Aldeburgh on the east Suffolk coast is at its best before 10 am on a Sunday morning, especially in winter. Only a few people dodder along the near-deserted main street, and Crag Path, the parallel road along the sea front, is almost completely devoid of the holiday makers who so often make one wince by their insistence, whatever the weather, on wearing shorts just because they are on holiday beside the sea.

Yesterday, 24 January, there were no inappropriate shorts because there were indeed few legs to wear them. Just as well, for it was icy cold after a hard frost in the early hours. A curious phenomenon was the result: the vast expanse of deserted, pebble beach, normally ochreous brown, was thinly white, as this photograph rather inadequately tries to show:

 

The whiteish cover on the grass in the foreground gives the explanation: it is frost, and it is frost which had given the whole beach this very thin, superficial white covering. Perhaps this happens frequently at Aldeburgh; I don’t know, but the presence of frost all over the beach right beside the salty sea seemed in general to be sufficiently interesting to be worth a few pixels.

More characteristic of the place is the way sky and sea visually merge in a layering of greys and pale blues. Personally I just love the image of those pulled-up, overwintering boats with no-one around them. Indeed, there was no-one on the beach, in shorts or otherwise.

A critical reader may well find it odd that I should chose only two ‘momentous moments’ last week, and/or that I should choose the two I did. So I’ll just indicate that I am well aware at least two other such events occurred last week too. Perhaps the most significant of all was the taking of the Capitol in Washington, DC, by a rioting mob of Presidential supporters, egged on by the President himself. That one could sit here in England and watch this taking place live on TV gave the event an immediacy similar to such as the air attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on 9/11 and several terrorist incidents in France in recent years.

Though Test match cricket is of a rather different order of activity, a similar buzz of authenticity has been provided for the keenest of followers by streaming on BT of live action of not one but two overlapping Test matches from the other side of the world: New Zealand v Pakistan and Australia v India. I have spent far too many hours watching both, though not quite simultaneously, over the last week. I think it just fantastic that I can do this.

The other event was over several days rather than just a moment; and it will continue. I refer to the first practical consequences on the ground of Brexit: lorries having difficulties in passing through Dover in both directions as new regulations and much more paperwork came into play. That lorry drivers should have their sandwiches confiscated at the Hook of Holland by the Dutch customs because meat and animal products from the UK are not easily allowed into the EU makes its own quite sad commentary on a situation which should never have been allowed to develop.

But where is the art commentary in all this? Where is the artist? Good questions. In the first place, there is (almost) no art on exhibition, though of course galleries and art institutions like the RA provide a stream of material on-line – interesting in its own way but not really a satisfactory substitute for actual paintings. Secondly, I’m not painting or arting in any other way at the moment. I’m not sure whether I’ll restart any time soon because, following the destruction of most of my ‘exhibition paintings’ 2 months ago, there seems little point in spending time painting more. I am indeed de-motivated big-time!

Here are four works that are no more:

 

 

Perhaps it’s just as well.

I came to realise how poor many of my paintings were as I took several hundred quick decisions as to whether or not to throw a picture in the back of the lorry. Most went in the lorry. The world has certainly not lost a significant part of its artistic heritage, even if my psyche is a bit dented and my paint brush still.

Difficult to believe that nine days of 2021 have already passed, making the point that unless I improve my blog-discipline I am not going to be writing here regularly and often. Those nine days have seen two momentous events, respectively at personal and then national level.

After re-assurances, acquired with some difficulty on the fourth of January, that second doses of the Pfizer anti-Covid vaccine would indeed be administered despite Government instructions to the contrary, as an 80+-year-old I duly reported on 5 January to the Health Centre in North Islington where I hade received my first dose on 15th December. Clearly much had been learnt about how to organize mass vaccinations from that first event and this time there were no queues and no waiting inside. I sailed in without any trouble, despite being half an hour early, received my jab, was asked to wait for 15 minutes to see if I felt alright, and then left. There have indeed been no adverse effects at all as far as I know. So I am now one of the first, and still one of the relatively few, people in the UK to have the full Pfizer vaccination and therefore to be well on my way to becoming 90% Covid-immune by about 20th January. This is clearly a matter of not inconsiderable interest to me and I am so lucky to be such an early recipient of this miracle of modern medical science. Let’s hope it works for some time and that meanwhile the disease does not mutate into something which bypasses my particular vaccine.

