream and chopped scallops surrounded by mashed potato in the shell. As we buy finely-ground coffee from a shop some distance away, part of our purchase is frozen. When the packet is unfrozen and undone, the coffee is as fresh as when bought.

But the main items are those mentioned above. They go to make our quick-turnaround, town-oriented freezer well worth while.

Beef and Fennel Stew

The weather was getting warmer, but the days for body-warming stews were not yet over. So I wanted a light, springlike beef stew. Why not, I thought, use fennel bulb as the vegetable ingredient? And there was a little ouzo left in a bottle to add to the aniseed flavours. Moreover, fennel bulbs were plentiful and cheap in the market.

BEEF AND FENNEL STEW

You will need:

Fennel bulbs

Onion

Flour

Stewing beef

Pepper and salt

Star aniseed

Ouzo, Pernod, or other aniseed drink

Beef stock cube

Herb or herbs tied with string (optional)

In a saucepan or casserole, fry a chopped onion in oil until the pieces become transparent. Sprinkle over some plain flour. Stir.

Add chopped stewing beef, 2 star aniseeds, a crumbled beef stock cube, pepper and salt, some ouzo or other aniseed drink (be careful that it doesn’t flare up), lots of chopped fennel, and water to cover.

I first added some prunings of sage, rosemary and thyme tied with string. This adds flavour but is not necessary.

Boil the stew slowly for some 3 hours more or less, depending on the quality of the beef.

Should you have added herbs to the top of the dish, extract and discard them before serving.

The end result is light and delicious, so much so that it would be wise to make enough to serve the following day.

*****

Chicken Stew with Multiple Goodies

This dish has many variations and each one is a winner. The first of my versions started with onions and garlic, flour, black olives, chicken, white wine, pepper and salt. Since then I have varied the ingredients as I thought appropriate for the time. It is a wonderful dish, cooked with your own choice of spices and vegetables. It is so easy to do – and inexpensive as well. 

You will need:

Oil

Onions and garlic

Flour

Chicken

Herbs, spice or spices

Potatoes

Black or green olives

Citrus and/or vegetables

Pepper and salt

Stock and/or white wine

Cook chopped onions in oil until transparent in a saucepan that will hold your chicken or chicken pieces pretty snugly.

Add a little flour, spice, spices or herbs of your choice, like ginger, thyme, turmeric, saffron, sage, paprika, five spices, cumin, etc., but only one or two. Don’t overdo it.

Now add potato chunks, lemon or lime chunks, green or black olives (without stones). Or you could add any other fruit or vegetable from prunes to swedes should you feel like it.

Salt and pepper your mix.

Just cover the ingredients with chicken stock, white wine, tea or other stock (made from stock cubes). Bring to the boil and cook the chicken very slowly until the meat is done, say around 25 to 30 minutes, or a little more for a large bird and more solid vegetables.

Serve and eat it right away, or better still, leave the dish until it becomes cold. Then extract the chicken to skin and bone it, returning the carved meat to the lovely juices. Heat through when wanted.

Being a main course that can be made well before other preparations for the meal, there are huge advantages to be had – especially for those at the table who dislike dealing with skin and bones.

*****

Complications of Life

An imaginative journalist writes in our Sunday newspaper.

He has just written on the advantages of divesting ourselves of gadgets large and small.

We are rather in advance of his recommendations.

He suggests that we do without a second car. We no longer even have a first one. But we are blessed with an excellent public transport system, almost at our door.

He says, and must know, that coffee machines are complicated, need much attention, and contribute to considerable waste pollution.

We can tell him that to make the best real coffee you do not need a machine. Just get a supplier of roasted coffee beans to grind your favourite kind on the Turkish ground setting. Then it is a simple matter to put a teaspoon or so of this into cup or mug and over it pour boiling water. Stir once to settle the grounds and add whatever is to your taste. There will be residual grounds at the bottom of the cup or mug, but that is a minor inconvenience en route to obtaining the best coffee simply and at a reasonable price.

Most machinery in the house can cause trouble, expense and wasted time. I am the dishwasher that works, and can do it quickly with the minimum of hot water and with no extra fossil fuel power - only using my own manpower. But I do need the help of nature by soaking crocks, etc. in a sink of detergenty water overnight, thus loosening and softening any adhering food. The resultant clean crockery, cutlery and pans, are then stacked in a draining basket and rinsed with hot water before drying naturally. Cutlery is then stored within sight in a divided container as used in restaurants.

(Margreet uses a clothes washer and dryer.) 

