About Gertrude

What follows is a tale which I promised to tell a pal of mine the other day whilst on my way home from nudey drawing class in Glasgow city centre…

I was always alright at drawing and painting at school. It was always my favourite thing to do (apart from playing footy). At junior school (I went to Haslewood Junior School and we NEVER called it ‘primary’ school, I didn’t know what a primary school was until I was about 14) people used to get me to do bubble writing on the front of their project folders for them or even the odd cartoon or whatever. Looking back I should have charged commission, perhaps in the form of sweets.

Anyway, the theme continued when I moved up to senior school and I’d spend most lessons finding an excuse to draw rather than pay much attention to the actual subject being taught, e.g. I’d get glowing praise for how well my Geography case studies were illustrated although perhaps at the expense of having conducted much actual geographing in the process.

In lessons like Maths and Science where I just wasn’t interested, I’d spend lessons doodling in the back of my exercise books. I’d often reach the middle of a book working from the back page before I did from the front. Thinking about it, my teachers didn’t seem that suspicious that I went through a lot of exercise books in my time, I always claimed it was because I had big handwriting.

So it was that inevitably when it came down to it where classroom based pursuits were concerned, I enjoyed Art the most (again, apart from footy – I was in the bottom group for PE, partly on account of being a clumsy great oaf who wasn’t the most gifted of athletes and partly I maintain because as a clumsy great 6 foot tall at about 13 years of age oaf who wouldn’t try out for the precious school rugby team I was hated by the PE teachers. They love a clumsy great oaf do those rugger types, I could’ve been a contender. The bonus for me was that I was pretty much the star of the bottom group when it came to football, I enjoyed being a big fish in a small pond for a change sports-wise and racked up some sterling performances down the years, which I may detail further in a future blog).

I did ok at school in spite of my daydreaming, doodling ways. I didn’t enjoy it at all really and was always delighted to get away and go home at the end of the school day. I didn’t really mix at all with classmates outside of school hours, not until 6^th form really when I finally decided that socialising a little might not be the worst idea in the world. Even then I was never fully committed to “going out” and all that jazz, I don’t think I ever will be really.

Having A-starred it with my Art & Design GCSE coursework and exam efforts I took Art at A-Level along with English & European History, English Literature (I didn’t realise it was just English Literature until I started the course, I hate reading a book and then analysing it, I thought there must be some creative content but – gah! – this was not the case and I was stuck for two years snoring through Thomas Hardy novels and trying and failing massively to feign interest in stories about posh girls getting upset and fancying the gardener or whatever. YAWN!) and an AS (no idea what that stands for or what it means) in Art History.

To say I struggled through A-Levels is an understatement. I was miserable, the school was not a nice environment to exist in for however many hours we were incarcerated there each week. A lad in my history class died suddenly during a PE lesson in the first year of 6^th form and almost a year to the day later our European History teacher Mr King was found hanged at home after the Easter Holidays. He’d apparently been having an affair with the super, super hot RE teacher (as a bunch of horny teenage lads we all understood perfectly how no man could never have possibly resisted given the chance) and his marriage had fallen apart. My brother was diagnosed with diabetes around this time and I was late for school the day the news about Mr King broke, so missed the assembly where everyone was told and walked in half way through my first lesson (English History) to find the class sitting there in silence, an atmosphere as thick as fog and having to put my hand up and ask Mr Norton (Nigel ‘Nobby’ Norton, he’s another blog worth writing) what on Earth had happened.

I really couldn’t have given a monkeys about school those final two years, I ploughed on through, “struggling seriously” as one report stated with my artwork through a combination of my own lethargy, disillusionment plus complete lack of any facilities or real encouragement. I took the “struggling seriously” as a slight and it dogged me for some time, until my teacher explained that she’d meant it as an acknowledgment that I had been serious in my struggle to do my best work, not that I had struggled in a big way to do anything. So, even semantics played a part in messing with my thick teenage brain.

I got there though and scraped Ds in English and History and Bs in Art and Art History. What to do next? I had never been and remain someone who has no idea what to do with myself and so it was that I, as types like myself so often do, stumbled into my next venture. A BTEC in Art Foundation Studies at Hertford Regional College! My friend Douglas who I have known since we were toddlers was heading off in his red modern version of a Volkswagen Beetle to the open evening and asked me if I fancied joining him. Like two kids off to join the war effort we signed up together not really knowing what this course was for or why we were doing it.

I had not had any thoughts of University at this point. Nothing appealed to me, least of all further “learning”. Seven desolate and unhappy years at The Broxbourne School had well and truly beaten, drained, scraped, whatever you want to call it any enthusiasm I had for being taught stuff from my being and it didn’t even occur to me that I could go somewhere else and start a new life, learning about something in an environment that might not be so inhibiting and uninspiring.

Art Foundation Studies opened up a whole new world.

