A to Z 2025 – Signwriting and Squidgy Things…

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

This sign remains one of my favourites from my pre-Ireland signwriting days. It was the first pub sign that I ever got to do because most pubs were tied to breweries who employed their own in-house signwriters. But in the year before I moved to Ireland, the government broke the monopoly of breweries and forced them to sell off some as “Free Houses”. “The Overdraught ” was a pun on the new owner’s means of financing his purchase so I followed suit by showing an overflowing pint of beer in front of the Bank of England! Pictorial pub signs hark back to the days when many people couldn’t read and relied on the pictures…

Signwriting was not a considered choice – the first piece of sign-like lettering I did was to paint my late sister Carol’s,name on a steamer trunk left over from our voyage to Australia in 1968. Carol was mad into all things canal, so I painted a shadow block lettering such as you see on English narrow-boats. Then I asked, on the spur of the moment, whether an antique shop opening just around the corner from me would like a sign – English readers may laugh when I tell them it was called Acorn Antiques (a comedy sketch in Victoria Wood’s iconic comedy show). A wholefood shop in Brixton followed and when I moved to St. Albans to live with Barbara, it became my living as a jobbing signwriter.

A St. Albans shop, if my memory serves me correctly, where I painted both the fascia board sign, and the window panels…

Signwriters or Signpainters can be separated from ordinary painters because they hold their long-bristled brushes perpendicular to their work. Halfway through their apprenticeships, they would divide into signwriters and poster writers – those indian ink on fluorescent paper, posters, typically seen outside churches back in the day… An old signwriter told me that when he was apprenticed, he spent a year before even touching a paying customer’s work. Each day they would practise writing letters on a gloss board, only to clean them off after the end of day’s inspection – he said they spent a whole month just practising “S’s”. Perhaps I was destined to become a signwriter for my only memory of a unique interaction with my Grandad (the one who was unable to become a teacher after WW1), was that he looked over some lines of “S’s” I was practising and said ” The halves should be equal top and bottom!” to which I replied, challengingly “No! You can have them differently if you want to!”

I became a signwriter at a crucial time for the profession, computer-cut vinyl and pespex lettering were on the rise and signwriters had been challenged by the rise too, of the graphic designer. When I worked at the Greater London Council as the office junior in the Graphic design section, if we wanted a fancy headline font, we could use Letraset. For those too young to remember Letraset, you took a sheet of lettering mounted/printed on the back of a sheet of plastic, placed the lettering where you wanted it on your artwork and then burnished the sheet, until, when lifted, the letter was left behind – transferred to the artwork. But here’s the rub – in the days of lead letterpress printing, the minimum spacing of letters was governed by the solid block of lead – you could increase the space (kerning) by inserting spacers but the minimum was a given. Now, with Letraset, and later, graphic programmes which anyone could use on a PC, you could, if you wanted, even overlap letters and Letraset blossomed into a myriad of exotic letters, many of which were a nightmare for signwriters to paint if instructed to by a client who had previously gone to a graphic designer for a “design”. Now signwriters, for the most part, used to have tree basic styles, Serif, Sans-serif and Script – everything else was just the use of different bolding, spacing and arranging of letters in straight lines, diagonal lines of even curved lines. Of course there was the fancy stuff you see at fairgrounds, on canal boats and on high end shops, but for the workaday sign, the options were limited for time and cost reasons, so these new demands on their skill were a nightmare which was only really resolved as computerised sign making took over from hand painting.

A page from a late Letraset Catalogue, 1995/96, far after the heyday in the 70’s when I started in graphic design but illustrating the diverse styles which signwriters wer now, routinely expected to use.

So signwriting meant drawing the sign out on a fullsize piece of paper, poincing (with a toothed wheel similar to that used by pattern-cutters in tailoring , but much finer) taping the design to the painted board (tricky on a shop fascia on a windy day) and then rubbing a bag (old sock) full of powder across the pounced letters so that when the paper was removed, the outline of the letters was left in faint dotted lines of powder. As yo used your brushes to paint the letters, the powder would disappear into the paint or be able to wiped off when the paint was dry. That same old signwriter said the only real difference in practice from his early days, was the use of masking tape – not the whit tape used by painters and decorators, but red, transparent “Litho Tape” a crossover from the print industry – it could make neat edges top and bottom or even follow a curved line. Previous to tape, signwriters had to rely on the squareness of their “Chisel” brushes to get neat corners. The oter, pointed type brush used by signwriters is known as a pencil.

As well as shop fascia boards, pavement A-signboards are a staple for the jobbing signwriter. In this one, I had marbled the background before painting the lettering…
In the 80’s, there was a resurgence of “special paint effects” – woodgraining, marbling, sponging or as above, rag-rolling. These finishes had last come to prominence in the 1930’s when the advent of plywood panels in doors made it necessary to paint rather than varnish doors. For me, this meant a mission creep from signwriting to specialist decorating as in this Chinese Restaurant.
Smallbones, a famous fitted kitchen company in the ’80s, left it up to the clients to find a painter, and I enjoyed painting this one in a modernist listed building – a 1960’s house in North London (a detail, including stencilling, is shown below).
A kitchen I constructed from scratch – what can I say my daughter loved sunflowers…
A stencilled piece of furniture intended to be the start of a collection bur which didn’t get realised and which we still have in our home today. Guess the date I painted this…
Like Letterpress wooden type before it, the fate of old 3-D sign lettering was to end up in antique shops…

Squidgy Things

Eventually, I fell in with a lady called Anna Ryder-Richardson, a nursery, soft-furnishing maker who had a shop called Squidgy Things and for a year, I made furniture to compliment her soft-furnishings. Unfortumately, developing a business such as this requires finance and my own finances suffered and it eventually became part of the reason I ended up moving to Ireland, where I returned to amore steady diet of signwriting. I fond myself the only signwriter in Sligo who could work with gold-leaf which gave me an immediate advantage.

