Work In Progress

Anyone interested in the family likeness aspect of yesterday’s post may like to look at the postscript and enlarged section of the school photograph I added this morning, following Becky’s observation.  I think it is staggering.

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Tomorrow The Firs opens its doors to the public.  Awaiting hanging (1)This morning we drove there with the cards and to admire the framing of my photographs and the work of all the other artists.  Work in progressThis is all taking place in the very large garage/workroom which I have never before seen as an open and available space.  The family and friends have worked brilliantly to clear it. Light on the subject You see, it has been regularly filled by a revolving conveyor belt of furniture, frames, artefacts, various woodworking materials, gadgets, and loads of tools, all of which might come in useful one day. Quite a lot of it, I understand, now lies in the conservatory, which we are advised not to attempt to enter.

Drum shelf

Margery Clarke wallThe arrangement of an excellent display space was, when we arrived, really well under way.  Jackie and I were despatched to Hobbycraft to buy hooks for Elizabeth and my photographs, and pink balloons for the front entrance. IMG_5495 Pink balloons are this year’s symbol of Hampshire’s Open Studios.

There was still a deal of setting up to do, and I was quite relieved when Chris produced another 1961 print for me to play with.  Alex Newstead, who was framing his exhibits helped me work on retrieving what we could of the original image. Chris's band copy Maybe someone will frame it in the few hours left before opening time.

I felt a bit better once Jackie and I had mounted my framed photographs on the wall.

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The Firs will be open from tomorrow until Monday 26th. at The Firs, Beacon Road, West End Southampton, SO30 3BS, telephone: 023 8047 3074; e-mail dannikeenan@aol.com

Andy Milwain’s am drums will be on sale.  Art work is by:

Hilda Margery Clarke (BAHons FRSA): Painting in oils and oil pastels and drawings. She is known for figures, glimpsed or imaginative

Jutta Manser: Wood engravings: Jazz, born in oppression pictured in stark black and white

Louise Tett’s pieces are produced from discarded manuscripts

Liz Knight: Handmade books and music themed photographic prints

Photographic prints are by Rosie Aldridge, Alex Newstead and Derrick Knight, whose work features Ondekoza drummers from 1970s Soho.

Rosie and Derrick have produced greetings cards.  Derrick’s feature the New Forest, Hants and Dorset; Rosie’s are of London.  There are postcards by Margery.

Geoff Poulton and Jacqui and Harriet Lea have provided music themed sculpture, collage, and papier mache.

CylinderClearly an admirer of Duchamp’s ‘readymade’ school of art Jackie came in with a late entry this evening.  The Cylinder was quite unreasonably priced.

She and I left Elizabeth and Chris working this evening whilst we went for a meal at Eastern Nights.  We took them back a takeaway and returned to Minstead.

Junk From George Osborne

Daffodils

This morning I finished ‘Wordsworth, A Life’ by Juliet Barker.  That was essential because otherwise I would have had to weigh down my hand luggage with it on the plane to France tomorrow.  The book comprises 971 pages of very small print for this modern age.  Maybe the font size was chosen in order to restrict it to one volume.  Even skipping the notes, index, etc,, that take up the last section, I had to get through 810 pages.  This required the stubborn determination of a Cancerian marathon runner.  Full of dense detail about the man and his extended family the tome is a tribute to the research skills of the author, and the fact that I did want to complete the task of reading it is thanks to her powers of writing.  Being fairly familiar with the Lake District and having read much of the subject’s poetry also helped.  Maybe I should have been more fascinated by some of the more peripheral characters.

My readers will know I enjoy illustrated books.  I prefer my pictures to appear interspersed with the relevant text, so that every now and again I get a pleasant surprise.  What I don’t like are sections of photographic reproductions in two or three chunks, which usually means you are treated to portraits or views that you have not yet read about.  There were two of the latter clusters in this volume.  Of course this is also a matter of cost, so I shouldn’t be mealy-mouthed about it.  I enjoyed the book.

