Antiques Roadshow Coming To Liverpools Sefton Park Palmhouse.

 Sefton Park Palm House. Will host the Antiques Roadshow for a Valuation day on the 28^th June 2022.

The magnificent structure in its wonderful parkland setting will see over a thousand people bring their cherished items, and car boot finds along for appraisal.

I was so proud to be invited to become a member of the Antiques Roadshow team and to be hosting a Roadshow day in my home town, well it does not get better than that.

For decades every Sunday night I watched the programme. The programme that inspired me to become an antique specialist.

I said to my mate Eric Knowles, when I joined the team.

“I can remember sitting there in me short pants, watching you talk about Art Deco figurines”.

“Cheeky Monkey” he said in his Burnley accent “I'm not that old”

Sefton Park built by Liverpools forefathers to give gentle relaxation and greenery to both the gentry and the working classes. And an escape from the industrial grime. 

It is a place I have visited all my life. From a very early age. During school holidays, unable to afford a week away we would go on days out. On bus trips and spend the whole day walking around the park. Though we lived closer to Stanley park with its boating lake which too has a Palm House it was a special treat to visit the mini Kew Gardens with its gigantic plants and its Aviary with its exotic species. The colours of the birds a complete eye opening contrast to the soot covered monochrome world not far from the docks where we lived and my father worked. 

I would sit and draw birds for hours on end during primary school taking paper home to do voluntary homework. I trained a Kestrel.

Then we could meander over to the bandstand and visit the famous cafe, still thriving today.

And there we would see the Peter Pan statue which was a treat for childrens sore eyes. And of course the famous Eros statue that is just by the cafe.

As you walk today watch carefully and you may see a wild Parakeet flying overhead, that had escaped from the cages that held the birds.

Then as a teenager and member of an infamous Fishing club I would sometimes, weather permiiting, in the summertime, board our clapped out smiley faced Charabang after doing my paper round and wolfing down my tea. And then we would drive to the lake to set the tackle up and pitch a line and a float in hoping to catch a perch or a roach. 

There on the bank sitting still against a mirror like calm, occasionally broken by a swan or two and a gaggling group of Canada Geese landing. And those quacking ducks that gorged themselves on the loaves of bread they were fed by children with their parents or grandparents escaping the humdrum of everyday life.

Years later I laughed in sadness at that wonderful sketch in 'Boys From The Blackstuff' where Yozzer Hughes who had gone slowly mad after losing his wife and children and fed up trolling the boards asking all and sundry to “Giz a Job” wades in to the lake. Sefton Park Lake. To drown himself. 

He went to see the Priest pleading with him

 “I am desperate”  over and over again, pleading with him. 

“I am desperate" in a sadder pitch. 

The other side of the confessional screen and the Priest feeling his desperation says “Call me Dan”

“I'm Desperate Dan” he replies. He went mad.

There was nothing left to do. He had given up. He waded into the lake.

Only to get half way across and the water only came up to his knees.

Life was so bad for Yozzer he couldn't even end it all.

He just can't do anything right. When life goes against you. 

And it was like that in Liverpool at the time.

The decline of the docks. Industry had gone and unemployment was high.

This was the time that Sefton Park Palm house fell into dis-repair. It was a sorry state. There was no money, so it was claimed by the City Council. This was the Hatton era. 

And it started to get vandalised.

I recall stopping my car once and walking through the missing panes of glass and almost crying at the sad state of neglect and the sorry state of the place. The plants had all died. There were no avaries. 

I did not cry. I got angry and became a heritage campaigner fighting a corrupt council whose councillors and officials were lining their pockets, with the peoples hard earned rates.

The lake was left to choke up and all the fish died. They drained it and found loads of shards of pottery, some Herculaneum, that had been dumped there. 

Liverpool had escaped the Luftwaffe but it couldnt escape the dim wiited corrupt councillors who lined their pockets with greed.

A campaign was won, grant funding was found and like a Pheonix it raised itself from the ashes and became a venue.

I went to a wedding there. In the afternoon. A wedding in a greenhouse I thought “Now thats clever. It was very hot. The sun would eventually set and a good evening would then be had by all.

 I did a gig there. As a clarinettist.

