Fine parking

Sunday planned and executed. The plan is to travel on a day trip to London by coach to meet up with A to sort out her smart phone and see the stereoscopic exhibition at the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road.

I drive the car down town and park by Trinity church risking a parking ticket, walk to the ferry via the newsagent’s to buy the Observer, stuffed into my red backpack. Getting an early crossing gives me time to wander round Portsea to check on the theatre (former school, now the Groundlings), inspect brickwork on the Dockyard wall, notice huge iron chain links dated 1943 and wait for the bus in the interchange.

The coach is full up but I get a seat on the aisle halfway down next to a young man who stares silently through the tinted glass as the A3 landscape whizzes past at 60 mph. The traffic slows in London and the coach rolls into Victoria on time. There’s a long way to the tube but I’m pushing A’s No 22 doorbell before the promised time of arrival.

A hug and chat and we’re off to the Wellcome where we get on their Wi-Fi and start activating A’s phone and organise to keep her old number – GiffGaff makes it easy. She treats me to lunch in the restaurant and we find the show of stereo photographs excellent; even the large photos of the old storage premises seem 3D.

We get back to the flat for tea and petit gateaux, to charge the phone and discuss a potential sale of No 22 – whether to accept an offer, on what terms, or not?

A tells me about her meeting with old Parade friend Claire with whom she had holidayed years ago; she finds her still peculiar and reticent about her life since the separation with her former partner. Talk of Claire highlights East Grinstead where she now lives. This gives me an opportunity to boast of great-aunt Norah Stevenson’s war work with McIndoe doing physiotherapy with wounded pilots. Then we watch the 1914 newsreel footage of the women’s lacrosse game (England v Wales 15-0) in which Norah played, available free on the BFI Player.

When I finally return to Gosport, I find the car has been ticketed, £25 fine.

Sunday

Sunday breakfast by the kitchen window in the morning low sun, feasting on thick sugared porridge and Italian espresso coffee. The oats in a bowl edged with a retro pink and green flower motif and the frothy drink in a solid café cup. Eaten with an 1830 smooth silver spoon off a repainted Chinese bamboo tray named for Hua Mu-Lan. The colours of the blocks, red and black for anarchism; and white, green and soft purple for the suffragettes. On my mind, the writing of ‘our scrittore’, Hanif Kureishi, in Italy on his new Substack. It’s all over in ten minutes, the frosted rooftops dropping east exposing us to more blue sky again. More stuff to wash up.

Hua Mu-Lan bamboo tray – repainted 2021

Proud kayakers

Kayak swim support team members on Ryde sands after successful crossing from Stokes Bay

Members of the kayak safety boat team which escorted twelve teenage swimmers across the Solent from Stokes Bay to Ryde sands. The dozen young people from the Dorset Bryanston school (private) who were testing their stamina and raising funds for charities took less than two hours to make the crossing.

On the wall

The sea defences of Portsmouth Harbour include a vast stone wall on the Gosport side built in front of the old naval Haslar hospital. It’s almost a secret place for quiet walks and fishing with a wide open view of the eastern Solent across Spithead to the Isle of Wight.

The World of Comic Strip at YEG

Watch out! I’m set to give a talk on this at Gosport’s new Yellow Edge Gallery on Thursday 15 August at 7-9 pm (yellowedgegallery.com). I’ll be looking at comic strip as a medium of mass communication but which has a long history. It’s been sidelining both art and literature and influencing contemporary art and cinema for years. Now there’s huge interest in graphic novels and the products of Japan’s vast Manga* industry.

Pizzo-col-trim   * Manga at the British Museum 23 May – 26 August #MangaExhibition