It says something that at the end of the one year course I was awarded the prize for Most Improved Student by some time Public Image Inc bass player Jah Wobble. I had gone from, what my tutor described as being a “waste of space” and a “piss taker extraordinaire” in the first three months of the course, to “top of the class” by the end of it. I graduated with a Distinction for both my coursework and final exhibition, I came in on my holidays and did extra work, was taught how to build my own canvasses and how to use oil paint and stuff. There were other people a bit like me on the course, drifters, shy people, people who didn’t really know what they were but who weren’t going to be bullied about it so were enabled to start to become someone, all sorts.

I actually ended up falling asleep in the lecture theatre early in the evening of the Graduation Show/prize giving after a particularly heavy lunchtime pub crawl so I never met Jah Wobble and never actually heard my tutor’s speech about how much I’d blossomed over the duration of the course.  Oh well, I’d managed to go from Gobshite to Golden Boy and that’s all that counts.

This discourse is actually entitled About Geraldine, not How I Hated School & Other Stories, so before I go I must impart one last, small but perfectly formed anecdote from the Art Foundation Studies years.

On an Art Foundation Studies course you try out a whole range of different artforms, from pottery, sculpture and photography to painting, textiles and printmaking. It’s a great way to get a taster of all the sorts of things you could then specialise on and perhaps study at degree level. I got into painting in particular and ended up heading off to sunny Bath where I pursued a degree in Fine Art (Painting), just like John Lennon. Woo!

One demand of the Art Foundation Studies course I was on was that we all attend a weekly evening class in life-drawing. Hertford Regional College had a regular roster of two models, both male. One was called (I think) Brian and he could be spotted around town in his blue and purple shell suit, a bald headed man in his 50s with a pot belly, a barely discernible bum and a world weary look on his jowelly face. In fact, in my memory he looks a little like a stunt double for Alfred Hitchcock.

Model number two was a whole other kettle of fish fingers. His name was Gerald and he wore a tartan skirt the like of which an elderly female French teacher might wear. He had a more chiselled look about him and a wild look in his small, dark eyes. I was sure he dyed his hair a dark reddish brown and had either spent a lot of time in a hot climate, or otherwise was a regular at one of the local tanning studios.

Gerald drove a souped-up camouflage painted Citroen (one of the old ones from the 70s I think) and also had a matching camouflage painted motorbike and sidecar which he would drive around Ware (the local town, home in my day of Nigel Hawthorne and Foggy off Last of the Summer Wine) on a sunny day, skirt flapping in the wind. Gerald was in better shape than Alfred, er, Brian. He had a pointier bum and a fairly well toned torso. He had more of an air of the eccentric about him, but then Brian wore a shell suit and perhaps was just less overt in his eccentricities. Either way, they both got their kit off for us on a regular basis of a Thursday evening circa 1998/99.

Our class was a fairly even for art college male/female split. A good group of people and we got on well, particularly after a brilliant week of gallery visits, drunken exploits and general team-bonding on the college trip to Barcelona in the February. Us lads complained regularly that our life-drawing class was sexist and we wanted a female model. Promises were made but week after week it remained the Brian-Gerald funny bottom axis. Until one cold winter’s eve when all that changed…

I’ll never forget walking into the life-drawing studio and there she was. Resplendent in slightly tatty and faded white dressing gown lashed loosely under a heaving bosom. Tall and broad, in white high heels, with a crow’s nest of jet reddish black hair styled in some kind of Siouxsie Sioux meets Gayle Tuesday ‘do with what appeared to be a self-cut fringe (perhaps involving having drawn a straight line on her forehead in biro and snipped across it with the kitchen scissors). The reddest of red lipstick finished off a pale, lantern-jawed face, big, Cruella de Ville eyes daubed with too much black mascara. She was beautiful, I and the rest of the boys (and probably a few of the girls) just couldn’t wait for her to drop that dressing gown.

We were introduced to Gertrude (I’ve always thought that was a false name, but it absolutely fitted the character before us) and the class began. I was a little disappointed that she didn’t keep the white stilettos on. They were a nice touch, plus I’ve never been the greatest at drawing feet. Anyway, Gertrude was, needless to say, a bombshell in our eyes. I can hardly describe what a boon it was to us, the chance to sketch a veritable cacophony of curves and smooth flowing lines, after months on end of Brian and Gerald’s nondescript figures, straight up and down with a nipple pointing out here and a funny shaped bum protruding there. This was heaven.

At the break halfway through Gertrude scantily wrapped herself back in her gown and put back on the stilettos. She then broke the rules of life-drawing by, gulp, engaging with us the class! She was fascinated to see our work and had a good wander round, chatting away to us all. I’ve attended quite a few of these classes over the years and never has this occurred. The second session was over in a flash and Gertrude popped into the loos to get dressed while we packed up our things, looking forward to more of the same in the weeks ahead.

