Seb Palmer

Teresa suggested we watch The Ladykillers tonight. I wanted to watch a fresh episode of Columbo – I’m working my way through the complete boxed set – but she got her way. And it has to be said, even though I’ve seen it several times, The Ladykillers really is superb.

Alec Guinness is great, as the creepy Prof. Marcus, leading his rag-tag band of ne’erdowells on a ‘stick up caper’. Katie Johnson is equally fab as the dotty old Mrs. Wilberforce, who lets a room to the gang.

The plot is great, but I won’t give it away here. Suffice it to say that Prof. Marcus’ team are working together for the first time, and masquerading as a group of enthusiastic amateur musicians. The prof’ plans to make use not just of Mrs Wilberforce’s home – which, like her, is a relic from a bygone era – but her, as the unwitting mule for the lolly.

But the prof’ hasn’t taken into account the unforeseen consequences of her well-meaning busy-body nature. From her wonky pictures, to General Gordon and her other parakeets, she is a law unto herself.

As the prof’s well laid plans unravel, the nature of their crimes assumes a darker hue, as they begin to plan to be rid of her. But she is a force to be reckoned with.

The ensemble cast is great. Herbert Lom and Peter Sellers meet pre-Clouseau, and, with Cecil Parker and Danny Green, form the gang. There are small but strong supporting supporting roles for such familiar faces as Jack ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ Warner (a cop, what else?), and Kenneth Connor (taxi driver) and Frankie Howard (barrow boy), the latter two perhaps most familiar from the later Carry On films.

The setting is also worthy of note. Like her home, Mrs Wilberforce is a relic of a bygone era, a holdover from the Victorian/Edwardian age, polite, moralistic, and heavily floral, lodged amidst terraced tenements and the industrial grime of a large railway terminus.

She embodies qualities that range from lightly quaint to deeply irritating, but is stoical, decent, and ultimately very sweet and hugely endearing. Her simple good naturedness is the nexus around which the grubbier workaday business of the contemporary world revolves, giving the whole film, in addition to its darkly comic side, a wistful romanticism.

A really terrific film.

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P.S. I did also get to watch Columbo, Grand Deceptions, which starts with – joy of joys – slow panning shots of an ACW (American Civil War) diorama. I’ll probably post a review of that at some future point on my mini-military blog.

We have friends coming for a Sunday roast later today. Getting the painting and decorating finished in time was reasonably hard work, as Teresa insisted I refresh the paint on the stairs, which were rather tatty.

Found a good spot for the mirror I took off the recent FC wardrobe, in the corner where I formerly had one of my sets of model display shelves.

Having the downstairs tidier is lovely. I’ve stuck the hard-top for my MX5, which currently lives in the lounge, on the car. I’m going to have to find some way to store it that doesn’t impinge on our living space. There’s a butler sink under the stairs, under the white sheet. Need to find somewhere to stash that as well!

The stairs certainly do look a lot nicer now. Only thing is, now the wear and tear to the paint on the handrail is more noticeable.

Teresa also insisted I pack away my little Gretsch Catalina Club Jazz kit, which I’ve had set up in the lounge. I haven’t put it away, but just taken it down and stacked it in the corner.

This morning I finished painting the downstairs hall and stairs area, which looked lovely in the early morning sunlight. I’m painting purely with brushes, which is more work (than rollers), but also more fun.

The ‘party wall’, which we share with our immediate neighbours, in the older cooler off-white colour, mid-way through clearing the area for painting. Still no real idea what to do about those pesky exposed light fittings. One thought is to install some of those inverted conical uplighter doodads.

Mid-way through painting the longest wall section. This gives a good indication of the degree of difference in colour and atmosphere. It’s so much nicer, warmer and cosier. Really need to change the main light fitting! The three part ‘chandelier’ is what we inherited from the previous owner, and not to our tastes – well, mine, at any rate – at all.

I also painted a fair bit of the old chocolate brown woodwork, in the lovely Permoglaze glossy white. This stuff stinks, and is oil-based, requiring cleaning and thinning etc with White Spirit. It also required two coats. I’m going to need more, to do all the skirting boards, and other wooden bits and bobs.

I now have to wait for the painted woodwork to dry out fairly fully before I can rehang the last of the three curtains at that end of the room. But I have to say that the dining room end of our long through lounge ground floor now looks quite lovely!

Teresa and I love a game of Scrabble. We haven’t found the time to play in ages.

Today she was off work for a medical check-up, and I’ve stopped teaching at my Thursday school, on account of it being too far away – Bishops Stortford – to remain viable.

