This morning our plants enjoyed some welcome rain; I identified, scanned, and retouched twenty black and white negatives from my unsorted collection; and Jackie shopped for 
and prepared our evening meal. 
When, on 24th October last year I visited the site of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, I mentioned some missing prints I had made in the 1970s. In fact I was confusing them with some black and white ones from 1982. This were among the negatives I worked on today, and I reproduce one here. Anyone familiar with the work will recognise that the position in which I needed to stretch myself for this shot would probably be beyond me now.
This set of negatives can be safely dated at early summer 1982, by the same method of deduction as the colour ones featured on 20th July. A trip to Cannizaro Park alongside Wimbledon Common with the Shnaps family provides one theme. 
I think it must have been in the park that the unknown girl was about to turn her cartwheel.
Jessica, Becky, Maurice and Beverley, with their boys, brought up the rear as Sam delightedly raced into his brother Matthew’s arms.
There were also a number of pleasing portraits of my other offspring, Becky and Michael.
The Zebby board books were a great favourite. Never having seen them before or since, I think I bought them in one of London’s many remainder bookshops. 
Michael here reads to Sam, whose excited expression suggests this book was ‘Where’s Zebby?’. Sam must have spotted him before he emerges from behind the upright railings that offered him the perfect camouflage. Board books are heavy duty and can withstand a considerable amount of attempted mutilation from young fingers and teeth.
On a bright and blustery afternoon, having missed the post at Shorefield, and wishing to ensure that Alice received her birthday gift on time, I walked on along the cliff top to the Needles Eye cafe and up Sea Road to the Milford on Sea Post Office. I missed that one too. Never mind, my granddaughter will forgive me.
I returned to the path overlooking the sea via Park Lane, and thence home. Motorboats sped along the solent, and hardy holidaymakers sat watching the waves or walked along the shingle.
I know you will all be keen to learn what Jackie cooked during the day and served up this evening. Now I can reveal that it was her trademark juicy lamb jalfrezi (recipe), and it was delicious. It was accompanied by vegetable samosas, mini poratas, and boiled rice; and followed by mixed fruit crumble and custard. The proprietors of the Shaan in Newark would approve of our choice of dessert. Jackie drank Kingfisher and I drank Cobra.
Tag: dahlias
Marevna
On learning of my penchant for history, our friend Margery lent me ‘The Crusades’ by Thomas Asbridge. I began reading it yesterday evening.
As I took a series of photographs in January 1965, at the ripe old age of 22, I thought: ‘these will be an historical record one day’. 
Now, nigh on 49 years later, they are. I did not start illustrating these posts until June last year, so when I mentioned on 22nd May that I still had the colour slides I took of the queues for the lying in state of Sir Winston Churchill, I did not add them to the post. I rectified that this morning, by adding five.
After this a deer made its quite slow, elegant, way across the lawn, until, disturbed by our attention, it fled into its bolt hole.
I then walked the two underpasses route, starting at the Malwood Farm end. A summer’s usage by pedestrians and ponies has produced such reasonably clear footpaths as to make my earlier errant efforts at this trip during the waterlogged spring seem somewhat meandering. The farm’s gravel heap is higher, harmonising even better with the pipes upon, and logs beside, it. I reached the Rufus Stone car park in very quick time, just as Bob and Lyndon were preparing to move on.
These two friendly men were volunteers for the Forestry Commission, engaged in litter picking. I wondered if the family decanting from a car behind them might render some of their work in vain. I spoke with them for a while, and told them I had seen their equivalent in Morden Hall Park last year. They knew of the National Trust’s similar system.
Outside Shovel Cottage in Minstead four apples placed on the verge of the road seemed to be harbingers of the season when local residents put out food for the struggling ponies.
At mid-day we set off, Jackie driving, to Athelhampton Hall in Dorset to visit the privately owned house and gardens. 
It was a dull day and late in the year, but we saw enough of the splendidly designed gardens to know that they will look stunning in spring and summer, when we vowed to return. 
First built in 1485, the house has undergone various embellishments over the centuries, yet remains beautifully integrated.
The garden has been so well designed that wherever you are positioned, as in an open plan house, you are led to another living area. There almost seem to be more rooms in the garden than in the grand house, each one offering an invitation to another. 
There are more walls than in an open plan house, though. Fountains abound. Through one you can usually see another. Dahlias, Rudbeckia, 
sunflowers, Hydrangea were blooming. 
Some roses were still at their best, usually with their companions’ petals carpeting the earth beneath them. 
Sweet chestnut shells are developing to protect the nuts they nurture.
A thirty year old eucalyptus, in gentle pastel colours, sheds its bark and its leaves onto the brick paths around its base, two long roots stretching out like symmetrical tentacles. 