Douglas and I were wandering out to the car park a few minutes later and as we got to the bottom of the steps a tall, curvaceous figure wrapped in a faux leopard fur jacket, mini skirt and white stilettos bustled past us. Waiting outside was a lemon yellow Mini Cooper with engine revving. Gertrude squeezed herself into the passenger seat and the car zipped away into the night.

We never saw her again.

I’m a lazy sod…

…I’m a lazy Sid!

John Lydon screamed circa 1977.

Oh, as Vic Reeves sings so poignantly “I remember Punk Rock like it were only yesterday” (I don’t I wasn’t born yet). I was actually born in September 1979, just as The Clash put the finishing touches to the last great rock and roll album ‘London Calling’. I read somewhere that on the very day I was born The Clash played a festival in the States and during their set, as Topper Headon rattled out the machine gun drum roll at the start of ‘Tommy Gun’, Joe Strummer threw himself backwards as though he’d been hit by a shower of bullets, to gasps from the crowd. He then sprang back up to the microphone and blasted into song. Apparently Joe had a photo from that very moment up in his house for the rest of his days. I enjoy this fact.

Apologies for the not bothering to write anything on here for over six months. I seem to go through manic spells of blogging like there’s no tomorrow for a week or two every few months, which annoys me as I’d rather be a bit more disciplined and sit down and write something good say once a week or so. Maybe one day I’ll fall into such a routine, who knows.

I mentioned The Clash earlier as I’m rather keen to attend a gig at the ABC in Glasgow tomorrow but probably can’t for (a) financial reasons and (b) because my mum’s turning up to visit tomorrow evening. I don’t know, I really want to go because Mick Jones is on the bill and playing Clash songs live for the first time since he left the band. A rare treat. I may somehow try to wangle myself into being able to go, it’s important.

The gig is also raising funds and awareness for the The Hillsborough Justice Campaign, something close to the heart of anyone who can genuinely look themselves in the mirror and call themselves a football fan and who witnessed the scenes on that tragic day in 1989 when 96 innocent supporters perished while trying to get in to watch a game of footy. I remember as a 9 year old watching confused on the telly as a Peter Beardsley wandered white as a sheet from the field of play as chaos ensued around him. The fallout would have a major impact on the future of football in England and beyond, but the bereaved families find themselves still searching for closure some 22 years on.

Kapow Studios has been a busy haven on and off since I last nattered on here. I’ve completed a number of works, mucked about with and abandonded a number of others and a few more are still in progress. A raft of new photos will appear soon on the website and the facebook page.

I just realised that I actually wrote my last blog post in the final week of my employment with Strathclyde’s finest… it’s over six months since I drifted into oblivion in a 9-5 decent working man’s terms. I don’t regret it and I’m getting on ok thanks, ups and downs all the way as ever, but as Connie rightly says, that’s just all part of being Jamie.

Catch y’all later kool katz, have good weekends one and all.

Our house, in the middle of our street…

Alongside a number of the Ancestry Portraits I’ve been working recently, I’ve had an interesting wee side project on the go in the form of a commission which is also on the genealogical themer, but with a bit of a twist.

I was asked earlier this year to find a picture of a North London townhouse - more specifically 5 Leighton Grove in Kentish Town - and paint a picture of it as a 50th birthday present for a work colleague’s sister. The significance of said address is that this was the house where the birthday girl was born.

Living approximately 400 miles away from Kentish Town (it’s 404 miles actually, I just checked on AA Route Planner… POINTDEXTER!), it wasn’t as if I could just pop round and take a photograph of the building in question. Internet searches for a picture proved hopeless, other than those I found on Google Street View. Taken from the usual slightly squinty angle, rather blurred and/or distorted, not to mention hindered obstructed by parked cars, these images were never going to be ideal. However, at a bit of a loss for alternatives, I decided to have a bash using these and see what I could come up with.

The results are as follows, I’m quite pleased with it actually. The last time I did a picture of a house it had windows in the top corners, a big scribble smoke-stack billowing from the oversized chimney, a couple of stick people playing in the garden and some ’V’ shaped birds flying about under a smudgey yellow sun which belted out spikey wax crayon rays at wacky angles. I’ll try and dig an example out from the archives…

I used a little artistic license to have the offending vehicles towed out of view and set about building the terrace from scratch, starting with a fairly loose but detailed enough pencil drawing.

Early on I began to work form and structure into the composition using blocks of flat colour to fill out the dead space and give myself some foundations on which to begin working in earnest.

The next stage was to tighten up the seemingly endless array of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines using up an entire Sunday broadsheet torn to shreds as my straight edge. Once this layer had dried I was able to layer in those fiddly finer details and tidy up the, well, paintwork! A bit of greenery provided depth and little touches like the brickwork on the garden wall to the lower right of the picture finished the piece quite nicely I hope.

Let me know what you think, eh?