As for those myriad electronic internet gadgets, that seem to try everyone’s patience, Margreet suffers like the rest. And here is where I cheat a bit. I write on a Windows 95 and transfer my words to her Apple via a 3 ½” floppy disk. She is pleased to transfer my words to the ether as she, like most people now, are cleverly hooked.

Our approach to the television is that everything is missable. But for our New Year’s picnic feast in bed, we did find an annually viewed short film from the internet. This brief comedy, featuring Freddie Frinton some years ago, is much loved on the continent and called “Dinner for One”. So stored items on the computer did come to our aid for the celebration.

Of course, in reality, to give up electronic communication in this day and age would, for those on the net, make life both tedious and slow. There’s no going backwards, leaving those of us who believe that simplicity is the key to a happy life to struggle a bit, such as payments via the net being sometimes obligatory. But to call for transport by car, which usually takes less than 4 minutes, and not having to tip the driver, is, to me, a real bonus.

Back to objects around us. Which ones do I treasure and that are failure-free? A hand-operated soup Mouli is a wonderful way of turning mixed ingredients into delicious soup, leaving behind unwanted fibres. A blender for such, chews up everything, often producing a sludge or slime of liquid. But I do use my blender to make breadcrumbs from oven-baked slices of bought white bread. And in it I powder porridge and bran to mix with melted kidney fat for my half coconuts that provide wild birds with winter sustenance.

An electric coffee grinder is used not for coffee but for dry spices with which to make curries. Lately I have used it as the French do for foie gras, by grinding green peppercorns and sea salt to make a condiment. This mixture is also excellent as a dip  for hard boiled eggs, such as quails’ eggs.

Our slow cooker does just that at a mark of 1 ½. Ingredients are put into it and forgotten for hours – depending on the contents. It also cooks slices of aubergine at its maximum heat, on the grill pan part, for a first course, when oil, salt and oregano are then added.

Our toaster doubles up as a heater for Arab bread when each half slice is opened up and devilled eggs added. (Devilled eggs just being scrambled eggs with Dijon mustard.)

An electric kettle, made of toughened glass has been a huge success, showing just how much hot water is wanted and when it is coming to the boil. What scale and impurities form inside are quite visible and can be emptied out.

So I really have moved with the times in some respects, but still maintain that we can rid ourselves of unnecessary encumbrancies, and that simplicity leads to a happier life.

A sort of Bubble and Squeak

Now it so happens that my wife, Margreet, had never cooked when I met her. Being in the Dutch Foreign Service, other people had done it for her. So that was one of the many reasons why I married her. I could do it all. But on her retirement she expressed the desire to cook. So we decided to be the chef on alternate weeks. I was willing to be surprised. And I was – with her imagination in the kitchen. Among other excellent productions (sometimes with a Dutch slant), she produced something that might be “my kind of cooking” in serving the simplest of dishes - cold duck breast with this lovely hot bubble and squeak (hot and cold on the plate is so often a delight).

A SORT OF BUBBLE AND SQUEAK

You will need:

Mashed potato

Coriander

When mashing the potatoes with the usual butter, milk, pepper and salt, add plenty of chopped coriander leaves. That’s it.

*****

Avocado fillings and more

Before, and ever since writing The Oldie Cookbook and Cooking in Docklands Past and Present, I have created and developed simple recipes and put them into my computer for an extended cookbook for publication.

But that won’t happen. Cookbooks are now written by the young and/or famous who crave, and must be, on television. So that counts me out.

I have even given up adding my blog recipes to that extensive cookery tome of mine, blogging recipes when I feel like writing them and leaving it at that.

Now, with my weekly turn at cooking, Margreet often says “write it up”. I sometimes do.

We rather like avocados as a first course, filling them with what comes to mind and hand at the time.

Margreet favours recently chopped-up anchovies in oil and vinegar as a filling.

With this in mind, and a form of fishiness in the filling being a nice change, I have been using oyster sauce, mixed with chopped-up cornichons and capers – the latter two supplying the vinegar element. Should you try this, be careful not to overdo the salt content. Margreet may add to the mix some Tabasco sauce and chopped up shallot.

Incidentally, chopped capers and cornichons with oil, vinegar, pepper and salt, makes an excellent dressing for a salad of finely sliced fennel bulb.

Margreet finds that our own Hammersmith red wine is a little too dry as we ferment it right out. So I may use a bottle of it as a marinade for a beef stew when using shin of beef.