The national event was on the same day as my jab, officially starting at one minute past midnight on the 5th. England was put into lockdown for the third time in a year, with everyone urged to stay at home (legally required to stay at home when the necessary legislation was passed on the 6th) except for essential purposes. In effect the country was closed down, including schools. This was because the rate of infection (and deaths) was rising so fast, first in London and the south east and then throughout the country. It continues to rise as I write, with infections and deaths now logging in at c30,000 and 1000+ per day respectively. The NHS is on the point of being overwhelmed, a ‘major incident’ has been declared in London, and the pandemic is clearly out of control.

What a contrast to such grimness today has been: after a severe frost, a cloudless day of continuous sunshine with no wind. We attended to the NT flock of rare breed sheep (like the one above), now on grass-rich but very wet fields some 10 miles away; the sheep were just thawing out, and were still grazing intently at 11 o’clock by which time they are normally well into their rumination. Clearly the grass had been too frosty to nibble earlier. We then drove cross-country to Orford for Pump Street refreshment. How splendid was the coffee, drunk sitting in the sun on the stone bench outside the church porch; how equally splendid was more coffee drunk sitting in the glorious sunshine on the quay jutting into the River Ore and overlooking Orford Ness. The quay never disappoints but today its quiet beauty was tinged with a poignancy at the thought of the really serious situation inland.

If I can just get this published before midnight, I’ll have logged in the first day of 2021 50% of what I managed to publish in the whole of 2020. I still don’t really understand last year and on the whole think that perhaps I was more adversely affected by Covid-19 than I realised. Still, my main objective last year – NOT catching the disease – must continue to be my priority in this new year. In one sense, that is not too difficult a task provided I can live on my own in my own house; whole days go by without me meeting, speaking to or even seeing another person. But I do have to venture out occasionally, mainly for food but also for medical reasons, and once a week nowadays, to check out the NT sheep. At the moment, for example, I am scheduled to go up to London for my second anti-covid jab next Tuesday but, as the year begins with uncertainty just like 2020, yet another change in Government policy means that I now don’t know whether to go or not. I’ll have to find out on Monday. Nor am I sure, for the same reason, whether or not either or both of my grandchildren will be returning to school next week. Uncertainty rules.

That certainly applies in many other fields, particularly in some close to my interests. Sports are not doing at all well.  When are art galleries and art exhibitions going to be open again? – we don’t know. Personally, the near-complete absence of art exhibitions for nearly a year has been my loss most keenly felt. I visited three in fact, all carefully booked in advance and very properly socially-distanced. One was at a new venue just outside the village of Rendham, and very good it was too. Two were at White House Farm, Glemham, about which I have written much in happier times. The second visit, just the other week before Xmas, was of a very high standard and a joy to see, not only for the artistic quality but also for being almost completely on one’s own. That is one big plus for the exhibition goer in present circumstances: being able to experience the event in the company of only one or two other people.

It’s the same going to a music concert: the great concert hall at Snape Maltings which seats 850 people looks very strange indeed when ‘sold out’ means that but 80 people are carefully scattered through it as singles, couples and groups of three or four. For those lucky enough to be one of the 80, the experience is enhanced by not being crowded, making it easier to arrive and leave, and by a somewhat sharper acoustic in a hall famed for its acoustics. It is so sad that, after valiant and successful efforts to keep something going at the Maltings throughout the autumn, all there is currently closed under new government restrictions as the infection rate rises rapidly in Suffolk.