Masterchef 2011

Hello, I don’t really watch Masterchef, well I have a few times and I liked the one where the man put the poached egg under the glass cheese bell type thing and piped some smoke in there with it so when the bell came off it was all foggy. He was cool. I love Reeves and Mortimer’s impression of the show, with Vic as Peter Kay too. They do the greatest impressions of people I’ve ever seen. It’s an amazing clip.

“Look, he’s a fabulous memory has Peter, but what’s on the menuuuuuuu?!”

Incredible stuff.

Anyway, this week I have cooked myself twelve pancakes. I must mention my being somewhat agog recently when use of the term “pancake” by myself seems to have caused distress in these parts (i.e. Glasgow, where I live). I still don’t understand why it’s confusing to refer to a pancake as a pancake, not as a crepe. Why is Shrove Tuesday also known as Pancake Day then? And then what does that make a dropped scone? My great grandad George Baird was born in Ayrshire and lived in Glasgow for over fifty years where he worked as a Master Baker no less, but I still can’t get my head round Scottish baking terminology. And does it really matter that much? I don’t know.

I love cooking. I love following a recipe as much as I used to love following Lego instructions as a lad, from start to finish and maybe throwing a few of my own ideas in. I’d never like to do it professionally or that seriously or anything, but it is really fun and tremendously satisfying too. Or, “as well, too”, as S____ of “scone critique” fame likes to end most sentences. I’m no grammar pedant (amazingly), but that is just unnecessary.

Tonight I also indulged in a spot of culinary experimentation. I had a couple of chicken breasts and a few mushrooms that needed cooking and, rather than just whack them in with a pasta sauce we had standing by for nights when you just can’t be bothered trying, I decided to try something a bit different. I plucked out my copy of Real Fast Food by Nigel Slater (I like him, Connie got me three of his books a Christmas or two ago and funnily enough my brilliantly talented friend from uni days Alice Tait did the illustrations for them. Alice also did some work many moons ago based on drawings she did of me pulling funny faces, which I think formed part of her degree show. What a claim to fame, eh?! I knew my big, silly face would come in handy some day!) and picked out a honey, lemon and soy sauce glaze for grilled chicken and some simple egg fried rice instructions (which I embellished with some diced ham and those mushrooms that needed using up). I’ve never made fried rice before. It was good. I ate my tea with chopsticks, just to make it that little extra bit authentic. Yes.

Without going all “S____/scone critique” about things, the result was really pleasing and it only took about 25 minutes to do. Nigel’s books are great, he explains stuff in a really simple, but interesting and readable manner. His autobiographical novel Toast is well worth a read too. It’s the one they made that drama out of starring Ken Stott and Helena Bonham-Carter, with the lad from all them good kids movies who’s suddenly got dead tall and skinny and teenage playing the “Nigel” character. He has a good old fashioned northern English style face and haircut. I don’t know if he is northern mind. (Just checked, he totally isn’t northern)

More tales of Mr Kapow! let loose in the kitchen to follow soon. Bet you can’t wait!

PS. Here’s one that went a bit wrong. I title it: ‘Tuna Mayo Sandwich Stroke Pepper Incident’, Feb 2011.

Pet Sounds

The following history of the pets my brother and I have had in our lives down the years appeared pretty much out of nowhere earlier today while I was writing what began as an email about the future of me in my current job to a good friend and fellow observer of all that is odd about the world.

Some people appear in your life and just inspire you to put down this kind of stuff (I mean this as a compliment, not as in some people inspire you to write long, boring stories about your goldfish), to “let it all out” and just let the good times roll in a literary sense. I’ve found that the best thing brought to my life by the arrival of the internet a few years back (other than the Ecuador football jacket I bought off ebay) has been its enabling me to ”meet” and shoot the breeze with all sorts of people all over the world, primarily by striking up email chats which have rambled into all kinds of territory, be it hilarious, tragic, ridiculous, raging, bitter, excited, sad or a combination of the lot. 

I’ve never even met a great many of these people in person, I’m married to one of them, I occasionally bump into others when I’m out and about and realis that although I may have exchanged epic email outpourings with them, that we’ve barely spoken more than a handful of words ”in real life”.  Some would see this as the death of conversation as we know it, but I see it differently. There’s so many different angles that can be explored by the written word, the considered or off the cuff construction of a sentence, the (rare in my case) ability to just knock someone dead with a single word or sentence bursting with perfect comedy timing and impact. It’s a skill and it’s great fun to mess about with. It’s the only reason I have any interest whatsoever in the likes of facebook really, it provides a kind of electronic post it note on which I can scribble whatever nonsense has just popped into my head, or happened over my shoulder at work. I’ll plough back through my page one day and gather up a few of my favourite posts (the unfortunate truth is that I actually will do this one day).

