Recollecting Katrina

Close friend and personal assistant, photographic model and, if that wasn't enough, landed gentry.

Katrina was naturally funny, even when she was glum; indeed, especially when she wore her sullen expression, which I have chosen to capture in my portrait of her. She was always brilliant company.

Yossel

Yoss (also known as Yossel, Jossel and Joss), was a school chum and member of the St Luke's boy's church group I attended, who played lead guitar at my stage debut at a large Saturday night dance held in a hall in North London when I was fifteen. My first ever number on stage as a saxophonist was Rudy's Rock. It brought the house down. Steve Howe (later to become a lead guitarist in his own right in the group Yes) was in the audience. He would mimic some of the mannerisms of Yoss when performing as a world renowned musician in later years. Being a couple of years younger than Yoss and I, he was still learning chords on an inexpensive acoustic guitar, but went on to acquire a solid electric guitar from me. My instrument of choice was and has always remained the saxophone.

I was, therefore, saddened to learn in recent weeks that Yoss is "on his last legs." It prompted me to paint the portrait (above) as I remember him when we were young. When the world was young.

The Elizabethan Age

Elizabeth was Arthur's first wife. He worked part-time in the afternoons at my London studio darkroom from 1963 to 1968. In the mornings he delivered milk for United Dairies Ltd. Elizabeth was called "Zibby" by all who knew her. When I came to paint her portrait years later from memory I placed the subject in the Elizabethan era. She was in many ways traditionally old-fashioned in her outlook and curiously mirrored Elizabethan Englishness despite her mother being Scottish born and bred. Her father was every bit a Londoner. They represented a type of person who no longer exists, as London itself no longer exists, which is perhaps another reason I was drawn to placing her in the distant past. Her views today would be regarded as indubitably politically incorrect. But not so much back then. What I liked about Zibby was her infectious sense of humour, plus the fact that she spoke her mind without fear or favour. She had wit and showed immense generosity to those whom she liked. Her tongue could sometimes be acerbic, as well as soft; yet she was always true to herself and that is at the heart of what really counts. I appreciated her honesty, and continued to know her until her divorce from Arthur at the turn of the 1980s. This was followed by my accidental encounter with her and her daughter, Jacqueline, a few years later along a busy Kentish Town thoroughfare. I never saw this unique woman again after that meeting. Zibby belonged to a breed now practically extinct. The pictures of her holding a saxophone were taken at my studio in the 1960s. She died in October 2014.

Keith's Last Farewell

I had already decided back in July 2017 to title this photograph The Last Farewell. I cannot explain why, but this is what came into my head when I saw it. By December of that year the subject, seen waving, had contracted a bad case of shingles; so much so that we thought he would not return. 

The figure walking and waving at the end of the paved path has been a friend of mine for approximately half a century. He was due to attend a Christmas dinner party at my home, but shortly prior telephoned to cancel owing to acute pains which prevented him sleeping, and obliged a visit to the doctor. We had all expected to see him the next day. Clearly the picture was aptly named, as it is now the last photograph I took of him. He already knew of its title, and the irony was not lost on him.

It will translate to a large canvas well where the symbolism redolent of what we now recognise to be significant shall transfer in oils. For example, there are the three horizontal stripes of light produced by the sun in the west. Then there are the three verticals. Two of these are lamp posts. One is a telegraph pole. There are three people. Two visible in the image. The third is the photographer/artist, namely myself, who is creating the work. The image shows three verticals broken by an eerie energy.

A distant woman walks eastward. The man, Keith Maclean, walks southward, but will turn westward soon after this photograph was taken. His right foot is lifting to continue on the Right-hand Path. It is that right foot which five months later would be most severely afflicted, along with the right leg.

The paved pathway with its double yellow lines provide three verticals starting to converge.

Three in one, as the lone figure swivels 180° for the last time before vanishing around the corner.

Yet before he does, he smiles and waves. The hand is high; the wave hearty. 

