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.

Church of St Mark Brithdir-One Of My Favourite Things.

I was recently asked if I knew about an Arts and Crafts Church, in a village that I had been driving past for some time and unfortunatly I had to declare I not seen it. 

I was told that it was hidden back from the road behind some Rhododendrums. 

So I decided to make more of an effort. I almost felt guilty that I had not seen it.

Its not everyones cup of tea, that is spending time, studying architecture but it keeps me out of trouble and its something I have done since I was young.

I stopped the car and opened a stop gate designed to let a single file of people enter, and keep sheep out, and there it was. 

My first thought was whats all the fuss about though it had an interesting bellfry and a rather heavy overhang. 

Then I notice the rather unimposing door was rather small so it is obvious the entrance was round the back...or the front as the road entrance was not the main.

The first thing I notice is the brackets for the gutters being wrought out of two pieces of iron, twisted, leaving a patterned heart as decoration.

The heart was a symbol of the Arts and Crafts period that is forever linked to C.F.A Voysey but was adopted by the legions of architects and designers around the late Victorian and early Edwardian period.

Built of a heavy local stone its long roof with Aberllefenni slate gently slopes down to just above your head as you enter the gates of the porch. It reminds me of the signature roof style of Herbert Lucknorth who designed many houses in North Wales.

Pulling and twisting a delightful wrought iron handle the door opens to reveal a Font right in front of you, almost in the way. Its obvious that the siting of the church is now slightly out of sync with the modern interaction, which is that it is owned by The Friends of Friendless Churches. I think that explains a lot. The Font is unpolished copper, I test it for sound and noticing the wall decoration and the intricate pannelled door I turn to see the most amazing Alter.....made of copper a blaze in the midday sun at the far end of my entrance. Then there is a pulpit, made of copper.
The colour of the walls is a mediteanean terracotta which in the sun seems to transport you to another clime.

I turn back to the double doors facing my entrance which are oak inlaid with what appears to be Macassar Ebony and Abalone shell. The benches or pews are carved with playfull animals Rabbit, mice and owls are but a few. The SM stands for St Marks.

The Church was built in 1895-98 for Louisa Tooth in memory of her second husband Charles who was the Chaplain of St Marks English church in Florence. Her first husband Richard Richards of Caerynwch bequeathed her the land in Merionedd and she was wealthy enough to adopt a style that pleased her.

The architect she picked was Henry Wilson (1898-1934) who was Master of The Artworkers Guild in 1917 and Editor of The Architectural Review. He designed the metalwork for Holy Trinity Church in Sloane Street that John Betjamin called “The Cathedral of Arts and Crafts”. He later turned his hand to silversmithing and designed jewellry.

He said of Mrs Tooths agent, Mr Williams who he had to liase with that “he knew no more than a cat” and it seemed there was plenty of disagreements.

Wilson wanted the stone left rugged but Mr Williams made it smooth.

Wilson believed that “the chief merit of Brithdir is that it is personal”.

I think in that he achieved great success.

He also said that “what has come out of Brithdir must live, because it has come out of my own life”. He wanted a simple beautiful setting and a beautiful altar. In this he achieved a great thing. The altar is lined with copper beaten into a beautiful realism with skill and attention that could only be done by a master.

It was claimed that the work was in fact hammered in parts, in repouse by Wilson himself along with John Paul Cooper.

The small boy, winged, with lillies in his hand is overshadowd by the figures who seem to welcome him or look over him. He seems to be kneeling in front of a hedge of thorns with various inscriprions, hammered from behind.

I believe there could be several different interpretations of this and I will leave people to make their own mind up. But to me it is a lament in copper and as the blade of sun shone across it I saw more and more detail unfolding like a poem before my eyes. It lit up my day.

I really will have to go again as I only had a limited amount of time and as I left I was still noticing further details. On the way out I noticed what must be an ancient stone structure perhaps the original place of worship. Covered in moss the stones were erected in the round. The symbol of an ancient structure that now has a little brook running through it shone in the winter sun. the graveyard is slightly overgrown with large crosses carved from the same stone that stand tall. There is a path that must be the orinal way for procession. It was silent and calm.

I will be back. To study in more detail, When I have some more time,

It made my day. I am so glad I stopped.
I took a little video. Click above.

Two days later I purchase a Copper beaten plate or plaque with Voysey hearts and grapes that could have come right out of The Church of St Mark.

http://www.classicartdeco.co.uk/art-nouveau.php

Is Wales The New France?

 I got dragged to Wales when I was a child.
As a teenager with a serious paper round it would cost me wages to go away and I always tried to stay home alone, so as to be free for a week.

Well when I say Wales, it was North Wales and every other person seemed to be from Liverpool.

 I recall one week at the summer peak most of the customers on my paper round seemed to be on the same Caravan site, or maybe the next.

Gradually I broke away and become friends with many of the locals, who would call for me when I was there and we would go off to the arcades and the fairgrounds looking for holiday makers, hoping to Kiss Girls Quickly and Squeeze Them Slow.

Or was it Kiss Them Slowly and Squeeze Them Quick.

Well both really, I wasn't that fussy.

This is the time before Facebook and Social Media so it seemed impossible to plan ahead. So you pick up friends where you are.