As I mentioned later in the same email, I often wonder how writers do it. How do they have the guts to just write it all down and then let the world see it? Meanwhile I have arguments with people who tell me they “can’t draw”, “can’t paint”, etc. I always say that anyone can draw or paint, everyone has their own unique style. It’s just some people choose to push it that little further, seek to take their basic skills to an advanced level and really develop themself as an artist. Others choose to really develop themselves as bank managers or estate agents or whatever and these are the people who have nice houses and tidy bank balances. So the moral of the tale is, don’t EVER listen to me.

Stick with me for a bit here though, right? 

The same logic must apply to writing I guess, it’s just a case of “doing it”, letting the words flow and not worrying about how what you put down will be perceived, whether it’s right or wrong, “good” or “bad”, etc. It’s such a shame that the way we are taught and the way our (sensible, caring, hard-working and decent) families nudge us in the direction of applying ourselves to tangible, “safe” forms of harnessing our energy and intellect when we’re kids without a clue about how rubbish the big wide world is in many ways when you grow up.

As I’ve told myself so many times for years on end, I’d really like to do more writing and try a bit harder to improve. My father-in-law came up with a great suggestion recently, which would be to somehow harness some of the tales which have emerged from the family history research I’ve done in recent years and mould them into ficiton, be it in the form of a novel or some short stories. Perhaps that’s an ideal starter project. We’ll see.

In terms of my “style” as it were, I go on for far too long and off on so many tangents (“Duh, yeah! Where’s the bit about the pets?” – ed.), but maybe that can become a strength? I dunno. Anyway, to end this elongated introduction, a million thanks to you C-Dubya, you’re an inspiration and no mistake.

The pet tangent exploded after I asked my dear chum whether she had had any luck in her recent quest to get herself a dog. I’ve never had a dog and so I began to recount why this was and what I have had in the way of furry (or otherwise coated) friends down the years. Here we go then… (NB: certain details have been changed or ommitted to protect the identity of persons involved)

How’s things up sunny M____ way? Any progress on acquiring of a faithful, trusted hound? Are you after a funny looking, scruffy little mongrel type with a crooked tail but a heart of gold, or something French poodle-esque and snazzy, to match your inimitable style and swagger? (maybe you should get one of each, one to totter around the shops with and another to take for lung-busting country strolls bedecked regally in tweeds and deerstalker?)
 
I’ve never had a dog, or a cat (not bothered about that, I find cats rather tiresome) of my own. My Mum has bad asthma (I have it too, but it’s not been bad for decades) and so pets were always a bit of a no-no when I was a kid. We had a lovely rabbit called Bobbie when I was about 8, who was my best little chum for a good few years. When she died we got two new bunnies on the rebound, from a litter produced over the summer holidays by the school rabbit when H___ M______ let it run wild with her own menagerie of rabbits, guinea pigs, etc. and it swiftly got itself up the duff (with one of her rabbits, they weren’t some sick ‘guinea/rabbit’ hybrid). Anyway, we christened the pair of sisters we inherited Harvey and, er, Beauty (rubbish name), but they proved a mistake. While Bobbie was tame, friendly, house-trainable and generally a lovely pet, the other two were wild, averse to a cuddle and hard to catch when they escaped on the occasions we let them have a proper run about in the garden outside the confines of their chicken wire run.
 
This non-relationship between two young lads and their pets culminated on one particularly stormy (metaphorically speaking, it was actually a nice summer’s day) afternoon circa 1993 after my brother and I had spent several hours trying to coax the evil twins from the bolt-hole they had found at the back of a thick, prickly bush. We had tried tempting them with carrots and other treats, reaching through the thorns and branches to carefully pluck them from the undergrowth and, once they had managed to hide away beyond our reach resorted to gently nudging them with a broom handle, in an effort to encourage them to hop out so we could catch them and put them safely away in their hutch, away from the wicked clutches of our neighbours fat and nasty cat. In a fit of frustration I stood up and tossed said pole across the lawn in the opposite direction from where Harvey and Beauty were hiding. I didn’t throw it javelin style, or in any way viciously, I simply chucked it in frustration and – quite clearly – well away from any innocent creatures nearby (including my little brother). The next minute our neighbour (owner of said horrid cat) J____ (a particularly dense woman, who was deaf as a post and insisted on watching Coronation Street seemingly 24/7 on maximum volume) flung open an upstairs window and bellowed down at us “RIGHT! I’m ‘phoning the RSPCA on you boys! I saw you throwing iron bars at those poor rabbits!!”
 
Needless to say, Gah! (Brilliantly though, Mum later went round and gave the old bat an absolute rollicking. She never bothered us again.)
 
Fortunately we finally managed to coax the rabbits out and put them back in the secure confines of the rabbit hutch. Perhaps we should have just freed them into the wild. They died a year or two later from Myxomatosis as it happens, poor blighters. I’ve not had any pets since, although my brother had a hamster for a while. The fact that it turned out we’d bought him a pregnant one, which promptly had three babies, ate one of them (weirdo) and the other on escaped never to be found. We managed to piece together a suspiciously Mission Impossible-esque possible path featuring the box containing the plastic rolling exercise ball beside the cage the hamster lived in, a smaller box beside it which created a step down from atop the first box, then a colouring book which had been discarded and overhung the edge of the bedside table, onto a pillow, a cuddly panda which was sat on the bed with its back to the wall under the window sill and could perhaps have been traversable by a small rodent, who could, maybe, just maybe, have then flung itself, lemming-like, from the window which was ajar at the time as my brother and I examined the scene of the escape. Some 9 or 10 years later when we moved out of that house in 2002, as the last box was loaded onto the removal van, my brother and I conducted a thorough search of the empty building, just to see if we could find a hamster skeleton tucked away in some dark corner. Nothing. I wonder what on earth became of the little sod.

Other than that, pets-wise, when I was about 5 I won a goldfish at a funfair, one of those that you get in a plastic bag filled with water. Whose job is it to bag up goldfish for fairs? In my excitement I dropped it on the pavement on my way home and the bag burst. I scooped up my fish in a little pool of water in my hands and ran home. It survived in its bowl for about a week before it expired, a week during which I insisted on giving it a new name every morning. It was winter and my mum put the bowl outside, with the fish still floating in it and we all forgot about it. Needless to say, the water froze into a solid block which my brother and I discovered a few weeks later. We buried the ice block at the end of the garden. I clearly remember digging the whole and placing the sizeable lump of ice in it.
 
Finally, for my brother’s tenth birthday, mum and I got him ten fish. They all died over the next ten days. A big one ate a little one. One got stuck behind a rock and drowned. Another jumped out and perished on the carpet overnight. One was just found floating (perhaps it died of depression at seeing its friends all succumbing in such bizarre fashion). The others all went in similarly unique and innovative ways. Perhaps we shouldn’t be allowed pets really. Having said all that, none of these incidents were down to our neglect or cruelty towards said creatures and we were genuinely sad when they were gone (well, maybe not the rubbish bunnies so much). My brother did upset me a bit when we brought Bobbie back from the vet in a shoe box coffin. Uncle R__ was staying and said he’d help me dig a grave in the back garden. My brother said he’d come to the funeral but that he was going back out on his bike again straight afterwards. This upset me a bit in the midst of my grief (Bobbie had finally died on my lap en route to the vet, she appeared to take some sort of fit, wet herself and then flopped motionless on my knee. I bawled it.).

Mum told him my brother off for being heartless. He did get to go straight back out on his bike (a brilliant, tiny silver BMX with yellow trimmings if I remember correctly) afterwards though.  

Bobbie and I in happier (sadder, my parent’s were about to get divorced!) times, c1989

I Lost My Heart To Konnie Kapow!

“‘ello playmates!” © Arthur Askey c1938

Well, so here I am back in blog land. It’s been a busy few weeks. Lots of good stuff, the odd bit of artwork on the go (I made 27 new canvasses last week. Erk!) a few ups and downs, stresses and strains, but that’s life, eh?! I found out during a family history nerdathon the other day that in 1815 my great great great great great grandfather lived in a place called Kilninver, which is just 6.4 miles from the farm where Connie grew up and where we were married in 2009, nearly 200 years later. It’s a small, small world indeed.

I’m currently listening to Koko Taylor, who is an incredible blues singer. A cool lady.

Speaking of cool ladies, I just wanted to pay tribute in a small and wordy way to my wonderful wife Connie, also known in these parts as superheroine par excellence, the one and only Konnie Kapow! Lovers of her skills as a greeting card impresario will no doubt have been delighted of late to see the Kapow! powers put to good use in the act of getting the online shop back up and running and even making a couple of low key appearances at the odd craft fair here and there. Indeed, Konnie is currently doing the odd spot helping out her namealike crafting supremo Vonnie down at The Life Craft where there’s a rack of Kapow! cards for sale and of course my own humble artistic offerings in the form of the ’5 Queens of Country’ in startling oil paint technicolor. Pop down and have a gander if you’re out and about.

Connie has a lot to put up with in terms of Mr Kapow! and his errant ways and failings. I should know, I am he after all. She’s struggled herself with a lot of inner strife, self doubt, being treated like rubbish by her employers, trying to find a place for her many talents to flourish in this big ugly world and she’s facing it all with tremendous courage and as ever plenty of heart and soul. Without her backing I wouldn’t be making any art any more, I don’t know where I’d be and I owe her everything to be honest (why, thanks for your honesty! – ed.).