A Postman Pat children’s bed and below, a sentry bow wardrobe…

During the time I worked with Squidgy Things, we received an unexpected boost due to the scandalous revelation of intimate phone calls between Princess Diana and her lover which became known as the “Squidgy Tapes” – you couldn’t make it up… Shortly after I moved to Ireland, Anna Ryder-Richardson herself, made a move into TV where she had a programme known as “House Invaders” in which she did house makeovers often using paints and fabrics that the owners already possessed…

P.S. I was originally going to include Spreadsheets in this post but I mentioned them elsewhere, so although I removed it from the tentative title, WordPress has incorporated it into the link – apologies to any spreadsheet fans…

A to Z 2025 – Restaurateur

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

Restaurateur

My good self from The Telegraph & Argus article on the opening of Frewins in January 2012…


I used to have trouble remembering the correct spelling of the word Restaurant – knowing where to put the au vovels, middle or last until I started to think of how it sounded Restore-ant a place to rest and be restored which solved that problem – the au is in the middle. But recently, a poet, older even than I, who also attends the Keighley Library Poetry Group, monthly, – gently pointed out that on the short bio on the back of my self-published chapbook, I have misspelt Restauranteur – it should be Reastaurateur and upon checking, I found that indeed it should! By my sounding system the owner of a Restaurant is therefore a Restore-ateur – one who restores you in body and hopefully in mind…

There is of course, nothing restful about running a restaurant, especially if you are one of the chefs! There is perhaps, something that restores the spirit on a daily basis else why would so many people do it – it is truly a lifestyle choice that consumes every waking hour with menu-planning, shopping, food-prep, cooking, supervising staff, talking to customers, clearing up and cleaning and somewhere in there, paying bills, staff and doing accounts… Well it is all of those things if you are a small restaurant! During the first two weeks of opening, between all the running around and working in the heat and pressure of the kitchen, I lost a pound (0.4Kg) each day…

When my mother died, I was between jobs which was lucky in terms of spending time with my sisters, sorting out her flat, and when, afterward, I returned to Yorkshire with a little immediate cash from my mother’s estate, I spotted a Restaurant premises up for rent in the next village of Addingham. Following a building collapse (nobody was hurt) and the rebuilding of the front of house area, the previous owners, who had moved into a different area of catering, decided to let it out, fully equipped and ready to go. I paid too much for it, didn’t know that a large gastro-pub was also about to reopen, and the year proved dire in terms of weather – it rained all Summer, non-stop. I operated a Café menu during the day, so daily baking of scones and gateaux, whilst in the evening, there was a Bistro menu – so a double challenge there! The weather meant that the walkers, tourists, cyclists and villagers either didn’t materialise or went to the gastro-pub which also had the advantage of it’s own car park and so I never got out from under the shadow of their honeymoon phase. I did, of course, have customers – just not enough, and so after eight months, with debts rising to meet the rest of my inheritance, I had to admit defeat and close. Losing your inheritance is no small thing and yet, part of me can say that I had no regrets, or rather, that I enjoyed (almost) all of it! I had one of my grandsons who lived in Addingham, working as a waiter in the evening, I assembled a great bunch of staff, some of them on an apprenticeship scheme and I cooked a lot of good food, and those customers who came, were I think, happy and a few became regulars!

People often want to know what kind of food I cooked and I have to say it was homely, eclectic and a little fusion. My signature dish was Venison marinated in Strawberries and Stilton, and Brioch Bread-and-Butter was always on the menu. I had a curry night every few weeks. What I don’t have is menus – they were hand drawn – no digital ghosts, and no pictures – I was too busy to be taking photos – but I have a lot of happy memories…

You can read a bit more about dishes I sometimes served at Frewins here:-

If you want to know what it is like to work as a chef, you could do worse than read “Kitchen Confidential” by the bad boy chef, Anthony Bourdain who ended up with a TV series on food around the world. I reviewed the book as part of a “Six Degrees of Separation” post – a fun challenge in itself, if you haven’t encountered it – you can read my post below.

A to Z 2025 – Qualifications

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

Qualifications

There are qualifications that are requirements for certain jobs and part of my part-time job is as HACCP Officer for the company – HACCP is Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, a food safety management system. My initial HACCP study for our company ran to some 35,000 words – mostly written during lockdown on Crete for six months…

A great deal of emphasis is placed on Qualifications – usually obtained by taking an exam of some kind, but certainly in Britain, the push, at a certain time in the past, to get students to University, may be seen, cynical as it may be, to have postponed the entrance of people into the ranks of the unemployed and as a result, many students took courses of dubious value in getting a job and in any case, at the present time, even a “useful” degree is no guarantee of employment. Of course obtaining a qualification at university or even at a lower college, is not just about getting the qualification but getting an “education” which is different thing altogether! Education does not come from the academic facts that can be subject to examination, it is often invisible, perhaps even to the person who has received it – maybe apparent only after some subsequent life experiences. It was this principle that led the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin to promote a BA to an MA upon application after three or four years out in the world following graduation. Whilst many employers might discount the value of such a qualification, it reflects that academic work is enhanced by being subject to a period of application in the real world.

This idea was only one of those I imbibed from my father (a senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Oxford see here) – often whilst he washed up and I dried up! Another of his ideas led me to choose a strange (in my school’s view) selection of A-Levels – I studied Geography, Physics, and English and although the school allowed this, under protest, I had to take an additional Maths qualification. It was of course, tricky doing a single science subject instead of the usual Physics, Chemistry and Biology, but as a result of my father’s thinking, I did not want to be pigeon-holed as either an Arts or Science type. I did pass all three A-Levels albeit with too low a grade in Geography to obtain the place I wanted to read Geography at university. Even that choice of Geography was because I saw it as a sort of modern equivalent to “the Classics” – but with greater relevance, encompassing the real world, physical, economic and social. So I stayed on at school for another year, to retake Geography but I also added Art and Geology A-Levels and completed them in the year. Most of my cohort had left and I only had 11 hours of timetable lessons – hence my freedom to roam to Oxford’s many museums and art galleries, or even go sketching. Physics gave me enough grounding in science to be able to comprehend the world of science, English gave me a love of poetry in particular, (see my Murals on the “M” post where I put my knowledge of WB Yeats to use!), I still consider my view of the world to be that of a geographer (and geologist) and as I have described in my “A” post, I am something of an artist.

If asked whether I would like to live at any other time in history, I would say perhaps somewhere between the 17th and 19th centuries – providing I could be an aristocratic polymath such as Sir Joseph Banks. There was so much to be discovered about the world and polymaths were free to make links (and advances) between many branches of science – astronomy, zoology, chemistry and biology – so exciting. I still believe that schools and universities force students to specialise too early and that we should perhaps have Departments of Poltmathmatics designed to foster connection between different disciplines.

