Nowhere to go

Tuesday’s sombre sky provided a surprisingly fine backdrop to a still snowy landscape.

It helps if you like that sort of thing which I did even before becoming enamored of Winter.

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One of my favourite paintings: Rue Jeanne d’Arc by Maurice Utrillo 1934

The contrast of colours is what does it for me, I think.

And all those straight lines.

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Simplicity pleases me too.

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It’s why I love Japanese art. The above Hiroshige painting hangs on one of my walls.

My father brought it back from Japan in 1959. I assume it is only a copy though it looks old.

Regrettably, it was not well cared for and was never properly framed until it came into my possession. Shipped between numerous homes, it acquired a fold mark. Still I treasure it. Far more, I think, than my parents did.

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Next to the Hiroshige hangs a lacquered woodcut that was presented to my father by his UNESCO colleagues upon his departure from Vietnam in December, 1959

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On other walls I have my mother’s temple rubbings that she did in Bangkok.

After leaving Vietnam, my father was stationed in Ubon Ratchatani in eastern Thailand, which was when I was dispatched to a boarding school in the highlands of Vietnam.

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Because my parents moved so often, few souvenirs remain from their travels, most items having to be abandoned along the way. It is surprising that the above vase is still with me. I saved up my pocket money and bought it for my mother in Saigon. I was very pleased with my purchase, but I suspect she did not love it as it is heavy and she would have found it unlovely. The fact that she held onto it and transported it around the world despite having to leave behind better- loved possessions, is perhaps all that matters.

The vase was purchased from a shop in the rue Catinat but I know not of its provenance. The Vietnamese are skilled artists and although it cost all of my pocket money, it cannot have been expensive.

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A pair of other heavy, though smaller, items refused to be abandoned. Two old bowls that my mother bought in the Thieves Market in Bangkok.

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Presumably it was because she liked them and not that they were valuable, considering the way they were used alternately for serving food or displaying flowers.

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After two years in Thailand my father left UNESCO and took up a contract with the Colombo Plan which sent him to Laos for another two years. Then in 1964, aged 52, he decided to go and live in the West Indies. In Barbados he purchased an old plantation house which my parents converted into a small apartment complex.

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They built a tiny house of their own adjacent to it, my father doing much of the construction himself, while my mother took care of setting up and furnishing the living spaces and the very large garden.

It was a lot of work and not inexpensive which is probably why, 5 years later, my father was persuaded by an old colleague now working in Madagascar, to accept a new contract from UNESCO. Putting a friend in charge of the apartments, my parents went off there to join her (and Wolf, her dog).

Sadly, I was not able to visit. Toward the end of my father’s contract, Mum flew to Zambia to patch things up with my brother, leaving my dad to finish out his contract, but without her restraint he got thoroughly fed up and left the office one day telling his driver to take him to the airport whence he departed, abandoning the pension he would have earned.

Perhaps this is where I got my inclination for sudden impulses, but I have never done anything quite as mad.

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From Madagascar my mother brought a solitaire set, the frame carved in wood and the marbles all semi-precious stones. I used to know how to solve the puzzle but it’s been so long since I made the attempt I have now forgotten.

Mum also brought a few pieces of coral and the above exquisite shells.

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One item that went everywhere with my parents was Dad’s stamp collection which I inherited.

The stamps are colourful and interesting and nicely displayed, but I seldom look at them now. A little more often though not much, I glance at my father’s atlas, printed in the year I was born and of interest because of the vast changes that have taken place over my lifetime.

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Several of my walls display Dad’s art work.

The garden in Barbados grew a wide variety of hibiscus and he painted them all.

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I also have Dad’s photographs of Cambodia which perhaps I cherish most of all.

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In Cambodia, childhood asthma left me. I had not a single attack despite having been diagnosed as allergic to dust and pollen. It was a good reason to like being there but there was much more to it than that.

Cambodia was a fascinating and beautiful country.

I loved it, even when I was eventually sent back there to a hated boarding school.

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It surprised me to find the above mug among the items my father chose to ship to America when he returned following my mother’s death. He was not a fan of the Royal Family but I imagine he may have acquired the mug from my grandfather and as Edward’s coronation never took place, I suppose it was of some historical interest, though there must be thousands of them in Britain. Not so many Upstate NY, I’d guess.

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Last but not least these two small items.

The penknife was my father’s, I think, but Mum appropriated it to live in her handbag whence it was fished out on many occasions to cut up fruit, open letters or poke at things that needed poking. It is a versatile and still perfectly serviceable tool.

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The magnifying glass is in fact not. It’s a reducing glass, used by artists for perspective.

It still carries my father’s paint stains.

A few more of my parents possessions can be found in boxes and drawers but not many and it is just as well, since they are of little interest to anyone else and when the time comes they will have nowhere to go.

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