Another one some months later outside the cafe on a Sunday afternoon. Part of the amazing Gerry Harrison's Jazz Workshop. Then progressing I did a gig on the bandstand with my little group. The Penny Lane Jazz Band. We were not that good at the time, but it was great experience. 

Experience to stand there in front of people and of course in order to live you have to die a thousand deaths.

So, I got a job. As a specialist on the Antiques Roadshow and when asked by our Executive Producer Robert, “Did I have an idea for a suitable venue”. I calmly said “Yes I do”. 

And in June 2022. Hopefully, if they let me, I will be there on national TV, a proud Liverpudlian alongside some of the best antique brains in the country.

With an accent exeedingly rare.

Dreaming about what I will find.

One thing is for sure.

I know I will find a welcome for all my colleages from the people of my home town and they will bring along, their humour, their stories and their warmth.

I cant wait to show the team the place, that has been a massive part of my life.

The Palm House Sefton Park Liverpool, in all its majesty.

I Find A Stradivarius. Or Is It A Stradivarious?

 Ever curious I recently came across a violin with a lable. 

Peering inside the case through the distinctive holes, the dealer said “Stradivarius, believe that if you want”.

It made me wonder.....What turns a musical instrument, into an myth?

I purchased it knowing that there were probabaly thousands of imposters and the labelled Stradavarius had become a by word in the antique trade, saying to all

 “Believe what you want, buyer beware”.

I took it home and hung it on a piece of string off the picture rail and there it stayed. 

A twenty quid talking point.

Then ever more recently I was told that a friend of a friend actually owned a Stradivarius violin.

A genuine one.

With a provenance as long as your bow arm. 

Ummm. Thats interesting I thought. 

I had the time and was given the opportunity to sift through the life of a great musician. Who had owned it. 

It seemed a great honour to me. 

The momentos of the vast travelling, that has to be done in pursuit of an International Concert career. It was all there for me to look at. 

I felt honoured to peer through the window of time. 

I have not seen the actual Stradivarius, but I have seen detailed photographs, heard and read all about it. 

Its concise history is known. It's in all the books. Very expensive books.

Speaking to members of the family I have peered into the life of the violinist who it was gifted to, by her rich father. Fascinating.

But always cynical I remember watching one of the later Lovejoy episodes, when the programme had lost its zeal, and become a Keystone Cop's parady.

This episode involved one of the actors from The Boys From The Blackstuff who was playing the part of a violin master repairer. He was being asked to fake a Stradivarius by the loveable rogue in order to pretend it was not real.

Though it was a comedy it brought out some real dilemmas and asked questions about authenticity that are lessons in life.

 “Why would you wanna ruin a thing of beauty” Yozzers mate says being asked to turn A Stradavarius into an 'ordinary' violin.

Far fetched you may think?

Well not by the history of violins that I have read about.

They appear to, not just be musical instruments but blue chip commodities. 

That are traded by kings and queens and held by rich institutions.

My Clarinet is made of Grenadilla not as is often thought, ebony.

I often see them being sold.

 Some that were owned by famous people. 

Of course the pads are usually well and truly dried.

I look at them but they are old and worn. It will let me down. I know it.

I leave them behind they are not too valuable. 

I have an antique metal clarinet....can't get a tune out of it. It squeaks in the box.

But what if it was, the clarinet, that Artie Shaw showed direct to the camera in a BBC4 documentary. Where he spoke about his life and how he became the sound of America. Around the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbour. 

Where he says that he recorded a little known George Gershwin tune called 'Begin the Beguine' and “It took off like a singed cat”.

Then it becomes a piece of history. It's culture.

What is that magic that makes, a label inside a violin, with the name of Stradivarius worth millions?

It was previously thought that decades went by drying the wood used to make instruments.

But dendrochronologists have scientificaly dated the woods used in the making of his instruments to have only been felled a few years before the instrument was sold.

Quite often, when dated, the latest ring would be 1702 and the label on a violin would be 1706.

There are too many of these, short dates between felling and sale to be a co-incidence. Attribution to a maker by the exact tree used is now able.

Stradivarius built over a thousand instruments and about five to six hundred of these instruments are left. Of these 350 are violins.

He didn't buy wood in wedges like most, he bought entire trees or large portions of the same tree.