I have never once been asked to provide my qualifications in the form of exam certificates, wich is partly because I have rarely applied for the sort of jobs where that might be required but also because employers are mostly inclined to take your CV at face value My current employers didn’t even ask to see my CV but took my having set up and run a Frozen Yoghurt Shop on my own, as evidence enough that I was suitable for the job. I continue to take the odd test to prove I have studied something, like the certificate at the top of the page but I also find, ever more as time goes on, that the things in which I excel are the result of the accretion of life experience rather than academic study. I find myself fluent on the computer, writing, spreadsheets, presentation, graphic work, and drafting skills, with hardly any formal study (although I did once do an Advanced European Computer Driving Licence lol) but rather continuous learning across many jobs. I like to say that I have forgotten more jobs than many people have had – that I was an early adopter of the idea that we will all have to retrain every five or so years for new job opportunities. Has there been a downside? Well, I haven’t made a lot of money, but I have got by, I don’t have much of a pension, but I get by although I csn’t see myself fully retiring anytime soon, however, I have, with very few exceptions, had enormous enjoyment and job satisfaction! I am happy, on the whole, to still keep a foot in the working world, to apply my skills to new challenges and to meet new people through work…

A to Z 2025 – Photography and Poetry

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

My camera setup – my Canon SLR, telephoto/macro lens, mini tripods, cable to connect to computer, a pen to record details and my camera bag which has three sections that can be joined together, middle row:- charger, my Samsung phone whose camera I now use far more than all the rest you see here, a phone to tripod mount, a clockwork camera turner (never yet used in anger. Bootom row:- Flash, with batteries, flash/camera controller, lens filter set.
One area of photography I don’t often do is Street Photography, mainly because I don’t want to intrude on people’s privacy – even if, as some photographers assert, if it is in the public domain, it’s fair game. This lady agreed to be photographed on Clacton promenade, and the result is what I think of as my Diane Arbus moment… As a teenager, I kept articles from the Sunday Times colour supplement on art and photography and an article on Diane Arbus obviously had a great effect on me…

Photography and Poetry

If you like either poetry or pictures, then this might be a feast day! I suppose there was no avoiding the fact that the two most frequent creative acts I practice would fall in the same post of this A to Z memoir – there will be photos aplenty, and poems and poems which are illustrated with my own photos – not ekphrastic poems – poems based on a photo, though I do write those from prompts by dVerse Poets Pub. There are also a couple of poems illustrated by Genrative AI – but more of that later.

It is so easy to take photographs these days compared to my first efforts with an 828 film (35mm wide with no sprocket holes so big negative/slide images) and it was cheaper to take slides than colour prints back then, so my pocket money for several weeks (I got 1 penny for each year of my age per week) went to send a film of 12 slides off for development.

Squinting in the sun on top of Table Mountain, Capetown S.A. 1968 from my other blog on photography

Nowadays most children’s first photos are taken on a mobile phone and cost nothing to take and often little to print if they have access to an ink-jet printer but it is not the same as the thrill of getting a carton of slides or an envelope of prints and negatives back from the pharmacy/ photo company. When I got those 12 slides or, later, prints, back, there were rarely wasted shots (though accidents could happen) because each shot had been carefully considered and framed before pressing the shutter. Digital pictures, and even professional photographers on a shoot, will acknowledge this, you can, and must, take hundreds of shots to get “just the right one”, and even then, it’s not guaranteed…

People are rediscovering the joy of real film photography and here are two girls so excited to see the results that they literally sat on the kerb outside the only shop in Bradford, Yorkshire, that develops film – ironically snapped by me on my mobile phone.

I have another blog on which I occasionally post where I explore my relation to photography – Photography & Me – A History, if you want to read more but for now here are just some of my favourites and the reasons why – because one of the problems with the plethora of pictures I now have, is what to do with them, how to exhibit them – even for oneself. For my recent 70th birthday, my daughter bought me a digital picture frame – so a growing number of treasures (more of sentimental than aesthetic value) are now on rotation…

With a background in painting landscapes, landscape photography remains key to me – this was taken on a day trip to Blackpool where taking into the sun (a thing you are told not to do) has washed out much of the colour around the iconic pier.
I used to travel to work across the moors, taking backroads to avoid being stuck in traffic. At the top of the moors, you can see for miles without seeing a single human habitation – empty or, as in this early Summer shot, filled with Buttercups and Bog Cotton…
Just a little further along the road, descending once more into civilisation, a large old farmhouse on a misty morning…
Modern camera phones excel at what I like to call Plant Portraits, especially close ups and the camera is always in your pocket – I did not know that the jade tree (see also my “C” post) had flowers as I never saw them in England but over the Winter of 2020, locked down in Crete, I watched these flower buds open into tiny flower on big bushes of Jade Tree…
I don’t have many photos of me because I am usually the one taking the photos at family events but here, in one of the last of my era of slide taking, I am simultaneously the joint subject and the photographer with two lovely friends with whom I shared a squat in Brixton, London and who have sadly disappeared from my life… BTW – check out my full head of 70’s hair!
Often photography is about being in the right place at the right time and seizing the moment – this picture was taken from a lorry/car ferry to Ireland as it set sail from the docks in Liverpool, next to the container port and no other vantage point would have captured it. The colour is slightly abnormal because it was taken with an HDR setting…
Sometimes the bizarre just has to be captured – I found this mutilated Barbie on a pavement in Blackheath, London and placed it on a wall, partly as a setting but also in the vain hope that somebody might reclaim her…
Another right place, right time, and this one, which looks like it might have been HDR, is not…
An abstract shot – snow on our Velux skylight…
A simple abstract snap until you know that these staples and thumbtacks mark the place where death notices are posted announcing the funeral details on the walk into Elounda, Crete, to do shopping in lockdown – ghosts of the community…
On the same walk as the previous shot. tiny Olive flowers…
Although I lugged my camera bag to Crete, where we spent 6 months during covid, I hardly used my SLR camera, taking so many photographs on my excellent phone camera, but this was one subject that the phone camera couldn’t cope with – panning and zooming simultaneously to follow the kite-boarders. They came from all over Crete despite lockdown to the bay at Elounda where at the southern end of the bay, a causeway blocks waves whilst allowing strong winds to provide perfect conditions for the sport – the SLR triumphs!
A wind sculpted rock formation from the Sahara? No! All that’s left of a rotted piece of wood from our bathroom which I had to replace. The wood around the screws had survived and I photographed it on top of our blue car…

Poetry

It was the A to Z that connected me to a couple of poets who are also attendees at dVerse Poets Pub, which drew me into writing more poetry – 208 poems in two years at the last count. dVerse post prompts 3-4 times a week, which can be subject or poetry method-based. – I highly recommend it… I also belong to an Amherst Writers writing group where we start by looking at a poem and then write in the shadow of it. The group facilitator, a retired doctor, Deborah Bayer, combines Amherst methodology with Healing Journey concepts so the poems that come from the group are often introspective or memoir in content.