 Staying in touch was difficult.

When I got a bit older my Welsh girlfriend didn't have a phone so every Tuesday and Thursday she would walk over the phone box and call me. Or try to.

There used to be queues outside phone boxes, remember those big red monsters sitting on the pavement usually on the corner of roads.

I would phone and a bloke would answer it waiting for someone to call him.

“Its not you again is it? Will you get off the line I am waiting for a call”

I would hear my lady friend asking “Is that for me”?

“I don't know, you will have to wait” It was a joke.

I would ring back a few minutes later and the phone would be engaged, and engaged and engaged again seemingly forever. I would go the loo or something and come back to the phone and my sister would be on it, gabbing away one of her friends. Smiling......

“How long are you going to be” I would ask. She would be talking for an age and eventually I would make the call and the phone would ring out. She had been waiting that long that she went home.

This went on and on for a long time.

The kids don't know they are born today with their mobiles.

Now I am starting to sound like my old man.

I always recall when we came into the road to Prestatyn and looked over the valleys and even though I was interested in previously stated.... other things as a youth, I could not deny the outstanding natural beauty.

Being a fisherman my treat was to get into Wales with the grown men, who were all accomplished Anglers who would show me how to lay the ledger down in a eddy swell and wait for a chunky Chub to snatch my luncheon meat.

Or trot a float down river for some distant shoal of Dace. The hope of hooking a Grayling was always there.
 I did many times, becoming an accomplished angler. I took it very seriously indeed.
https://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.com/2015/03/pilkingtons-vase-decorated-by-richard.html 

I stayed out of trouble by fishing the rivers and lakes of Wales sometimes getting as far as Bala. Rain, hail and snow and the glistening sunshine in the summer there was no obstacles to my adventures.

My mates at school called me Findus for a while. 

Findus The Fisherman. I hated that.

Captain Haddock was another. It just shows you how much they knew as I did not go sea fishing.

Some of them would get into trouble later on. How could I tell them back at my school for hard knocks, about the excitement of seeing a Kingfisher land on my rod. And that its iridescent red breast feathers shone like beacons against the pure white snow. That snow that had drifted in overnight. That we had travelled through watching the wildlife wake up. While  the more nocturnal creatures such as foxes would be seen scurrying home before the dew had drifted away on the breeze. The air always tasted different. There was no taste of smoke or industry.

It was then that I decided I will come back when I am older but apart from antique buying trips, I only occasionally travelled back through the country.

It never disappointed even if sometimes the food did.

That's all changed now.

To stock my India Building shop I would travel to the continent sometimes twice a month, circumnavigating most of France and then all over it again.

Like a grown up kid looking for treasure I searched for Circa. Circa 1900, Circa 1920.

 Art Deco became my favourite style and France seemed the place to pick it up.

I must have been to some cities 40 times over twenty years. There are some I know as well as my home town.

I don't know whether its the fact that the language barrier means you miss the mundane, but the food was always good and the perk of the job was that I could eat out most nights.

 I have eaten some good food in France, I mean really good.

Though some of the best was cooked in French style in Belgium, but that's another story.

What a beautiful country full of twists and turns and friendly people.

But the grass is always greener on the other side.....of the Channel in this case.

But as with the poem that has always stayed with me says.

We shall not cease from exploration

And at the end of my exploring

I will arrive where I started

And know the place for the very first time.

I don't know if its just because you are older but It is a delight to journey through the Welsh hillsides with all their surprises. I think that the lack of industry and investment in some areas has been sadly missed but there are areas that look as if they have not changed for ever.

And this now, is that countries charm. Or at least that's my opinion based on the areas that I have recently frequented.

This means that in some places it has saved its rivers and lakes from pollution so you can quite easily go wild swimming in crystal clear pools that are hardly off the beaten track.

See waterfalls with that sweet fresh magnetic smell.

Rolling hills and sunken valleys with trees, branches moss laden with emerald velvet shimmering in the April showers. Yes, there are showers but that is the price to pay for the lush life and that spring growth that seems to regenerate your soul.

Its the spring, when the Welsh come out of their strong sturdy slate stacked piles, from their winter slumber. In just enough time to spare, to greet the new wave of woolly jumper-ed walkers who too, need to taste that fresh air with its bitter sweet taste of cold dew, lifting from the winter wake. They come from all over the world. 

Though lingering in the memories of The Welsh is Tryweryn. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-34528336

It is easy to provoke but if you play a straight bat you are alright.

And when you go into the history and the language.

Welsh is in fact ancient Breton.

The English are speaking a mixture of Viking, Angle and Saxon. The Welsh have kept their independence and you have to respect that.

The English are the ones who have been conquered many times.

I recently found underneath the pews in a listed slate built Welsh Chapel, a simple piece of pitch pine. Signed John Felix. Taliesin.

https://www.dyfiospreyproject.com/blog/emyr-mwt/2020/01/26/short-story-10-john-felix

 And dated 1895.

https://www.facebook.com/dyfiospreyproject/photos/a.194204187277130/2911469942217194/?type=3&theater

Frank Lloyd Wright one of the 20^th centuries great architects called his design company Taliesin. His company would be responsible for the curving Guggenheim, amongst many other memorable structures. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliesin

This brings into my minds eye several stories of King Arthur's bard and poet of the same name, who may have been washed up in a leather satchel on the beach of Aberystwyth.