Today presents us with another challenge: how to cope now that, as from today, politically we are not part of Europe. One answer involves the next few days and weeks, concerning in particular the passage (or otherwise) of goods between the UK and Europe. Another answer concerns the longer term. That we have such questions I personally find very sad; so here is a morose photograph of a familiar view, south along the sea wall towards the Martello tower at Aldeburgh. It was taken on Boxing Day, a week ago. The blue line has been newly repainted but the painting I made of this view some years ago was destroyed in 2020.

 

 

 

 

I write on the fourth last day of 2020. Why on earth have I allowed six months to pass since I started to draft, and failed to get going with, my last draft? And why did I allow five months to pass before that without a word on this web site? I don’t know is the answer, but I don’t think an answer lies in one reason.

2020 has been a very strange year, as anybody who has lived through it knows only too well; and undoubtedly the pandemic of a killer disease called Coronovirus or Covid 19 has contributed to my silence. But before the virus struck and forced England into lock-down in mid-March, I had lost interest in both painting and writing – almost as if I was struck by my own anticipation of what was to come. In fact, I was aware of the existence of the disease in January but only watched too casually, and then with growing concern, as it spread across Asia and then raced into and through Europe. But even when it laid low first Italy and then Spain it was difficult for me to grasp the reality that it was going to invade the UK too. Yet, after an anxious nine months, I was among the first of the over-80s to receive an anti-covid 19 vaccination on the very first day, 15 December, that saw the beginning of the huge project eventually to immunise the whole of the population. I just wish my jab could have been given to someone – a nurse, doctor or bus-driver – out there on the pandemic front-line. My jab is supposed to have given me 60% immunity to infection (a second dose follows in January) but perhaps it has also given me the spur to start writing again. I painted on Boxing Day and certainly feel more lively in being a lucky recipient of the results of a modern medical miracle.

A more pragmatic reason for my five and then six lost months of activity on this page was solely practical. I ran into technical problems and, despite the best efforts of my friend and web-manager, Bob Foyers, and after wasting hours and hours of technically illiterate time, failed to reconnect with my webpage; so I gave up in July, until today. Meanwhile, I have painted nothing but wrote a short novel for children during the dog-days of August. The two big events of this autumn were that my studio was invaded by vermin which made it unusable, as it still is even though we have got rid of the rats and mice. The animals made such a mess of the store of paintings in the roof space that the bulk of my oeuvre, accumulated over 15 years, had to be destroyed; so, in two truck loads, I lost nearly all my framed and glazed paintings and those on stretched canvas: over 200 of them. Here’s the first load about to begin its journey to destruction:

 

 

 

 

We’ve just come back from a remarkable dramatic occasion: the Winter Solstice Play performed by the Rendham Mummers. Rendham is a village just a few miles inland from Snape. At each solstice, winter and summer twice a year, the Mummers perform a new ‘play’ on one evening only.

Tonight’s was called ‘Death Stole the Sun’. It began at 7.30 pm so was performed in the dark which led to quite dramatic effects:

This photograph shows the ‘stage’, a grassy knoll about 15m across between a splendid tree, greenly under-lit, and three arcs of straw bales on which sat an enthusiastic, participatory audience of the ‘hiss-boo-and look behind you’ variety. To the left was a square red tent housing the 5-person band in which a drum, a recorder and a guitar were prominent. The violin seemed to be largely decorative. They may have played some Telemann and the like but I only recognised the James Bond tunes.

Between tree and tent was a curtain, used to dramatic effect when it fell away to reveal three ‘Essex girls’ called Tracy, Maisy and Daisy (I think). Right of the tree was a narrow ridge tent used for unmentionable goings on of an explicitly sexual nature. Centre front of the picture is the Master of Ceremonies with the script – one suspects the only copy – whose main job turned out to be not so much telling the audience what was about to happen as prompting the cast what to say and when. Behind him are various members of that cast including, to his right, the three ‘Essex girls.’