For this, cut up the (marbled) shin into small lumps (you will need a sharp knife). Cover the meat with the red wine (any) and leave it for as long as you like (hours to days).

When ready to concoct this rich stew, pour off the wine and keep it handy.

In an iron casserole or like pot, fry chopped onions and garlic in oil until they reach a transparent state.

Coat the meat in flour and add it to the onion/garlic mix. Add pepper and salt and a stock cube (or two). At this stage I like to add a bit of liquid gravy browning. This added colour enhances the dish. Stir the ingredients around for a while.

Now return the wine marinade, adding water to well cover the contents of the pot.

Now for the first of two special ingredients. Add lots of pitted black olives. I de-stone Kalamata olives as those already without stones are not nearly as good.

The next special part is to add lots of small and tight Brussels sprouts. Rinse them first.

Bring the dish to the boil, leaving it on very low heat for a couple of hours – or more.

Serve with mashed potato. 

You may never have enjoyed sprouts as much as these.

As I am writing about cooking matters, here’s a popular breakfast item.

Cut a pitta bread in half. Open up the pocket (I do this with the back of a knife).

Warm the halves in a toaster, but don’t allow the bread to become crisp.

In a shallow pan, on medium heat, melt butter, and on this butter put a dollop of Dijon mustard. Add pepper and salt.

Now break a large egg on to the mix and, with the back of a fork, break up the egg and keep stirring until the right consistency has been obtained (keep it moist).

Slide the egg mix into the pitta’s pockets – and eat in the fingers.

Debunking wine

I think it was when looking at a TV programme on wine that set me off writing again on wine skulduggery.

Th presenters of this television show loved 14% alcohol in red wine because it was “warming” or suchlike. 

14% alcohol I consider to be too much in a wine – the alcohol content usually overriding the natural smells and tastes that should be in the forefront of a good wine. And one can so easily drink too much and negate the pleasures of sensible consumption.

Tavel, that much renowned rosé from the south of France, was once deceptively strong (and may still be). Locals would have a glass and go on to a less alcoholic rosé. Outsiders would swill down the Tavel and suffer, much to the inhabitants’ amusement.

In the those days when 12% alcohol in wine was considered to be high, I took my containers to a wine merchant in Grasse to have them filled up with either 10%, 11% or 12% red. I chose 10% to both enjoy as wine and quench the thirst in the heat of a south of France summer.

In America, and in impecunious circumstances, I decanted and watered down cheap and strong “gallon wine”. My guests loved it, having no idea of its modest origin.

At home I offer red, white and rosé wine, and eyes pop out when I make rosé by putting a little red wine in a glass and topping it up with cold white. And those who like my rosé keep to it. After all, pink Champagne is made in this way. Others are not meant to, but it is the easy way and, well, who knows?

I like to read out loud the blurb on the back label on bottles of red wine – generally to much laughter.

A favourite is that the wine tastes of “berry fruits”. These may be elaborated to contain black currant and/or blackberry tastes. Cassis is black currant and Mure is blackberry. In the days when Burgundy was a robust wine, was it just coincidence that black currants were grown in quantity in the Burgundy region?

Our own Hammersmith wine is fermented out to become a very dry red. Being unsulphured or fine filtered, it is a completely natural wine – but a couple of glasses at one time are enough. So I sometimes, but rarely, blend it with another wine that may have a little too much sweetness to it. This is done in a two-bottle decanter. And what have I been known to add? – those “berry fruits” no less – but only in the smallest of quantities. Too much added turns the wine into a port-like drink. But when my  judgement is correct, the completed wine becomes rather special.

The most common of these “doctorings” is the addition of sugar to bring up the alcohol content in years of bad weather, or perhaps commercial demand. There are rules (routinely broken) for when, or when not, winemakers may add sugar to the vinification. Many have to add it to make good wine and raise the naturally-fermented  alcohol level – like I do. But I don’t add sulphur, which most commercial wine contains to ensure stability and prevent infection. Alcohol is the preservative in Hammersmith wine.

To me, all this blending and mucking about is fun. And many wines are legitimately blended wines anyhow. But as an ex-wine-writer I have seen and heard about much commercial malpractice, and am rarely surprised. After all, dealing in wine is a business, and fortunes may be at stake. 

COMPUTER FAILURE, BLOG WRITING AND ART

COMPUTER FAILURE, BLOG WRITING AND ART

There was a gap in my blog writing.

This was not that I had given up writing a blog, but a connection failure between the old and new worlds of the internet.

