Cuyp

While I was pottering round Kenwood with the 3CC (see previous post), I was keeping an eye open for paintings by Cuyp. He's a Dutch painter, I think, eighteenth century, who painted mostly pastoral scenes of cows standing in fields. Albert Cuyp.

One of my first bosses was an elderly lady who was utterly entranced by Cuyp and said she could stand and look at his paintings for hours. I never heard her mention any other painters. She was very old-fashioned, and proper, and it was all Miss This, and Miss That, no Christian names ever to be used in the office. I vividly remember her explaining to me that it was the duty of all the senior staff to keep an eye on the juniors at Christmas and make sure that they didn't take too much sherry. She was quite serious, and I am sure that she said this from the best of motives and out of the kindness of her heart. (I am also sure that the juniors not only could, but did, take a great deal more alcohol than she ever did and none of it was sherry).

She was enormously kind, and encouraging, and supportive and, in my youth, while appreciating and understanding her goodness, I neither cared nor knew how to acknowledge it. I thought she was rather foolish, and that she had little idea of what the world was really like. When I left my job for what I was sure was a much more exciting one, I didn't keep in touch.

She probably wasn't as old as I thought she was, but this was thirty years ago and more, and she will certainly have retired and is probably dead. I don't think she had much in the way of freinds or family, and I doubt she is remembered.

But I still look out for Cuyp.

Hampstead

I had a good day out last Wednesday in Hampstead. It was another trip for the "Three Chief Cataloguers" - now, two ex-chief cataloguers (because they have recently retired) and me. We all have regular partners but it is nice, sometimes, to go out with somebody different and although we don't have everything in common, we are sufficiently on the same wavelength to enjoy the same sort of things. Coffee and buns, mostly.

So we met at 10.30 at Hampstead Heath station and wandered round the corner to the tea-rooms and settled in for an hour of coffee and croissants. By the end of that, we were wondering where to have lunch, and decided on Kenwood, which should have been a reasonable walk across the Heath. It turned into something of a marathon, because (shameful to say) the 3CC got a bit lost. We weren't helped by the boys of Highgate School who were organising a charity walk and had tables set up at intervals to record progress. Their directions were hopeless - they clearly had no idea where they were, or where anything else was. And I have been tasked with writing a stiff note to the Director in charge of the Heath, decrying the lack of signposts. (We don't want great flashing neon signs, but tiny little fingerposts in a discreet and tasteful colour would have been most welcome).

Anyway, we eventually reached Kenwood and went straight to the cafe, and sat down with hot soup and got back into the conversation - for another hour or more. Then a walk round the collection (we had been meaning to go to Fenton House, but we felt that we had walked quite far enough) - and I hadn't seen the pictures for at least twenty years, and probably nearer thirty. It's a great collection. And free.

Then back across the Heath and another cup of tea and back to the station. Not a wild day, by any means, but a pleasant walk, a pleasant talk.

I suppose this is the sort of thing that retired people do every day.

Ruddles is lost

When I got home last night, about half past six, noone knew where Ruddles was. He had been around in the kitchen at five o'clock and had been fed then, but after that he just disappeared. For a while, noone was too worried - after all, he often slides off for a nap. But by the time I arrived back from work, Husband and Son were getting anxious. They had looked all round the house, in all his usual hidey-holes, and found no sign of him. Quite soon, Daughter and I were joining in, all of us wandering about and all of us, no doubt, looking in the same places.

The search would have been much easier if the house had been tidy (as it never is). Piles of clothes (clean and dirty), unmade beds, kit bags, school bags, open doors to all the cupboards and wardrobes, all meant that searching was protracted and bad-tempered. We looked everywhere, even in the oven and the dishwasher (his particular fascination). And there was no sign of Ruddles.

From time to time we would all sit down, or go about our normal business, pretending that if we didn't look too hard he would just turn up. But we couldn't settle. He is only three months old, after all - anything could have happened to him. Even Star - whose life he has turned into a misery by mercilessly bouncing on her - was starting to look concerned.

We looked outside, up and down the street, terrified of what we might find - his little white and tabby body lying in a gutter. He shouldn't have been able to get out to the front and on to the road, as the front door hadn't been left open and the side gate has had its hole blocked especially to thwart his wandering.

We went up and down the back garden, each of us, looking, listening, banging his dish and rattling the box of biscuits. He has been out in the garden often, but has never gone far away, and isn't left alone - someone always keeps an eye on what he is doing. He has got a loud voice and yowls and yowls for attention or food - surely he would have squealed out if he had been trapped or hurt?

It got dark and we sat down to dinner with no appetite.

Then we went all round the house again, looking in all the same places; and up and down the garden again; and up and down the street. And we still pretended that we weren't really worried, but we weren't fooling ourselves or each other.

And then round the back door came Ruddles, a very sad and sorry Ruddles, with his tail all fluffed up and his back up, a terrified Ruddles, a dirty and damp Ruddles with a dirty bottom and a dreadful smell about him - and we picked him up and cuddled him and cleaned him and asked him where he had been and he didn't tell us. And he went upstairs and climbed onto Son's lap and purred and purred and purred.

Noel Coward

I have been listening to a CD of Noel Coward's speeches and songs and - I hadn't realised, or had forgotten, how racist he was. Of course he is the product of his age, and of course there are plenty of people even now who would say the same, but the casual off-hand nature of his offensiveness quite takes the breath away. There is hardly a song that isn't marked by it. The whole product comes from a different world, and yet there are books and songs of the same age that recognisably inhabit the modern world with us. I wonder if he knew that his views would fade and his art be intolerable to us now?