Wry Rye literature and a dose of history

Mermaid Street, Rye – genuinely Olde Worlde

As I said in my previous post, our long weekend in Rye was both the best of England and the worst of England.

But the food and the public transport were far from being the only aspects of the break, and there was plenty to relish.

High up in that category came history and, over the four days, we began to gain an understanding not only of the story of Rye itself, but more generally of that part of the south coast and, indeed, all of the medieval confederation of the Cinque Ports.

This included learning just how much the area had changed physically, with what are now the salt marshes adding a stretch of land between the previous coastline and the edge of the sea today.

St Mary's, Rye

The border area between East Sussex and Kent, upon which Rye pretty much sits, has long been associated with the sea, from providing ships for the king in time of war to being involved with smuggling in the 18th and 19th centuries.

It’s only just down the coast to the west that we find Hastings, looked down on by the ruins of one of William I’s first trio of castles in England.

Rebuilt in stone in 1070 on William’s orders, it was slated for demolition by King John, re-fortified by Henry III in 1220 and then battered by the storms of 1287, to the extent that part of it collapsed into the sea with the soft, sandstone cliffs beneath.

It suffered during French attacks in 1339 and 1377, was hardly helped by Henry VIII’s destruction of monasteries, then became overgrown and forgotten as the land around was used for farming, before being hit by the Luftwaffe in WWII.

Finally, in 1951, the Hastings Corporation purchased it and turned it into a tourist site, but this potted history of just one building gives an idea of the area’s story.

Stanton shelter

And it’s even in worse condition than Camber Castle, Henry VIII’s low fortification on the marshes. Walking out to that, we came across a small, concrete building, which turned out to be Stanton shelter, a decoy bombing site that was built in 1942 to deflect Luftwaffe raids.

It was what was known as a ‘starfish decoy’, which operated by lighting a series of controlled fire during an air raid, to replicate an urban area being targeted by bombs.

The hut with the shelf in the photograph is the shelter itself; the wall with three holes is the remains of the generator building.

Back in Rye, and in terms of all things nautical, there’s a reason that local resident, John Ryan, set his cartoon stories of Captain Pugwash in ‘Sinkport’, which was actually a fairly recognisable Rye. Today, you’ll find Pugwash references throughout the little town.

Ryan also penned a short, illustrated book about the notorious 1742 murder of deputy mayor Allen Grebell by local butcher John Breads in St Mary’s churchchard, Rye.

Ready for tea in the garden at Lamb House

Breads had been intending to kill the mayor, James Lamb – who subsequently tried and convicted him – after he had been fined by Lamb for selling short weights.

Readily admitting the killing and his intended victim, Breads was later hanged, and his corpse gibbeted and left on display in an iron cage for some years.

Which cage is now on display in the town’s Ypres Tower, of which more later.

The Lambs of Rye were a particularly wealthy family, who built Lamb House as a statement of their prosperity and power, and then bought out nearby properties to create the biggest garden in the town.

Occupied rather later by American author Henry James, it also provided a home for EF Benson, the prodigious author who remains most famous for his Mapp and Lucia novels.

Flowers in the garden at Lamb House

These delightfully bitchy satires on social one upmanship filled six novels between 1920 and 1939. There have been two television adaptations: first, 10 episodes for Channel 4 in 1985 and 1986, starring Prunella Scales and Geraldine McEwan as the eponymous battlers, with Nigel Hawthorne as Georgie.

I watched it at the time, but was never quite caught up in it.

However, last Christmas, the BBC screened a three-part version, adapted by Steve Pemberton, with Miranda Richardson and Anna Chancellor as Mapp and Lucia, and Pemberton himself as Georgie.

This, I adored – and crucially, it made me want to read the books. Indeed, the BBC’s use of Rye itself as the location was what inspired me to suggest we take a break there – and how I came to be carrying a copy of Mapp and Lucia, the third novel in Benson’s series.

Benson set many of the stories in a place he named Tilling, which is a barely-disguised Rye. Mapp’s house, Mallards, is in fact Lamb House.

Town gate, Rye

Now in the care of the National Trust, we pottered along to see it on the Saturday. There’s not a great deal to look at – just three rooms – although they’ve added to the displays with props, costumes and hats from the BBC production, which also used Lamb House itself.