So we got out the Scrabble. And here’s how the board looked at end of play.

One thing I enjoy about our games is that, unlike the old-timers who once thrashed us at Scrabble Club we made the mistake of venturing into, we aren’t hell-bent on winning via as many two-letter combinations as are humanly possible. Certainly for me it’s a game that’s just about the fun of thinking of words.

Cooking pumpkin pie, having had pumpkin soup for a starter, and a meaty rice dish for mains. The fireplace looks nice!

We’re watching an old BBC adaptation of M. R. James’ The Stalls of Barchester. It’s perfect Halloween viewing! Dripping Victorian stuffiness and academic/cloistered mustiness, with just the right touch of creeping horror. Really great!

The Stalls of Barchester has finished, and we’re now into A Warning To The Curious, which is set in Norfolk, and filled with places we know and love.

As Peter Vaughan digs into the sandy soil at Holkham Bay, to find one of the lost crowns of Olde England, defying the ghost of William Ager, spooky music – the music/soundtrack is utterly superb (poss using some Ligeti?) – wiffles away, and our pumpkin pies are ready:

Last time I made the pastry base as well. But on this occasion, with no time and bring very tired from my first day back at work, we opted to use ready made pastry bases. And they are very good. But the filling is completely home made.

God, these M. R. James things are good! They’re the perfect mix of pagan weirdness and Victorian Christo-academic spookiness, all filmed with height-of-the-BBC’s early ’70s greatness… classic!

A while back we decided to repaint the dining room end of the lounge a slightly warmer colour. It was red when we moved in, and I’d already painted it a pale off-white. But it was too cool, verging on cold.

Teresa demanded something more yellow, warmer. And she was right! We chose ‘cupcake’, from B&Q’s Valspar range. I made a small start quite a while back, just with a sample pot. I finally got a proper pot full a while later, and today I painted the bookshelf alcove.

I also went to work upgrading the bookshelves themselves. There are four, each of which is a different depth (well, two of them are the same). Originally they were just rough planks, resting on little wooden brackets.   They still are, but I wanted to put a nice decorative face on each of the shelves, so I bought some trim from B&Q, cut it in to four pieces, cut them to size, and then tacked them on.

I took the trouble to prep the painting area with Frog tape, at each stage. Whilst doing so I noticed how nice the shelves and trim look, with their contrasting colours/grains (even though both are pine). So I took a pic, as I was about to paint them white.

The gloss white paint, from Permoglaze, is absolutely fab. One of the best domestic paints I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. Sadly it seems the once massive Permoglaze range is currently being run down. I’ve put one coat on so far. I’ll do another tomorrow. The contrast between white gloss and the new matt yellow-ish colour, ‘cupcake’, is really nice. Just what we wanted!

Later the same night:

Got to be patient. Second coat of white gloss won’t be thoroughly dry till tomorrow, 10 a.m. Then I’ll be able to load up the books. Have to say I’m very pleased. The ‘cupcake’ colour is exactly right, warm, soft, cosy. And the gloss white woodwork, with the nice ogee facing, really sets it off.

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The next day…

Mostly filled with art books at present, plus some miscellaneous and the omnipresent military/Napoleonic stuff! We may put a curtain rail and curtain across the aclove, so we can shut it off as and when we want to, to de-clutter the view.

We’re convinced a previous guest of ours – a friend who stays with us regularly – wandered off with our spare key last time he stayed over. He says he doesn’t have it. We reckon he just hasn’t bothered checking properly! Still, we may be wrong, and it may turn up here at some point.

Anyway, I got some new keys cut today, for our AirB&B guests. I decided I wanted to make them less easy to lose, and that key-fobs might be the way. None of the ones at the key-cutting shop were suitable/nice enough. So I resolved to make some wooden ones.

They’ll be big ‘n’ chunky, in a nice dark hardwood I wish I knew the name of, and I’ll be putting the AirB&B logo on them. To that end I printed logos, and glued them to the wood.

As many have observed before me, the current AirB&B logo resembles female genitalia more than the various concepts it supposedly embodies. Maybe that’s why I don’t mind breaking my usual embargo on ‘brand’ labels?

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Some time later… Hmmm, well, as can be seen below, that didn’t work! The one on the left I carved using some mini-chisels I bought via Amazon, for model making. They cut through styrene fine. But they wandered all over the place in this hard wood.

I painted in the carved area, and then sanded back. The idea is sound, but it just didn’t work here. The grain of the wood has all these fissures, so even if I had carved the logo superbly, the paint would have bled into the fissures, and never looked as crisp and neat as I wanted.

