Hundon Honey and the wrong bees

This lockdown is causing a lot of difficulty for we who don't have CV but need some other service from the NHS.  Ben was told he needed a fasting blood test, but when he turned up at the surgery, starving and hungry, he had a slight sore throat, probably from hay fever, so they refused to admit him for the test. For my own part, I was due to go for a number of follow-up appointments and a body scan to check I have no recurrence of cancer, all now cancelled. When our neighbour had another mini-stroke recently, the doctors refused to come out, but just sent an ambulance round. It's as though GPs are getting paid full whack for doing virtually nothing.

Bees in the birdbox

Today started off busily with an early phone call to say the new vacuum cleaner would be delivered soon after eight. I went to unlock the back gate ready for the delivery and noticed a swarm of bees buzzing round the entrance to the bird nesting box Sam had made for us. I noticed them first last night when it was already dusk, but thought they were flies and there might be a dead bird on the box. But in the morning light, they were definitely bees, so we called Luke the bee man who lives in Hundon and has a notice pinned up asking for information about any swarms he could collect. He came within half-an-hour, a young man with a childish, innocent face, telling me he had taken up beekeeping as a way of giving something back to the environment. He already has a good number of hives in Hundon, and sells the honey locally, and hopes to do it professionally full-time eventually. He was dressed head to toe in a boiler suit of brilliant white, with a hood covering his face with netting. Unfortunately, he took one look at them and pronounced "Those are Bumble Bees, not Honey Bees!" However, he taped up the entrance hole to contain them, and took them away to allow them to resettle somewhere away from the housing.

Luke the Beeman tackling the swarm

I walked the dogs round the quiet fields at the back of the house. Ann advised against going to Clare for this, as it was reported to be packed with no room in the carpark and people unable to keep any distance apart, social or otherwise. Yet a letter in Hundon Facebook reported a couple playing music in their garden who were reported by neighbours, and four policemen in two squad cars turned up, which is a bit excessive by any measure. What happed to the solitary village policeman, putting in a quiet word of caution?

I have attempted to correct the face in my newest picture, but it is getting more difficult, and the layers of paint are becoming so thick it is more like a bas-relief than a painting. Nevertheless I am determined to try and get the colours and deep shadows better, and will not show a picture of it yet until it is done.

Yesterday, the boys came round bringing some welcome food and a picnic they had prepared, which we enjoyed in the warm sun. Tonight, we ate a delicious mushroom stroganoff they had prepared and left for us. We are being truely spoilt.

Frustrations with art and tech

It's interesting how we stick first-founder names to first inventions. We often call ball-point pens Biro's, or use Google as a verb to search for information. Yesterday was a day of trauma when our Hoover broke. The brush was still rotating like a crazy cyclone and the motor was making hefty noises, but the main point of its generic name was defunct, for it no longer had any suck. A vacuum cleaner it was not; a child with a straw could get better suction. In fact, newborn babes have reinforced cheeks, and their suction on the teat can generate a phenomenal negative pressure. But this cleaner sucked not.

Close examination, which in this case needed only a swift glance, showed a massive perforation in the main tube, with air entering the fistula rather than the business end. I was able to order a new hose on Amazon which I hoped might save the cost of a new cleaner. One dealer sold a hose for £9.36 including delivery, but it wouldn't come till Tuesday, so I paid an extra £5 for another supplier who promised delivery on Saturday. After I had placed the order, thinking it would be delivered today, Ann checked it, but I had totally miscalculated the date; it will not be delivered until next Saturday! So this morning, I wrestled the thing onto its back, undid numerous screws wherever I could see them, and started to dismantle it. I finally got down to the innards concealing the hose to pull it out from each end, repairing the gash with electrician's tape. As so often happens with these simple jobs, I finally reassembled it to find two screws on the bench staring defiantly at me, so had to start over. But eventually it worked again and will hopefully last the week out.

I spent the morning struggling with the picture I'm doing. I left the face till last, knowing it would be the most difficult, but perhaps I should have tried it first. Anyway, it is not very satisfactory, so I'm now thinking I might be best to paint it out completely in white and start over. I've now put it to one side before I do anything too rash.

