ELEVEN LITTLE PIECES

 

At a 101 I have slowed down with writing and painting, yet can’t stop. In my mind are small incidents in life that are not worth the space of a blog but are worth mentioning in short pieces even though I may have written about them in the past. 

1.

In the RAF I had just crashed a lovely little aeroplane in America and, having knocked out two instruments from the panel with my head, was not at all aware of the circumstances. 

In bed at the airfield’s hospital I was visited by the Commanding Officer and Adjutant. 

“I suppose you now want to give up flying and return to England”, said the CO. “No Sir, I want to get out of this bed and FLY”, say I. As the Officers left the ward, the CO was heard to say to the Adjutant: “That’s just the kind of young airman we want in the Air Force”. 

All continued well with my budding RAF career.

2. 

I was staying with friends in Norfolk, and, on a particular summer’s day, was asked to be the crew on a “Brown Boat” with a rather grand lady Commodore of the sailing club as Captain. She and I set out. “Free the weather sheets”, she commanded. I somehow muddled through.

3. 

In California my film prop-master son Robert fired off a real gun by mistake. It was reported to the LA Police who, if called out, have to make an arrest leading directly to jail. 

There were communal showers in prison and he recalled that if a piece of soap fell to the ground in one you did not pick it up!

4.

My grandmother, a diminutive lady of some presence, was leading my mother along a pavement in London’s Soho district when their progress was thwarted by a gang of young ruffians. Grandmother approached them.“Aside scum”, she commanded. They stood aside. 

5.

It was said amusingly in the RAF that mothers would say to their pilot sons: “Fly low and slowly to be safe”  - two very dangerous ways to fly an aeroplane. 

6.

“Children steal your life”. 

7.

For a happy life you should never be too rich or too famous. But a little bit of each works out very well. 

8.

Everything is missable. 

9.

Some people, when they are aware of my age, ask me: “What are your secrets?”.

So I have a standard reply which invariably ends with hoots of laughter. I reply that of the greatest importance is to have a partner with whom you can laugh a lot.  Next I recommend garlic. I don’t know why. Third comes red wine - of which I have partaken some in my life. And last - A good sex life.

10.

In January of 1946, as a young RAF Pilot Officer, now grounded because the war had just ended, I was posted to Pembrey in South Wales, for a reason I cannot recall except that it involved a Spitfire testing rocket-launching mechanisms near Pemdine Sands. 

I was invited to the home of a coal miner and his family. 

Coal was then strictly rationed, but not for a coal miner.

All I remember about this house was its blacked, cast-iron kitchen range that heated the house, dried the clothes and was the sole means of cooking.

But it was the fire glowing in its grate that caught my eye - perfect in the symmetry of its red coals. Then I saw why it appeared so orderly and perfect. Each piece of coal was placed on it by hand with such reverence that it could have been the conducting of a religious ceremony. 

11.

A fellow officer at Pembrey had a mother who, through illness, was quite unable to communicate. He was in contact with her through spiritualism. He asked if I might accompany him to a meeting in a public hall. Why not? 

He took a seat in front near to the medium and I at the back of the crowd hidden away as much as possible as a sceptical observer. 

He received no message, but I was singled out, as a crowd parted in front of me to be told that I had health concerns on my right hand side. But I was young and very fit. So I dismissed this information as hocus pocus.

Sometime later, at another RAF station, it was so cold that with no coal we had to forage the hedgerows for combustable material for our Nissen hut stove. 

I was soon given a medical and Xray on being demobbed, to be told that I had TB in the right lung. 

CARS

 

To my mind there are two kinds of car owners. One likes fancy, good-looking cars that are probably expensive, and the others want a reliable vehicle that will start without fail, go from A to B inexpensively, and not caring too much about its looks or attractiveness to thieves.

Margreet and I have reached a third kind - people who live in town, have the good fortune of access to excellent public transport and have no need of a car with its many related expenses.

As a child I was lucky that my family owned a Bullnose Morris with a dicky seat. From this open-air position behind the driver’s front seat, we children could enjoy the flowing air and the interesting countryside. But OT70 did need a push up a hill occasionally. From this open-air position we could invent many games to keep us happy - like Beavers (beards). The first to see a beard got a point, a big beard two points and a woman with a beard, game set and match. The points score would be very much higher today. 

Caps were worn back to front, petrol was added to the tank through a funnel containing a fine metal filter to prevent foreign bodies from entering the carburettor. Batteries had to be topped up and punctures were commonplace.

Engine temperature was watched by observing a simple dial on the bonnet, and oil levels were carefully checked. Most cars seemed to leak oil and left their mark when parked. Cars were not easy when I was a youth, but they were fun for us children. Then I remember we owned a streamlined Ford 10 and an Airflow Chrysler, the latter handed down to us by rich relations who would buy the latest. 