The garden, however, is a joy – as was being able to sit in the shade of the trees and sip elderflower cordial. We had never tasted elderflower cordial before, but it felt appropriately Tilling.

For all the literary clout of James, the locals are far fonder of Mapp, Lucia and Pugwash. And why wouldn’t they be? All are, in effect, set within the town itself and all are typically English in their satire or comedy.

The town also has a volunteer-run museum – a tiny affair, but nonetheless with enough to see that you will learn something. It too includes these literary icons – plus a small, 2D ‘flat’ metal model that was labeled as being German and showing the Kaiser in WWI.

Ypres Tower

This allowed me the joyful opportunity to show off my pedantic credentials (to the Other Half, at least), pointing out that it was actually showing the Kaiser and Bismarck, which put it as 1871 or so, rather than the following century.

On the Sunday, on a rather greyer day, we visited the previously-mentioned Ypres Tower, which offered more insights into the local history, including the chance to view a remarkably large cell that was built for female prisoners after a visit to the area by prison reformer Elizabeth Fry.

I’m not one who is necessarily convinced by ‘interactive’ exhibits, but this had a set up where you could pick up a trio of weapons and feel just how heavy they were, and also try a construction that allowed you to see just how much strength was required to use a longbow.

We managed to get to the aforementioned Hastings, on Monday, in the damp and wind.

Fishing boat, Hastings

At first, I think we were both close to turning back: as mentioned in the previous post, some of the new architecture, for instance, was stultifyingly bland, while the promenade has been damned by running a dual carriageway along it.

But with nothing else in mind to occupy the day, we persisted. And thank goodness we did, because shortly thereafter, reached the fabulously-named Rock-A-Nore Road, while the A259 turns north north east.

This is where the Jerwood Gallery stands – unfortunately closed when we were there. But it’s also where the Fisherman’s Museum has been set up, in an old chapel at the back of the shingle beach.

This is where the biggest fleet of trawlers to still be launched from a beach in the whole of Europe is based. And where the fishermen sell much of their catches in small cabins.

It’s an old area, as the tall net huts near the museum attest.

Net huts, Hastings

And in their unflinching black attire, with old boats, a two-ton Napoleonic anchor and an old harbor light scattered alongside on the shingle, they offer a deeply atmospheric window into the town’s past.

They make a fascinating photographic subject, even in the inclement conditions – perhaps particularly in those conditions – and I got absorbed in the business of trying to capture something of the place.

One over-arching thing did hit us about the trip. Many is the time that, when looking around old places on the Continent, we have bemoaned how little of our own built medieval and Elizabethan past still exists.

It was a great pleasure to find a town where that is still very much a living place, but which actually gives a glimpse of several centuries of English history.

And with that, it’s time to bid you all ‘au reservoir’ from this post, as I raise – in genteel fashion, of course – a glass of elderflower cordial.

Food, glorious food. Or not

Knights and ketchup

It was the best of England; it was the worst of England. It was a reminder of why we should take more breaks in the UK – and a reminder of why we don’t.

With The Other Half in recuperative mode, and both of us having ditched the tobacco, we decided, at short notice, to grab a long weekend away from London – to somewhere where we might stand a chance of breathing clean air.

It perhaps says something about pollution in the Metropolis that we chose a spot not far from a nuclear power station.

We had picked Rye on the basis of a Saturday morning conversation over coffee, which had started with me musing: “Where was it that the BBC filmed the Map and Lucia that they showed last Christmas?”

Google has its purposes. The location for filming turned out to be Rye, where Map and Lucia author EF Benson had lived for some time and even been the mayor.

Not only that, but the Tilling of those stories is Rye, with Mallards being Lamb House, where Benson himself had lived, and which had housed the American author Henry James before him.

So, literary credentials, plenty of opportunities for walks, the sea close at hand – what was not to like?

Well, one of those downsides of UK holidays is rather obviously the weather. In this case, our four full days in Rye saw two of soaring temperatures and azure skies, with the following two being almost entirely the opposite.

But on a break like this, that wasn’t too bad and more of what we did in later posts.

