The Enemy Returns

Several unexpected events jumped into our lives this week. First to happen, the hot water system went off, discovered when Ann came down from a tepid bath. Our plumber said a valve had failed; he has ordered a replacement but is yet to return to fit it, so we are using the inefficient immersion heater as a standby. 

Then early yesterday, I was woken at 4 a.m. by a loud crash from the wardrobe as Ann slept peacefully on. Having listened in case it was a burglar, my guess was a hanger had given way and some clothes had fallen down, so I went back to sleep. Later, Ann came to tell be the whole rail had collapsed; all her dresses were in a heap, so I was out early to buy a new rail and fittings as Ann sorted through and reduced her stock considerably, to the benefit of the charity shops.

Afternoon tea at the Swan, Lavenham

In the afternoon, we are in Lavenham for an afternoon tea at the Swan, a splendid Tudor coaching inn at the heart of England's most unspoilt medieval town. The tea is a treat for Ann's birthday from Richard and Chris; it is over four months since the birthday, but the long delay is ours: the gift card was sent on time but we have been busy, and anticipating our delayed gratification in this splendid dining hall. We are greeted by the maître-d' in his elegant suit and waistcoat, who informs us to proceed to the desk in the restaurant whence we will be shown our table. At the desk, I am greeted again and give our names; "Yes sir, I know", he said. Ann whispers to me, "it's the same man, idiot!". He had raced through the kitchen and popped up at his other desk before we reached it, but I hadn't noticed. This often happens in our lives: Ann is far more observant than I, especially when it comes to people. Perhaps it's a woman thing; Ann always says women make the best spies. Little seems to escape their eye, and Ann certainly always seems able to read my mind just from my expression or body language; nothing escapes her. No wonder some women used to be considered witches; they appear to possess the ability of second sight.

A phone call from the consultant's secretary to ask when I will be free to speak to him sets alarm bells  clanging ominously. Sure enough, he phones to say my recent scan shows a recurrent growth on one of the lungs. I wait to tell Edwin, hoping not to spoil their holiday in Africa, but conscience beats back caution, as we have always promised to not keep anything from him, so I say that a cyst has been found on the lung. He immediately replies, "how big is the tumour?", for like his mum, he has great insight into people and events. I tell him "six centimetres diameter." He sends sympathy, and a fine picture of wild penguins bathing off the rocks on Robben Island. He is now at Victoria Falls, where I note there are such wonders as the Elephant Walk, Rainbow Hotel, Lookout Cafe, The Three Monkeys Restaurant, and Shoestrings Backpackers' Lodge. It all sounds very American commercial. 

Strangely, despite the recurrence, I feel fine with the little pain controlled with paracetamol. True, I get breathless walking up slight hills, but on the straight it is more the pain in my feet and legs that limits me, rather than the lungs. The future is clearly uncertain (well, the timing I mean; the outcome is all too certain!), but I continue to enjoy life, write this blog, and do as much as I can in the world. One advantage now is that major events seem to pass me by as I ignore the looming world catastrophes, for I will probably not be around to see their outcome.

Happy 70th Birthday, Caludon Castle School

Yesterday was brother Richard's birthday, celebrated by him and Chris in Barnstaple. He was eighty, a significant milestone, and the date coincided with the 70th anniversary celebration of the opening of our old school, Caludon Castle in Coventry in September 1954. I was just 11, and therefore the first first-year student to stand at the great entrance above the school, still in short trousers but with a new tie, blazer and school cap. The school was then all boys, with just six houses initially, all named for former knights of the castle; Morgan, Seagrave, Chester etc. As the other four houses opened, they gradually took the first two year's boys who then transferred to the more senior houses, but I was in Howard and stayed there right through to sixth form. Now, even the house names have changed to famous sports people; no one will remember the old punishments of general demeaning and caning; and it became fully co-ed after we left, with the new friendships and relationships that engenders, whereas we didn't even see girls.

We didn't come out of short trousers until we were thirteen - a great milestone for a young lad growing into manhood. I remember being very impressed on our tour round by the well-equipped labs, with separate physics, chemistry and biology sections. As befitted a school built to support a transition into the industry for which Coventry was famed, we had superb wood-working and metal-working shops, with heavy lathes, huge drills and presses, individual work benches, and a full blacksmith's shop. I seem to remember the physics classes laid emphasis on water pressure and flow through pipes, and the mechanics classes included full calculations for beams, levers and stresses, no doubt to encourage the engineering students ready for the town's apprenticeships, but the school still taught Latin, a hangover from the teachers who transferred when the grammar schools closed and Coventry became an innovative educational centre for comprehensive schools. Most boys left at 15 or 16. To go into the sixth form was rare, and I think there were hardly ten of us staying on for 'A- levels'.   There cannot be many from that year left, who went through the whole school from the day it opened, so I didn't wish to attend the reunion, for the whole school has changed and I will have little in common with those who attend.

Northern Lights over Hundon

There was an impressive display of Northern Lights last night - great sheets in red and blue. Ben told me he could see them in Telford, so I went out to look. They are very faint and require well dark-adapted eyes, but even to the naked eye the streaks and faint red glow were apparent. The camera has much greater sensitivity and can run an exposure, getting more light in. Even the stars are bright behind the lights. This morning remains clear, with a heavy, early Autumnal frost. Unfortunately, our heating system is misbehaving again, with no hot water. Our plumber has ordered a new valve, but it has failed to arrive, so we are using the inefficient and expensive immersion heater; happily the central heating still comes on, or we would be shivering in our beds. Winter heating is currently hitting the headlines with Labour's attack on the poorest and most vulnerable in society, so I feel great sympathy for people with no heating through poverty or neglect.