 The Arthurian legend is as much Welsh as it is French in the guise of L'Morte D'Arthur.

I am amazed at how little I have been made aware of the great history of Wales.
I really do look forward to exploring the myths and legends of old Wales.

Its time to pay respect and appreciate the history and independence and learn a bit of the old Brythonic language.

Wales Definitely Is The new France …...For Me.

Supermarine Spitfire-One Of My Favourite Things.

Long before I understood what beauty was I admired this formidable fighting machine for its beauty.

I would build Airfix models of Spitfires and Messerschmidt and dogfight them together, inspired by the periodicals of the day and films on TV showing the glorious few who flew them as heroes.

I don't know how you can claim a killing machine was one of your favourite things but because of its place in history. I will.

K5054 was the code name for the first prototype Spitfire that was the marriage of the Rolls Royce Merlin engine and the frame that Reginald Mitchell had designed.

June 1937 Mitchel died of tuberculosis

K9787 was the first spit in production. The first fliers were astounded by its ability. The production created many challenges as the tooling process was particularly complex with many new style of engineering principles that the engineers had to master. The wings were particularly slim and the placing of them in such a low position helped to keep down drag.

Merlin 2 had a fixed pitch wooden propeller.

Could reach 20000 feet in 9.4 minutes.

The 78^th spit had a De Haviland steel propeller to get more speed. A constant speed propeller with a Merlin 3 engine was fitted to the 178^th.

Few were produced. There were only 3 squadrons in 1938.

Hurricanes were easier to produce.

There was a pitifully low production early on.

Sir Hugh Dowding almost single handedly produced Britain's radar system.

Home and Chain home low made u the worlds first air defence. …......Filter systems identified friendly and attacking forces.

Ladies were employed in plotting rooms.

The enemy could not track.

Once crossed the radar and observers plotted the course by relaying the information back to the centre.

The idea was that flying to combat would be as simple as possible.

Sept 1^st 1939 Hitler marched into Poland. The new war had begun with fighters employing blitzkrieg in tandem with the ground armed forces of the German army.

France did not act decisively and soon the Germans moved on through the defences, around the Maginot line.

In November the first Spitfire flew over Germany in reconnaissance mode.

They could out fly flak at 35,000 feet.

Photographing would become a job for the spitfire with all its guns stripped out to make it lighter and faster.

Then the RAF bases in France were attacked. The French air force was withdrawn to the safety of the interior huge losses were attained. BEF were shrunk to Dunkirk and the last RAF airfield was abandoned.

The Messerschmidt 109E had 2 fuselage mounted machine guns and 2 cannon, wing mounted and were a formidable foe. Their pilots were confident. They would encounter Spits for the first time during operation dynamo.

16 squadrons of British aircraft including Spits at a time would see action with another 16 joining the Supermarines.

The Spitfire could out turn the 109 whose muzzle velocity was low and it was found that the convergence of the spits guns at 200 yds could destroy a 109 in a single pass. 132 aircraft were destroyed away from the beaches at Dunkirk but the RAF prevented the German bombers from smashing the BEF.

The troops on the ground would distrust the RAF as many of them did not see the battles that went on away from the beaches to prevent many German airplanes getting to the beaches.

338,000 British and allied troops escaped.

The true judge of combat showed the spit as a superb aircraft.

The conquest of Britain was planned. Herman Goring planned the invasion massing in early August for Eagle day the plan to start the invasion. While bombing ports and attacking convoys the canal account began. While defending the ports and convoys the 109's would be engage the British. Fighter command thought the first engagements were successful. But they only had 19 of spit and 29 of Hurricanes so husbanding Dowding forces engaging the bombers was a priority but over 400 planes had been lost.

The constant speed propeller increased its climb and engine wear.

Incendiary bullets increased killing power. Many pilots recognised its difference in shooting it out of the sky.

There was armour behind the seats. Bullet proof glass was fitted. Dowding arguing if BP glass was good enough for Chicago gangsters it was good enough for his pilots.

A V of three pilots were the method employed. But they could be bounced by a formation flying at high speed towards it.

The formation would be broken.

A finger of four was employed by Luftwaffe and the swarm would be the best formation. 125 were destroyed but most of these were bombers but the fighters killed 50 pilots and 35 spits and 36 hurricanes. The V was abandoned on initiation in favour of the swarm. By the British.

FL Alan Deer destroyed 17 aircraft during Battle of Britain. Taylor Malan a South African got a bar added to his DSO along with other medals. The German aces were a formidable foe and many of them would see the war with several hundred kills many on the eastern front.

The Spits and Hurries were fitted with cameras that filmed while the guns were engaged. These were shown to the public in cinemas and helped morale.

Claiming our pilots and planes were better than theirs saying the RAF gave the Nazis a beating over Dunkirk.

August 12^th began a perilous time and 1790 sorties of Sept 17^th.

183 were lost by fighter command by the 18^th.

Losses outstripped supply and pilots were thrown in without adequate training.

If this was continued within 3 weeks the RAF would be finished.

