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It's November 1947, and Henry Seabright sees his addition to a series called Old English Customs appear in the latest Sphere magazine. But this is no editorial; a tiny line of type under a description of Mumming Plays says 'One of a series of pictures specially painted for the Dunlop Rubber Company', next to an emblem of the Union Flag and a rubber tyre scrolled with 'As British As The Flag'. And that's it, most of the type area is this scrumptious picture of St.George challenging Slasher, whilst village folk look on outside (and inside) the pub where a recent thaw sees snow sliding from the roof. There's just so much going on here, prompting so many questions. Why is that bloke that looks like Rudyard Kipling in a black bowler hat doing running away by that green car in the background?. Well done Dunlop, whose name I've only just seen on the spare tyre of that gorgeous touring car in the foreground, and well done Henry Seabright for choosing this difficult bird's eye viewpoint.
Now. I don't remember my parents reading The Sphere magazine (or indeed similar) in the 50s, but these full page advertisements for Brooke Bond Tea somehow ring bells. They're from a series in 1955 called "Round and about with the 'little Red Vans'", and probably took their cue from contemporary Post Office posters that positioned Royal Mail vans in market squares and village streets countrywide. Mind you 'little Red Vans' is slightly coy, considering these vans are the quite beefy and utterly unique Trojans. But I'm fascinated by the illustrations, not just because they are so redolent of my childhood, but because advertisers and their agencies produced such stunning work at this time, Think Shell, Whitbread, Johnnie Walker. True commercial art, the Suffolk scene at the top is by Rowland Hilder, the Broad Quay in Bristol by Morden. Time for a cuppa.
Apologies for my delay in getting the New Year started, but finding my way through the muddy byways of Unmitigated England has been particularly difficult since Christmas. But be of good cheer, because Saturday found me almost on my knees in front of this extraordinary monument. Warkton in Northamptonshire is part of the estate of Boughton House, which explains the delightfully unspoilt nature of the village, although it is but a marble's throw from the urban sprawl of Kettering. Both churchwarden and verger were so kind in letting me in, and I'm eternally grateful to their guided tour given just for us. Not just because the monuments in this light and airy mausoleum had hitherto been plates in the Shell Guide to Northamptonshire and corresponding Pevsner, but also because they will now be closed from view for essential repairs lasting the rest of this year.
Facing each other are four set piece monuments commemorating the Dukes and Duchesses from the big house, two by that masterful sculptor Roubiliac (remember him at Southwick?), one by Thomas Campbell and this, a real showstopper, by Dutchman P.M.van Gelder. Robert Adam may or may not have designed the background apse, but no matter, this is sculpture to make you gasp, as we did. A full-on 1775 drama gathered around the essential urn with its beautifully incised verse to Mary Duchess of Montagu. This was a very special moment, the sun coming out and the sight out through the clear glass of the big churchyard trees moving in the wind.
A very merry Christmas, and a happy New Year to all my readers.
So, farewell then Ronnie Biggs. The BBC must collectively be going "Well I never", considering the boost this news gives their drama on the 1963 Great Train Robbery that, amazingly, starts tonight. Back in those far off days I was returning home from the Chilterns in my dad's apple green Ford Popular, my mum in the front saying things like "Watch that cow Arthur" and me glowering and spotty-faced in the back. Suddenly, somewhere south of Leighton Buzzard, my mother says "Ooh, I know that bridge" pointing across a field to a railway embankment on the London-Euston mainline. "We were all in a charabanc going to Grandad's [a Chiltern strawberry farmer in Lee Common] and we went under that bridge and then it went off the road and tipped us all out into the ditch". My father looked at me in his driving mirror and we said nothing. "Were any of you hurt?" I eventually said. "No I don't think so. It went so gently down the bank we were just laughing in a big heap". And do you know, dear readers, that very night, at this very spot, the train robbers relieved the Glasgow to Euston mail train of what would be today around £40 million. Quite what the charabanc and the outing from Wellingborough's Strict Baptist Tabernacle were doing on this lonely lane I will probably never know. Anyway, that's two coincidences for today, three if you count my very recently taking the above picture at Quorn station, courtesy of the Great Central Railway.
So, it's Saturday and I'm on top of a hill in a disused radar station, remote on the North Downs above Bearsted in Kent. Nearby is a room humming with activity, an art exhibition featuring amongst other great things the stunning abstracts of Margaret Shepherd and exquisite jewellery by her daughter Nancy Rose. The space was kindly given by Nick Veasey, and close by another room hummed with even stranger activity. In here is a big X-Ray machine, and in the dark Nick produces simply amazing images, which you can see here. Well, I say in the dark, I think for much of the time he has to stand outside whilst the humming is going on. Anyway, being very nosey, I had to snoop about amongst the detritus in the immediate environs, and came across this extraordinary sight, a VW Beetle turning itself into its own X-Ray, wedged between two peeling MoD brick walls.Perhaps at night, after the big steel security gates are chained and all the humming has stopped, the Beetle carapace lifts up and puts itself back on the chassis. And like that scene in Woody Allen's film Sleeper it starts first time ('wouldn't you just know it?') and gently cruises around the skeletal radar masts on the dark hill top.
This is the time of the year I go rummaging in the woods. Seeing if a shaft of early morning sunlight will search through the lessening canopy of leaves to show me something I still find extraordinary. Flowerless Plants, as my fungi book designates them, are amongst the most fantastical living things. All that huge web of mycelium threading its way underground, to suddenly erupt in science fiction fruit that can look deceptively benign or downright evil. Not that I go in search of them to casually toss into a frying pan, unless it's slices of a big fresh puffball. My neighbour says "You've got to get up early to get those round here", meaning up before him. No, I just love photographing them, even though for the most part I'm doubtful as to what I'm looking at. I know Fly Agarics and Death Caps (fortunately), but the advice must always be rigorously followed- When collecting fungi to eat, only take those which you can identify with certainty. My Glamorous Assistant said these were Field Mushrooms. So what were they doing deep in a Kent wood, I pondered. Or did she have an ulterior motive? (Cue plaintive oboe music).