Anyway, last week when Connie was away in deepest Argyll at her mum and dad’s, I scurried off into the loft, dug out all manner of odds and ends of wood, paint, glue, screws, nails and tools and set about fixing up a little treat for my dear wife to come home to. This resulted in me transforming the wierd little walk-in wardrobe/almost a wee room but not really big enough, but bigger than a wardrobe really, not sure what it’s for to be honest type room which is linked to our bedroom by one door and out into the hallway by another.

At that point said cubby hole housed our clothes in various states from hanging by a thread in a rickety Aldi canvas/plastic/knackered mini-wardrobe type thing which was falling apart, a far over-stuffed chest of drawers, a holdall or three and, well, on the floor otherwise mostly! Buried under all of this was Connie’s dressing table and mirror. In short it was a state and I’d been going on about fixing it up all nice for ages… Like us hubby types tend to…

…Then we put the football on and all is forgotten. Sorry gals!! (Did anyone see Everton turn Chelsea over in the FA Cup the other day though…? YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!)

The truth is though, I love a bit of DIY and a bit of a challenge. I’ve been putting the mitre saw my in-laws got me to great use and did so again throughout this project. Luckily I found a couple of good solid wooden poles to use for clothes rails and some left over red paint to decorate the tired old pine drawers with and the frame of the shelf/rail unit which is all nicely supported by wall batons, a central section which is also screwed to the floor. I’ve glued and screwed all the major joints as taught to me many moons ago by my best friend’s dad who was a master carpenter. Sadly he died a few years back after a long battle with cancer.

Fred was a joy of a man to spend time with, I miss him. He had a great attitude to his work and always did a beautiful job. He made a point of always hoovering up and ensuring he left the job in pristeen nick when it came time to clear up his tools. I’ll never come close to his ability to craft a pile of timber into a work of art, but I try to adhere to his principles as best I can. It’s good to learn from people like that, that kind of skill combined with integrity is all too rare in people these days

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Connie and I are off to the west coast again tomorrow morning for the funeral of a similarly close family friend of her own, a lady who ran a great pub on the Isle of Seil and was very much a central figure in the community. I’m lucky to have had the chance to get to know her and her family a little bit in my time spent up that way. I actually spent the evening before our wedding at her inn with some of my nearest and dearest having a few beers and playing darts until kicking out time. A warmer and heartier welcome I’ve rarely witnessed than I always do there. A grand and emotional send off is guaranteed tomorrow. Good people like these should be cherished and remembered by everyone who had the good fortune to know them.

In the meantime Connie and I continue to try hard to work out where we are headed in the coming months and years, trying to get our life in some sort of order which should result in removal of some of the frustrations and chance to focus on what we’re good at, work hard and get where we want to be. It’s both exciting and daunting to think about the challenges we face, but together I genuinely believe we are capable of anything. That’s the Kapow! in me talking, right there!!

I’ve probably wandered off the original point of all this a little bit (as usual!), but the point is, if you’re married to a superheroine, comic genius, cheeky minx face, bombshell, pop star, country gal, Tasmanian devil, Hollywood Golden Era-alike, weasel, knitting machine, quizbook loving, whale fearing, tinkerbell, snoofs mouse like Konnie Kapow!, then count yourself a very, very lucky big-faced, fuzz sideburned, football wierdo, nerd of epic proportions!!

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In other news… Artistic types in Glasgow’s West End, if you don’t already, then please try shopping at MIND THE GAP, it’s good! And it means you don’t have to trek all the way into town for your art supplies. AND they have a real life DOG in their shop, which is always a boon! 

Ancestry Portraits by Mr Kapow!

If you, like me, are a bit of a genealogy buff, then please read on… if you aren’t, then read on anyway, you’ll find yourself reading about how your great great great uncle Terry was a boot maker in Southend in the 1890s. Thrilling stuff!!

I first got interested in earnest in the old family history game about four years ago. A couple of things happened/occurred to me which really set the touchfire blazing and it’s become something of a quest ever since.

Connie and I got together in January 2007 when I travelled to Glasgow, we hung out for a weekend and have sort of been together ever since really. Once I became a regular visitor north of the border and began to see my future panning out there I began to think about a few of the family tales I’d been told down the years, noteably regarding my great grandfather James Brodie Baird.

Born and raised in Glasgow, James was by all accounts something of a character. I had known for as long as I could remember that he had played football for Dumbarton FC (standing only 4ft 11ins tall he was brilliantly nicknamed ‘The Tricky Ant’!), served in WWI where his twin brother George was killed in 1918, trained as an electrician, toured the UK as a song and dance man on the stage, met an English woman and married her, had three children (including my Nanna) in Manchester, then settled in Kent. During WWII the Germans again went after ‘Jock’ Baird, bombing the Bairds seven times (all survived) in the Blitz. After the war Jock worked as a professional snooker referee, with the stars of the day including Joe Davis, at the snooker hall in the bustling heart of London’s West End, Thurstons in Leicester Square.

Is it any wonder I’ve never settled on one straightforward career coming from this kind of stock?!