This is the last farewell.

When Keith returned the following year it was a detached spectral winter visitor from a time prior.

This last glimpse of Keith found him waving through an ethereal mist. This was not his final farewell. We had already had that in the summer of 2017. This was something else. An echo. Nothing more.

  

Art For Art's Sake

Embers of the Arthur of old flickered every now and again, not being entirely lost in the panorama of ill-fitting pieces to an already fading puzzle. Are we not all puzzles? I wore black intuitively; semi-formal and without decoration of any sort. Sarah was attired in a Sixties chic silk dress with a black cross pendant. It seemed somehow apposite. Arthur wore his familiar expression with casual attire.

We had barely begun when he had almost finished the main course. "I'm hungry!" he exclaimed. "Apparently," said I. Following coffee and liqueurs, we partook of some conversation. Arthur kept looking at his watch throughout this venture, finally declaring: "I must be off!" And then he was off. 

The period spent in the dining room was accompanied on the gramophone to the strains of Albert Ayler, Arthur Askey, Benny Hill, Charlie Drake and such as David Sidney Liebman playing The Beatles' tunes on saxophone. Arthur was rather taken by Albert Ayler's version of Summertime.

With the dining table set at its shortest length (it expands to double the size above), the first course of buttered asparagus with lemon toasted breadcrumbs was served with suitably chilled Champagne.

Fresh lemon juice from the Victorian lemon squeezer, which indispensable utensil has now bizarrely become obsolete in most households. Not in ours, however, where it is used almost every day.

The main course of wild Alaskan salmon en-croute was served with an ice cold, crisp Chardonnay.

Arthur, being a strict vegetarian, received the vegetarian option of wild mushrooms poached in sherry with cream en-croute. A mix of French beans, carrot sticks, broccoli florets, petit pois and buttered Jersey Royals, plus foaming Hollandaise sauce, served both the vegetarian and fish dishes.

A limincino, marscapone and strawberry trifle was served for pudding. Seasonal and refreshing.

Arthur prepares to leave with, tucked under his arm, a birthday present from me. His birthday will be in another week and it will remain a surprise until then. I presented the very first portrait in oils I ever painted of him. I gave him another three years ago. These two works I consider the best likenesses.

This final photo before Arthur's departure would inspire the painting Hello, Goodbye (oil on canvas).

Hello, Goodbye was joined by Point of Departure (oil on canvas) showing only Arthur who soon afterwards developed a hernia and had to have an operation for same. He remains extremely fragile.

My Cousin Marianne

My cousin Marianne was buried exactly one month ago near the picturesque village of Milford. There was a traditional Anglican service at which no English family members were in attendance, largely due to distance, illness and the simple fact that we are approaching our own extinction. Contingents from the United States of America and elsewhere were well represented. I nonetheless was to receive through the post at a later date a pair of silver candlesticks and two ink pots with silver stand. The candlesticks were kept in her dining room, and the ink pot stand in what I would describe as the drawing room. Her father was extremely fond of these, and Marianne herself cherished them. I am indebted to her daughter, Simone, for bestowing these items to me. These heirlooms are all I have by which to remember my cousin. They shall act as tangible and welcome reminders, almost relics, of that person to whom I am connected inextricably by blood despite the inevitable surrounding sadness.

Marianne had one sibling, a brother called Keith who was my first real chum. He died in the early 1960s from a blood disorder while still a relative youngster. She possessed no photographs of him, and Simone saw his image for the first time when I forwarded some vintage photographs of Keith with Marianne and I. It transpired that Keith's mother was so distraught with grief at the time that she ordered the destruction of everything, including all images, which might act as a reminder of her loss.

The last time I saw Marianne was in London in the 1960s. It was an amicable time where I showed her around the capital, but we did not stay in touch. The next time we spoke was on 15 August 2017 when she telephoned out of the blue. It was a long, pleasant conversation, but fifty years overdue.

That conversation was our last.