Today I am going to give links to poems that I published here on the blog and illustrated with photos of my own plus a couple which I used Midjourney to illustrate. First however, this poem. It is written in the Duplex form, which I particularly like because each couplet passes on the baton of theme to the next couplet, giving a fast-moving, eclectic exploration of an idea that almost seems to write itself…

An Ode to Food Moments

Food was always the focus of family
always sitting down to eat all meals together

We did not go about separate lives
or help ourselves to leftovers from the fridge

Our mother refused to let my father cook
though he well could, and would have enjoyed to

Christmas morning was the exception – proved the rule
carving the ham, drop scones, grapefruit halves

Picnics were a chance for creative sandwiches
grated apple and chopped date, cream cheese and grape

Dinner parties brought forth beef olives from a magazine
my first beer next day – awful dregs at the bottom of a bottle

My Granny’s seventieth cake – a Dresden firestorm
with seventy candle power of heat melting inward

A picnic by Victoria’s Murray River
whilst fishing for who knows what with yabbies…

University evoked family meals
where we JCR sat down together for evening meals

Then, food on film – The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
always about to eat but coitus interruptus

And the winner for Best Conflict Resolution Through Food –
Babbette dissolves all community feuds with a Christmas feast!

Are not all remembered meals filmic moments
salted away in the memory and aged to perfection

To be brought out on special occasions of family reminiscence
or encountered in the random, channel-hopping of life…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Though it looks like a photograph, the image illustrating this poem is in fact the result of a period of experimenting with Generative AI (see the button at the top of the page) and I include it here because arriving at a good prompt turns out to be an art all of its own…
This poem is in the same vein, and I include it for the sheer beauty of the image which when it emerged from Midjourney – took my breath away… I have stopped using Midjourney to illustrate poems, partly because I feel they can overshadow the poem and partly because of the debate over the fairness to artists whose work may have been used to train LLM’s (Large Language Models).

A to Z 2025 – Objects of Desire…

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

Cooking ingredients – what can I say – the cupboard is bursting at the seams…

When I was populating the list together for this A to Z 2025, the phrase “Objects of Desire” just popped into my head – it seemed a good idea at the time but I find I have no “bon mots” to offer. I have already confessed to a very unPC desire for certain Citroen cars (see “C”post) but here are a few other things I covet…

What fun it would be to have one of these bright scooters to ride out on a sunny day and better still to belong to a friendly scooter group for the companionship of the road… These beauties were photographed in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, a place we like to go for a mooch around.

I love to photograph repeated objects and this was a table of “Burned Basque Cheesecakes” at my factory (although we call them San Sebastian Cheesecakes) and which are absolutely delicious but totally forbidden to a Type 2 Diabetic like myself – so aesthetic satisfaction only…
And from Burnt Basque to Books ( who can resist alliteration) and this is the reason I stay out of bookshops where I could probably spend £100 in one sitting if money was no object…
Sometimes, though, you have to give in to temptation and buy! These carved elephants presumably African), were on an antique stall in Dieppe which we visited last summer on a road trip holiday of Northern France. Actually you get two objects of desire as it is my partner Barbara who is holding the purchase with an indefinable expression of pride and bemusement…
I shot this picture of a De Havilland Tiger Moth at the Shuttleworth collection on a visit last year with my school friends of over 50 years ago. When I was in the Air Cadets at school, I was lucky enough to get a flight in one of these, including aerobatics, at RAF Cranwell. The Shuttleworth Collection differs from most aircraft collections in that every plane either is, or will be a fully flying plane…

There is a film, which I saw during my time at The Ritzy Cinema, called “That Obscure Object of Desire” by Luis Buñuel, in which a late middle-aged man falls in love with an exploitative younger woman. I am now 70, but still one’s heart can be gripped and squeezed by the sight of beauty – it never goes away, seemingly…

On safer ground, though, boats, who are always female, here is poem about an unrequited (as yet) love…

Grant me a Boat

For goodness sake
grant me the bucket-list wish
of a boat
any boat will do
a picayune pram
to potter on a large pond
better still a proper rowboat
on a large lake
to drift down the wind lanes
a dry fly bobbing alluringly
on the ripple, gently retrieving
with the dream of a trout rising

A day sailer – better still
ducking the boom
on a dinghy is dodgy
at my age so day trips
on a Summer suitable sea
would fit the bill delightfully
sailing out and back
with the sea breeze
sometimes sleeping
in the cabin after stargazing
at anchor in some sheltering bay

And in the Winter
I would cherish
my little vessel
drawn up on the shore
cleaning and caulking
and laying on varnish
let me leave alliteration behind
and voyage forth
on real wavy waters –
so for goodness sake
one day
grant me a boat

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

A to Z 2025 – Novel-writing…

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

This cover used all my graphic skills- firstly I tried to get Midjourney AI to generate the whole thing but didn’t get anywhere near my visualisation but I really liked the background view of the planet and so I prompted the AI just to generate that and the astronaut. The space-elevator, spacecraft and field of containers floating in space were done in AutoCAD 3D, and everything put together in PhotoShop including the lettering.

When I was living in Ireland, my late sister Carol, invited me to go along to a writing group (yes! face-to-face!) and I realised that I had once enjoyed writing creatively but that as you rise in age, free-writing is one of the first things to go in order to make room for more academic subjects. I remembered one of the few unprompted stories I wrote outside school – it was a ghost tale in which a sorrowing father whose little daughter had accidentally walked into the big saw blade in her father’s saw mill and now, on the one year anniversary, the father, eyes blurred with tears and beside himself with grief and guilt, does the same… This short and sorry tale, though of a genre I don’t enjoy, is evidence that all my mother’s storytelling had left its mark and after the short writing challenges in the writing group, I started a novel which I still haven’t finished (although I have picked it up again recently). The novel deals with themes of post-colonialism and looks at the abuses that happen between countries as if they were intra-familial abuse and weaves several threads around it’s central characters taking in Rwanda, India and Ireland. With such weighty themes, the novel has taken a lot of research and gestation as you can imagine. On the other hand, my second novel – the opening anyway – came to me in a dream when I was recuperating from a hip replacement – I awoke and reached for my phone to record as much as possible before, as dreams are wont to do, it vanished. I started writing and it proceeded in a very linear manner – I even tired to use the A to Z 2021 (see the tab at the top of this page), to push myself to finish it. I didn’t quite make it, but it did get done in the following six months. I felt that finishing a novel (since as I have remarked before, I am not good at finishing things) would, however different a book it was from the first effort (a utopian science fiction novel), be an effort worth making and so it has proved to be. I now have a Critique Partner and he is also writing a science fiction novel though now that I have moved back to the first book, he has taken the change in good faith. Although there is a twenty-year difference in age between us, we never lack things to talk about on our two-weekly chats.