The rest of the morning was spent sorting out technology.  I have realised that for some weeks now I have not been receiving e-mails on my Blackberry.  Since I am off to Sigoules tomorrow where the Blackberry is my only e-mail source, this has become quite important.  The BT Yahoo icon has also appeared on the mobile device.  This made me think that the problem had arisen as a result of sorting out the password problem with BT which involved linking to a Yahoo account.

Given a choice between O2 and BT help lines I decided to try my luck with the former.  This was definitely the better option.  Dean, of O2, established that my Yahoo account had not been activated by Blackberry.  As I never use it I wanted to get rid of it.  This wasn’t possible without the password.  Now which one would that be?  I gave the young man the most likely key with a couple of alternatives.  None of them worked.  He tried the most likely one again.  No joy.  He said I would need to ring BT to check the password and he would call me back in fifteen minutes.

Well, after the last time I wasn’t going to go through the palaver with BT again, and anyway it would take much more than fifteen minutes.  So I had one last go with the most likely password.  This time it worked.  The most amazing part of all this was that Dean did actually ring me back on time.  He tried the password again.  It worked.

Now all I had to do was take the battery and SIM card out of the phone after we’d finished speaking and put them straight back in again, then wait twenty minutes to start to receive new messages.  The back of a Blackberry is like the inner sanctum of Fort Knox.  I couldn’t take it off without reference to the instruction manual.  Even then, it was tough.  The battery then slipped out easily enough.  But the SIM card was firmly locked in a strong box.  I managed to prise it out a bit but a metal band held it in place.  Imagining that I must have broken whatever was the crucial circuit, which would have been tantamount to taking the card out altogether, I reassembled the device.  76 messages came rushing in.  These were the old unread ones.  I had lunch, after which a new message came in.  It was junk from George Osborne, but it was a message.

I then accompanied Jackie to Sainsbury’s in Ringwood to replenish provisions devastated by the Easter family influx.  On the verges of the A road and roundabout approach to the car park are planted ‘a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils’.  I wasn’t exactly wandering ‘lonely as a cloud’.  In fact I had to dance between cars on their way to the West Country to approach them.  It has been a happy coincidence to finish the Victorian Poet Laureate’s biography in April, thus giving me the opportunity for a cheesy personal link with another, better known, rambler.

This evening Ali and Steve drove from their home in Clutton to the Aroma Bangladeshi restaurant in Shaftesbury.  Jackie and I drove to the same venue where we all met and spent a very enjoyable evening over an excellent meal, Cobra, and Bangla beer.

A Rant

Today was what David calls ‘the big tidy up day’, so there was no walkabout.

This morning I finished Dennis Wheatley’s ‘Vendetta in Spain’.  With a good grasp of history and a fine attention to detail, Wheatley tells a rollicking good story.  Set in the first decade of the twentieth century, this novel was, even when published in 1961, described as historical.  This got me reflecting on what is history?  For a child of the last century, born in 1942, it was initially strange to think of this book as such.  When Louisa, born in 1982, once asked me who Winston Churchill was, I was quite surprised.  Then I considered my own ignorance about the First World War; my lack of knowledge of the ministers and personalities involved.  I was even vague about Douglas Haig.  and I had been born far closer to that event than she had to the second conflagration.  Then, I remember Churchill’s funeral.  How we experience time changes as we age.  When I write of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, it seems like yesterday, yet must be remote history to my grandchildren.  As the days go by, I feel I have all the time in the world, yet the reality is that mine are numbered.  Six months in a child’s life seems an age.  To a septuagenarian it is nothing.