I still write with a Windows 95 computer and its 3 ½” floppy disk. This disk I hand on to Margreet when I have written something, who slips it into a gadget that she can connect with her modern Apple computer. Then she can deliver my words to the ether to be read by anyone who cares to do so.

But, as with most computers, hers had a glitch and had to be seen by Apple experts, who not only mended it, but also gave it an upgrade. In doing so, they disconnected its 3 ½” floppy disk route. (The Apple man, when hearing of my antiquated approach to computer technology, referred to me as a “cool dude”.)

Anyhow, that was all rectified, and I can continue to enjoy putting words together, as well as painting.

The painting part of my life has suddenly taken off. Not only do I have my private collectors buying but, through Offer Waterman (that very smart gallery at 17 St George Street, behind Sotheby’s in Bond Street), sales also go apace.

It so happens that in the 1950s I exhibited in the best London galleries and was thus quite well known at the time. I suppose I could have continued with that form of art when I painted what I saw, then putting paint to canvas. But I have an enquiring mind. So around 1959, after the period of “natural” painting, I would select an imaginative theme, then persevere until I had squeezed enough from it, not bothering too consciously about style and content, but letting imagination, nature and experience take its course. Always in my mind I wanted to create interesting paintings to look at, but with my imagination and that of the viewer paramount.

Around 1964 (I say 1964, but that is a general date encompassing 1963 to 1966), I painted a series on the theme of London’s dockland, and in a pretty vigorous manner. I never exhibited them or, I recall, even sold any. Now they seem to be all the rage, with some collectors liking them not only for their style and content, but also because no other artist, certainly with my way of painting, was working in London’s dockland at that time.

Which goes to confirm (I trust, and hope) that good art will always be recognised as such – eventually. 

So this little burst of sales and recognition is rather unexpected. And I am delighted about it.

Robin Training

We are used to having a tame robin in our small London garden.

We train them to have confidence in us and eventually to fly into our shed (a small summerhouse) to eat grated cheese from a feeder that I designed, and then to stand on my knee.

The robins last for a year or more, the length of friendship depending on the extent of their life -–usually terminated by a cat. So we have to train a new one every so often.

Our summer was one without a tame robin – or robin of any sort. But the gap was filled by a wood pigeon.

Training this large bird was minimal as soon as it came to the conclusion that grated Cheddar cheese was not only delicious, but also easily obtainable from the feeder in our shed. So in it would come, hopping on to and over the door’s sill to wander around by our feet. Then it would jump-fly up to the feeder, or fly in directly from outside, making us jump.

So, despite no robins, we did have avian company over the summer months. Our very handsome pigeon became so bold as to walk on or hop over our knees and legs as we sat in the shed in its search for morsels of cheese.

Then, at the onset of autumn, a new robin appeared.

This robin, we think, was a foreigner, a blow-in, perhaps from Scandinavia. It flew around the garden like a wild thing. Slowly it calmed down as it felt more at home in its English surroundings.

Training this wild one was obviously going to be difficult. Our “making friends” regime is simple, but it does take patience and time. Would we have that time between its arrival and the start of winter when it would be too cold for us to sit in the shed with the door open?

The first move is always to show the bird that grated cheese is good to eat. Our new robin was for some time loath to even try it out for taste. But it did, eventually taking the proffered bait that had been placed well away from us in the shed. It liked what it was eating.

Then, day by day, cheese gratings were positioned nearer and nearer to our open shed door – then to the sill and then the floor.

Now the new robin chooses to fly straight into the floor. But despite seeing the pigeon enjoying lovely cheese from the feeder, positioned on top of three boxes of bird food, it has yet to do the same. That should happen very soon, but will it be before the cold winter sets in and we have to abandon the shed and close the door until springtime? 

Being discriminatory, we now ask the pigeon to leave the feeder so that the robin might eat there. Although we still like and admire a wild wood pigeon to be so close and trusting, we would rather have a robin as a garden pet. And we would like it to be an even closer friend before the winter is over and birds think of mates and nest-building once more.

(I am glad to add that the robin has now, in early November, flown into the shed to take cheese from the feeder.)

The Shed

We have a shed at the end of our small London garden. Well, it’s not really a shed as such but an octagonal summerhouse made of cedar wood with five sides glazed. So when sitting there in our two armed chairs, we can view the garden for about eight months of the year.

     We inhabit it for conversation, for reading, listening to music and cricket commentary, computer business, baby-sitting, drinking, and meals. From it we can see, from beneath an arbour of grapevines, the back of our house, a sculpture of lovers, our flowers, vegetables and wild life. It is lovely.