Those girls may not have featured in a genuine medieval mystery play but here the rest of the dramatis personae were drawn from that tradition. We had a splendidly acted pair of the Grim Reaper and Death; the latter turned out to be the missing son after he himself had been deaded by a cannon ball shot with an excellent flash and bang from a toy cannon:

The scaffolding tower behind Death’s left shoulder was necessary to provide the platform from which the Archangel Gabriel descended. This she did to great effect but far too early in the play, most of which she spent suspended rather awkwardly and inarticulate over the front of the band tent. This unfortunately put her slightly higher than the Earth Mother who, to signal clearly just how top she was meant to be, lounged nearby in an easy chair on top of a kitchen table.

Another prominent character was an oak tree alias the Green Man with flaming branches coming out of his head above a cloak of leaves falling to the ground:

Unfortunately, he was relieved of his manhood which in turn necessitated the ‘Essex Girls’ giving up their large bottle of Viagra  to help achieve a miracle fertilisation which in the end proved unnecessary since Death was the missing son anyway. The plot did get somewhat tortuous and fragmented towards the end, but that didn’t matter since everybody was just waiting for it to finish so that they could process behind the cast with flaming torches down the hill to the pub:

Before finishing my critique of the ‘new’ Sutton Hoo, I would like to insert a few notes about a selection from the many other events I have been to and things I have seen during an autumn dominated in terms of time by looking after some of the Rare Breed sheep from the National Trust’s flock whose summer home is on Orford Ness. The Ness has been flooded for several weeks now and for a time we took some of the refugees rescued from it. All are now off the Ness and parts of the flock are distributed over several places in Suffolk and Essex, including Snape Warren where we perform our twice-daily duties.

Above right, part of our reduced flock of 20 (3 Manx, 6 White-faced Woodlands, 11 Hebrideans, in the background), led by, above left, Jesus and her two lambs; and, below, Woodlands being selected by Andrew the NT shepherd for removal to pastures new.

It is a delight and a privilege to be working with these lovely creatures, but they do take up a lot of time, particularly relative to the limited daylight hours at this time of year. Still, keying this on the eve of the Winter Solstice, what a invigorating thought it is that from tomorrow the days will be getting longer.

Talking of Winter Solstice, I repeated my mistake of recent years of putting a couple of paintings into The Cut’s open exhibition at Halesworth, now open and exhibiting until Saturday, 11 January. My main painting is called ‘Black Winter Solstice’, an overtly gloomy work expressing my own gloomy  state of mind in the autumn of 2019:

Above top: ‘Black Winter Solstice’ hanging to the left of the window in The Cut, December, 2019; below, the same in better lighting.

My other painting is an older one not previously shown at The Cut: ‘Slashed Red’, an abstract collage which was great fun to make and which is full of painterly innuendo:

Partly because it is unlikely that either will sell, it should perhaps be recorded that recently two of my other paintings have found a new owner:

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They make a contrast: on the left, a small. impressionistic but figurative version of the view from the bridge of the quayside at Snape Maltings at low tide; and, on the right, a geometric abstract created in Michael Horn’s studio three or four years ago.

And looking at that quayside reminds me that I’ve had several more looks at the ‘ship art’ etched into the fabric of St Bartholomew’s church, Orford. I noticed on my favourite column between the nave and the north aisle a rather prominent fish:

I suspect that image may well have been unconsciously in my mind when I found myself doodling on a photograph in the travel section of a newspaper:

 

Anyway, about 180 degrees round the column from the Orford fish, I almost convinced myself that, among a palimpsest of scratches, I’d found not just a new ship but two ships, one etched on top of the other:

If you accept the two vertical lines as the two main masts of two different ships, two prows of two different ships, one on top of the other, emerge from the linear complexity below. I’ll see if I can take a better photograph on my next visit. Meanwhile, to remind us of what an unambiguous ship looks like, here is a new photograph of an image which has already appeared in these pages:

And lo and behold, even this well-known image now, under good cross-light, appears to consist of a round-bottomed boat cutting across a flat-bottomed one. Orford never fails to give: I went from the church down to the quay and was just in time to catch the lower parts of a double rainbow shimmering and then fading over Orford Ness:

The third vertical on the right is the, rather surprisingly still standing, lighthouse on the far side of the Ness.