There are a number of pleached lime colonnades.
The delightful boy with his dog was just one of the many sculptures enjoying the flowers.
A bridge in the grounds crosses the River Piddle. (That just had to be done, didn’t it?)
At the entrance to the house I was intrigued by the dates of some of the graffiti. Once inside, we were permitted to take photographs; could roam freely without having to follow a prescribed route; and could, it seemed, sit anywhere.
There were bathrooms of different periods, one containing a magnificent polished copper bath. It had me wondering about the term ‘copper’ for a tub for washing clothes. The state bedroom had what must have been a rather early en suite.
Staircases were from very different periods, and always intriguing. One, an Elizabethan ammonite, led to the gallery where I discovered Marevna. Marevna was a Russian painter who lived in the house from 1948 -1957. 
She worked with all the great earlier twentieth century painters, her style embracing various forms, such as cubism and pointillism, to name just two I recognised. Obviously a favourite model, her daughter Marika, was her child with Mexican artist Diego Rivera who, incidentally, numbered the brilliant Frida Kahlo among his many lovers. 
At the top of the spiral staircase lies the entrance to the gallery, through the door of which can be seen part of her ‘Homage to Friends from Montparnasse’ of 1961. 
Her painting of The Great Court hangs on a wall adjacent to one framing a window through which can be seen the real thing.
When, like father bear, I tested a very comfortable chair, and Jackie decided to photograph me in situ, she found herself at the head of a queue of would-be David Baileys.
After an uneventful drive back Jackie produced a meal of lamb and mint sausages, potato croquettes, onions, mushrooms, cauliflower, cabbage and peas. It only needs a second’s power cut, to which we are prone, for the electric cooker to be thrown out. By this, I mean, its operation is upset. Mind you, it sometimes is at serious risk of being ejected through the kitchen window. The instruction manual has to be consulted, and much fiddling undergone if the food is ever to burn. We had one a couple of days ago. However, it was sorted, otherwise we wouldn’t have had our sausages. Mine went down well with the rest of yesterday’s Sicilian wine, and Jackie’s with her Belgian beer.
Aviemore Revisited
Jackie was thrilled this morning to see that the third of her sunflowers donated by the birds has bloomed. She tried very hard to coach one bee simultaneously into each of her trio. Two out of three can’t be bad.
For as long as I can remember Louisa has been disgusted at me for ‘wasting paper’ when I use A4 paper to print smaller photographs. She has always said it is very easy either to use smaller paper or place two or more alongside each other, and I have always been reluctant to attempt to get my head round it. When Elizabeth suggested I produced a series of greetings cards for sale at the Open Studio I knew the time had come to grasp the nettle. By sending me a link on ‘how to print multiple images on a single page’ Chris ensured that I didn’t cop out of it. I had a little trouble working out how to print the resultant document so that I could have it in front of me when I tackled my phobia. I was doing this on my small Epson printer which chose that moment to require head cleaning.
Eventually I was as ready as I was ever going to be to try multiple prints. I couldn’t produce more than one picture, although I thought I was following the directions reasonably well. That meant I needed to ring my brother Chris for further elucidation. He realised that I couldn’t do it because I had only highlighted one picture on the screen. I explained that I wanted multiple copies of one picture; not one copy each of multiple pictures.
Ah. That was different. By this time I couldn’t be doing with exploring this any further. As I needed more than one copy of each picture I thought I’d settle for placing two different images side by side. I did, of course, have to be instructed in the art of holding down the command key in order to keep more than one picture highlighted for the purpose. 
Well, it worked.
I suspect the final paragraph in the aforementioned article does explain how to do exactly what I want, but I think I’ll just rest on my laurels for the moment. I’m a fairly old dog after all, and one new trick is enough for one day.
This afternoon Jackie drove me to Hobbycraft in Hedge End where we bought enough blank cards with envelopes and Pritt stick to produce a decent stock for the studio.
The main event of the day was the eagerly awaited second open day of Aviemore in Bartley. 
Today I will let the photographs utter their thousand words, for I wrote at some length about this marvellous village garden when we first visited on 2nd. June.
Sandy and Alex Robinson welcomed us most warmly, demonstrating their appreciation of my post of that day.
Indeed, a printout of the relevant pages was on display on the tables in the tea room, as well as an article from a gardening magazine. I was very pleased, as they had been with my piece.
Jackie thought that Mata Hari, reported lurking in the bushes last time, was probably being played by Theda Bara.
The garden attracted a range of butterflies, including Meadow Brown and Cabbage White, bees busying themselves replenishing the hives, and other smaller insects such as flies, to which the eyes of my camera were more alert than those in my head.