An extract from “The Book” (it has no title yet)
There is a sub-plot in the book involving a young Indian Rhodes scholar at Oxford who has finally plucked up the courage to ask a young Irish barmaid out on a date and being Oxford – it has to be punting…

As she lay back against the cushions of the punt, like Cleopatra propelled down the Nile, Margaret’s only regret was that she was compelled to face backwards. Watching Satajayit’s somewhat erratic and obviously unpracticed use of the punt pole to propel them downstream made Margaret nervous. Besides, although this branch of the Cherwell could not really bear comparison with Africa’s greatest river, nevertheless, Margaret would have preferred to watch it’s charms unfold facing forward. She did not feel she knew Satajayit well enough to face forward in silence or to lie bottom up in the sloping bow of the punt and offering possible distraction to Satajayit. So, resigned to watching the river recede from her, Margaret decided to risk a lesser distraction from his efforts by resuming conversation with Satajayit.
“You never finished telling me who Cecil Rhodes was”, she said.
“No indeed”, said Satajayit as he ducked to avoid the branch of a tree he had managed to steer beneath. Out in the open, he managed a long, powerful glide in the right direction along an open stretch of water with no other boats or obstacles to negotiate and took advantage of the respite to reply more fully. “You must have heard of De Beers Diamond Mines?” she nodded ”Well, Cecil Rhodes founded the company and made millions when he was still a young man. He went out to South Africa to join his brother in farming because he had poor health and the warm climate helped. After they were rich, he came back to England, to Oxford in fact, to complete his education.”
“They must have been delighted to have such a rich young man come here. From what I hear these colleges are always on the lookout for benefactors.”
“I am sure you are right. So too were the Freemasons because they invited him to join.”
“Really!” said Margaret, sitting up a little. “My father was a Freemason too. It’s big with the Protestants in Ireland. Bloody men’s clubs! All sticking together to scratch each other’s backs is what it’s all about!” This sudden vehemence surprised Satajayit and caused his next thrust of the pole to wobble the boat precariously.
“Ach, I’m sorry but I’ve no time for all that carry on!” she said, flopping back onto the cushions.
“No, no, you are right!” said Satajayit animatedly, “and Rhodes thought so too. Even the night he joined, with the usual secret initiation, he wrote they were an organisation ‘with ridiculous and absurd rites without an object and without an end.’ The next night, he had a brainwave – to create a secret society to further the interests of the British Empire and indeed all the Anglo-Saxon people. He wrote down his plan and called it ‘Confession of Faith’.”
“So that’s what you meant about his relationship to the mother country. Well, if you ask me, England was never any ‘mother’ to her empire – more like a thoroughly bad father. Look what they’re still doing in Northern Ireland!”
“Oh yes, I have been reading about that – most unfair on the Catholics. So, although you are Protestant, you are not in agreement with the British policy in Northern Ireland?”
“No! I am not! And the funny thing is, it wasn’t till I came to England that I started to see what was really going on. At home people don’t talk that much about Northern Ireland and ‘the troubles’. You know, when partition took place, we had a civil war that was almost worse than the war to get Britain out of Ireland. Both wars were bloody, but this was worse not because it was us against them. No, this was father against son, brother against brother. So that’s why I think we don’t want to hear about it all starting up again in the north. But then when I came here people were so ignorant about Ireland, like those eejits in the pub today but when I did get talking to the odd one, I realised there was a lot I didn’t know either and I started to take home the papers people left in the bar and to read them. It’s all a terrible mess, Ireland, it’s all ignorance and stupidity on the part of the British. Half the politicians don’t know any more than those students and they don’t care as long as the Unionists continue to vote with them!”
“It is strange to hear you use the word ‘partition’ as my country too has had partition when the British left and likewise it was divided along religious grounds. India is mainly Hindu and Pakistan is mainly Muslim, although there are a few people in each country who didn’t move at the time of partition, so there are still some troubles from time to time. Personally I don’t have any time for all that religious nonsense. India is stuffed full of religions for all the good it does. If there is a God or Gods, I am sure he wouldn’t want people squabbling the way they do!”
“Well isn’t that what the British always did with their bloody Empire? They conquer a country and exploit it as long as they can, and when they leave, they leave it all upside down like a house after a burglary with everybody fighting amongst themselves?” This was more a statement than a question – Margaret sitting bolt upright with indignation again.
“Oh, but in India they left behind great civilisation, railways, a legal system, schools and of course a parliamentary system!” Satajayit said, adding proudly “To which I for one hope to belong someday!” He beamed and completely forgot to pole, nearly running into another punt coming the other way. Only hasty action by the other punt avoided a mishap, but Margaret scarcely noticed with, as her Grandmother would have said, ‘her dander up’. “Do you so?” she said “Well I bet when you are in the know, you’ll find the British robbed the place blind before they left, I mean if they were so great for India, how come there are so many starving people there?”
“Oh my golly! You do ask some difficult questions. I have never met a woman so fierce in her opinions before. Why, you ask better questions than some of the students in the seminars I go to!”
Margaret fell back laughing but sat up again suddenly and with a serious look said, “Well, do you know, I’ve never said anything like that to anyone before! They may not talk much about the north where I come from, but I can tell you, they wouldn’t like to hear me say what I’ve been saying. Oh, Jeany Mac no!” and she burst out laughing again.
“Jeany Mac? Who is this Jeany Mac?” asked Satajayit once more poling the punt downstream and beginning to look more comfortable with the process.
“Ach, it’s only a saying we have, I don’t know where it comes from or who she was.”
“Are you perhaps one of these feminists?” Satajayit asked cautiously.
“Well I haven’t burnt my bra if that’s what you mean!” Margaret replied with mock indignation and burst out laughing at the look of embarrassed horror that overtook her companion’s features and nearly caused him to fall off the punt. ”I’m sorry,” she said, “I was only joking. I never thought of myself that way, but I suppose I do agree with a lot of what they are saying, even though I’ve only read about it in the papers, I mean I don’t actually know any. Come to that I don’t know many people at all. This is the first time I’ve been out with anyone.” She said, suddenly shy, her eyes dropping to her lap as she wondered at her candidness with this comparative stranger.
“You don’t have any family here in England?” he asked quietly.
“No. I left home under a bit of a cloud, and when I came here, I had to do something I didn’t feel very good about and I just kept myself to myself for a long time.”
Satajayit had little experience of women, and although he could not guess what she might be referring to, instinct told him it was better not to probe, so he punted on steadily, the two of them silent for a few minutes. Margaret realised she felt better for having spoken to someone about the loneliness of the last while and it occurred to her that maybe it was because Satajayit was also alone in a strange country that had liberated her.
“Tell me about your family.” She said and noticed a cloud pass momentarily across Satajayit’s normally sunny features.
“There is not much to tell.” He said diffidently. “My parents are not very well off. They are farmers, and I have an older brother who will take over the farm.”
“Really! Me too!”
“What a coincidence! It is truly a strange world. I myself won scholarships, first to school and then to the University of Bombay and finally to here, to Oxford University.” He beamed.
“Your family must be very proud of you so!”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” Deflating visibly Satajayit suddenly headed the punt alongside a stretch of open bank and pushed the pole firmly into the mud to hold them fast and sat down facing Margaret. The sudden seriousness made Margaret sit up and draw her legs in to face Satajayit eye to eye.
“You must understand, my father is a very old-fashioned man. He believes everyone has their place and they should stick to it. He thinks I have no business getting ideas above my station and that no good will come of it!”
That sounds only too familiar, thought Margaret but said nothing – just looked sympathetic.
“It is most fortunate that I do have an older brother who wants to farm, otherwise I would have had no choice about going to school. I would have had to stay on the farm to look after my parents when they got old.”
“And do you have any other brothers and sisters?”
“No. That is quite unusual you know, for an Indian family. It makes my mother sad and maybe a bit ashamed. I think perhaps she is proud of me, but she would not contradict my father. It is only because the other people in the village were so pleased for me that my father allowed me to go away to the school in town, and that is where I met Mr Horatio Singh!” Satajayit said, his serious face breaking into a smile of happy reminiscence.
The serious moment seemingly passed, Margaret burst out laughing at the strange combination of names.
“What is so funny, please?” said Satajayit with a frown.
“Horatio! It just seems a strange name for an Indian man!”
“Ah well, you see Mr Singh’s parents were very keen on history and wanting to give their son a truly auspicious start in life, they named him for the great Englishman Horatio Nelson!”
“I see. And what did he do, this Horatio Singh?”
“He was my school teacher, and because it was not a boarding school, but I lived too far away, I used to live in Mr Singh’s house. He was like a second father to me and I can say with the utmost certainty that without Mr Singh, I would not be here today”, and he looked around as if to take in the full reality of the exact spot in which they had come to rest.
The effect of this look was so comical that it was all Margaret could do to keep a straight face, but not wishing to offer any further offense she managed.
“Yes indeed, he it was who set me on the path to learning and gave me encouragement, he is truly my mentor.”
By now, it was late in the afternoon and the light was starting to fade. Satajayit punted them slowly back to the boat station. For the first time since they had met that day, they fell silent, but companionably so.
Margaret felt relaxed and lay back contemplating this gauche but passionate thinker who was propelling her along like the Queen of Sheba whilst Satajayit glowed inwardly at having negotiated the novel experience of dating a member of the opposite sex without any mishaps. They made their way up the High Street again both knowing that sooner or later they would have to go their separate ways, though neither voicing the question of where that might be or what might follow on from this first encounter. Satajayit lived in Rhodes House whilst Margaret lived out along the Cowley Road and so was walking in the opposite direction to home. Half way up the High Street, Satajayit wordlessly took Margaret’s hand. They turned together to look in some of the shop windows, both noticing the novel reflection of their conjoined forms more than the contents of the shop display and yet without comment, savouring their silent companionship. Finally, they reached Carfax, the crossroads at the top of High Street, and Margaret turned to face Satajayit, reached up to plant a firm kiss on his cheek. “I’ll be seeing you at the Turf then”, she said, and with a squeeze of his hand, she turned and walked back the way they had come.