     Even when the autumn evenings draw in, we can close the door, light three candles and enjoy our “den” in the warmth given out by the two of us and the three candle flames.

     We are not the only ones who make use of this little paradise. Mise like to shelter there when the weather turns cold. And in the summer we have trained robins to fly in to eat grated cheese and stand on my knee.

     Of late, a wood pigeon has befriended us. It either flies in directly or hops in through the door and flies up to the cheese-feeding tray. This large bird also stands on my knee and walks around under our feet. We speak to it as if it was human and it takes us for granted, even turning its back on me as it eats, knowing that I could so easily grab it and turn it into a nice terrine.

     We surround the inside of this small shed with objects that we seem to need. There’s a clock, a torch, three candleholders, a dye marker, a miniature Stirling engine (to demonstrate for children and the incredulous), pencils, pens, India rubber and tooth picks. With these is an Indian, enclosed and vented incense burner (decorated by me in silver , dazzle camouflage), incense sticks of many kinds, spare spectacles, insect repellent, and touch-up nail varnish.

     There is a small table for food and things, a hanging rubbish bag, and two quite large pastels in frames of Aircraft Shadows (ex Mayor Gallery) and a fisherman in a tree landscape, made up of blocks of green and yellow colour. Like most of our pictures, they are changed every so often.

     Inside are also two very heavy wooden, folding chairs, and three large plastic containers for bird food.

     The home-designed, glued, wooden bird-feeder is made of two pieces, one of which slides over the other to reveal the amount of grated Cheddar cheese that we think appropriate at the time.

     Then there are paper kitchen towels, scissors, nail file, secateurs and a gas lighter for candles and the Stirling engine. There’s a fly swat too.

     At one side is a rug and woollen shawl for when it is cold. Beneath the table is a box of garden accoutrements (seed in a tin, wire brush, granular fertiliser, gloves and all sorts). And beneath one chair is a box of sprays, insecticide, rat and mouse poison and so on. Books are on the floor next to several kinds of fertiliser and two pairs of wellingtons.

     And of course there is a screw pull corkscrew and a hook, and a knife to cut away bottle capsules. That knife must be over 100 years old as it was used to scrape eggs when my wounded father had a chicken farm after the First World War.

     From our little paradise, that seems to contain so much, we look out onto a summer garden in complete privacy. Although surrounded by houses, the leaves from our grapevine arbour and general greenery shield us. For much of the year our lovey shed forms a major part of our house and life. 

    

Clothes Moths

We all know how destructive the clothes moth can be whenever a favourite garment is extracted from cupboard or drawer and found to have been eaten in part by the grubs of this small and obnoxious creature.

Until about six months ago I clouted them in one way or another whenever seen.

After quite a plague of them (a shopkeeper said that there had been such in Chiswick), we adorned the inside of cupboards and drawers with anti-moth devices. These took the form of moth balls, a plethora of different coloured objects designed to kill, and an annual supply of conkers, gathered from beneath a horse chestnut tree in a nearby square.

So I thought that I had got well on the way toward eliminating these pests. Certainly the count of “kills” declined. Not many moths were seen.

Yet still Margreet would find clothes ruined by moths.

So, by chance, we thought we would try a new ploy by setting out Toblerone-shaped traps that contained sticky paper impregnated with moth-attracting pheromones. And low and behold, moths started to fall for the bait and died a sticky death.

I felt that if we could catch all flying moths for a year, we could interfere with their breeding cycle and thus with their resultant clothes-eating grubs.

What we had not noticed was that although we could see and destroy the moths by day, it was at night that they appear, like ordinary moths do, and fly around  mating and having a nice time.

As the first two traps were successful, it was most surprising to discover that in our house were so many of these destructive creatures.

I wondered if by hanging these traps in cupboards was not, in fact, attracting moths toward vulnerable clothes. So we bought refills and left them open and in places that moths might frequent – and well away from where hands or clothes might come into contact.

I laid each on a piece of paper on which I recorded the daily the number of carcasses sticking to the trap. The number was considerable – and mounted by the day.

Instructions coming with these most successful devices state that the adhesive sheets should be changed after three month’s use. Ours seem to last longer. And to increase the length of life for each one, I now fold back half of the protective sheet and pin it back with a paper clip. This then doubles the life of the sticky killer and leaves enough pheromones and sticky surface on the newly-revealed half to catch more moths when the exposed surface becomes too crowded.