Walking the dogs this afternoon, a lady suddenly popped out of one of the houses and called me back. "Hello," she said, "I'm Gill. I just happened to be looking through the window and thought I recognised you and the dogs from your blog." Byron usually barks at strangers, but I think he had met her from when Edwin lived at home and used to walk the dogs, for he was silent this time as though he knew her. She introduced herself as the correspondent who had helped me identify several plants recently (see Unexpected visitors), so I duly thanked her, then hurried home to prepare for tonight's quiz. We are presenting so I am a little nervous, hoping all goes smoothly. After all our trouble with House Party and Google Hangouts, tonight we're going to try Google Meet.

Reminiscing

Yesterday would have been my father's birthday. He died 24 years ago, but we were reminiscing about him while sat in the warm sun when brother Richard rang to say he also had been thinking of him. I was reminded of him by my palette knife, an antique piece that had been given to dad when he was a lad by a professional artist, so it may now be more than 100 years old.

We have had a full week preparing questions for the Saturday quiz, when it will be our turn to present. It is surprisingly difficult. Ann prepared rounds on Literature, History and General Knowledge and I've done the Science and Picture Quiz and put them into PowerPoint. MA's girls helped by creating a Young People's round. I couldn't answer Ann's questions, so we showed them to MA, but they were generally too difficult for her too so we've toned them down a bit. I sometimes think Ann doesn't realise just how much she knows, and assumes others know as much as she. We don't, Ann.

We have continued to watch more episodes of Bob Ross (Bob Ross sets a rare pace). I enjoy his relaxed style, and clever combinations of colour, but I do feel he is becoming quite repetitive. None of his pictures contain figures or personality; they are all models of "his world" as some rural idyll. We can almost predict where he will place a happy tree or plop a cloud in, and his many rustic barns look identical to his rustic houses. We feel it may be time to move on to some new art teacher; happily there are many on-line instruction videos on YouTube; but the problem there is that they are so contradictory. Basically, each artist has their own way of creating a painting, and the only general rule seems to be "in art, anything goes". But one thing I have learnt from Ross is, there are no such things as mistakes: only "happy accidents".

Bob Ross sets a rare pace

It is another hot day, so I walked the dogs early to avoid the coming heat. Now free to go out, I drove to Clare for a change in scenery hoping it would be quiet, but there were more people at 8:30 in the morning than I ever used to see on a week-day, all with similar thoughts to myself. There were many dog walkers, but also as many runners as I usually only see on an organised run. Even at that time, they seemed to be running in a lackadasical way as though they didn't really mean it, not being in a monitored race. Perhaps they felt out of training, following all these weeks of lockdown. One older woman, dressed the part in tight, black lycra shorts and with a pace tracker strapped to her arm, seemed to be attempting a record at the fastest hobble rather than the slowest run. Unhealthy though I am, I could have walked faster.

Knowing so little about painting, or its myriad kindred techniques, we have started to watch The Joy of Painting by Bob Ross. He was born the same year as me, but died 25 years ago, yet is attracting a new audience attracted by his laid-back style and quirky comments as much as by his instructional videos. Bob presented many series on painting from 1983 to 1994, and is being reshown now on BBC. Each programme follows the same format: thirty minutes in which he starts from a blank canvas and produces a brilliant landscape, painting wet on wet (I'm showing off here, using a technical term I've just learnt). The only problem is, he makes it look so easy it is deceptive. He is backed by years of experience, so when he quickly mixes several paints to produce a joyful, glowing, vibrant colour that shouts from the canvas, he knows exactly how much of each tint he can casually throw together, adding to his white base. I can do the white base, which is a start. But when I add colours, it more often ends up a muddy mess. When he dabs paint on in rapid jabs, you feel you can see each individual leaf and every dappled shade; all I seem to end up with is a smeared uniform mess. Taking up painting late in life, although I too may have a lifetime to perfect my technique, in my case a lifetime may not be quite long enough.

However, there are positives to this painting business. It's great to be learning something new; hopefully it will keep this old brain active. So far, my portraits have lacked any background to keep them simple. But painting's a great way to take the mind off any other troubles: when I am in our new studio, carefully preparing a new drawing and trying to get a background that looks half decent, I become so engrossed I seem to forget anything else. It's worth the humiliation of watching Bob Ross perform. Like the old jogger, I have have the right equipment but I'm hobbling slowly behind him.

