cricket - Peter Arscott

This is going to be a very equine blog. As one gets older, the more challenging the climb up Bradlow Hill becomes, and the more one wishes for a horse. The weather was breezy, and there was a lot of Red Campion about in the wood, having taken over from the Bluebells – the moment when both overlap would have been a month ago: a sea of blue and pink.

Red Campion

Recently I took up the birthday gift by my children of a riding lesson in the Western style, not far from Ledbury, in a place called Ullingswick. It was more fun than expected, given that the last time I sat on an animal was in 1967, and the tolerance of April (my horse) was impressive, as is the fact that I did not fall off. The Western style encourages the rider and horse to become one, with the former using his or her body to guide the horse, who responds to pressure from a knee or a shift in weight.

April carrying a sack of potatoes

April had all the qualities of a ceramicist: patience, perseverance, stoicism, and equanimity (a habit of mind that is only rarely disturbed under great strain). If she had fingers rather than hooves, she would make a good potter.

Juggler vase at Cecilia Colman Gallery

Earlier in the week I was in St John’s Wood to deliver some ceramics to the Cecilia Colman Gallery, which you may remember from a previous blog, has been operating for forty-five years. It’s an established star in the ceramics firmament.

Streaky bacon

Regent’s Park and Zoo are nearby, lots of shops, but also some fine residential buildings built in the late 19^th century Streaky Bacon style, or ‘Constructional Polychromy’ – alternating bands of brick and marble, which was popular with British architects. I mention architecture in order to show you a recent piece from the kiln called Construct. There is an affinity between ceramicists and architects in that both vessels and buildings are ways of filling space (discuss).

Construct

I was a little early, so I went to a café. A morning coffee isn’t always accompanied by the unexpected thrill of a seemingly endless column of beautiful chestnut horses clip-clopping their way past the large windows of a London café on its way to Regent’s Park. There must have been over forty, twenty riderless, that passed by with an air of disdainful boredom, as if the gawping pedestrians confirmed all their prejudices about two-legged beings.

All the King’s horses

The barista confirmed that this was a regular occurrence. Based in St Johns Wood, the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery is responsible for firing royal and ceremonial salutes as part of the sovereign’s birthday parade in April, the state opening of parliament, state visits and Remembrance Day. The barista was a talented joker. When I said I thought they were beautiful thoroughbreds, he told me he had once I put a bet on a horse that had excellent breeding, and that after it left the starting gate, it stopped and closed it behind him.

Red ochre vase at the Cecilia Colman Gallery

Unable to get horses out of my mind, I inevitably resorted to finding out a bit more about them. So, did you know that horses can sleep both lying down and standing up, thanks to a special locking system in their legs? You’ll like this: when foals are born their hooves are covered with soft tissue which stops their mothers’ birth canal and uterus from being damaged – they are called fairy slippers.

Cuckoo spit

Horses produce 10 gallons of saliva a day – saliva has very important functions because it wets feed material and begins to break it down. It also has an important buffering effect in the stomach, reducing acidity. Since we are talking of these matters, above is a picture I took in Bradlow Knoll of some Cockoo Spit, which has nothing to do with horses’ saliva. Inside each mass of cuckoo spit is a juvenile yellow-green froghopper.

The adult froghoppers or spittlebugs are 6mm long and bright green, with large eyes and a blunt-shaped head, but they’re rarely seen because they hop away on their strong back legs at the first sign of danger. We all know people like that – excepting the “bright green” bit, I assume.

Tall pink ochre vase at Cecilia Colman gallery

With the excuse that a froghopper looks like a plump cricket, here in St John’s Wood is the home of the sport. Lord’s has been the birthplace of cricket since 1787, but looking at the grounds from outside one has to admit that they’ve moved on with the times, and their roofscape is nice mixture of the old and the new. They say that if cricket wasn’t so difficult to understand, most of its obsessives and followers might never have bothered with it at all. Here are some of the fielding positions players take up: Deep point, Backward point, Deep backward point, Short third, Deep third, Short leg, Square leg, Deep square leg, Backward square leg, Long leg, Short fine leg, Deep fine leg, etc.