Purple succulent flowers 8.12

My house in Sigoules was built in the eighteenth century, from solid stone.  Exposed beams are from barges which struggled down the Dordogne loaded with produce.  Since they could not be taken back up the raging torrents, the vessels were broken up and used for building.  I understand the crews then walked back to their starting points and began again with newly built craft.  Now  enormous refrigerated vehicles bring regular fresh produce to Carrefour and Le Code Bar.  I can fly to Bergerac from Southampton in the same length of time as it took me to commute from Newark to Kings Cross.

I received a call later from James Bennet of Azzurri.  Azzurri is a company to which O2 allocated my mobile phone management about three years ago now.  They apparently ‘manage’ mobile phone accounts.  The first I heard of this was a letter from Azzurri, sporting the O2 logo, telling me I would be hearing from one of their representatives.  As long as I have been a mobile phone user I have had an O2 business account.  I only ever had one previous problem.  Oh, yes, the Azzurri intervention was a problem.  The earlier one was my discovery from my bank statements that the cost of my mobile phone had rocketed during the last two months.  On closer inspection, and after telephoning O2, it transpired that for nine months I had been paying for two mobile phones.  One wasn’t mine.  Because the first seven amounts had been virtually identical to mine, I had not noticed that there were two entries each month.  Obviously the lucky person who hadn’t been being billed got greedy.  In fairness, O2 immediately put that right and gave me a refund.

Back to James Bennet and Azzurri.  As I needed to be able to send e-mails from France I actually welcomed the initial approach.  I was informed that I needed a Blackberry with which I would be able to do this.  I have no problem with that.  I can.  Now.  The phone was quickly supplied and the contract signed.  Mr. Bennet then seemed to be less communicative.  Which was a pity, since I could not access my e-mail account.  Neither could I get anything from Azzurri but voicemail messages.  I inundated my personal account ‘manager’ with texts, voice- and e-mails.  He almost never responded.  I made several visits to O2 outlets in London, each taking upwards of an hour of time.  Every single, initially confident, O2  consultant failed either to contact Azzurri or to access the account.  Not one of them had heard of Azzurri.  I always had to provide the contact number.  Eventually we were told that Mr. Bennet had not passed the relevant information to the necessary department.  At last I gained a promise from him that it would be done within two days.  It wasn’t.  And his voicemail message had changed.  He had gone on holiday and would not be back until I was in France.  I managed to reach someone else.  He made, and failed to keep, the same promise.  Finally, I spoke myself with technicians who were able to solve the problem over the telephone.  I can’t remember whether they were in O2 or Azzurri departments.  But does it matter?  All the information is at home in England.

There followed extensive letters, mostly unanswered, and phone calls to O2 Customer Relations department.  When I finally spoke to the manager she informed me that I was bound to Azzurri for two years.  You can imagine my response to that.  Eventually she agreed to release me from Azzurri.  Coincidentally, I received a box of chocolates from O2.  One had been sent to each ‘valued customer’ of ten years or more.  When I politely suggested that didn’t really fit the bill, she proudly told me it had been her idea.  I think she realised I wasn’t impressed.  Furthermore, to compensate me for my trouble, I would receive a list of events at the O2 Arena.  I could choose any performance for which I would be given two tickets.  The list never arrived.

Maybe I had been freed from Azzurri.  But if anyone told them, they ignored it.  A year ago I received a phone call from a poor chap who had been given the task by Azzurri of contacting all customers to see how satisfied they were with the service.  I told him.  I finished by saying it wasn’t his fault.  Just his bad luck.  Now James Bennet calls me.  As I can only get a signal on the loo seat upstairs, I did not reach the phone in time and had to listen to a voicemail message from him.  ‘It is a little while since we spoke’ and there are possibitilities of a new tariff and a new handset.  I calmly walked up to the village square where I can be reasonably sure of an uninterrupted signal.  Of course I got his answerphone.  I left a fairly firm message.  Well, it was firm, and fair.  He responded with an e-mail to which, as I had said, I will not reply.  I had asked him not to contact me again.

The Code Bar pizza, a quarter carafe of red wine, and chocolate surprise pudding finished the day nicely.