On our first full day, the Friday, we took a walk down one side of the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, ambling through sheep-dotted salt-marsh pastures all the way to Rye Harbour itself.

There, we took tea and magnificent homemade blackcurrant cake, still warm from the oven, in the delightful Avocet Gallery and Tea Room – but more of art in the area another time too.

Refreshed, we set off for Winchelsea Beach, aiming to be there for lunch. There are two routes: one, along what passes for the front, while the other appeared to pass through the reserve, alongside one of the bodies of water within it.

I say “appeared”, because we were relying on Google maps and were having to do a certain amount of guess work given the lack of information on footpaths.

We should have taken the lessons of Google maps in Bavaria in March, but hadn’t. So instead of proper maps, we were stuck with the computerised version again.

The Other Half plumped for the latter route, thinking that it would offer us more to see.

In the event, we discovered that the reserve is, in effect, split across the middle by an area of private land, which prevents you getting near any of those bodies of water.

By the time we realised this, it was too late to turn back. We were walking due west, with the sun pouring down on us straight from the south, with nothing to provide any shade.

Unaccustomed to British seaside stays in the summer as we are (Brighton or Bournemouth in June or February for work does not count), I had forgotten any sun screen.

We were dressed sensibly enough for walking, but by the end of the trip, one side of me was pretty much beetroot red.

However, although we were prevented from seeing the sea by a sizable ridge – a secondary part of the local sea defences – there was plenty more to catch the eye.

Is beans on toast really so difficult?

This included masses of common blue damselflies or azure damselflies, darting just above the gravel path, their vivid, electric colour

There were also brown hawker dragonflies – flitting far higher up, often very near you, and vast, at 7cm or just over.

Flowers abounded in the shingle and the scrub, bringing flashes of unexpected colour to catch the eye.

A battered boat, sitting next to a large tree, provided one wonderful photographic opportunity.

We saw hardly anyone and the few who did pass us exchanged greetings.

When we eventually reached the beach area, with it’s caravan parks, we were in need of lunch.

Those caravan parks – indeed, the beach – might suggest facilities. A simple eatery or two, perhaps. But that’s where the ‘worst-of’ stuff kicks in.

We ate a Mr Whippy simply to keep us going as we continued the hunt. And it was some time before we came across a single café at the far western end of one camp site.

By that stage, we would have been prepared to eat almost anything.

Now in such an environment, I do not remotely expect anything fancy. I don’t want haute cuisine. Pies and chips and the like are eminently acceptable.

But this is not an excuse for such dishes to be poor. They are not inherently poor food, but they need cooking properly, while decent ingredients are as important as elsewhere.

Frozen chips and cheapest-possible frozen scampi will not produce a feast. And nothing will ever be helped by a pile of grey-green tinned peas that are barely even warm.

After that, we trudged back eastwards to get a bus. When we eventually caught one, less than two miles from Rye itself, it cost £2.50 for a single fare. That’s £2.50 each, remember. For a single fare on a short journey. Perhaps London’s constantly-rising bus prices are not quite so bad after all.

In that, then, you have another reason that we head across the Channel for breaks: public transport. The Other Half can drive, but I never have. We don’t have a car. Neither of us has a licence.

Hake with popadom

In the UK, this means that you will: a) get shafted by the cost of public transport; b) discover that public transport is very limited in being able to deliver you to more remote rural spots.

The latter has been experienced on previous UK holidays, on Skye and in the Lake District, where we had to rely, respectively, on local taxies and the generosity of the co-owner of a B&B in order that we could do any decent walks.

That evening, after a rest at our B&B, we headed to The Ambrette, an up-market restaurant in the old town that came highly recommended.

It serves a fusion of local produce with Indian spicing. The menu was mouth-watering.

Unfortunately, what we were served was rather less so.

The spicing was far from subtle and dishes seemed essentially to be slightly deconstructed and poshly-plated curries.

For my starter, part of my pigeon breast was raw and the whole was pretty much covered in a rather sludgy, brown sauce, which was miles for being the hoped-for fragrant.

An afternoon scone  with Earl Grey in Rye – not bad

For a main, I had opted for the fish of the day. It turned out to be hake – and came covered in something that bore little obvious difference to whatever had smothered the pigeon, and a piece of popadom that had lost its crispness by being in contact with the sauce.