From only seeing a few clothes moths six month ago in our small house, and thinking that I was winning my battle with them, I have just been around my traps counting the carcasses – and the number was one hundred and eighteen. I might really be winning. 

Words and Art

Because of the disruptions of war, I missed out on the education that I should have been exposed to at that time.

So I had no idea until later in life that writing was so creative and such fun. And perhaps I would never have got started had I been told that I must understand grammar to be able to write.

When embarking on the business of words, it was to produce five copies of a book on my ideas about early American history when I was in America around 1970.

These books were each illustrated with my own lino-cut prints. But I was not concerned about the artwork but about the punctuation of the text.

So I consulted my life-long friend at Yale, Edmund S. Morgan, who happened to be America’s authority on the subject of the Founding Fathers and author of many key works on that period. Of all people, he should know the answers to my queries on punctuation. “There are no rules,” he said.

So in the early 1980s, when I came to write after a car accident that prevented me from continuing to sculpt large pieces of wood, I used words and sentences as I might see and create shapes in the chunks of trees that had become my chosen material.

That is, I would make words flow as my eye might follow patterns of wood and grain, and then, perhaps, stop to concentrate on detail. I was shaping ideas into words in a fluid kind of way.

The transitions and tangents in my life after flying aeroplanes in wartime, to designing in the theatre, to landscape painting, to sculpture, then writing and back to painting, have all been minimal.

It is ideas that count. And turning ideas into different forms of artistic expression seem to come to me like I breathe.

Those who would read my books, articles and blogs are most probably scornful of my use of language and its presentation. But I don’t care.

I just let ideas flow out in my visual art and writing, and that’s it – good or bad.

Ed Morgan was quite right. “There are no rules”.

Perhaps having had no education because of the war was not such a bad thing after all.W

Wood pigeons - hated and admired

I have had a lifelong interest in wood pigeons.

In my country days I would admire their extraordinary eyesight and ability to avoid the human kind – keeping at least a fieldsworth apart. But they were mugs for decoys – which I made out of card, paint and, for eyes, those gold-coloured, split pins that held pages of paper together.

I was asked quite often to help protect young cereal crops from the scourge of pigeons – rapaciousness that could do untold damage to succulent growth.

So wood pigeons were my enemy – though the breasts cut off immediately when shot and cooked at home made for fine eating.

This bird is as handsome as they come, with the colour of their feathers flowing or contrasting from greys to white, and with a pinkish breast.

When I came to live in London, I was more than surprised to see these wily birds hobnobbing so close to the inhabitants. And in my small garden a pair would make themselves at home eating the bird food put out for my smaller and more vulnerable avian friends. But worse, they defecated all over the flagstone surface that covers much of the ground – the mess sometimes coming into the house on the soles of shoes.

So these wood pigeons once more became my enemies, yet I was certainly not prepared to turn this London pair into a stew with red wine and carrots.

My next task was to protect the bird feeders and their contents from this greedy couple.

It was no easy task, as although large and seemingly cumbersome, wood pigeons are most agile, not to say very clever as well.

Each of my smart ideas using chicken wire and anti pigeon spikes came to nought. Whatever configuration of spikes and mesh I used was circumvented by these masters of cunning. That was, until I used so much chicken wire that even the small birds were hardly able to reach the food.

Then, one day, when Margreet and I had set out on a walk, we witnessed, only a few metres away and on the road’s surface, a wood pigeon in an all-out fight with a carrion crow that had threatened her nearby eggs or nestlings. We were lost in admiration for her bravery.

Now, for the first time, I respected their courage as well as their intelligence. I had become rather a wood pigeon admirer instead of an enemy.

Our two wood pigeons seemed to recognise this change of attitude immediately, strutting their stuff in front of us in the garden and even entering our shed to walk beneath our legs to seek crumbs of food.

Then, in the shed, and with no encouragement, one of these large birds rose to stand on a bird food tray right next to my knee. There it pecked at the cheese morsels put out for a robin – a robin that each year I have to train, with enormous patience, to come to that feeder.

For a wild creature I suppose this constitutes either brazen courage or extreme trust – or both.

We must now learn to live together – even though the size of a wood pigeon almost squeezes us out of our small garden retreat.

There was a sequel to this: I was reading a newspaper in our garden shed one day when there was a sound from the door sill beneath. Then, because a lump of pink quartz was blocking the landing and feeding spot for birds, a wood pigeon flapped up to land on my knee – just too far away for it to eat the grated cheese offering. So I slowly moved my knee, with pigeon on it, toward the food, where it stepped off to the feeder. Having polished off the cheese it flew off.

