Osbert

Arrived home 14 July and return to Film Farm 21 July during which have set myself the impossible task of reading all 5 volumes of Osbert Sitwell's biography, Left Hand! Right Hand! since our next Perambulation will be to interview Sir Reresby Sitwell and film Renishaw. This in addition to the usual hunt the spider, hack the jungle, forage for food activities and visit two local collectors, one in Sandgate and one in Canterbury - plus have everything in readiness for the Renishaw trip - although it's up to Charles to charge the batteries of course.
Not entirely fair on the boy, it has to be admitted, since this week Charles appears to be running a B&B with not only Jobear visiting Monday to Friday but two other Charlotte Bach researchers arriving for part of the week, Charles not only running the house and cheffing in his own inimitable manner but also researching and editing.
Bad news from the wonderfully quirky Sanderson Hotel in London, where we hoped to film a Piper stained glass panel, a lovely plant abstract. Since they gained no editorial and they realised we had no budget worth speaking of - they decided against allowing us to film. What would they have lost by allowing 2 people into their building for an hour max? What do they lose - nothing in the immediate money sense, but think of the schoolchildren who may have benefited from the experience of seeing that window, perhaps future entrepreneurs who may think twice about paying for a room in such a short-sighted establishment. Money certainly does make the world go around - few of the groups, companies, organisations I contact can credit that Mike Goldmark is making this film for purely philanthropic motives and planning to give (as in freely) most of the production to schools. Or that most of the fixed budget Charles and I are working to will be eaten up by payment for reproduction rights and travel expenses. For some strange reason we seem to be out of synch with the remainder of the world in feeling it's more important to create than to fill the coffers - I guess the world needs nut cases!
Osbert is delightfully quotable, as can be seen from the following, and I am rather enjoying the books, although I did find the family tree at the
start rather yawn-making.

'Educated during holidays from Eton'
'No gentleman can be without three copies of a book, one for show, one for use, and one for borrowers'
'fashionable beauties, with psyches that resembled air-balloons, inflated, light and highly coloured.'
'a real seaside piano, which compared in tone withe the normal instrument as the face of a swimmer who has swallowed a lot of sea-water compares with that of an ordinary human being ...'
'They were all tall: for height was an ideal in this circle; everyone, especially the women, despised the undersized as elsewhere the talented look down on the half-witted ...'
'Extravagance has done more for the world than ever has thrift.'

Odd how one's conception of age changes, Osbert could write of himself at the age of nearly 50:
'Already I am nearing fifty and the grey hairs are beginning to show. I have reached the watershed and can see the stream which I must follow downhill toward the limitless ocean, cold and fearless.'
I'm now nearer 60 than 50 and yet life seems to have blossomed anew and there is so much I want to accomplish, and most of the time I'm whizzing and whirling Tigger-like!

His father once 'determined to have all the white cows in the park stencilled with a blue Chinese patter, but the animals were so obdurate and perverse as in the end to oblige him to abandon the scheme.'
British eccentricity at its best!