Category Archives: Autobiographical

Mostly autobiographical but with occasional comment on life today

Doing the Peculiar

We shall stand and sing the hymn about our paintings.” Everyone stands as the organ begins the introduction to the tune. They sing lustily, tunefully, and with feeling. What do they sing, though? You might well ask. In fact, I asked much the same question myself when I was asked to write it.

You may remember that, recently, I dealt with being asked to write a hymn about water and to deliver in little more than seven days. That was tricky, but it was chickenfeed compared with being asked to write one about pictures- even though I was given a couple of months to produce it.

These pictures were wall and ceiling paintings in a church – the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Enfield, Middlesex. They were glorious paintings and they had just been restored. But – a hymn? What on earth do I write? ‘What lovely paintings!’? Or perhaps ‘I say, just look at those paintings’? Imagine a congregation (and choirboys) trying not to giggle.

I sweated over it. I lost sleep over it. I could see that a congregation could give thanks for the paintings. In the one hundred years they’d been there they had darkened with dust and grime; now, cleaned and restored, they shone in their original brilliance of colour and texture. That was why they wanted a hymn to sing on the day of the Centenary commemoration. A long hymn, I was told, would be most satisfactory because it would be sung at the start of the service as the clergy and Choir processed from the West door up to the Chancel. So, a long hymn about pictures. Great.

As a change from panicking I sat down and thought a bit. Those paintings were superb pieces of work. To have a professional artist – possibly more than one – to cover walls and ceiling must have cost a lot. The restoration would have been expensive, too. The money was raised by the congregation. There must have been those who could barely afford what they gave. Sacrifice. That was something that could be mentioned in a hymn. What did the pictures show? Illustrations of the Bible stories. They’d been up there for a hundred years and something had to be done to clean them. Ah! A bit like us, I thought. We get spiritually grimy after a while and we need a spiritual bath – confession of wrongdoings to the one we worship. That would be something else I could use.

The ideas began to come. I had to re-write and re-write before it made sense as well as being singable, with a natural rhythm to the phrases. In other words: a good hymn. What was the result? You can see the restored paintings and read the hymn here.

Sir John Betjeman

Back in 1982 I decided I just had to meet John Betjeman. I wondered how I might achieve this. Then I discovered that Lady Penelope was giving one of her lectures on Hindu temples at Lacock Abbey. It seemed the perfect opportunity. So I went, and took with me a small gift for him – a recently-published book of mine – the first ever – entitled A Victorian View of Old England, a compilation of Victorian text and engravings of English scenes.

Penelope finished her talk, and I approached her. She was surrounded by a chattering group, happily answering questions in her high, clear and faintly edgy voice. I greeted her, handed her the book and asked if she would be kind enough to give it to Sir John with my compliments. ‘Oh, he’ll like that. Thank you,’ she smiled. I said it would be lovely to meet him one day. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘But you MUSTN’T STAY MORE THAN TEN MINUTES. D’you understand?’ Capitals were her way of stressing phrases in her letters and it seems only right to use them when quoting her. I reassured her and said ten minutes would be fine. She pulled out a small notebook and wrote in it. ‘I’ll arrange a meeting for you with his secretary.’ A day or two later she rang me to tell me to go to No 29 Radnor Walk. Could I manage August 19th? Somewhere round about 11.30? I most certainly could.

Why I didn’t discover Betjeman’s poetry before I was forty I can’t imagine. But when I did it came as a revelation. In his free use of strict scansion and rhyme his disregard for the lofty poetry-world critics was made clear. And his discovery of the funny in the obscure, his trick of capturing the extraordinary within the ordinary, his skill in communicating all this, made him stand alone. From that day onwards I blatantly imitated his style.

On August 19, 1982, I took a day’s holiday. My early feelings of inadequacy and my father’s ready confirmation of it came to me as I rang the doorbell of No 29 Radnor Walk. Little old me, going into the home of the Poet Laureate, now into the hallway, now into the small front room, seeing him sitting there in an easy chair, turning his head stiffly towards me. The three full-blown strokes he had suffered and advancing Parkinson’s made it difficult for him to smile.

We talked and talked and drank champagne. After half an hour or so his then secretary, Liz Moore, had to go out for ten minutes. She asked me if I would mind looking after him. The moment after she left, the phone rang. I reached for the phone, and in doing so knocked my glass of Champagne – the best Moët – on to the floor and saw it soaking the carpet. As I finished taking the message and was ringing off I caught sight of him looking across at me, eyes alight with boyish merriment.

‘Just help yourself to more,’ he said. ‘Oh, this is fun!’ He knew how to make idiots happy.

A couple on minutes later the phone rang again. It was one of the papers. What was Sir John’s reaction upon hearing that Naseby Field, the scene of the Battle of Naseby, was to have a road built through it? He thought for a moment.

‘Tell them it’s like cutting a man in half,’ he said. Then, after a pause and raising a hand – ‘Alive!’

And he sat thinking about it. I wrote a poem later, describing his gloom at that moment. John Murray once said that John was never gloomy. ‘Melancholic, yes. Never gloomy.’ It’s a nice distinction, but Jock should know, having been his publisher since 1937. Perhaps the two of them have discussed it by now, up there in some sunlit heavenly chapel.