Edwin and Andre are in South Africa for their great holiday. We drove them down to Heathrow to wish them farewell; theirs was one of the last flights of the evening before the airport shuts to overnight flights as part of their attempt at noise abatement, so we ate late before tackling the motorway home in blistering rain. They have sent some fine views of Table Mountain, and visited Robben Island and the cell of Nelson Mandela. Later in the week, they have booked a safari, so we await pictures of some of Africa's iconic wildlife.  

Swaledale and the Eden Valley

Ann and Theo

 It is grandson Theo's birthday. With distant separation we see him rarely, but had several good days together in the summer at Lucy and Andy's cottage above Gunnerside (The End of a Great Holiday). Looking at that photo now brings back thoughts of that good time in Swaledale, and when we met at our rented house in Eden Valley below Kirkby Stephen. 

The owner thoughtfully sent me a book called The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks, a wonderful, well-written account of managing the fell sheep and the land in which they exist by someone who spends his whole life there. To read at first hand of the harshness of deep winter snows and the duress of gathering sheep for winter feeds of hay, while recording the losses each year of favourite breeding stock that don't survive the winter, is an eye-opener and counterweight to the idyllic summer skies we were under. The fells are a beautiful landscape, but it is tough when the deep snow drifts block roads and doors. In Hundon in Suffolk, we have had but a handful of days when ice or flooding imprisoned us; but on the high moors, every winter brings entrapment when snow ploughs give priority to motorways and towns, and only tractors can get through on the high, narrow country lanes. Lying between the Cumbrian Mountains and the northern part of the Pennine Range, The Eden Valley is at the western-most end of Swaledale, criss-crossed with tiny, steep roads. We have hopes for a return visit in the New Year to witness the different winter scene, but will need a glowing, warm house to stay in and to stock up well with contingency food. 

Our gardening contacts have come to cut back the trees and clear out unwanted growth against our neighbour's garage, behind the oil tank where I cannot reach. Henry and Harry are young men, each with regular week jobs but keen to build a successful business, who always do a reliable job. Above the roof of the garage, Henry reports a hole in the tiled roof above the art studio, about an inch in diameter, though none of us can imagine how such a hole could have got there. When they leave, but I mount the ladder to fill it with glassfibre sheet and epoxy resin. These are still in the garage from our boating days, and have an expiry date of 2011, but they still seem sound and mix to the old familiar bonding paste. I will know if it is successful if I don't get a douche next time I'm painting.

On acquiring art

One of the pleasures when Ann and I ran our modest antiques stall in Clare was visiting the auctions and bidding for a miscellany of items. Books always seemed to do best, but art too generally sold well if not overpriced. Books were easiest to value, as they could usually be identified and dated online, and other copies might be for sale to suggest a retail price. Art, however, was much more tricky. Occasionally we got lucky; one picture, for instance, didn't strike immediately as impressive, and attracted little attention, then the auctioneer said, "Does no one want this fine example of Kiro?" My hand shot up and I secured a good picture for a few pounds which now hangs on our wall, though I admit I'd never heard of him. I think I was more sold on the auctioneer's speel.

Persian Market

On another occasion, we bought a large bundle of animal pictures in oil-on-canvas, again for a couple of pounds to save them from the auctioneer's bin. These were by a local artist, and I phoned her to say we'd just bought some of her pictures, and how much we liked them, though not mentioning I only bought them to resell. She said she had donated them to a charity shop to raise some money; the shop must have put them into the auction, where they didn't fetch much, but we priced them at £15 each; they were hugely popular and sold out within a few weeks. 

Another batch we bought as an assorted box; most were poor quality, but two caught my eye. The loupe clearly showed they were originals rather than prints, being opaque watercolour, ink and gold on silk; they looked like ancient Persian Art, so I had hopes that they were truly old and valuable. Edwin has a friend who is just starting to work in the British Museum art section. She wrote back with the incredible detail of a true professional, "Your artworks depict scenes in the manner of Persian/Safavid manuscript paintings, but the figures look noticeably different, particularly in their clothing and facial features.  It struck me though that in one of the artworks, three of the figures in the image are wearing the ‘taj’ - a cap with a tall, thin shaft that is seen in early Safavid paintings, during Shah Ismail’s reign (1501-1524), as the characteristic headdress of so many figures.  This continued during Shah Tahmāsp’s reign (1524-1576) with the addition of feathers.  But by the reign of Shah Abbas the Great (1587-1629), the headdresses lost the shaft, and the turbans became more elaborate.  So my guess is — the artist was trying to depict a Persian/Safavid scene and appropriated the Safavid 16th-century headdress."

Persian Camping Scene

She continues: "Tent and canopies, ornamented on the interior and exterior can be seen in 16th-century Safavid paintings.  A ravishingly idealised portrayal of a desert camp in a painting from a Haft Aurang by Jami demonstrates this point.  The complex pictorial structure is anchored by a half-dozen brilliantly decorated tents and canopies.   Reciting poetry during feasts, between hunts, was a favoured courtly entertainment." 

Alas, she concluded: "It is noteworthy that in 1555 the members of Shah Tahmasp’s court and his great amirs took an oath to renounce all acts forbidden in Islamic law.  The puritanical turn of the Shah’s mind also resulted in his releasing artists, musicians and poets from the court service.  Many of these artists, scribes and poets emigrated to India and served in the Mughal court. It is possible that the images in your artworks were produced by an artist in India who took inspiration from Persian manuscript paintings which were prized in India, particularly the Mughal emperors and members of their court in the 16th- and 17th- centuries." 

We have since discovered copies of prints on Google showing similar themes and compositions at modest prices, that probably were created in India. Our pictures seem to be low quality copies of copies, produced for the tourist market. Therefore our two, though still attractive and interesting, are unlikely to swell the inheritance sufficiently to add to the death duties.