My own first car was a post-war sporting affair. This was an open two-seater with an outside exhaust. It was a fun car, but girls could burn themselves on the exhaust and get wet in the rain. It was made for me by a mechanic at Toton, near Southampton, who constructed cars out of spare parts. Mine was mostly Austin 7. But those Austins never had good brakes, so they were a bit dangerous to drive at speed, when mine might also become unstable. 

I belonged to an Austin 7 racing club. At one meeting I asked Collin Chapman (the founder of Lotus) why my car could misbehave at speed. He could find nothing wrong with it. 

I sold it to a City man who, when telephoning me, possibly to complain about some mechanical matter, told me that he had not taken it above 30 miles an hour.  

Then I owned a Citroen 2CV, an Ami 8 and lastly a VW Cabriolet. This open-topped car was lovely. It could reach 115 mph when going slightly downhill on a straight road, but conked out if driven through a large puddle at speed.

I once used it with the roof down to show a Russian colleague of my ex wife some thatched houses in the country owned by wealthy people. He wondered why they had roofs of straw.

But the 2CV and the Ami 8 cars did me proud. They were mechanically much the same, but the Ami 8 had a station wagon body. They were simple cars made by a genius who understood mechanical simplicity.  As long as the two spark plugs were thrown away in the autumn and replaced by new ones, starting them up in any weather was never difficult. Mine also had the centrifugal clutch - genius again - as was the suspension. 

Cars, to me, are now generally much more comfortable, very reliable, but far too complicated electrically - and much more expensive accordingly. But they are often necessary.

For me - no thanks. It’s  lovely to be without one. 

ANIMALS

 

Parts of what is to come may have been read before in my previous 450 odd blogs. With “animals” it is almost inevitable.

As others have often said, and it applies to me, my relationship with animals is much the same as with children. When they are well trained and obedient they are a delight, but if  untrained they are pests. Fortunately, most of my contacts with animals come within the first category.

As the son of a farmer I was trained to shoot and snare animals for the pot and was adept at plucking, paunching and skinning as we probably all were in the family.

Dogs were an important part of our country life, not only as pets but as working animals.

The two dogs in my memory were Bunty, a Cairn, and Ben a Spaniel. 

Bunty was a ratter par excellence as she could chase down rats and shake them to death - and there were lots of rats on a free-range chicken farm. 

Bunty’s puppies were a lovely crowd of individuals, Big Ben being one of my favourites. But as nice as they were they did smell horribly. So I was both sorry and glad when homes were found for them as pedigree animals.

Ben, had a special relationship with my chicken-farmer father. When we or a customer wanted a fine chicken to roast, my father would select one and Ben would immobilise it by pressing it to the ground with his paw. This must have involved a close relationship with animals and in telepathy. 

Peggy the horse not only provided my sister June with a steed for cubbing, but was also a carthorse for the farm. She was docile and pleasant enough. When I rode her I almost invariably fell off. Riding was a serious matter. My devil-may-care attitude was not appreciated. Peggy just carried on.

In their season, pheasants would be hung in the larder by their two tail feathers. Then, when they were pretty high in decomposition they would fall to the floor. Not until they did so were they thought to be ready for the pot or oven. That was the way with them at that time, and they were considered to be a treat. 

It was much the same with Stilton cheese, which had to be kept free of maggots and was refreshed with Port. 

Step forward a few years to just after the start of WW2 when I was a refugee in America.

For a “puber” as the Dutch say, alone in a foreign country, a dog in this case, called Smudge, became a good friend. That’s what dogs excel at. I needed Smudge. 

Jump forward in time again.

When the war had ended and me being invalided out of the RAF as a pilot with TB, a wealthy uncle, leaving his Côtes d’Azure house in the hot season to stay in his cool house in Brittany, asked me to stay in the South of France to pay his staff (of two) and feed the dogs (two) and parrots (also two).  I accepted gladly, living for free and able to paint and draw as I pleased.  

One parrot was an Amazonian Green and of no great character - if any parrot could possibly lack character.  The other was an African Grey who was bursting with joie de vivre. His name was Gérard. I was to cut some of his primary feathers at one side to prevent him from flying away (he might fly but would spiral to earth). I was warned that he could become nasty when his feathers were cut. This was untrue as he and I were friends and I had no trouble from him when using the scissors on his wing feathers. 

Gérard and I had a great time in areal manoeuvres as I would swing him around and up and down much to the delight of both of us. BUT, Gérard hated women. When one appeared he would chase them around on foot. Women just had to run faster than Gérard. 