So we can be confident with the technology to hand that we can identify the very timber used.

There are fortunes to be won and lost on mis-attribution of one of his instruments.

His output was huge and the system of taking the timber from tree to sale must have been a akin to military planning.

He needed to use the timber that had cost him dear, and this he did to perfection.

So what was so magical about his chosen wood that made them sing in such a way that his legacy, we still talk about today with the utmost reverence?

Why do we call anyone a genius?

What is it about the name Stradivarius that has been passed down the centuries that has turned his name into investment gold?

And still play nicely too.

The attributes to make a violin are unique. You have to become an alchemist and dance between the practical skills needed to engineer any number of pieces of chosen wood and having picked them, take those different woods, and with those skills join them seemlessly into a work of art.

And be confident that the beautiful work of art will be of use to a skilled player with an ear that is tuned to hear the minute semi-tones of any string chosen or plucked. And make a violin or a cello sing sweetly and to to be applauded by any number of audiences, also with ears that quiver to a bending sound.

Musically educated ears to be matched with auditorium acoustics. That are traditionally constructed of wood. It's not easy. Wood is warm.

Science and magic is in the soul of the luthier. Who turns his spruce and maple to golden sound. Trees that in life are silent yet in death they sing.

What is it that allows the confidence of the player to match his hands and bow and become one, in tune?

The thickness of the wood and how the holes are drilled in the plank to set the varing depths of the curviture to be the gouged out.

The understanding of the exact level to be removed from that wood, done by a gauge but mostly by feel are not a given right. They have to be earned.

Spruce is an evergreen, it is not a dense hardwood.

Spruce does not have a cellular structure of a dense timber. The grain is straight hollow. With tiny tubes bound together like minature drinking straws, this carries the sound.

So when you curve but retain the flatness it conducts the sound. Yet is strong. The plate conducts vertically. It has a high density for a given wieght.

Balsa wood is the optimum material for violins but it is not strong enough. It could be strengthened with plastic, but why would you do this?

Wood is the correct material for the job no matter how much science is applied to it.

The balance of a violin being set with another wood, a harder wood. 

Maple is the usual hardwood support and has a diffuse grain. Birds eye maple could be used occasionaly for the back, but more than often, it was plain maple.

This spreads the sound horizontaly.

The woods, sometimes chosen by foresters ear, that could be augmented into those magic tones was not a given right. 

Knowledge has to be earned and passed down through families and generations. Just like those trees, it grows slowly but surely.

Altitude 1200 meter high some say makes it free of knots and the terra ferme and the flora around the tree is also crucial. Its like choosing where to plant grapes.

These are slow growing and not forced like the pines we grow for carcassing.

You have to understand just how it bends and how the climate helps it grow, to watch it grow. Then all of a sudden a tree is cut and ready to be handed to the lutherers aim.

What is the right time to fell a tree?

Maple grows best in southern Europe.

There are different visual aspects too to be taken into account.

If you dry it too quick it will split so it needs to be watered for a year, outside, and this watering cleanses the inside of the grain.

The ripples form and come out in pattern and depth in these verticaly cut timbers. Experience would be all in the choosing of grain.

The flame or the ripple if deep and goes well into the wood becomes a back plate. 

Necks can also be chosen and the tree in death gets a second life.

The life of the tree goes on indefinitly in its sacrifice to become a instrument.

And the wood we are working with today were saplings when stradivarius was making his.

But will the instruments of today be as good in 300 years as a Stradivarius is today.

The loving care that is needed through all stages is what makes a good violin.

The curve or arched shape of a violin carries the load and combining this with its pleasing shape that helps to stop warping. Sharp course corners would acentuate or, help a split. Wood is a material that is subject to changes in temperature and forces that if unchecked or not counter balanced would ruin an instrument.

So the shape and form of Stradivarius design was quite revolutionary around the time of 1700.

Stradavarius changed the way Cremona heard the instrument. A town of trained ears. 

This will have been by trial and error. In this town that understood.

We can see his original moulds that are preserved in Cremona today.

Still curious, I asked my good friend, retired professional violinist of The Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and all round mechanic, Ken Johnson about his violin.

So what of my Stradi-various. 