Some time later this bird (presumably it was the same) came to sit on our bird bath – where it stayed despite us walking past it. Then it came toward the shed to sit on the arm of a wooden bench very close to us. On the bird bath and bench we could see that it was in distress as it spent most of the time trying to keep awake.

Then a neighbour came with dogs and the bird flew to a nearby arch, where it perched, almost motionless, for several hours.

The food is no longer taken and the bird gone. 

It must have wanted to die in our small garden - next to friends.

NATURE'S WAY

Having reached my 10th decade, I expect to have a few aches and pains. I wait. They go. But Margreet can outrun me to catch a bus.

So when something does go wrong, it is quite an occasion for me.

For ten, perhaps fifteen years, I have had a lump on the side of my chest under an arm. It has just been a subcutaneous lump that I have ignored. It didn’t bother me and I didn’t bother it. Then it suddenly became sore and infected. A doctor told me that it was a cyst. I was given an antibiotic. (I have done my best to avoid antibiotics since they were invented to save up for when I really needed them.)

Then nature decided to take over, opening up to rid me of this nuisance.

There was quite a bit of medical interest. I was sent to Accident and Emergency for an operation. After a day’s wait a surgeon decided not to operate because of me taking the blood-thinner, Warfarin. He recommended that I have surgery at another hospital where they specialised in such matters. This was applied for.

And all the time nature was at its gory work with me making up primitive swabs and dressings with salty water, cotton pads and Micropore (my rather primitive approach, I thought, being better for allowing freedom of air flow than the stick-on dressings offered by the medical profession).

After just over two weeks of unpleasantness and manipulation, the cyst had virtually been expelled and the wound healed.

Nature had taken over (with – er – the help, I must admit, of antibiotics) and done its stuff. Surgery will almost certainly no longer be wanted.

I feel fine, and so well that I might now even run faster than Margreet to catch a bus.

Nature works in wondrous ways.

Tooth and Claw

In springtime, either a great or lesser-spotted woodpecker came to our garden, first to  inspect our bird boxes (empty) and then to indulge his or her appetite on my experimental fillings of halved coconut shells.

We were delighted to see such an exotic bird in our small garden, rather forgetting that on a previous year, such a bird came to consume our entire brood of robin nestlings.

Anyhow, it was not only a new visitor but also one thoroughly enjoying my mix of bird food. Robins, great tits, blue tits, long tailed tits, coal tits and even dunnocks have also pecked away at it – the less acrobatic birds with difficulty.

When carrion crows perch on nearby television aerials and croak, they are looking for nestlings to eat. When they have found this food source, the poor youngsters are taken in the beak and flown up to a high perch to be torn apart and eaten. Magpies do the same, but those have been scarcer of late.

With our regular great tits deserting their annual breeding home in our nest box (probably one taken by a cat or succumbed to old age), our attention was drawn to a nearby neighbour’s nest box of blue tits. The young were about to fledge, when a woodpecker (perhaps ours) ate the lot.

How, I wondered, had the miscreant managed to raid the box without enlarging the entrance hole? It was suggested that just by creating noise and beak action near to the hole drew the young up to feed – only to become food themselves.

This, I suppose, is nature’s way of keeping the balance right between predatory creatures and their victims.

After all, if the young of every nestful of garden birds survived, there would probably not be enough territory or food to go around.

My popular bird food is pressed into half coconut shells with holes in them to attach hanging cord. The shell is then filled with the following: lamb’s kidney fat and suet fat (Atora will do) cut up. Heat this slowly in a saucepan until the fat has liquefied and can be poured into a bowl off the solid matter. In a liquidiser turn porridge and bran almost into powder form. Stir this into the warm fat as much as it will take – which is quite a lot. Now, with a wooden spoon, press this mixture into the shells to become cold and hard before hanging them in the garden out of the reach of cats.

Birds take time to become used to anything new. So before they start to enjoy your offering, a little patience might be needed.

Stirling Engines

I am no mechanic, but some aspects of machinery intrigue me. One is the Stirling engine. Why? Well, to me it is almost like perpetual motion, and it is a machine that is virtually silent and non-polluting when in operation. So silent is it that the Swedes and now others use it for submarine stealth under water where it will generate electricity to power the boat – in silence.

There are snags. Powerful machines are heavy, and they work at a constant speed. So for jobs like pumping water, making electricity, or spinning a ventilation fan, they are excellent – though not as efficient as an electric motor or the far more complicated and polluting internal combustion engine (like in a car).

