Ice Melt, oil painting, 8” x 8”

‘Ice Melt’

 As I get older I find myself getting much more nostalgic and enjoying reminiscing. Whilst working on  this oil painting in the studio I found myself remembering when I was a tiny tot way back in the long,  hard winter of 1963.

I was in the infant class and each day for weeks we faced a long trek through the snow to school and back. The snow went way over the top of my wellington boots so they never seemed to dry out before the next time I had to wear them. My legs were permanently chapped, but that snow was so beautiful, and such fun to play in, we children hardly seemed to notice all the discomfort of permanently soggy wellies and gloves!

If I was lucky one of our teachers, who lived near me, would give me a ride home after school in her bubble car. I don’t think bubble cars were really designed to drive on snow and ice, but I would squeeze into that tine car with Mrs B and all her teacher’s paraphernalia and we would very slowly make our slippery way from one end of the village to the next. It very probably would have been safer to make the one mile journey on foot through the thick snow, but I can’t tell you what fun it was, sliding gracefully and slightly sideways, on the icy road, whilst somehow avoiding all the snowdrifts which were built up on both sides - it felt like a slow motion version of the Cresta Run!

Once safely back at home Mum gave my sister and I hot drinks to thaw us out and we settled down to toast cooked in front of the blazing fire in the tiny front room, which was wonderfully cosy on a cold winter’s afternoon. There is really nothing quite like the taste of a piece of bread which has been placed on a toasting fork and presented to the flames until it browns, and then buttered liberally and eaten hot. 

It was a hard winter and must have been so hard for the adults, but for us children it was quite magical.

This painting will be on display as part of an exhibition at West Ox Arts Gallery in Bampton, Oxfordshire, from 9th November to 23rd  December.

RUSSETS 6” x 6” oil on board

Our neighbours’ Russet apple tree looked lovely in the early morning light and I couldn’t resist doing a little oil study of it. Our family have a fondness for that Russet tree, which grows right by our garden fence . . .when our boys were little (they’re grown men now), our lovely neighbours told them they could scrump ‘our’ side of the tree whenever they wanted (how our boys loved our neighbours who, with great patience, would also return stray footballs etc and pass other treats over the fence!)
 

Now it’s Boo dog who goes apple scrumping and eats all the windfalls as they drop on our garden path. If you hear me bellowing, “Boo, drop it!!” at this time of year, it will probably be because he is wolfing down his third apple of the day! 🍏🍏🍏🐶

Sweet Peas 6” x 8” oil on board

There was so much to enjoy on my walk with Boo today, but the highlight for me was the noisy little housemartin family that had made its nest under the school roof. It was the sound of the noisy youngsters, obviously more than ready for some lunch, that first stopped me in my tracks, and then I watched as one of the parents kept flying back and forth with tasty goodies for them. Boo waited so patiently as I watched the parent bird darting in and out from under the roof, with his children never letting up in their demands for more food. I couldn’t see them in the nest but they must be getting quite big and like hungry teenagers by now. 

When I got home I picked a bunch of sweet peas to put on the mantle piece - amazingly, the strong winds and fierce rainstorms of the weekend hadn’t done any damage to them  and they were still beautiful (unlike our poor, battered geraniums). Once I’d brought them into the house and put them in the little glass vase I couldn’t resist painting them.

Sweet peas have always been a favourite flower of mine and hold lovely memories for me. My Dad grew wonderful long rows of sweet peas every year, and when they were flowering Mum would let me take a bunch to school each week to give to my headmaster’s wife. My headmaster at the junior school was extremely strict, and in all honesty as a little child in the infant class I was quite scared of him - but his wife was very kind and gentle, and I was very fond of her. 

We had a school savings club which she was in charge of, so each week I would take the half of my pocket money that hadn’t been spent on sweets to school and deposit it in the savings club, and each week while they were in flower, I would take a bunch of sweet peas with me too. Dad must have had such green fingers because I seem to remember taking these little bunches of flowers for that lovely lady for weeks on end throughout the summer. 🌸