Spitfire 1

Reginald Mitchell.

Towards close of Battle of Britain 920 spitfire 2's had been delivered to RAF. Merlin 12 was fitted (replacing the Merlin 3 of the mark 1) and the engine had been rated at 1175 Hp and fitted with cartridge starting.

The Spit II also had more gun power and most had 2a's 172bs were fitted with canon.

Mk3 and 4 never went into production.

1000 sorties a day were flown by Luftwaffe.

What Britain needed now was a miracle Dowding said.

After RAF raids on Berlin Hitler told the Luftwaffe to bomb London and the cities and this was the miracle required. Who ordered the bombing was it Churchill.

Goring was told the spitfires were down to 50 and ordered the Me 109's to stay close to the bombers and as result the 9 days up to September 15^th 351 to 170 British fighters.

Spitfires were being produced faster than lost now.

Winter weather was a impossible barrier and Sept 17^th invasion was cancelled.

If there really was an invasion as many now feel it was a feint to attack Russia.

October 20^th 1940 day time bombing was suspended by The Germans.

This was the summer of the finest hour.

920 Spits were delivered Spit 2's were delivered with cartridge stating with more armour. “ B's had cannon.

The ME 109F was upgraded in January 1941 at heights above 240000 ft was a more superior aircraft and as a result the Spitfire 1 airframe was strengthened and a Merlin 45 engine was placed in.

February 1941.

Top speed 370 mph . Ceiling was 36.500 ft. Some wings were clipped for roll speed. Sub types were specified by wing types. A wing had 4 no 303 Browning machine guns. B took 20ml Hispano canon and 2 machine guns. C wing had flexibility 2 canon 1 canon and 2 machine guns with a second muzzle canon blanked off or 4 machine guns.

Result was Spitfire 5 was the most used spitfire and played a massive role in the defence of Malta.

1942 Spit flew as a fighter bomber.

In 1942 Fokker Wolf 190 was seen in ever growing numbers and outclassed the Mk 5

The MK VI was produced to combat it as it was superior.

Supermarine produced 7, 8 and 9.

The mk 9 Merlin 60 engine to a 5c airframe with a 2 stage supercharger with a after cooler giving the aircraft a top speed of 400 ph and 44,00 feet surface ceiling.

1944 MK9's were fitted with a new wing the E-TYPE.

Housing 20ml canon and a .50 machine gun. No German or Japanese could withstand this power.

MK 9 would stay in production. 5739 Mk9('s were built by wars end.

A seaplane conversion Echo Schneider cup was never put into production. 1943.

In October1944 a MK 14 as put into production and a Rolls Royce Griffin 65 engine was fitted.

Griffin was first fitted to a Spit in MK 4 in 1941.

A five blade propeller was needed to take advantage of its 2035 Hp Griffin 65 had immense power. 439 mph max speed and 43000 ft ceiling.

MK 14 was the final and most potent of WWII. Final WWII

MK 18 a strengthened version at the end of the war. Last of the original spit airframe.

Mk 21 to 24 were different aircrafts with Mitchell wing radically altered and few original parts remained.

In Malaya the last few Spits flew.

THE SPITFIRE One of the most inspired designs in Military Aviation History.

I DO NOT NEED TO ADD ANY MORE SUPERLATIVES THAN HAVE ALREADY BEEN NOTED.

Frederic Lord Leighton-Athlete Wresting A Python-One Of My Favourite Things.

 This has to be one of the finest sculptures of all time.
It is one of my favourites, and I have seen a few.
Only one of his two lifesize sculptures.

I stand there open mouthed every time I see it. I saw a giant casting in The Royal Academy London.

Frederic Lord Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton, (3 December 1830 – 25 January 1896) was a artist of repute. His art was photographic in its realism. Some of his art such as 'Flaming June' painted in 1895 is known all over the world.

He was a very skilled man indeed.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Leighton

 By that I mean he was a purveyor of truth. 

When he did anything he did it well. 

He was able to bring about a resurgence in the art of sculpture in Britain with this creation by being honest to himself and with his line of thought and his idea of movement. This work of 1877 pioneered the 'New Sculpture' movement in Britain.
It was a  challenge to one of the most famous sculptures of all time 'The Laocoon'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laoco%C3%B6n_and_His_Sons

 He chose that very moment of battle. To test his skill.
At the time, it was also known as 'An Athlete Strangling A Python and 'An Athlete Struggling With A Python'

So he went out of his way to make it difficult for himself by choosing the exact time that a Python is wanting to kill its human prey.....or is it the other way round.

As a constrictor, the Python would have been, in elongated and truncated form pumping its body in the fight that ensued. 

The wrestler in turn tensing his muscles as violently as its foe. 

Keeping the monster at bay pushing it away while it wraps itself wanting to suffocate in a coil of death around him.

Each fighting for its life, wrestling for survival. He does not want to be suffocated and consumed, eaten through that retractable jaw that would dislocate itself to eat something far bigger than itself. Reticulating its prey inside its jaws, this man does not want to be a lump inside a giant pair of shoes, you can feel it.

The strength that would be needed to exact this very split second in time that Lord Leighton has captured was immense.