Of the two dogs to be fed, the poodle, Pistache, was a nice enough woman’s plaything, but the huge, white bull-bating and muscle dog, called Brute, who could have killed any one of us with a bite, was friendly and so lazy that he could not even be bothered to lift his leg to have a pee, but would just do it as he walked along.

I exercised him by throwing stones for him to chase and recover - a game that he loved. But that was something that uncle said: “ruined his mouth” and asked (told) me to leave.

I no longer had to pay the staff or feed the animals, but had made such good friends nearby (one with six poodles) that I had several offers of accommodation as I awaited the arrival of a friend to accompany me on a drive through France to Rome and then Venice before heading for home.

In thinking about it, I do seem to get on well with animals and they with me.

(On being kicked out I chose the house with six poodles.)

AEROPLANES

 

From my boyhood of being mad on aeroplanes and flight, through to now, wanting to avoid airports and flying, encompassed a life of enormous interest in flying through the air in both peace and war.

I look back nostalgically on incidents that have shaped this extreme interest. 

My first real contact with aircraft was with an Avro utor biplane. For my part I already knew the principals of flying pretty well from my book, the Pictorial Flying Course, written by W.H. Johns, the author of Biggles Books. But actually climbing into the spare cockpit of this Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus aircraft to fly over the Solent and doing a loop-the-loop (7/6 all in) sent me on my way.

The next landmark, when I was seven in 1932, was a flight over London in a Klemm  Bat from Croydon Aerodrome (London’s main grass field airport at that time).

Kingsford Smith, a pioneer Australian aviator, was due to take me, my brother Ni and sister June on this flight, but the tail skid on his plane broke, as did the wooden replacement. So, with the boy’s caps worn back to front, the roar of the partly exposed engine up front, and hanging on to the sides of the cockpit for grim death, gave an idea how Germans felt when flying in this type of aeroplane that was secretly used for training Nazi Luftwaffe pilots in Germany at that time.

Then came the Second World War when I returned from America to join the RAF, 

to be told to wait in Civvy Street until pilot training was available. 

I took the job of a prop-swinger. This involved starting up the engines by swinging the props  of Tiger Moths for students to reach their first solo stage. 

The authorities at RAF Theale, having learned of my being a would-be RAF pilot allowed me to fly as passenger, and sometimes pilot, on weather flips. These involved flying up wind to forecast the weather, there being no meteorology at the time. 

This experience did me well when I was eventually back in the RAF as a trainee pilotMy first (the greatest day in my pilot’s life) was flying solo from a farmer’s grass meadow at RAF Shellingford (a few sheds, Tiger Moths and Nissan huts). 

Now, stationed in America’s Oklahoma, I completed my flying training in Cornells and Harvards to become qualified to fly Hurricanes or Spitfires. 

Fortunately, the war had ended in Europe and I was grounded and returned to England to become a Photographic Intelligence Officer. 

From a drawing trip around the world I returned home from the American continent in a “Whispering Giant”, a Bristol Britannia prop jet, as I was then nearly out of money and to fly across the Atlantic in the emerging new Boeing 707 jet was too costly. 

When automatic landing was invented, I flew to Paris in a Trident aircraft, landing in dense  fog at Le Bourget’s Paris airfield. From my own flying experiences, this seemed quite magical and a brilliant advance. 

But my fondest memories of those post-war days was flying to France in a Bristol Wayfarer. This involved motoring to Lydd, a greenfield in Kent, where handlers would drive three cars into the jaws of this bulky, twin engined, workhorse of an airoplane, take our seats next to the pilot and then trundle over the Channel’s waves to the Le Touquet airfield in France. This was old-fashioned flying at its charming best.

It was a wonderful way of reaching Europe and, I suppose, the last of those days of flying unsophisticated propeller aircraft in civil aviation. 

SOME FAMOUS PEOPLE

I am not one to hob-knob with the famous. The notorious and infamous are the kind of people that I avoid. Yet I have come across people that I admired - some by chance and some blood relations.

With many of these people I was too young or too shy to ask questions for interesting answers.

***

I must have met Kingsford Smith because he came to stay with us in the country, flew my mother around the skies from Farnborough Aerodrome and (he was Australian) delivered the Christmas mail from Sydney to Croydon Aerodrome in the record time (17 days in 1931) with my uncle aboard his Avro 10, Trimotor, Southern Star as flight engineer/navigator.

A postage stamp to commemorate the event and the crowds waiting at Croydon to greet them for press coverage, certainly made it a great event. 

In the days of unreliable engines and aircraft, and when navigation was “by the seat of your pants”, Kingsford Smith spent his life breaking records for distance and difficulty in a most exceptional way and this combined with a great appetite for women and booze.

But famous he really was throughout the blossoming of endeavours in the sky.