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

A to Z 2025 – Music, Murals, Memories, oh, and Marmite!

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

Marmite has become a word that is shorthand for “Love it or Hate it” since the strong-tasting, quintessential British contribution to spreads/food ingredients divides the room. It is yeast extract and is made from the yeast that accumulates at the bottom of beer brewing tanks and if you ever have the good fortune to smell a Marmite, collection tanker passing, you will know the truth of this! As well as eating it on toast, I like to spread it on the toast for baked beans which can be bland but is transformed by the addition of marmite…

Music

Music pervades and has always pervaded my life to such an extent that I am not aware of its centrality but from the few records that my parents possessed (including a 78 rpm record of Elvis Presley’s Blue Suede Shoes), to learning the violin at school, to progressively listening to Radio Luxembourg and Radio Caroline on a valve radio to the ease of access that Spotify and You Tube give us to much of all recorded music, I love not just the music but the musicology – the family tree and genetics of music. I gave up the violin for the guitar and the guitar for the ukulele (more of that later), I have sung in choirs from Mozart’s requiem to Dylan – I can’t imagine living without music. On the days when I go to work, I listen to the morning news radio but on the way home I listen to music…

Two musical games of my own invention that you might enjoy…
1. Music Associations
Ideal on a long journey – you play word association but with the title or a line from a song and anyone can challenge a player to explain the connection and if all the other players agree that the connection is valid, the challenged gains a point but if the challenge fails then the challenger loses a point. an example of the chain might be:- Heart like a Wheel – Little Red Corvette (cars have wheels) – Little Red Rooster – Wake up in the Morning etc. Connections could be word associations but they could be deeper – composer, covered by the previous singer – the possibilities are endless…

2. Hit or a Miss (Juke Box Jury)
Juke Box Jury was an early panel show on British TV in which the host, David Jacobs, played the latest pop songs to a panel of guests who were then invited to vote it – Hit or a Miss! With a group of friends, two people at a time play three random songs from a playlist of their own favourites one at a time and everybody else votes on each song as Hit or Miss and the winner is the one with the most hits. Each person may choose the starting song, but then the playlist must be set to Shuffle for the next two songs. My music choices are so eclectic, I couldn’t possibly choose favourite music but to give you a taste, here are three pieces from my largest playlist on Spotify chosen according to the rules of the game…

Sweet Dreams – Bettye Swanne
Breath Again – Åsa
You Do Something To Me – Sinead O’Connor

Well, with 71 hours and 9 minutes of music to choose from – those surprised me too, especially the second choice but that’s the fun of the game!

