Small Pleasures

The azure blue of cloudless summer days seems to me the wonder of the past as I sat and looked at the collection of images that I took with my camera. During this second week of September, we have had countless variations of Scottish weather; ragged stormy clouds, sea fog and mist and early morning dews melting into autumn rain.

And yet, there will be one fine day that greets us when we are least expecting; it can be pleasantly warm enough to go out and read in the garden under the pale midday sun and listen to the sound of the waves crashing onto the rocks in spray of crystal and the unchanging voices of the curlews coming from the seashore.

When the rain stops and the clouds are clear, splashes of blue sky appear…rainbows are common place. They are perfect, unbroken semi-circles with every strand of colours sharply defined. On a clear day, you will see not one but several rainbows sprinkling across the land, glittering with their luminous colours against the grey seas.

Charles Baudelaire once wrote that ‘Genius was nothing more, nor less, than childhood recaptured at will.’

 

During the recent months, I thought about my childhood and the time I spent at my grandparents’ house by the sea. Those were the carefree summer afternoons of my childhood. I would never forget the sight of an airy hall as you came into their house, the large French windows that opened onto a balcony that overlooked the sea and the glittering rock pools left by the outgoing tide.

I recall quite distinctly the time and place of the first time I inhaled the scent of mimosa flowers in the living room that were beautifully arranged by my grandmother. She usually put the vase of flowers on a round table by a net-curtained window.

At my grandparents' house, luncheon was served punctually at half-past twelve and late-comers were treated morosely by Elsie, the housemaid who was devoted to my grandparents.

I remember the luncheons which were beautifully prepared by Elise, my grandparents' devoted housemaid. They were rather protracted luncheons (always referred to it as luncheon, my grandfather would say, "You mustn't call it lunch in the foreign service."). As I was a terribly restless boy, it was a rather agony to sit still at the table during a prolonged meal and conversation about the arts. 



I love the sound of music boxes. It brings back a lot of memories about Bubble, the musical automaton that stayed inside the display cabinet in my grandparents' house. Victorian Musical Boxes is one of my favourite records by Gef Lucena, available online here

Image credit: (Pinterest) French Musical Automaton by Roullet & Decamps. Circa 1900.

Above all, I shall never forget a musical automaton, a little boy in his blue velvet Fauntleroy suit blowing bubbles, a similar version of the doll illustrated above. We called him Bubble. If you wind him up, the music started to play and he would dip his wooden pipe into the bowl and then, the bubbles appeared. It was absolutely magical to watch as a child. Bubble was a very special doll that always stayed inside the glass cabinet. My grandparents and I had the tacit understanding that Bubble could only come out of the glass cabinet on very special occasions such as birthday and Christmas.  

I love collecting old patchwork quilts. Their colours brighten up my day and they are perfect for chilly summer evenings in Scotland! Raggedy Ann and Andy doll in primitive style is made by a very talented artist, Sonia Sandell from America.

When I dream at night, I dream about the happy days of my childhood at my grandparents’ seaside house. But these days it is the sound of a different automaton, the sound of fisherman starting his boat engine at the harbour that wakes me up from my dreams. When I open my bedroom window, my dream would finally dissolve like a vapour into the sun or the driving rain.  

The desire of recapturing these childhood memories always stays with me. Perhaps, our creative impulse comes from a kind of void or insatiability that flows through our veins. If a painting was beautiful, if the book touched me deeply, if a day by the sea was particularly well spent, if Elsie’s home-baked cake, a gastronomic masterpiece, was delicious, I wanted to record them with pencil or pen ever since I was able to draw, sketch and write. Like the Impressionist artists who tried to capture an impression of the fleeting sunlight on their canvas, I want to snatch these treasured memories while they lay immobile on the iridescent waters of time.