Well I left it hanging there when I moved house......hardly paying it any attention. 

What are the chances? 

Its funny how your mind plays tricks.

And now I think, maybe should I have looked into it a bit more. 

Could it have been real?

And now I will never know.

Stranger On The Shore. By Acker Bilk-One Of My Favourite Things.

Stranger On The Shore. By Acker Bilk.

It seem topical and not hard to imagine the title of this tune in today's Isolated climate of May 2020.

Being born into a slum clearance terrace house that was not deemed fit for habitation, as a family we got moved to a modern council estate on the outskirts of Liverpool.

Times were hard there was no money around and the decline of the docks saw a demise of industry due to the geographical change and containerization.

In this very poor climate it would be easy to fall in to all the traps around me.

During the 1970's times were really tough but I got myself out and worked. Firstly as a milk lad helping deliver milk on our estate for 15p a day. I saved up.

Then I got a job as a paper lad and was able to earn a little money.

All my well earned money went on clothes, as my parents could not afford a lot....and fishing tackle.

Discovering fishing was a lifesaver for me. I joined a newly formed club on the estate and we would go off to these amazing locations in the countryside, of a Sunday, mostly, in North Wales.

I can recall the first glistening Perch I caught on a freezing Sunday morn. It was magical. It was small. And the fact that it jumped on my hook didn't matter.
I had caught a fish.

The excitement of hunting these monster fish we never caught was enthralling.

https://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.com/2015/03/pilkingtons-vase-decorated-by-richard.html

It was my escape. Some of the kids at school called me Findus or Captain Haddock but I did not care. It was they who did not understand. Many of them would get into serious trouble. While I stayed out of it.

I asked my parents for a radio for Christmas and a small leather cased portable radio that took a single 9V battery was found wrapped up on Christmas day.

It seems hard to imagine in this day and age, how something as simple as having your own pocket radio could change your life but it did. I carried it everywhere.

Listening and learning. Searching for the limited number of stations that would introduce me to new music.

During the course fishing closed season we charrabanged on our old fashioned smiley faced coach up to The lake district. The coach doubled up as a meeting place during the week, a sort of youth club.
 It took hours of motorway.
Then around a corner as if landing on another planet there it was, The Lake. The excitement of seeing Ullswater lake, several miles long simmering in the beautiful luscious green land still lives with me today.

Me and my fishing friend got off the coach we would be picked up early evening for the journey home. For a day we were free. Fishing we went.

It may have been the wrong spot we seemed to be on a shallow gravel shingle and the ledge for the lake drop off was so far out that there was not even enough line on my reel with which to cast out far enough.This was a bad spot.

Ingenuity was needed. I emptied the contents of my fishing basket on the bank and waded out with my rod until the water came confortably up to the top of my wellies. I sunk my basket and loaded it with rocks so it would not float away, and closed the lid and sat on it.
 I was 300 yards away from the bank. In 15 inches of water.
I took out of my pocket, my box, of tanlged worms and baited up, on a size 14 spade end hook, casting comfortably over the shelf and hopefully into the range of some monster trout.

I turned around and I was so far from the bank amidst the shimmering silver glade of water. I felt as if I was floating on silver ice. All around me was calm. The beauty moved me, and to this day I can remember the rolling hills foreshadowing that crystal mass of becalmed lake. There was no wind. It was beautiful. I felt safe and calm and alone. The silence of the lake deafened me with its majesty.

I felt like a speckle, a tiny little piece in the huge jigsaw of life.

I took out my coat pocket my radio and tuned it into the only channel I could pick up. Crackling away I finally balanced it in and on the radio as if by magic came the beautiful sound of....... Stranger On The Shore.

I had heard it before but today the beautiful clarinet solo hit me like a log, and as I looked around here I was.

The Stranger On The Shore.

It was very emotional. I may have shed a tear as I sat there looking around me at the sheer beauty of the place. It was a shimmering surreal experience that I have never forgotten.

The most beautiful isolation of my life.

Away from it all, free of everything in the wilderness of the deep. I was floating on air, or walking on water.

In no time the beautiful tone filtered away and I was forever moved in stillness.

Until my rod tipped and up from the deep cane a two pound eel.