John looked up, and pointed. He said someone had given him a painting. He was pointing to where it lay, still rolled up, and asked me to look at it. ‘What kind of mount d’you think it ought to have?’ he asked. It was of a tree, an apple tree. As I looked at it I found myself feeling somehow ‘inside’ the picture – a trick of the over-excited mind, I suppose. I told him how I felt it should look.

After unwittingly breaking Penelope’s rule by an hour and a quarter I asked him if I might just take a picture of him, with Archibald and Jumbo on his lap. Jumbo was his elephant, whom he had relegated to Number Two in his affections. He agreed instantly so Liz Moore went upstairs to his room to get them. When he had them on his lap I snapped away nervously. After I’d finished he sat looking at Archibald, his bear, murmuring, ‘Archie, Archie. You’re alive. I know you’re alive. You must be alive.’

Liz said, ‘Time to go, Sir John.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, I have to go and have lunch with Ozzy.’

‘That’s Osbert Lancaster,’ said Liz. She left the room and returned, bringing in his wheelchair. ‘Now, would you give me a hand?’ She showed me how to lift him, and I took hold of Archibald and Jumbo, laid them aside, put one arm round him and one underneath him and together we lifted him into his wheelchair.

On the way back to Sloane Square Station I felt a little lightheaded, almost as though I were floating above the pavement. I stopped at a little restaurant and had a cup of tea and a bun. The only table with an empty chair was occupied by a mother and her small son in his school uniform. He was being treated to a cream tea. I asked if she would mind if I sat there and she smiled her consent, with some pleasantry or other.

Still slightly intoxicated, more by the miracle I had just experienced than the plentiful Champagne, I sat down, beamed at them and said, ‘I’ve just been to see John Betjeman.’

The Barnato Bentley

My gesticulating here was probably to assert myself on matters of extreme importance. After all, I was the key man of the occasion and I was jolly well going to make the most of it. Art Directors have trouble in becoming famous. Nobody knows what they do. Nobody cares. But now, here on the premises of Kodak Limited (my employer) where the company’s advertising and promotions work was done, I had absolute responsibility for the safety and reputation of nothing less than the world-famous Barnato Bentley.

I knew nothing about racing and very little about cars. I knew how to blow up the tyres on my Morris 8 but that was about all. I simply understood that millions round the world found racing cars fascinating. So it was ideal choice as the eye-catcher for the product being advertised.

And the man who owned this Bentley was a friend. I got on the phone and told him about my idea. Bless the man, he agreed to hire it out to us for photography. I’d had a word with the company Maintenance Manager and told him I would need the employees’ cycle sheds as the background setting. He stroked his chin, and said OK. Props were obtained, the car was delivered, the picture was made and the ad appeared in the appropriate scientific and photographic press.

I became no better-known, received no prizes and settled for being grateful to have the job of art-directing. (I need hardly say that the Assistant’s grab-shot above bears no relation to the finished 1970s ad.)

How’s the back?

A boy fishes at the scene of our suffering

ONE GLORIOUS morning on the spectacular island of Mahe the photographer, John Garrett, was dressing. Ridiculously early, I strolled along the silver sand before starting work and had the idea of paddling a little. Nothing brave, mind you, like letting the water come above my ankles.

I took off my socks and let a small bubbling wavelet sweep over my toes, and back again. I went a little further out. I was up to my ankles, now, and confident. I walked, and swished the water a little. It was pleasantly warm - seductive, really. I pondered on the subject of mermaids.

This spell was broken when I trod on an upturned, broken beer bottle. The water swilling round my foot was red. Without howling (mermaids love that sort of thing) I walked, rigidly casual, up the beach to my hut. John was pulling on his socks. He spotted me and asked if I was OK – I seemed to be limping. I reassured him that I had only trodden on a broken bottle and would just put a handkerchief round it. But he became assertive and I ended up in hospital with needles being thrust into me and smiling tanned faces explaining that tetanus was a nasty thing to have.

The following morning I got up at the normal time and dressed and wondered why John hadn’t appeared. He was usually up before me, cleaning his lenses and fiddling with light metres and things. I stopped outside his hut and called. A groan came from within. I investigated. He was flat on his back.

‘Paul, I’ve done my back in,’ he growled. ‘Sprain. Nothing much. Be up in a minute. How’s the foot?’

After a few days of hobbling along, he wincing at back pains and I with foot pains, we both improved. Both foot and back grew more reasonable and work continued. But we developed a morning greeting. ‘How’s the foot?’ he would say. ‘How’s the back?’ I would reply. We made a happy couple.

I was moved to write this because, three days ago, I sprained my back. Standing and lying down are the only really comfortable positions. Sitting is OK for half an hour, but no longer. And getting up from the chair is sheer hell, with hot darts being thrown exactly at the spot where it hurts most. The days seem much longer.

And now I need the loo and I have to get out of this chair.

Pictures, not snaps: 2

Turn your snaps into pictures: 2

Be selective

O ne of the most common faults in snapshotting is – what? Clutter. In front of me there was a lot more than I included in the picture. More silhouetted trees, a house, a winding path across the foreground, two figures, walking.

Suppose I had included them all. The beauty of the tree would have been lost. Don’t clutter your snap with unnecessary things. Isolate the thing that caught your attention in the first place.

Turn the snap into a picture.

Musings

by Paul Wigmore