Being an externally powered engine, it is free to use almost any source of heat, like the sun’s rays and from any normally wasted surplus heat (like water-cooling water), right down in scale to a nightlight or electric bulb. (I have seen a very small one work with the heat from a mug of hot coffee.)

So what is this rather odd machine?

For a beta type engine, take an enclosed metal cylinder with an external heat source at one end and vanes or other cooling method at the other. In this cylinder is a loosely-fitting piston on a rod, called a displacer. Heat one end of the cylinder and the air (or other gas) inside will expand, pushing the displacer toward the cold end, where the colder air pressure within the sealed container will shunt it back to the hot end. In the process an internal power piston will move in and out, hinged and connected to an external flywheel via a rod through a seal, also through which the displacer is hinge- connected to a different part of the flywheel’s circumference (actually at 90 degrees on the wheel).

So, apply heat to one end, spin the wheel, and off she goes – hopefully.

The colder the external air temperature the better.

It takes no skill to operate. A farmer, for instance, who lights a fire at the hot end, can pump water with a Stirling engine and go away to work knowing that the pump will work until the fire goes out, with no damage done or attention needed. Simplicity is the engine’s strength.

Ever since Robert Stirling, a Scottish minister, invented and patented his engine in 1816, there have been countless innovations, configurations and variations of the principle. Many patents have been lodged, there being continued interest in its use and development.

Above is the way I understand it, and as a layman in these matters I still sense that a certain amount of magic is also involved.

Clouds and Sky

When I was a boy and living in the country, my father, who was a farmer and a lover of nature, taught us children about wild birds, their eggs, their song, animals, growing things, keeping a grass tennis court absolutely free of weeds and much more. It was nature for us children to live with and appreciate. But I can not recall him telling us about clouds.

Clouds came into my life when I was accepted into the RAF in 1942 for flying training. But as facilities were full, I was told to return to civvy street and wait to be recalled.

I first took a job as a farm labourer, aware that food for our severely rationed population was of paramount importance. Then, hearing of a job as a prop swinger at an airfield (Theale) some five miles away, bicycled over and got it. (The job was swinging the propellers of Tiger Moth biplanes to start their engines.)

There was no meteorology for us then. So an instructor flew a Tiger Moth  upwind for a distance to see what weather was in store for the novice pilots who were learning to fly until reaching their first solo.

Having already been accepted for flying training in the RAF I was sometimes given the dual control trainee’s cockpit behind the pilot, where I learned to fly the aeroplane well enough, with the instructor almost as my passenger.

Clouds were important. For a learner they could be a deadly hazard. So clear skies were essential for all concerned.

We would come back, fly low over the grass airfield, and stick our thumbs up if the oncoming weather was fair. Then flying could begin.

My next meeting with clouds was when flying in America, where the meteorologist said that cumulonimbus clouds (those huge anvil-shaped ones) were very interesting clouds. “Pilots have found them so fascinating that they have flown into them and never come out again”. They are the clouds that form hailstones.

When piloting a Cornell trainer aircraft in Oklahoma, I flew into a cloud to see what it was like and in no time could have sworn that I was climbing dangerously and might spin. Then I popped out of the cloud heading vertically downward. Fortunately I was high enough to recover from the dive. This taught me, very forcefully, that when in clouds your instincts were useless and that relying on the aeroplane’s instruments was essential. - vital.

Now, when I rise each morning early, I scan the sky for some time to ascertain wind direction, birds landing (into wind), blackbirds patrolling their territorial boundaries, and swifts returning in springtime. Are the gulls coming inland from rough waves, or are they making off in a southerly direction toward calm seas? Aircraft condensation trails at altitude tell me wind direction high up and rough destinations of the aircraft creating them. 

Then I watch for cloud types, and their formation in broken or stratified form, and how they change shape and volume as they pass over. I can then have a shot at predicting the possible weather systems to come (stand with your back to the wind and the lower pressure area is always on the left).

I look at the trees, the way they are bending, the early development of catkins and the size and colour of the ensuing leaves.

As much as anything I watch airliners come in to land at Heathrow airport. I try to identify the type (difficult now that so many look rather alike). If they are in cloud and invisible when passing by on their way to runways 27 left or right, the cloud level is below 1800 feet. If still invisible on their final approach and leaving my usual field of vision, the clouds are 800 foot high or lower.

We seldom take time to look at the clouds, the sky, and the objects and creatures that inhabit the vast space above us. It is a vibrant and fascinating part of our world.