This is a time when photography was in its infancy, a time when not many people would be able to see, with a naked eye, even if they witnessed the event. It would happen too fast.

We can, today video something and slow it down examining each frame, every second, finding the point that we wanted to capture, and stop it. But not then.

Most people would not have even seen a Python unless they went to a zoo.

Today subliminally we seem to know what everything is, we have discovered everything in passing. Our imagination is used to it. 

We pick things up from TV or images around us.

And if its not and we wish to query anything, we can google it.

But not in the age of discovery, the 19^th century, that we see here in this amazing piece of sculpture.

Lord Leighton was able to freeze frame a subject in his mind and then turn it into a study that bears reference to classical poise and then make it beautiful even though it is a violent and scary fight for survival.

This study in bronze was featured in the very first edition of the studio and its influence on British art was huge.

 It is said that this sculpture brought back the art of sculpting in Britain and it was an inspiration to a whole generation.

There is a casting of this amazing bronze in Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery in William Brown Street. 

Its worth a look and if you are ambitious, try and draw a study of it. 

Then, you will see, just how good it is.

Of course everything has a price.

Bonhams recently sold a version Provenance

Hartford Hall, Hartford, Cheshire
Purchased by the vendors family at the contents sale of Hartford Hall, sold by Messrs' C.W. Provis & Son, Auctions & Valuers on behalf of the executors of the late Mrs K. B. Carver, Wednesday 14th February 1934, lot 128.
Thence by family descent.

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/23987/lot/32/?category=list

Ships At Anchor by Richard Parkes Bonington-One Of My Favourite Things.

This is one of my most favourite pictures.
Yes I know I love modernism and 20^th century art, but in a round about way this is the forerunner to those modernist pictures that we are all, now, so familiar with.
To my eye this may be a 19^th century work but it is as fresh, and bright, as if it had been painted last year.
Why?
Because most of being an artist is not just about being able to paint.
It is about being able to see.
You cant have one without the other.
I recall how after studying of an evening with life drawing for over a year, and then one day, as if by magic.
 I could see where I was going wrong.
(I threw all my previous work away).
Now, that to me is more important than seeing where one is going right.
Put into context I could suddenly see the shadows.
No not the light that is easy to see, but the shadows where light does not fall.
This is a very important time for an aspiring artist, and only studious practice will enable this talent to be captured on paper, or canvas.
Richard Parkes Bonington sees it all, in this small but beautiful oil painting, arguably the best in Liverpool Museums collection.
Then he adds a little bit of extra colour, which as if a magician, by slight of hand, he turns your gaze in a direction that he wants it to go, with a little dab of red here and there.
A lot can be said against modern art and its excuses for talent.
 But I still do not want to linger in the 19^th century for too long.
 A sheep on a hillside will mostly convey, well a sheep on a hillside to me.
Though as long as masterpieces like this are around I may cancal my taxi back to the 20^th Century, till a later hour.
I first discovered it at the now, ruined Sudley Art Gallery in Mossley Hill Liverpool. http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sudley-house-why-have-liverpool-museums.html
It was, at that time, hung next to a Turner and I was at that age wondering what all the fuss about Turner was. (I went to see the film Mr Turner a few weeks ago. Didn't it go on a bit.)
I know what how all the theory about Turner has been played out.
Usually written by people who couldn't emulsion a wall I may add.
But where is all the fuss about Boningtons work.
Some of his work is a trifle sentimental, but its what he may have achieved that this, one of my favorite things, portrays.
Yes a ship at anchor on a becalmed sea, the sort of whimsical painting we all know.
But this to me has always touched me deeper than that. The way the light falls on the water and the way the composition is laid out is by the hands of a budding master. A painter who is completely self motivated to discover his own personal journey through light and shade.
Who knows where he would end up, would he challenge Turner or be thought more highly than John Constable, a national treasure. Or would he fizzle out to nothing. Over 200 years later we are still talking about the brush master and the small taste of what talent he had to offer in his short existence. And his impressionistic style.


Richard Parkes Bonington was born 1802 in Nottingham.
His father was the governor of Nottingham Jail who had strong political views and when he was arrested for riotous and disorderly conduct he had to step down.
He set up a ladies school that did not succeed later he set up a lace-making business. Nottingham of course was the countries lace making capital.
The factory was smashed up by Luddites who saw the coming of the industrial revolution as a risk to the way of life and saw the machines as a direct threat to their livelihoods.
Bonington senior seemed to have more in common with French views of life.
 France had gone through its own Revolution and the family headed there.
Richard Parkes Bonington began drawing at the age of six. At the age of sixteen he was painting Bologne Harbour in a way that does not show his young age and seems more from the hand of a mature artist than a teenager.

He took lessons.Thomas Gerten was an influence, I was recently shown an image of his water colour of Lindisfarne Priory. This was not a common occurrance that an artist of that date would use, a water colour, as a way to show off his skill, as a finished work and not a sketch that would be later used as a study for a oil painting.
In 1819 the Bonington family moved to Paris where Richard studied with Jaque Loiuse De Bead . He had taught Grull and his teaching was in the classical form.
Richard was off, here there and everywhere, it seems that every time he had a chance he painted.
He painted Churches in Normandy and then he would work them up in watercolour.

