Two flats and a Pre-Raphaelite show

Astarte Syriaca by Rossetti - poster
image for the Tate show

I don’t know what it is with my children, none of them can be relied upon to look after cars or motorcycles.

Tom will be gnashing his teeth in anger at that statement and will be able to cite multiple repairs and improvements that he has made to vehicles in his ownership.

In turn, I could cite a number of occasions when failure to add petrol to a motorcycle left him stranded and me riding to the rescue with a petrol can balanced between my legs.There was also that incident when he rode to Brands Hatch and (almost) back with only a cup-ful of oil in the engine.

Sam has a zero maintenance policy when it comes to four wheels, although he is now the proud owner of a foot-pump.

They were always very keen to get behind the wheel of a car, but less so to get under the bonnet and eschewed all attempts to interest them in oil levels, tyre pressures and washer fluid.

Latest car crisis came on Wednesday when I visited Max for a drink and some dinner. Driving home from school that day, he’d pulled up into his car park and felt a clunk at the back wheel. His tyre was flat. I said I’d help him put the spare on and so, after pints and pasta, we got busy by the light of a sodium street-lamp and a head torch.

Had a bit of trouble with the locking nut, but we got it off in the end, only to find that when we let the jack down, the space-saver spare tyre was almost as flat as the one we’d taken off.

“Do you ever check your tyre pressures?” I asked.

“Of course,” lied Max.

He couldn’t remember when he last checked the spare - probably not been checked since 2000 when the car was built. Next morning, the spare looked even flatter and so Max was on the bus and a trip to Halfords beckoned. The space-saver spare was pumped up and the punctured tyre replaced. It was pretty worn so two new tyres were needed on the back.

I had arranged to meet Max at Balham Bowls Club, which I much prefer to The Bedford, and I was quite late as I’d been to Shepherd’s Bush for a meeting which made me late setting off and had then gone straight to Balham from there. Normally, I catch any number of trains from Victoria and it’s a 15-minute journey. From Shepherd’s Bush, I had to catch a branch of the North London Line which went across the river to Clapham Junction and change there for a train that went through Balham.

The station at Shepherd’s Bush was rammed and when the train arrived that was also rammed!. Fortunately, quite a few people get off there (presumably to get onto the Central Line) so I managed to squeeze on. By the time we got to our last stop before Clapham Junction, the train was packed - worse than the Victoria Line on a bad day. People were left waiting at the stations, there just wasn’t enough room to get on the train.

Clapham Junction is an astonishing place. There are almost 20 platforms (twice as many as King’s Cross) and I had to get from platform 3 to wherever a train that went through Balham could be found. Fortunately, there was a large board with all destinations listed in alphabetical order along with the platforms to use. Balham said 15-17 so I made my way through a long connecting tunnel, shuffling along with the crowd and cursing the ‘idiots’ who chose to ignore the keep-left signs and pushed against the flow of people. I’m glad I don’t have to do that every night!

Inna joined us for dinner. She’d been late at work because they were filming a quiz for their Christmas party. Some of the questions were “guess the film” with the staff acting out well known scenes. There was the James Bond “no Mr Bond, I expect you to die” scene recreated with a laser pen and a few others. It sounded like good fun. We went to my favourite busy Italian on Bedford Hill Road and I had pasta with broccoli, chiorizo and cream. Max and Inna surprised me by saying they had been thinking about children’s names. I thought a big announcement was about to be made, but no, they had just been thinking about children’s names. Inna liked Chloe for a girl (she has a uni' friend called Chloe) and for a boy, they thought about a Russian name - Artem. That would be the first Artem in the family tree.

On Sunday, I took pictures for my project to record our garden through the seasons. I’ve been taking four shots of the garden from the same position once every month to show how it changes. There’s often a dog (generally Holly) photo-bombing the shot! It has been a fairly mild November; we’ve had some frost, but not enough to fully kill the dahlias or geraniums, although it has seen off the begonias which have provided so much colour this year. The main feature, however, has been rain (and lots of it). 2012 was the wettest summer for many years. A drought and hosepipe ban was declared in spring and, basically, it hasn’t stopped raining since! The ground is sodden and more rain has been falling. In the west country, Wales and parts of Yorkshire, there has been severe flooding and the washes road to Whittlesey was closed this week. We drove across it on Saturday and the water was well up. It shut on Monday and several drivers who had ignored the ‘road closed’ signs and tried to cross got stranded in the flood. I remember Max and I driving through the flood one year in the VW Sharan. I thought we’d be fine because the engine is positioned quite high, but in the deepest part the car started to rock and I think we were briefly floating. I decided to come back via Guyhirn! Apparently police have been prosecuting motorists who ignore the signs, which is a little harsh - a big bill to tow you out, dry your engine and then a fine and three points on top!

On Friday, we went to the Haycock at Wansford for a taster night. The idea is that you have a meal, comprising lots of small courses and there was a different wine to try between each course. A jazz singer in the Elkie Brooks style (Lesley) crooned away during the meal and she was quite good. The food was good, nothing too challenging, but there was a particularly nice rhubarb crumble to finish. It was a bed of thinly sliced just-cooked rhubarb topped with ice cream and with baked crumb sprinkled quite generously over the top. A thin slice of (I’m guessing) oven dried rhubarb was pushed into the ice cream. The flavour was intense in the dried rhubarb - a really interesting dish.

The wine waiter was an amiable Geordie who not did let a complete lack of knowledge dampen his enthusiasm. You’ll have to read this in a Geordie accent to get the best from it, but he told us that he didn’t know much about wine; he’d been on a course this week and this was his first night.

The first wine was an Italian white which he told me was “not too bad”. I asked him what grape it was and he was completely flummoxed (I hadn’t meant to make him so). He didn’t know, but started reading the bottle: “It’s a light, fruity wine ...”

The next was a Merlot which was described as “a bit better” followed by a “cabaret savvie-non” which was his favourite “aye, it’s all right is this.” The final wine was a sweet pudding wine. A sauternes? I enquired. He started reading the label - "no it’s a Gironde." We finished our wine chat at that stage. I don’t think he has a great future as a somelier, but he was a thoroughly nice chap.

The previous Friday, I’d gone to see the Pre-Raphaelites exhibition at The Tate with Lawrie, Davina and Laura from work. Margaret was supposed to come as well, but hadn’t felt like it on the day and so her ticket was wasted. I enjoyed the show, there was a lot to see and it was busy enough to have some atmosphere, but not so busy that you couldn’t comfortably see the works, which included tapestry, carpet, wallpaper and painted furniture as well as paintings.

Portrait of Sophy Gray

The art isn’t challenging or technologically ground-breaking, much of it is shamelessly romantic and rather sugary, but nonetheless there were some stunning paintings, most notably (for me) a portrait of a young girl Sophy Gray by John Everett Millais. She was the younger sister of his wife and he caught her at about 14 with a youth and innocence combined with awakening sexual awareness that resulted in a painting with the power to look straight through you. If I were Millais' wife, I'd keep a close eye on young Sophy!

I liked A Vision of Fiammetta by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber) and his other stunning work, Astarte Syriaca, which was the cover shot of the exhibition. It looks much better in reality than on the reproductions.

I’d seen a few of the paintings before, but great to see them again and to see so many well-known works of art in one place.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, A Vision of Fiammetta (owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber).