Of more recent times...

Nowadays I'm not as busy as I was.  In fact more often than not I'm hardly pushed at all!  When we can, other obligations., funding etc., we try to get away.  Over the past few years we've been fortunate to obtain residency opportunities in both Cornwall and Shetland that have enabled us to spend time in these wonderful locations for artists whose work still depends on stimuli from such experiences.  Here I'm using the phone camera to capture something of the Cornish coast in a very benign winter evening.  The Cornish trip was especially good.  It took place right on the tip of Cape Cornwall, for most of history believed to be the most westerly point of the county, only to be superseded by Lands End when 'proper' measurement came along.  But Lands End has been privatised, with all the consequent degradation we might expect.  The Cape, saved for the nation through the good works of Heinz (our beans and soups contributing), is only a few miles north but a world away from the commercialised nightmare of the 'End'.

It's a great place to sit and think but also to make work, like the painting above, that I've titled Priests Cove.  As so often with my paintings anyone looking for a representational view will be disappointed  but I like to think that I capture something of the spirit of the place.

  

Skule's Out

In the spirit of de-cluttering my life (and making it easier to sort out at its end!) I'm junking a lot of stuff.  Amongst my papers are a clutch of essays written on the PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate of Education) course I took in 1975/6.  In amongst the scribble nestled this photograph of a display I made on my teaching placement at Frank F. Harrison school on the Beechdale estate in Walsall.  Looking back over the essays (and the feedback) it seems I was a deal more authoritarian back then, certainly more opinionated and rather less competent and talented than I suspect I imagined!

My tutor on the course, the wonderful Arthur Hughes, showed great forbearance as well as warmth to me, despite my appalling attendance record (I blagged off many lectures etc., relying on my wife Sue's notes, to go to my studio overlooking the Gas St. Basin).  Perhaps as a consequence I bumped along getting mainly 'b''s for my essays.  Reviewing them the assessments are very generous.

Just for fun I attach the blurb for the course...

More on the Speedway

The Speedway at Exeter was a real passion for several years (see earlier post).  I was also an avid collector of the Speedway Star & Post, a regular magazine covering the sport.  Here are the back pages for each of seasons 63, 64, 65 and 66 when the Falcons were featured.

Of course being very young I didn't understand the economics of the 'game' so when Jimmy Squibb arrived for season 64 I was made up.  With Len Silver our captain and rapidly improving Alan Cowland we must be set for success.  Little did I know - that Squibb had been drafted in to replace Silver (off to Hackney)...my annoyance is plain to see above!

A year later and I was at it again - this time obliterating poor Tim Bungay though Cliff Cox seemed a decent replacement, both good riders but not in the same class as Len.

To emphasise the dangerous nature of this sport one of the new team members above was Jack Geran, an Australian rider of considerable experience and seen below in a pit side portrait with fellow aussie Neil Street on the cover of the magazine.

Sadly Jack died in a pretty ghastly crash at the track later that year.  An annual competition was instigated after it.  Alongside many other (and happier) memories was the arrival of exotic teams from behind the 'Iron Curtain'.  Difficult though it is to recall now but back then Poles and Russians excited much interest.  I was especially a fan (following his appearance at the County Ground) of Andrej Pogorselski seen here

so much so I bought a rosette to support him in the World Individual Riders Championship later in that year.

A little later on when the USSR arrived I transferred my support to Gab Kadirov (who I now think was Gabdrakhman Kadyrov, six time winner of the Ice Speedway World Championships).

Not least as he gave me a glove as a souvenir in the pits and taught me how to say thank you in russian (it sounds like bloguverda...ish!)