This was the worst place you could wish to catch this slithering slimy half fish half snake, that you can never grab properly.
And all the time it wants to bite you.

We were always scared of eels for some reason they would wrap around your arm like an Anaconda. I didn't want to catch them.
Getting it back to the bank after the cold water slowly slipped over the top of my boots could have easily ruined my day but at least it was a fish caught in the fishing competition of life.

It took me an age to unhook the wriggling slithering monster.

That song has never left me and even through my musical journey into Reggae, Soul, Punk, Joy Division and many other genre's I would always have to pause to have my soul pierced by the beauty of this old fashioned song that never left my heart.

It was something you didn't admit to when your mates were buying Sex Pistols records called Never Mind The B****cks, but I still recalled that day every time it was heard it.

Twenty five years later at a massive street market in Lille, by now I seem to have escaped all those beartraps of life and I am a antique dealer. With a shop in a arcade that Pevsner the architectural historian described as making Burlington Arcade in London, look pedestrian.

There staring at me on the floor amongst a load of junk is a shiny black ebony and silver keyed ......clarinet.

A beautiful instrument, and it seemed to call me. I went over and picked it up and asked the price which was the equivalent of £50. It was old, but I bought it for £35 or the equivalent in Francs.

It was like as if it called out to me. Buy me. As if I got a clarion call.

As if I remembered the tune I grew up with. That old fashioned tune by Acker Bilk who had become a caricature of trad jazz, even though my favorite song was without definition, it was part of that era.

It was a beautiful tune.

Now coming from that council estate in Liverpool and not having an education I have had to use my brains, and my brain is telling me,

“You can't play a note, don't even begin” So I ignored my own advice and showed it to a bloke who come in the shop.

“Have you got a reed for it” he said

“What” I replied.

Ignorant to anything about it. He brought a reed in the next day and clipped it into the mouthpiece. By chance he was an old trad jazzer.

“Can you play Stranger On The Shore” I said.

He did. It was as surreal as my early experience. I wanted to learn it.

I developed a way of writing down the notes by sketching on paper the holes of the clarinet and coloring in the ones that my fingers would close. To form a note.

I soon realized that the note C was, three colored in dots, and D was two. Six was low G and all open was the G in the octave above.

It was like learning a new language. But I like a challenge.

And so began the longest journey of my life. Having no musical experience whatso-ever. At forty years of age. I decided I was going to take up the clarinet. 

Learning to read from the stave was a long and lonely task. You can't buy it. you have to keep on keeping on. Barrier after barrier was broken down until I could read a basic tune.
 I felt that my fingers needed breaking and resetting again as they had formed, not as a musician at all, at all.

Every day I worked an hour at least for years. I learnt the tune I heard as a child and it was an achievement like nothing else I had done before.

I was now a musician of sorts. Formed a band even. wrote out scores.

I stopped and thought one day why do you like that old fashioned tune so much?

I learnt that when I was still a baby, it was the theme tune to a series on BBC. It was written by Acker Bilk and named after his daughter Jenny shortly after she was born. He gifted her all the royalties. It went to no One in America and no two in Britain. And in May 1969 the crew of Apollo 10 took it with them, into their own isolation, to the moon. It was played at the funeral of a dear friend who knew I played it.
I have often seen Acker Bilk on TV in daft hats and striped waistcoats , in old films with names like Its Trad Dad or similar, man he could play.

I learnt it was the second longest running record in the charts, ever, or the hit parade as it used to be called.
 Fifty two weeks in continuity. It made number two.

It wasn't just me that liked it. They played The Cavern Club.

Then The Beatles came along and it all changed.
But you cant keep a beautiful tune down and here I am several decades later still talking about it.

I was honored to have been invited to join The Antiques Roadshow team in 2015 and its fair to say I kept myself away from all those traps that lurked in wait.

I educated myself but it was all due to a work ethic to aquire my fishing tackle, and the need to get out of town, to be, even just for a few hours, that Stranger On The Shore.

In these difficult times with everyone in lockdown, I can put my licquorice stick together and play....from memory......Stranger On The Shore.

That I learnt by dots.

And I am transferred back to the Cumbrian lakes, in isolation, on a shingle shore, without a care.

And today as I play, several decades later a tear slips down my cheek, again.