Back to 2007 and I began hunting for records of the Baird family around 1900, finding to my utter astonishment that my great grandad and his twin were born but a few hundred yards from the flat I know lived in with Connie. On 2nd February 1897 George and Robina Baird (nee Brodie) became parents to twin boys James and George, born at 107 Kirkland Street, Maryhill. Subsequent research informed me that the Baird family lived in the same area for the best part of the next 70 years – all within the same square on an Ordinance Survey map as where I was now dwelling 110 years after my great grandfather was born. The fact that James left Scotland to start a new life in England around 1925, never to return and my own immediate family had not had any contact with the Bairds in Glasgow ever since just made this even more of a bizarre turn of events.

Alongside this I began to delve into my lineage on my father’s side. This area was even fuzzier and more mysterious to me having had little contact with my dad or any other relatives on that side for many years. I was quite upset when I actually realised that I had never even know my paternal grandmother’s Christian name up to that point. All I knew was that she had died very young from tuberculosis, shortly after giving birth to my father and then his younger brother, in the early 1950s. My dad’s father had died in 1987 in a nursing home in Southport, my only memories of him being from one or two short visits to his bedside when I was a small boy. Realising at almost 30 years of age that I knew next to nothing about these people, their siblings, parents, aunts, uncles and so on hit me quite hard and I worked hard to fill in what details I could. Through internet research I found records of my grandmother’s birth, marriage and death and that her maiden name was Enid Pert. She died aged just 22 in 1953, a month before my own mother was born.

Suffice to say, my maternal great grandfather and my paternal grandmother were the driving forces behind my research and desire to answer that big question… Who Do You Think You Are?

With this in mind – and having happily rediscovered my creative drive and determination somewhere along the same route along which I’ve followed in sketching out my family tree – I have since completed portraits in oil of James and Enid. There follows an outline of the process as I took a pair of black and white photographs from the family archives and turned them into full colour portraits of two people who I never really knew, but who both have contributed directly to my very existence.

Enid Pert (1930-1953)

There follows the process of making an oil painting of my paternal grandmother, Enid Stewart (nee Pert). Enid died aged just 22 from tuberculosis, shortly after giving birth to my uncle David. During my research I’ve been trying to trace anyone who may have been a friend of hers back in the 1940s in Liverpool, so far without any luck. I live in hope however, one of her old pals must still be knocking about.

I gave this painting to my Dad as a 60th birthday present in 2010, it was a very symbolic piece of work for me in that it represented everything about being able to rise above some of my deepest fears and lay a few major ghosts to rest. Working on it was incredibly emotional and I experienced a true breakthrough moment in my life as I laid the final brush strokes. I realised I’m actually quite good at this painting lark and it was about time I did something with my talent. Soft get that I am, I like to think it was Enid watching over me, giving me a nudge in the right direction. Thanks Gran!

James Brodie Baird (1897-1981)

Born in Maryhill, Glasgow, the son of a baker, James fought with his twin brother George in WWI (sadly George never made it home), played football for Dumbarton FC (nicknamed ‘The Tricky Ant’ as he stood only 4ft 11ins tall), sang, danced and entertained in the music halls up and down the UK in the 1920s, worked as an electrician and also a professional snooker referee at the Leicester Square snooker hall in the 1940/50s, tap danced around the room and was bombed out seven times while living in the East End of London in WWII (the Sunday Pictorial article warned: “don’t move in next door to the Bairds!”). In short (pardon the pun!), he was a character!

As mentioned, the portrait of Enid was something of a labour of love all told. I actually found myself pretty much on the verge of tears a few times while working on the painting, as her features emerged on the canvas. It was a real watershed piece of work in my life, where I really realised what I am capable of. I’m really pleased with the warmth and depth I managed to capture, particularly given that no colour photographs exist of Enid, so every decision I made had to be an educated guess. I also managed to turn her gaze to more of an angle facing the viewer directly, rather than remaining 100% true to the source image where she is actually glancing a little to her left as you look at her. The sparkle in her eyes and the final touches of warmth I worked into her flesh tone really bring the image together. I’m really proud of it.

Jock was particularly fun to work with in the closing stages. The early versions appeared to me a little too “charicature” and just didn’t cut it as far as what I was hoping for. I had great difficulty getting the balance of light and dark correct and had to take a bit of a gamble into constructing what became the finished composition. Slightly looser brush strokes, some astute blending and concentrating on getting that prominent Baird nose just right were challenges that I wrestled with and eventually came out on top of. It’s been great getting feedback from my mum, her sisters and their cousins who remember their grandad fondly. I hope I’ve captured that ‘jack the lad’ twinkle in his eye and a hint of mischief in his grin.

If you have a favourite black and white (or colour) photograph among your family albums which you would like me to turn into a full colour portrait in oil, please get in touch and I will happily provide a quote.