Bonnington made a brief return to England where its understood he saw work by Turner and returned to France in 1818. He seemed restless after this visit and he recorded that he was arguing with his tutors.
Around the same time Delacrioux.........who had also seen works by Turner was painting in a romantic style. Jerico............who painted The Raft Of The Medusa had seen The Fields Of Waterloo with Gods light bathing the soldiers on the field of battle some of who had perished.
This was turning a painting into a beacon of emotion.

In 1824 Boningtons painting Fishermen Near Bologne was exhibited at the Paris Salons.
Next to this work was a painting by John Constable entitled The Haywain.
Both won Gold medals along with another British artist, Anthony Van Dyck Copley Fielding. You could only be an artist with that name!!

One of my favorite things in the whole wide, is Richard Parkes Boningtons “Ships At Anchor” a small oil once owned by George Holt and now owned by Liverpool Museums, and on display at Sudley House.
Now a former shadow of itself. It seems the more money NML spend, the worse job they do under the leadership of its current director, this once hidden gem is now a pale shadow of its former self.
 http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sudley-house-why-have-liverpool-museums.html


It is known that Bonington and Turners lives were in paralell and Richard went to Venice at 24 years of age where he seems to come under the spell of Canalettos work.
His studies of The Rialto Bridge are not by a simple hand but an accomplished and steady application of art.
He paints The Ducal palace with its religious procession but my opinion He that this period he loses his freedom and freshness and although he gains confidence of brush.
 Though I would need to study his art a bit more before making any definite decision on this.



He literally meets Eugene Delacroix in a gallery and they become friends.
You can see the influence of both artists on each other.



In 1828 he gets sunstroke from working outside too often. John Lang, his quack physician sends him to Britain to get some air as this would be better for him than the south Of France.
He was not aware that he had tuberculosis and its  in Britain that he died at the age of 26 leaving behind a legacy of amazing work and a real sense of what could he have achieved if life had not dealt him such a cruel hand.
His influences are not always reported but for several decades later we would see the fashion of French painters depicting simple peasant folk with the same degree of skill as great leaders and hero's.



The French Impressionists would unknowingly or unwillingly be influenced by British Art. Boningtons legacy was great.
He at least that he helped to influence the seed change in France that changed the world.

He died so young and like James Dean, or Marilyn Monroe, we always wonder just what their talent could have achieved. 

See it hanging in the hall at Sudley Art Gallery.

La Piscine Roubaix-One Of My Favourite Things

You get around a bit and see things and then you think you have seen it all and cant have your socks blown off that easily, and then you come across a little gem like La Piscine.

I had been meaning to go for a decade and it always seemed a little out of the way and in a part of the world that you would not normally go to, unless you were in Brugges and its not far a detour to get there. Its an old industrial town that the world seems to have forgotten about, it seems to be a bit smog stained still from its past. Though it has a bit of your usual French style architecture a lot of it seems heavy and a little overworked. It seems a little like, well I wouldn't say Bradford, oops I just did, but I didn’t mean it. 

What I meant to say is that at one time it was a proud place with Civic pride and then the industry moved out and it fell down the pecking order. What all places with this past history is trying to do, is re-invent itself. Bilbao tried it and won. Liverpool copied the idea and failed with the museum of Liverpool that destroyed some of the cities most cherished views.

Roubaix has got a more difficult job. 

There are no cheap flights there is no tourist industry here and, why would you want to go there?

Well they have quietly created a gem a palace of pride in what appears at first drive, a barren wilderness.

And it is wonderful. After the approach that you take to get there and take in the underwhelming façade of La Piscine, what is after all a swimming baths, you get inside and it has everything.

We only had less than two hours but I wish I had a full day. 

I wish I would have been able to eat in the restaurant with its art Deco wrought iron balustrade that was lit with the sunlight that flooded in to the structure, through modernist style sky lights.

Now I have seen a few bits in my time. Sometimes being at a quality antique fair, I have been able to see thousands of items of beauty. You can sometimes see better, stuff, than what’s in most museums, especially if you discount how curators are like pack animals and follow the leader, and buy things that other curators or art journals say are needed.

There are curators who go out on a limb, but rather a lot of them fail, and they cant be allowed to fail because, curators are clever.....aren’t they?

Well this curator who put all this stuff together was clever. It is one surprise after another. Maybe its because the theme is Art Deco and French, but maybe its because they are just bloody good at their job, and have sewn together some magnificent things that are class, and not too pretentious, but have an unassuming sense of style, of what the period that I love has to offer.

We get the term Art Deco as a reworking of the 1925 Exposition Art Decoratif et Industrial in Paris. 

Someone or other, who may have been Bevis Hillier coined it.

This museum is both entertaining and absorbing.

 I sometimes like to think I know a bit but it was a tantalising, tingling of the senses that ensued that left me amazed. Combined with a sunny day, the sense of surprise that left me hunting for more. I was so disapointed when I had to leave, as I was on a work trip and needed to be somewhere else.

I will have to go back. I need to go back.

 Not just for some of the most amazing sculpture in a beautifully polychrome tiled swimming baths interior that was designed to be reflective and I don't mean looking back reflective I mean jewel like.