For the one on the right, I traced a dotted line through the centre of the line described by the logo, in the manner of a renaissance painter transferring their design from paper to a painting surface, with pin-pricks. I then carved as light and accurate a line as I could, following the pricks (sounds a bit rude!).

I wish I’d photographed that stage, as it actually looked pretty good. I then tried to manually move the wood underneath a dill bit, in the drill-press, to ‘draw’ a bevelled channel in the groove I’d carved out. Once again, however, wobble and wandering ruined the design.

So I’ve opted instead to just stick a large plain wooden doodad in the key ring, and keep it ultra-simple. Disappointing. Especially given how much time I wasted on trying to make it work.

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* College, Cambridge, the ‘Gate of Honour’. My dad had a pot labelled Caius, in which he kept old, random, spare keys…

Teresa asked me to carve the pumpkin today. I scooped out the seeds, and most of the sticky, stringy innards, before using an ice-cream scoop to get the flesh out. Looking forward to pumpkin pie, and pumpkin soup!

I prefer to go for old-fashioned simple designs. This is my most trad/goofy so far. I’ve kept the seeds for planting, and the flesh for eating. Wooo, ooo-woooh-oooh… ha, ha, ha, ha…

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Of course I did some work in my shed. I got the heater I had off Freecycle a while back working, and I cut down my home-made laminated top for the ‘tool chest’.

I was hoping to do some trim for the shelves in the lounge, but I’ve kind of run out of steam now. I might still do it, later this evening. But at present I feel exhausted. Tired enough I could easily go to sleep here and now; it’s only 5.30 pm! I felt a bit off colour today, probably on account of the flu jab I had (as did Teresa) at the weekend.

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Here are pics of the pumpkin flesh – still quite a bit – even after using half, or thereabouts, to make the soup. Which, though I say it myself, is delicious!

I popped out earlier to visit  a second-hand book sale in the village of Hilgay. Got six interesting books for just £9. Mostly art books, with one on restoring antiques, and another – yet another – on Waterloo. We plan to use some of the printed artwork in the art books around the house: I’ll chop ’em out, make frames, etc.

Back in the shed… er, I mean workshop, I loaded a bunch of stuff on to the newly painted set of shelves, and touched up the paintwork on the floor and adjacent wall. Later on I hope to get ye olde table back in there, and poss’ also to make a start on the ‘tool’ chest. Altho’ quite where I’ll put the latter, I don’t know!?

Returning to the books. I got a lovely old pocket-sized 1886 edition of Isaac Walton’s ‘The Complete Angler’, and the book Michelangelo and Raphael in the Vatican features some great reproductions, including a number that fold out, some making five-page spreads. Lovely stuff!

Funnily enough we’d just watched the episode ‘The Artist As Hero’ this morning, from Kenneth Clark’s magnificent Civilisation, which concentrates on Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci. So that particular book came quite serendipitously!

I tried moving the old table back into the workshop. But it wouldn’t quite fit. So I smashed it up. It was in a very bad way, with woodworm, advanced rot, it was practically falling apart. I’m going to use the timber for firewood! I just managed to squeeze the old chest into the space. Although even then I had to take some bits off to get it in. I’ll make a top of some sort for it ASAP.

I’ve taken the sides from the wardrobe, which I’ve had to cut and laminate: two layers, each of one wide piece and one narrow piece, with the top layer reversed, so the four pieces all overlap and reinforce each other. Pictured below the wood is buried under a load of heavy art books, to help it glue up.

I finally moved an old set of shelves I got off Freecycle a while ago into the corner of the workshop. They were very tatty, so I’ve roughly sanded them, and painted them a creamy beige colour.

To make space I had to remove two old decrepit shelves that I’m assuming Clive put up, along the left wall. I had a spillage of paint, visible on the floor in front of the shelves. I worked fast and slapdash, so both the rear wall, at right, and the floor, will need touching up.

I’ve had to move a knackered old table outside, and it’s pouring with rain. Well, hey-ho, it’ll have to sit there for a bit until I can create enough space to move it back in!

All of this has provided me with an opportunity to clear up and reorganise a bit. Well, it will do. At present the workshop is one almighty mess, with everything temporarily moved aside so I could get the shelves in and paint them, etc.

There’s also the bottom part of a wardrobe, which I might use as a chest for storing power-tools, to keep them protected from all the dust. But I’ll have to make a top for it, poss from scraps of what was formerly the top section of the same wardrobe, which I dismantled. We kept the mirrored door. We’ll find somewhere to put that!