An unwanted link

There has been much recent talk about the possibility of Covid-19 infecting young infants to produce a rare disease. The evidence is slowly accumulating, and is certainly supported by some circumstantial evidence. Kawasaki disease mainly affects children under 5 years of age. It is a rare disease, and results in a fever and swollen lymph glands, especially in the neck. It is a form of vasculitis with blood vessels becoming inflamed throughout the body. The cause is unknown, but may be due to an infection triggering an autoimmune response.

Little is still known about CV-19, but recent studies at the Royal Brompton Hospital suggest that it too is linked to a vascular condition, with the formation of microclots in the lungs and other organs. The most recent treatment recommendations are to give a blood-thinning drug. It is therefore all too plausible that CV-19 may cause a rare but devastating illness in infants. For some reason yet unknown, this disease is uniting young and old in the blanket of unexpected death.

Expanding boundaries

The lockdown has been eased and we are allowed to drive out. We broke our enforced retreat by visiting Thetford Forest, with a flask of coffee and a packet of biscuits. It was a warm, clear day and the roads and woods were crowded, but we found a less crowded spot and could walk the dogs in isolation.

Getting back, we had a message from our friends Robin and Yvonne, whom we haven't seen for many weeks. They had read of our recent interest in art, so wanted to bring round an art set they had in their attic. It had belonged to Robin's mother, Grannie Jan, who died a few years ago aged over a hundred. She was a good artist, and this set comprises her table-top easel and an old wooden box filled with brushes and oil paints. I don't know how old they are, but they are still fluid and were clearly top quality. There were also a number of art books on learning to paint, but I think it will be a long time before I am ready for oils.

 Adding to the conspiracy theories about Corona virus is a variation on the theme of the careless, filthy Chinese, spreading it from their wet meat market. The next phase was to acuse the Chinese of accidently losing it from their laboratory, where they were performing research on it. However, this virus is so virulant and pervasive that it is acting more like a bio-weapon.

The theory therefore is that it wasn't just released from the Wuhan laboratory accidently, but was designed and deliberately created there as a bio-weapon. The Chinese, so the theory goes, were hoping to develop a vaccine for their own people so they could release the virus safely in the rest of the world. The fact that it did escape was presumably more cock up than design, but the overall effect has been the same. Certainly, if they were designing it, they would select strains that survive best in the USA, while being less virulent among Asian peoples. In those terms, they have certainly succeeded.  The way the disease has progressed in the USA compared to China, with total destruction of the US economy and loss of jobs, means that China may be propelled to the top super-power in terms of GDP and production. They couldn't have planned it better.

Our art studio is commissioned

Tories

send the builders back to work
because you do not give a damn
for the safety of our English salt–
the normal working man

Annie Elliott

There is much debate at present about children returning to schools. Having no children of school age, we are in the position of disinterested observers. Certainly Mary-Anne does not want her two returning yet, and it seems many parents think similarly. Many parents are happy to spend so much time with their children, especially those forced to work from home for the first time; they are building new bonds they never knew they could. One of the agency people I speak with regularly had a new baby four months ago, and has welcomed home working with open arms. Usually, he would be commuting to work from early morning to late evening. Now he has spent solid, precious time with his baby, time that can never be repeated for they grow so quickly. He is in no hurry to return.

This art business takes a lot of thought

For the children, some are learning new skills they would never learn at school which is confined to formal lessons, many with a left-wing social bias, such as neglecting English history. If we don't teach our own history, certainly no one else in the world will except to carp and condemn us. Our nation has a history we may be proud of, and teachers should sing its virtues from the rafters. Parents can teach subjects the children actually enjoy, including practical and life skills, rather than rote learning for exams. Ann and I having succeeded so well with Edwin, and enjoyed the experience, we're all for it.

Today, I tried the new art studio Ann has designed. It is quiet and isolated, with the huge advantage that we don't have to clear the table each day so we can eat. I can make a mess to my heart's content, and it doesn't even matter if paint gets on the table of the old chair, or even into the carpet. It is really homely; I've moved an old radio in to listen to Radio Three music while I work.

My first commission

Today, I started my first "commission": Lucy asked me to paint our granddaughter. It is only my fourth picture, but I can see some improvement at last. However, I acknowledge that I have way to go to master the more subtle techniques of colour, shading and blending. As for painting from life - I think that will always be beyond me. One of the guests on Grayson Perry's show specialised in painting animals. She always uses photos because animals won't stay still long enough for her. I reckon what is good enough for a professional is certainly good enough for me - I can't imagine humans (especially children) staying still long enough either.