What it must have been like with water inside and beautiful French ladies in stylish bathing caps inside and around the pool, in its heyday I can only imagine, and I did.

Here it contains works of art by the likes of Paul Jouve, and the sculptor PomPom and my favourite, Rembrandt Bugatti ( the son of the furniture designer and brother of the car maker). These mix with lesser names that make you question what art means. There is a Jan Martel.

Can art, by a artist you have never had pumped up by a writer, be as good as a work by somebody you have never heard of. I know it can. You cant sell a dud to me.

The ceramics section was encompassing, not huge. 

There were ceramic works designed by the amazing French furniture designer Emile Jaques Rhulman for Sevres. 

Along with works by a ceramicist whose work I bought new a couple of years back in Lille, called Amina Roos.

There's the proof that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

There are Picasso ceramics and a huge 8ft high pot that defies the art of firing.

Bit it is the way it all melts together that is the beauty of this place.

 I believe they were going to knock it down one at one time. It is my pleasurethat the did not.

From an age when swimming baths were palaces designed to be an experience just like cinemas and theatres were.

There were so many ceramics on show I have to go back.

 I used a whole memory stick photographing nearly every piece, but I need to go back and have lunch and take my time.

The whole area that houses the paintings would be worth a trip in itself but the experience of the whole is remarkable.

There are temporary exhibitions that are made to be contemporary and to attract people and give the whole experience a contemporary quality.

Who so ever is running this show has class and is not afraid to challenge.

Unlike the people running my local museums they understand that a museum experience should not be designed to resemble a penny arcade with flashing lights, or a creche were people can dump the noisy kids on to people who are studious in their approach to art and may be a little bit more serious than the “I don't know much about art but I know what I like brigade”

If you ever are within a hundred miles of this place, La Piscine in Roubaix Belgium, make sure you detour.
I guarantee you.
 It will be worth it.

 http://www.roubaix-lapiscine.com/

Caravaggio-The Taking of Christ-One of My Favourite Things.

I was going to write about the Caravaggio oil http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/caravaggio-whats-all-fuss-about.html painting that I saw in the Irish national gallery in Dublin.

I have not been able to. I couldn't start writing, mainly because I didn't feel I could express the power of the painting that knocked the stuffing out of me, that rendered me speechless, if only for a quarter of an hour. (that may be a feat in itself)).

I didn’t think I can find those words that I need to highlight the prowess of this work.

I know we have thesaurus to pluck words from, but for me that’s not enough, I don't want to use a dictionary, and I cant find those words that are needed in simple form then I wont.

When you say something is marvellous, well we know what it means, but what happens when it is ten times better, what the bloody hell do I say then.

I don’t need to be clever in what I say, just to portray a meaning.

I don’t have a degree in English literature. Sometimes bleedin' 'ell is good enough to express the power of something that hits you, between the eyes, like a sledge hammer, that stops your breath and causes you involuntary reactions that you cant explain.

Well that's a Caravaggio all right.

I recall those series like 'Civilization' where Mr Clarke the cultured man, eloquently told me, on TV in my living room, about the great masters.

I almost believed him he was so good at it. I don't believe anyone.
You need to have seen a bit to be able to argue a way through a bluff.
Personally I don’t prescribe to Clarke’s waffling through the series especially about Henry Moore. Especially when you know he was being given sculptures by the artist on the cheap, by the sculptor he was waxing lyrical about. I think he got it wrong, and most of his work is no more than a formula.
His wartime underground paintings are rubbish. They sum up nothing other than a man with a bit more talent than most, doodling. Whiling away the hours.

People are usually up there because you are on your knees looking up at them. AA rolling stone gathers moss. One writer carries on where the previous left off, the myth grows. Who will question an art critic who is published?
I always want to question the credibility of any writer, as I find that the people who write about artists couldn’t emulsion a wall if you gave them a 10 inch wallying brush.
I once said to a lady who wanted to write about throwing a pot, “Why don’t you learn to throw one then you can write about it”.
That didn’t go down too well, she argued that you don’t have to be an artisan to understand the emotion of a craft.
I argued that you have to have a certain amount of understanding of skill to be able to talk about it, there are those that do, and those that write about doing it.
You have to have seen a decent amount of art good, bad and Henry Moore, in order to be able to differentiate from what you are being told, and what you should think, what you understand and what you may think, you may understand.

How can you understand emotion, when art bleeds if you haven’t bled yourself?

How can you understand how difficult this is to achieve if you have not got a brush out and give it a go.

Even if you get some way and fail at least you know how hard it is. There are always those who say “I cant do that” and then give up. Others that have to work at it and comes later after a lifetime of study.

And then there is Caravaggio.....genius, pure utter genius.