Murals

This mural was designed by the Irish designer of religious art Desmond Kyne for whom I executed several commissions – since he was in his eighties, he could never have painted this. St. Joesph’s Church, Keelogues, Ireland, had been completely refurbished and Desmond designed the mural and the altar inset which he made with a secret technique that has sadly disappeared with the late artist.
Desmond Kyne and I at the installation of an earlier project where I made the Rereredos which houses Desmond’s icon. The Rererdos is a frame that allows the icon to be taken out and paraded around the parish on religious holidays. You can see some of the same religious elements as in the mural – the descending Dove motif and the flaming Holy Spirit…

My signwriting days will have to wait till the letter “S” but following the car accident which broke my hip in 1999, I was unable to work up ladders in the way I did before and although I started teaching part-time at Sligo Institute of Technology, I also got a couple of mural commissions which I did with I did with my friend Rob Forrester. They were possible to do using lifting platforms or cherry-pickers, obviating ladders. In fact one of the first important jobs I did after moving to Ireland was a mural for a bookshop called The Winding Stair after a poem by the Sligo poet, WB Yeats. The owner already had a successful shop of the same name on the banks of the Liffey in Dublin and had been waiting for some years to get suitable premises in Sligo. Kevin gave me considerable licence in designing the mural, and it served as a great advertisement for me which everybody knew. Here you can see a news item on RTE – the Irish TV, which features a much younger me painting the mural…

Memories – A Poetic Interlude

House with No Plan

The plan of my mind palace
does not exist
I haven’t tried to
master my memories
in that way
but instead I wander
through the corridors
opening doors not quite at random
and relying on my
innate sense of direction
to find my way back
out of the labyrinth.

So sometimes I arrive
in pleasant pieces of the past
and sometimes in rooms
I would rather not visit
their contents not yet
come to terms with or
understood in the scheme of things

Nobody else can follow me here
so I needn’t draw the map out
with notes in the margin
“Here be monsters!”
only I need to know
the rooms best avoided
or put on the long finger to explore
yet sometimes my mental map
lets me down and I find myself
lost and shivering, stuck
in the darker places
searching for meaning

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

A to Z 2025 – Love

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

This sculpture was made by ceramicist Bettina Seitz who sublet her studio to me when I first lived in Sligo, Ireland. I made the painted wooden base which has a quotation from “The Voyage” a song by Johnny Duhan but made famous by Christy Moore which you can see here

The object I have picked to represent Love is the statue above, which I bought, mounted and gave to my partner Barbara and which is one of our favourite treasures. It encapsulates so many memories, the song “The Voyage“, a favourite even before we went to live in Ireland as it was often sung by our Irish son-in-law, the studio in Sligo and my friend Bettina, and for me it is a reminder of my signwriting and art-making days in Ireland.

Love and Hate are often designated as opposites and Love and Sex are often confused and in the following poem, previously unpublished, I consider the latter confusion…

Sex and Love…

I had a sheltered upbringing
and a late start
in affairs of the heart
my parents love-life
a secret to which their
obvious love offered
no clue.

A generous friend fired
the starting pistol but offered
first sex once but no more
love in confusion mired.
A Brazilian friend also
bemused by sex in England
told me how in Brazil
girls in a friendship circle
sit on any lap except
the one they fancy
sending a coded message
to the cognoscenti
coming closer by staying distant
but in England, you meet
at a party, say
and suddenly you find
you have vaulted over a wall
you didn’t even notice
to find yourself in bed
with a stranger.
There for the birth of
her grandson, her mother
gave me my first massage
and then so much more
showing that Brazilians
excel at vaulting too

I became the toy of
another older woman
not that she was a player
for we both confused
sex for love
and in the end became
respectively frustrated
and disappointed
because you cannot find love
in the cracks of another’s
flawed marriage – there may be dirt
but not the soil in which a
relationship might flourish

If she was not ready
or able to leave her husband
I finally found the one who did
and reached the sunny uplands
where sex and love
in true commitment bloomed
not knowing that winter and the
darkness of the past
was waiting in the wings.
After a short first act
the curtain fell suddenly
with seeming finality
where abundant happiness
had flourished in the light
sex wilted in the dark
but not before true love
had taken root – its holdfast
wrapped tight to the rock of life

And now, in later years
Persephone has been drawn
into the underworld
and winter reigns, mostly
but love leads me again and again
to venture there
to lead her back to the light
if I may, instructed not to look back
But in truth that is her affliction
the past, a cast of characters
who crowd her head
hiding her real self
asserting their various strategies
to protect her from a past
that is no more
and yet is kept alive by the
very protections and distractions
that hide her truth

Those who do not deal with the past
are doomed to live there
but doing that deal
is easier said than done.

So now I know that love
is stronger than sex
and though sex serves to
feed the seeds of love
once the tap root is driven
deep into the earth
the strong trunked love
sustains through long Winters
good Summers and bad
flood and drought
and for the tree of love
the flowering and fruiting of sex
is a bonus
not the whole story…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

A to Z 2025 – Knitting (and Crochet)

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

Knitting, Crochet, and Tunisian Crochet Needles. Top – Tunisian needles originally free with Women’s Home magazine, to the right, a Tunisian loop to allow long rows to be made, centre, a double-ended Tunisian needle. Main Row, left to right:- 1″ plastic knitting, 1/2″ wooden knitting, 1/4″ wooden needles, wooden, yellow plastic, plastic tortoiseshell, plastic, bamboo, orange plastic. A loop needle for knitting socks and a set of double-ended needles -the old way to knit socks. On the right side, there is an extreme crochet needle, two ivory and two plastic crochet hooks, a wooden ruler, and a cloth tape measure.
A sampler of Tunisian Crochet stitches done during lockdown – read more here

Knitting and Crochet

Why do I like to knit or crochet? To be sure, since this a kind of memoir, my mother knitted and passed on the bug to my late sister Carol, and I may have been shown how to knit too, but I think the real reason I like to experiment ith stitchcraft is simply the magic – and the perpetual attempt to understand how it works. Knitting offers the same fascination as watching a conjurer, (magic is a concept, not a real thing)and trying to work out how the illusion is carried out – except that knitting is real and produces tangible, useful and beautiful results – if you don’t drop a stitch, that is… I would say that I do understand the process now, especially with Tunisian Crochet and so now, the quest is to finish projects, something I am not always good at doing.