We decided to forego a dessert, although while we waited for the bill, we were each given a small glass of guava granita with vanilla sugar, which was light and refreshing and a delight, and left one regretting that that had not been a case with the rest of the food.

At this juncture, I want to mention the mystery of the toast.

Why, at breakfast in our B&B, did the menu say ‘beans on toast’ or ‘egg on toast’ when there was absolutely no ‘on’ to be had for love nor money?

To be fair, the tactic of giving you unbuttered toast alongside your beans or eggs for breckie had hit me in London, where my round-the-corner-from-work caff suddenly started doing this a couple of months ago, and where I now have to stress when ordering that, by ‘on’, I mean ‘on’.

And I’ve since heard that I am not the only one to have experienced this, which suggests it’s some sort of utterly stupid emerging trend. Well stop it. Just stop it. It’s stupid and annoying.

On Saturday, the same lunch issues persisted. We found Tambika, a small café that also sells fossils, for lunch. The Other Half had a vast bowl of piping hot leek and potato soup, while I had two large fishcakes and a salad.

To be fair, it was as good as lunches got, although the fishcakes were a bit sloppy, while the accompanying salad was bland to the point of lacking any discernible flavour.

Marino's fish and chips. Overrated

That evening, with hope in our hearts, we headed to Marino’s, which people universally acclaim as the best chippy in town.

If it is, then it doesn’t say much at all for the others.

There had been vast queues outside the take-away part on the Friday evening and we timed it well to get seats inside just 24 hours later.

Both of us ordered medium cod and chips, with mushy peas. And waited expectantly.

The mass of chips were clearly not hand cut. They were not the worst I’ve tasted, but they were a very long way from being the best. The batter on the fish was okay, but the fish inside it was dry. It didn’t flake properly and had the taste that you get from fish that has been frozen.

Nothing had been fried in proper fat. And by that, I mean dripping.

Fish and chips is not rocket science. But it requires decent ingredients and proper cooking. In dripping. Then it’s a joy – which is why I so fondly remember fish and chips eaten in Hull years ago and even in Scarborough in 2011.

On Sunday, after a very pleasant morning’s walk, we found ourselves in the same old predicament.

This time, we ended up at the Café on the Quay. Plus ça change. It’s chips with everything, as Arnold Wesker might have put it. Or everything with chips.

A cheese omelette this time – plastic, flavourless cheese, that is, and the usual British heavily-set egg concoction. With piles more mediocre frozen chips. And another insipid salad that a rabbit would turn its nose up at.

I was longing to go back to Rye Harbour, just for the Avocet. They don’t do cooked meals, but the mere suggestion of the simple crab salad mentioned on the menu was a serious lure for taste buds that were dying.


For goodness sake – Cromer is a mere four miles from Rye, and Cromer crab is famous, yet I saw it on offer nowhere other than the Avocet.

On Sunday evening, we struggled to find anywhere that had space, as the town seemed inexplicably full to its Elizabethan rafters.

Cod at the Mermaid. But those are not proper 'mushy' peas

At this point, we need to briefly nip back to Thursday evening, a few hours after we had arrived. Then, we had dined in the bar of the centuries-old Mermaid Hotel.

We’d had fish and chips: the beer-battered fish was to prove to be the best we had. The chips were far from sensational, but were also probably the best we were to have.

On Sunday then, we eventually wound up in the same place and, having scanned the bar menu, both opted for the local lamb.

When it arrived, it turned out to be a salad, with slices of rare meat atop a mound of pickled celeriac and carrot, and the freshest, crispest salad leaves you could imagine, with a dressing that was light but, at the same time, packed a flavour punch.

Finally, something wonderful

It was a thing of utter joy in every single way.

Afterwards, we booked at the hotel’s restaurant for our final evening – a meal that proved to offer local scallops for the first time, cooked superbly and served with equally-perfectly cooked broccoli and potato dice, followed by shoulder of lamb and veg.

Were that not enough to revive desperate taste buds, we finished with an utterly divine dessert of elderflower and champagne jelly, a stunning raspberry coulis, chocolate soil (here it worked) a small scoop of vanilla ice cream and a wafer-light sablé biscuit.