The ‘meaty, stewy, veggy thing’ that Jackie served up this evening was deliciously tasty. Among those ingredients that were identifiable were slices of pigs’ hearts, pork sausages, various vegetables and herbs. Various different well-reduced stocks formed the base. I am told that it is like ‘the lost chord’ and therefore cannot be repeated, which is a shame. I drank Roc des Chevaliers Bordeaux superieur with mine.
Cricket In The Street
This morning I walked to our landlords’ offices in Raynes Park to discuss our moving date. There was no-one in, so the conversation took place on mobile phones, which had not even been dreamt of when I was growing up in 29a Stanton Road, which has featured in a number of posts. Not wanting a wasted journey I continued along Kingston Road, walked under the railway arch and along Wyke Road to my childhood street.
It was dahlia time in Maycross Avenue, and magpies were feasting on rich pickings found in roof guttering.
The meerkats featuring in Compare the market.com’s television advertisements must be one of the most successful marketing ideas ever. They have spawned numerous offspring which can be found in outlets all over the country. Garden centres love them. 
Even the Metropolitan Police have used them to signal Neighbourhood Watch, several posters of which line my route. Neighbours in the Watch areas undertake to keep an eye on other properties in the street and raise the alarm if necessary. Net curtains must be quite useful there. These signs contain representations of the real thing, not the many different clothed characters which advertise the comparison site.
On such a blustery day as this, empty recycle bins are apt to be blown all over the place. One lay in the middle of Kingston Road, requiring drivers to avoid it. I picked it up and placed it against a wall. 
I had just passed the Emma Hamilton public house which is now home to a car wash enterprise. Pubs are closing at an alarming weekly rate throughout the UK. Many become Asian restaurants, some of which survive. These characterful old buildings often frequently change hands, presumably depending on whether or not their new owners have made a success of the alternative uses.
One of the few businesses which has thrived since my childhood in the ’40s and ’50s is the undertakers, the need for which will probably never die out.
I will forever know this establishment, wherever I see its branches, as Frederick Window Pane. We children thought that in naming it we had been very witty.
And so to 29a Stanton Road. 
In those early years all the children played in the street. The presence of a car in this right-angled road was a very rare occurence. It was therefore perfectly safe, even to play ball games, which are now banned in London’s Council estates. Naturally we played cricket. The fence surrounding the large house across the road was a perfect surface on which to chalk the stumps. Jacqueline tells Jackie she always had to do the fielding, never being allowed to bat. My recollection is that she was always out first ball and we were too cruel to allow her the few lives we should have given her. If you hit the ball into a neighbour’s garden that was ‘six and out’, which means six runs were added to your score but you were out. We used an old tennis racquet and tennis balls, so it was rather difficult to keep the ball down, as I once learned to my cost. I broke an upstairs window of a house at the Worple Road end. The residents were on holiday, so we left a note. Despite this quite amazing display of honesty, the woman was extremely angry, telling me that at my age I should have known better. I was only nine, but she thought such a tall boy must be a teenager. My parents paid for the window repair.
The fence which bore our stumps has long since been replaced, and the number of parked cars demonstrates that our games would not be possible now.
Michael has a wonderful old sepia- coloured photograph of boys playing cricket down the centre of a street of back-to-back houses somewhere in the North of England. These ragamuffins were making their own fun, just as we did.
I wandered down the alley by the side of our old home which now gives directly onto the railway path that was fenced off in our day, requiring us to scale the obstacle in order to play there.
I was able to clamber over rubble and bramble to peer over the garden fence and photograph the spot where I did battle with convulvulus and plum suckers (see 27th August), and Chris broke his leg. When my toddling younger brother had this mishap I went dashing upstairs to give Mum the news. ‘Don’t be so silly, he can’t have broken it’, she said, attempting to yank him to his feet. Indeed he had.
I continued along the railway path (see 11th May), intending to walk to Wimbledon. A beautiful long-haired dog of a breed I didn’t recognise sped towards me barking excitedly. As a train passed I realised it was not I who had stimulated him. He stopped when the train had gone. I spoke to his elderly owner who said that his one pleasure in life was to chase the trains.
With half a mile to go the footpath was closed due to maintenance. I crossed the railway bridge into Merton Hall Road, thence left into Kingston Road and right into Mostyn where a mother was doing battle with a little girl who had just picked up a branched stick. Phrases like ‘it’s not ours’; ‘it’s got points on it’, and ‘it’s not a good toy’, were met with stubborn resistance in the form of shrieks and pulling away. I was momentarily relieved that that is all over for me. I returned to Links Avenue by my customary route.
This evening, after a big Lidl shop, we dined in Morden’s Superfish, an excellent traditional establishment where, with our crispy cod, chips and mushy peas, we quaffed Malandrino Pino Grigio 2010. A nice touch here is that a few prawns and crusty bread are served complimentarily.