I wonder if he even noticed me (aged 7) with my brother Nigel and sister June due to be flown by him above and around London in his aircraft which had just broken its skid at Croydon. Another pilot in a Clemm Bat was given the job to give us a “joyride” instead. 

But I knew him - and famous he was as a highly skilled pilot and brave.

***

My aunt (one of my father’s sisters) married into the Smithers dynasty. They were a Stockbroking family and it was thought that they funded my uncle Walla (Sir Waldron Smithers) to be an MP to keep him out of the family business. His inclinations were more sporting. 

This uncle Walla was an MP in the days when Members of Parliament really did care for the people of all classes who had put them in power. He was much loved by everyone. 

One off from being the “Father of the House” uncle Walla asked more questions than any other MP, and because he passed through legislation for cab drivers to be enclosed as they drove their taxis around London, he never had to pay a fare as he was so popular with them. There’s fame for you. 

I knew him well. He was incredibly strong and loved to fight me (ne of the two “vile jellies” in Macbeth, being my brother and me). Of course he won - that was until I discovered his Achilles Heel, and that was his ears. If I was able to grab an ear and twist it I had the measure of him.

***

I must have known my grandfather. It was said he came from farming stock which lead to him becoming a doctor and surgeon. He married my grandmother, a formidable woman who promoted his career as his eyesight began to fail. Because of this he gave up surgery for anaesthetics, a branch of medicine that was considered to be of minor importance at the time.

But he was a promotor of that profession, writing the five volumes of the bible of anaesthetics “Anaesthetics and their Administration”. 

He was world famous, travelling the globe dispensing his knowledge and skills and making his name. 

King Edward the VII was about to the crowned king, but fell ill and needed surgery - and an anaesthetist.

Treated almost as a servant by the surgeon who most reluctantly allowed grandfather to see the patient before surgery to acquaint himself with the medical situation, he conducted his skills so well that the King bestowed upon him a Knighthood. 

Anaesthetics now became a legitimate and recognised part of medical care. He was the first anaesthetist to be Knighted, establishing its importance.

I call that as being famous, though few outside medicine may have known about it.

***

Having designed and part-built a one bedroomed studio house in the Berkshire Downs, I struggled to get back into the use of paint on canvas after a year-long circumnavigation of the globe drawing whatever interested me. 

My book, “Harbours, Girls and a Slumbering World” about this voyage was to be published later (ISBN 0953017 4 9).

But despite using collages to see things from my mind rather than eye, I vegetated and put on weight. It was time to move on - literally and mentally. 

A local estate agent told me that it was not possible to sell a one bedroom house in that part of the country. He was wrong. 

Replying to my advertisement in the Daily Telegraph, a Francis Bacon telephoned and asked to see the house. 

At that moment I saw my house and its simplicity as background material for a Bacon painting. He bought it immediately he saw it. 

We got on very well together as he also did with my lovely old cottager neighbour where runner beans grew on covered trenches of excrement.

I had built into the house several ideas like a central column that concealed all pipes and drains so that they were invisible, an air duct to control the amount of air needed at the fire place to make the fire work well, and a false chimney built parallel and alongside the real chimney that would take in cold air from the outside and heat it by close proximity, by heat transfer, from the real one. This delivered fresh warmed air to the house’s one bedroom above.

There was also an under-heated kitchen floor and an under-heated studio floor paved with discarded marble washstand tops from people ridding themselves of washstands in favour of real plumbing through pipes which was becoming popular after the war.

Francis, now in residence, wanted to know more about these ideas, so invited me to come back a couple of times and even invited me to stay as a friend. But I did not feel like staying with Francis and his boyfriend George, who reclined on the soft surfaces I had designed where he combed his greasy hair. 

Francis and I had much to talk about including the aforesaid ideas and of the value of chance in painting and that homosexuals were certainly not living in a twilight world.

When Francis sold up when George died, he returned to his Reece Mews home in London

There, and on the street should we meet, he would always cross the road to talk with me.

But I was not one of his drinking coterie and our friendship must have been refreshing to him as I sought nothing from our relationship.

World famous as he was, he was also just a very nice person. Others, I am sure, must have seen him quite differently. 

***

Back in about early 2000 a man moved into a place in our street and was outside when we fell into conversation. 

He turned out to be a journalist with a column in a motoring magazine. His name was James May, known, presumably, only by the readers of that magazine. No great fame there.  But times have changed. Over the ensuing 25 odd years he and his partner, Sarah, have been our friends and we regularly exchange 6 o’clock drinks in our homes. 

You might think that with international fame from Top Gear and Grand Tour to diverse programmes on such as history and mechanics that we locals might be plagued by crowds of  screaming fans or bespeckled professors of history. But no, James, happily, is still the same man as that journalist who moved in just up the road all those years ago.

May he continue to be both famous, modest and our friend.