It had been a difficult menu to choose from, and I was thrilled to see dishes that included sorrel and nettles.

A divine dessert

So the trip ended with really good food. But it would be remiss of me not to mention our last lunch.

Monday was a rainy day on the south coast. As such, we caught a train and headed two stops west to Hastings.

After an initially disappointing start – including but not limited to walking through the hideous Priory Meadow shopping centre, with its blander-than-bland architecture that wouldn’t offend Prince Charles (whose mother opened it in 1997) and which was built over the Central Cricket Ground that had opened in 1864 and remained there until the 1989; and also took in the classic British tactic of putting a bloody big dual carriageway between along the promenade – we found our way to something with character and real interest in the old town.

Just embarrassing

But come lunch time, we were struggling once more. And, yet again, we ended up having to give in to something and chips.

On ordering scampi and chips, this is what was placed in front of me. Few words are needed. No peas; no salad; not even a solitary leaf of garnish.

Germany is not rated as having a great cuisine, but in March, in Bavaria, there was not a single day when we struggled to find cheap, simple and tasty food to sustain our walks.

There were many visitors in Rye last week who hailed from Germany, France, Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

I shudder to think what impressions they take away with them of our food.

And that picture should provide ample illustration of one of the major reasons why we do not take more holidays on this side of the Channel.

Kitchen sink drama

“I’ve always painted. I recall sitting on the back doorstep of a house that we lived in before we moved to the ‘posh’ suburb, and being shown how to draw mountains with clouds around the tops by my older cousin.

“So that would date it to pre-1964 and I’d be about six or seven years old.

“After that, I’d draw on anything I could get my hands on, mainly on sheets of brown wrapping paper which would arrive at the house from Brian Mills Catalogue (my mother was an ‘agent’ for our area).”

Two of Gary Kitchen’s paintings currently adorn the wall of my flat, and as someone I’ve known for some time via the world of UK Rugby League, it seemed obvious to ask him how he got started with a brush.

Predictably, Gary’s story is as colourful as I expected, having read his wonderful blog.

“My father’s office was one floor below the distributors for Walt Disney Films in Leeds,” he explains.

“He'd bring home lots of cinema posters for me to copy from or to draw on the back of: the people in that office would bring them down to him when a film had finished doing the rounds and they had the big advertising posters left over.

“This was still in the early ’60s and I had original posters for The Aristocrats, Jungle Book – anything that Disney released in the ’60s, I had.”

That must be some collection!

“No, I didn't keep any of them,” he admits wryly. “I copied everything though – I swear that at the age of nine I could have probably got a job at Disney!”

But it was while he was a pupil at Leeds Modern Grammar School that Gary started to take art seriously.

His form master – a man called Bernard Phillips – was also his art teacher. Gary says that “he was the sort of old-fashioned teacher who would take his class of 30 boys, identify half a dozen of them who had any talent, and then concentrate on them alone.

“We who got picked got almost one-to-one tuition on all of the technical skills of drawing and painting: colour mixing, perspective, styles of painting, colour harmonies: a priceless education and the only subject that I found I could actually do –  and enjoy.”

And that enjoyment was productive. Well, sort of.

“It was around that time that I was given a set of oil paints one Christmas and painted a picture of a horse’s head – very stylised and probably very corny – but my dad sold it at his local club and brought home orders for more.

“I painted that bloody horse’s head at least 10 times on the back of sheets of hardboard (the rough side). My dad made the frames and houses all over Meanwood hung my work on their walls.

“I didn’t see much of the money though – strange that, isn’t it?

“My dream is that, one day, in a Sotheby's somewhere across the world, a painting of a horse’s head in a crappy frame will turn up somewhere and will be attributed as ‘An early Kitchen’ – you never know!”

Gary went on to take an art A level in 1973. It was a time, he points out, when only around 20% of pupils went on to that level at all – and usually only those who were studying for “the professions”, so “you didn’t take ‘frivolous’ A levels without a definite plan to use them for something work-related.”

His own A level class – himself, one other boy and 20 girls – were taken to Leeds Art College one afternoon for an interview and an introduction to what lay in store; a degree course and a career in art.