Its like he was born with a brush, from a womb of paint instead of placenta.
Its as if he knew how to mix it from birth, as if someone has shown him a secret way to see life. Dare I even say he was born to a holy angel who really did sprinkle something over him that nobody else has.
Something that renders all those who come after him a student and all those before arguably irrelevant.
Its not my style, most old masters are stuffy but this paint packs a punch, a Rhapsody in Black with an unbelievable rawness that allows you to have involuntary movements.
That curls your lip and makes you cry, or die, on your feet. For you know that once you have seen, and I only mean, really seen, into the depth of his imagination, nothing will ever be the same again.
I tried not to be embarrassed when I discovered The Taking Of Christ...........there were people all around. Some of them were even watching, waiting for reactions. It is right that you don’t care what anyone thinks that your involuntary spasms mean more to you, that you don’t care. Because you just cant help yourself you have been floored with an uppercut, and it was done with paint and a brush.
This is before you even look, at the picture and the detail and what it is about. This is religious and you know most of the story was made up to kid the silly plebeians that there really was a miracle from two loaves and three fishes and that some disciple didn’t sneak away get the rest of the food to feed the five thousand from a shop down the road, in the town and they sneaked the food into the party.
This sight would even convince me that there was a God and Jesus was his son, and the Jesus was betrayed by Judas....... because Caravaggio was there, and he saw it, and what’s more he took a picture of it, and then copied it down meticulously after the event, and it was just like it was.
Then your mind starts thinking how stupid that would sound if you actually said that.
So how did he get this onto a canvas from a thought, from a story?
Vag must have been so absorbed in the whole world of what he was painting that he must have been near to popping with his blood boiling. He must have been a simmering pot, a pressure cooker. What makes someone take this route? Just what did he take to pump his adrenalin through his veins and make religion believable? Even to non believers such as myself.
The subject, ah, yes the subject. He decided to make it the very moment that Jesus is betrayed as if a war photographer had raised his lens at the very time a bomb had gone off and captured an explosion, in real time.
Vag does it better, with laborious strokes of bristle. It must have taken forever to paint such is the apparent skill. The marvel is, how do you make something explode when it takes so long how can you capture a split second when it takes a year.
How can you sum up the work of a genius that makes you cry, on the spot, and not because of the story but because of the character in the faces, and the shades of reflection, from the lamp, held aloft, that makes a spot on the armour glisten, and then reflects a spot which shows you just how the lamp bounced the light around.......a painting.
I hear Hendrix in my head and then Tubular bells then Choral cantations, throw in a verse or two of some gut wrenching blues, and all the time I hear nothing.
He takes you into a world that you never knew and you are there, you troll the canvas looking for mistakes and it only captivates you more. Then after ten minutes longer you see something that he knew would take ten minutes to see, and then there is more.
When an artist makes flesh tremble it makes mine do the same. Shivers run up the back and karate chop you in the neck, making your head move. You go up close and see the brush strokes, the hand of a master with a indefatigable hand. A hand so strong and yet so delicate as to paint the white spot in the corner of a betrayed eyes, oh and a dot on a quivering hand and I am not even looking right now at a copy, I can remember the picture as if I am looking at it now.
It is singed into my memory I knew he was described by the likes of Clarke as a master but he is more that that, he is a link to another world before camera obscurer and pin hole magic happened. How can you make such raw with ground up pigment from the earth.
Eventually I got up and walked away, I don’t know if that has ever happened to me before certainly never with such intensity of soul.
All the other paintings I looked at seemed tame by comparison. I walked into room of Yeats artwork. He had become the darling of the Dublin-esque, and I laughed.
I had never seen anything that failed so miserably. To compare is not fair, a confidence trickster with a magician. I laughed out loud at the disgrace that had invaded my space. An insult to my senses. But for sure even without the controversy of his life, Caravaggio will only come along once in a century and for fifteen minutes, I met him.


The painting had been lost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taking_of_Christ_(Caravaggio)
 It had been hanging in the Dublin Jesuits dining room for only a few to see and was wrongly attributed as a Dutch Master it was rediscovered in the 1990's and now hangs proudly for all to see.

This is what the NGA says about it(the spelling mistakes are theirs nit mine)  http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/caravbr-2.htm

The painting represents Jesus Christ being captured in the Garden of Gethsemane by soldiers who were led to him by one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot. Tempted by the promise of financial reward, Judas agreed to identify his master by kissing him: "The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him and lead him away safely" (Mark 14:44). Caravaggio focuses on the culminating moment of Judas’ betrayal, as he grasps Christ and delivers his treacherous kiss. Christ accepts his fate with humility, his hands clasped in a gesture of faith, while the soldiers move in to capture him. At the center of the composition, the first soldier’s cold shining armor contrasts with the vulnerability of the defenseless Christ. He offers no resistance, but gives in to his persecutors’ harsh and unjust treatment, his anguish conveyed by his furrowed brow and down-turned eyes. The image would have encouraged viewers to follow Christ’s example, to place forgiveness before revenge, and to engage in spiritual rather than physical combat. Caravaggio presents the scene as if it were a frozen moment, to which the over-crowded composition and violent gestures contribute dramatic impact. This is further intensified by the strong lighting, which focuses attention on the expressions of the foreground figures. The contrasting faces of Jesus and Judas, both placed against the blood-red drapery in the background, imbue the painting with great psychological depth. Likewise, the terrorized expression and gesture of the fleeing man, perhaps another of Christ’s disciples, convey the emotional intensity of the moment. The man carrying the lantern at the extreme right, who looks inquisitively over the soldiers’ heads, has been interpreted as a self-portrait.

On a dark dank Dublin day, the day I discovered Caravaggio, the day I came face on to a genius.