Lord’s cricket ground

Most people have some sort of obsession, major or minor, though cricket is not one shared by the team here at Peter Arscott Ceramics (PAC). Spiro (Marketing) has a passion for goat yoghurt, Ziggy (fly-catching) is forever pondering the significance of Proust’s “A la Recherche du temps Perdu” and Shinto (the pugmill) goes on and on about sushi. In my case it’s Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon that has always bothered me – it’s the elbow sticking out at the top, centre, of the painting, which the vase below always reminds me of.

Demoiselles vase at the Cecilia Colman Gallery

Les Demoiselles d”Avignon by Pablo Picasso

A horse walks into a bar. “Hey,” says the barman. “Yes please,” says the horse.

landscape vase

Driving through the countryside in Herefordshire and then on to Wales is a captivating experience. Perhaps it is the winding roads and the rising and falling of the horizon as you make your way past meadows, hills and then mountains. Small hamlets, castles in ruins, the occasional farmhouse, all punctuate the drive to Abergavenny and, if you are brave enough to do so on a cold January morning, lowering the window will reward you with a steady blast of the cleanest air garnished every mile or so with a whiff of soggy river bank or wet grass or diesel from a tractor as it turns off into a field.

the mouth of the river of blacksmiths

Yes, Abergavenny was my destination. Aber, from the Welsh for “mouth” (of a river) and gofannon, which is Middle Welsh for “blacksmith” and subsequently the name given to the local river, the Gavenny. The reference to blacksmiths relates to the town’s pre-Roman importance in iron smelting. However, my mind was not concentrating on these facts but rather on the strange fusion of cricket, poetry, Nazism, and, of course, ceramics that this town’s history brings together within its old stone walls.

Poetry allusions are plentiful in beautiful Wales, but this town was where Owen Sheers was born – poet, playwright, novelist and actor, and as I say whenever I get the opportunity, the only difference between “poetry” and “pottery” is the letter “t”. Click here to visit his website, and, if you are interested, I can tell you that he is booked to come to the Ledbury Poetry Festival this July.

Malcolm Nash

From poetry to cricket is an easy jump, given the many poems written about this game. For those of you who do not know the rules I would need a whole blog to explain them but allow me to mention writers like Les Murray, A.E.Housman, Harold Pinter and perhaps the best-known, Henry Newbolt (“There’s a breathless hush in the Close tonight…”). One of the most remembered moments in the game took place on 31st August 1968 when the great left hander Gary Sobers became the first batsman ever to hit six “sixes” in a single over of six consecutive balls in first-class cricket. We all remember Gary, but who thinks about the man who bowled those balls? Step forward Malcolm Nash, born in Abergavenny, and forever Garfield Sobers’ partner in cricket history. “My goodness”, says the commentator of the last ball, “it’s gone all the way to Swansea” – click here to see it.

But I digress. I was in Abergavenny to deliver some pieces to the Art Shop and Chapel. Regular exhibitions of fine and applied arts are held at the Art Shop, where artists’ materials can also be bought, while just down the road at the Chapel readings and performances take place with artists, musicians and poets, and you can eat at the Chapel Kitchen too, all ingredients locally produced – something for everyone, from meat-eater to vegan.

The Chapel – music, poetry and food

The town is small enough to make wandering around in it a pleasure, and if you like your food the place is great for world-class mountain lamb, venison, Y Fenni cheese, pastries, beer and cider – unsurprising since every September it is the stage for Wales’s biggest food festival, set in stunning area surrounded by green hills, including the Sugarloaf that looks down on the town.

Abergavenny Market

But I know what you are thinking. What about the Nazis? Well, OK. On the road to or from Abergavenny you will drive pasty a large stone ruin called Skenfrith, built in 1066 to protect the route from Hereford to Wales and now largely visited by passing tourists. One such was Rudolf Hess, a leading member of the Nazi party of Germany.

Skenfrith

Deputy Fuhrer to Adolph Hitler, he served in this position until 1941, when he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom. He was taken prisoner and eventually convicted of crimes against peace, serving a life sentence until his suicide. They had to keep him somewhere straight after his capture, so he was kept under escort at Maindiff Court Hospital for a while and paraded before the cameras and even allowed out on sightseeing trips – he was apparently known locally as the “Kaiser of Abergavenny”.

You will need a coffee when you are there. Go no further than the Chapel – the coffee is seriously good. The kitchen and cafe make breakfasts, lunch and suppers, starting with fresh soda bread every morning.

Posts

All the King’s horses

pottery/ poetry in Wales

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