The work of the guerrilla knitting group “Knit a Bear Face” which I joined for a time in Leeds – you can see more of their activity and read my poem referencing them here

Part of understanding how it works relates to my wider skill as a designer – I want to understand how things are made, which in knitting means increasing and decreasing rows in order to shape the panels that will be sewn together to form a garment. I once did an evening class in Dressmaking where I learned to make myself a shirt – a project that covers many of the skills needed in dressmaking, cutting to pattern, gathered joins, pleats, cuffs and collars and buttonholes. I was living near Brixton, London in those days and as the only male and only white person (other than the teacher, a sometime dressmaker to the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting), I was a source of wonder and amusement to the West Indian matriarchs who made up the class. My father’s contribution to the family’s knitted clothes was to operate the Knitting Machine, which my mother found too technical to master. My partner feels uncomfortable seeing me knit whilst we watch TV (her father wouldn’t have been caught dead knitting), but there are many countries where it is considered normal for men to knit, sew and even embroider – let us not forget the great Kaffe Fassett. When I joined the guerrilla knitting group “Knit a Bear Face” who used to meet in the Victoria Arms, Leeds, I found both men and women happily knitting together.

A Tunisian Crochet shoulder bag I made as a present – like all woolen baga it needs a sturdy lining to stop it sagging…

What is Tunisian Crochet, you may ask, and how did I get into it when in truth, I don’t know how to do ordinary crochet. Well when my mother died and both my sisters and myself were sorting out her apartment (a rare conjunction of the three of us), Carol and I were going through her many knitting needles – both Carol and my mother ran knitting groups and although Carol could probably have deployed the lot in her groups, she insisted that I should have some too. After most were divided, there remained a beautiful tortoiseshell pair of teedles (plastic – no tortoises were hurt in the making of them), and a curious long wooden needle with a hook like a crochet hook at one end. Neither Carol nor I knew what it was for – there is no need for a crochet hook to be long since it never holds multiple stitches, so Carol made an executive decision, “I’ll have the tortoiseshell ones and you can have this!” and she thrust the curiosity at me! Sisters! After I was back at home and I did a bit of research and discovered that this was a needle for Tunisian Crochet – sometimes described as a cross between knitting and crochet, and although the results can resemble either, in fact, it is not like either! I am going to have a little rant against the stitchcraft publishing industry – once upon a time, books of stitchcraft would contain both knitting and crochet and even give patterns which combined the two – a jersey with a panel of crochet inset, for example. But the plethora of books and magazines devoted to crafts has led to ever more specialisation – not just crochet, say, but beaded crochet – all in the hope of selling more copies. So Tunisian Crochet became overlooked for a long time, and it is only by the democratising process of YouTube videos that it is now making a comeback.

So why would you want to employ Tunisian Crochet in a project? Well. it produces a much thicker fabric, which is both stiffer and warmer, and so ideal for say, a coat rather than a cardigan. It has many varieties of stitch giving it lots of different looks, and IMHO, it is very easy to learn – go on – give it a go…

This hat was done as a continuous circle Tunisian crochet and is currently travelling in South America with one of my grandsons – he has promised to send a picture of him wearing it in Machu Picchu…

Other posts on stitchcraft:-

Mixed Messages

Yellow crop top
skin tone leggings
a bare midriff
good as bare bum
but topped with
a biker’s leather
black bomber jacket

Cargo pants and
an old guy shirt
North Face jacket
don’t he know that’s
drug dealer gear
– sitting perving…

What you looking
at you old fart?

I’m sorry!
Did I drop one?

No I said
you are one!
– An – Old – Fart!
And stop perving!

A cool, grey cat
may look at a queen…

What does that
even mean?

In America
New York, Harlem
the Golden Age
of the black man
A cool grey cat
– an old white man…
may look at a
woman in the
prime of youth

Did I say you
could look at me
you old white man?

Everything
about you says
“Just look at me!”

Yes but not you!
Why would I want
you to look at
me – old fool!

They do say
“Only a fool
wishes to be
young again…”
but you make me
remember young
– I was young once
like you – you know?

I suppose but
just don’t look at
me – it ain’t for you
I’m all dressed up!
How old are you
Mister-talk-like
-a-dictionary?

Turned seventy
just last month
and can’t help but
see you when you
pace up and down
in front of me!
Where should I look?

True nuff, dude
– can’t stand waiting
what time’s this bus
coming anyway?

Still ten minutes
– could take the weight
off and sit down…
If the wind changes
you’re stuck with that frown…

Them metal seats
are far too cold
– any more advice
Mr Seventy

My mother would
have said you’ld catch
a cold – bare bellied…

And how old’s she
when she’s at home
– like you – cant mind
her own bus’ness!

A hundred and five
were she still alive…

Sorry mate I
didn’t think
I mean…
my mother
says the same…

Mothers! Who’d have ‘em?

You’re funny Mister!
It’s mothers have you!
Where you off to
anyway, bingo!

Keighley Poets Group
at the library
and what about you
– boyfriend? Girl’s night out?

Meeting the girls
maybe to score
not that it’s any
of yours “old fart”

If only I was
fifty younger…
I might even be
 in with a shout
I could dance then
shake it all about…

In your dreams mate
too posh for me
too many long words
you gonna write
a poem about me
am I your muse?

And have the world
call me a perve
and not just you?
You are a sight
for sore eyes it’s
true though – but I
didn’t mean to
upset you – it’s
hard not to see
beauty when it’s
there to be seen…

True nuff – I can’t
expect that only
fit young dudes will
see me and not
be seen as well
by “Cool grey cats”…
no Harry Potter
selective cloak of
invisibility…
Oh look! The bus!

It has been nice
to talk to you
and come to see
the other’s view
untangle all the
mixed messages
which age and looks
can scramble up
I hope you have
a good night out!

You too Mr Poet
– knock ‘em dead at
your poetry slam
and you can write
one ‘bout me too
– if you want to…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

I should first say that this conversation is an act of imagination lol! I have started attending a poetry group at my local library (whose construction, like many in England, was funded by Andrew Carnegie – an arch capitalist who made obscene amounts of money and ameliorated his conscience by spreading literacy through libraries) – the group are mainly people who have no online presence but only meet IRL – in the real world (an expression only used by those in the digital world!)
There is a topic chosen for each meeting and the one upcoming next Tuesday, is “Mixed Messages” and I wrote this poem for the meeting.

I have been absent from my usual online haunt – dVerse Poets Pub for the last month as I am participating in the A to Z Challenge and each post takes a lot of research, illustrating and writing which you can find, starting here. However, I thought this poem might fit Dora’s prompt in Poetics but missed the deadline and so I am posting it for the Open Link Night