“I hated it,” he says. “The college was full of bearded hippies doing weird things with paint and sculpture, and I didn't connect to any of it.”

Shortly after, he explains that he decided to pursue a more “commercial art-based career” after the class were taken on another tour – this time, to the art department of a large printing company.

There, they “let us have a go at what is now achieved using Photoshop on a computer. But then was done using magnifying glasses, colour negatives and chemicals to retouch original prints right down at pixel level.

“I left that place after one afternoon with a blinding headache and the stench of those chemicals in my nostrils – that was another art-based career crossed off the list then.”

Having taken technical drawing at O level, that was where Gary turned next, thinking he would become a draughtsman.

So in the summer of 1974, he left halfway through his A level studies and applied for three jobs – two with architectural practices and one at an electrical contractors where a small amount of drawing up schematic diagrams was involved.

“Fate decided that I was offered the job at the electrical contractors as a quantity surveyor that involved no draughting at all, and so art simply remained a hobby for the next 30 or so years.

“I still regret not taking up the architectural route and still have a love of architecture: maybe the discipline of fine detailed draughting wouldn't have suited my freehand drawings though?”

Even a brief glance through some of Gary’s paintings today reveals his love of the landscape – not least that of his home county of Yorkshire. He captures the moodiness of the county's hills in a way that conveys the dark romanticism of Heathcliff.

There’s a moodiness and bleakness that belies his rich palate: these are very evocative.

“I enjoy the landscape and love to observe other artists who specialise in semi-abstract landscape,” he explains.

“That’s where I like to think I'm going – contemporary artists like Kurt Jackson, John Mckinstry and the late John Blockley is where I want to be.”

Yet some of the moorland paintings are reminiscent of something older – more Turner-like in their depiction of the swirling, battering elements.

The one pictured left, with the sheep huddling, is one I particularly love. As is the beautifully blue seaside huts, reproduced below.

“I also like buildings – again in the abstract or in a simple pen and wash style like the late Sir Hugh Casson’s sketches, a real life architect who could switch off the precision penmanship needed to design buildings and just sketch with a wonderful freehand in ink and watercolour: he must have had two interchangeable brains to be able to do that …”

Gary’s studies included a year doing art history, “during which we studied the Flemish Masters …”

Brilliant!

“I hated every minute of it.”

Oh.

“I dropped the subject at the end of the year and can honestly say that I don't connect to any form of historical art until the French and English Impressionists of the 19th and early 20th Century – with one exception, Turner.”

Ah ha.

“I went to an exhibition of watercolour sketches that he made while touring the North of England. It was in the cellar gallery of Harewood House, and standing up really close – with no barriers to hold you beyond arms length – to a genuine Turner sketch is magical.”

His favourite gallery remains the The National Gallery of Scotland, where they have a small collection of French Impressionists: a couple of Van Gogh, a couple of Monet and “a pair from my favourite pointillist, Seurat”.

“Again you are unhindered by ropes and barriers and can ‘feel’ the works properly. It’s hard to explain. but the rest of the gallery leaves me cold. It’s the two Impressionist rooms that do it for me.”

One of the other subjects that Gary paints is Rugby League. After attending his first game as a nine-year-old in 1966 – a night fixture between Leeds and Castleford – he was “hooked".

“There’s an honesty to the game that appeals: an awe that they are doing something that is relatively simple to do – the rules are never complicated: anyone could pick up a ball and run with it – but you just know that never in your wildest dreams or daftest moments would you ever dare to do anything like those professional athletes do.

“There is a reason why millionaire professional football players attend Rugby League games and profess to being huge fans, and it’s for the same reason that us mere mortals attend too – they see athletes doing what athletes shouldn’t do.

“It goes against all logic to build up the physique and stamina of a professional rugby player and then spend 80 minutes running into collisions that match car crashes in their intensity - but that’s what they do, for very little money, and that is its appeal.”

So where next for Gary?

“I’m 56 years old now, so in 10 years time, I’d suppose I should be retired, but in these extraordinary times, I just don’t see that happening.

“I’ll paint until the brain stops working, until they prise the brush from my hand and tell me its time for the overdose of morphine and could I just remind them again where the deeds to the house are.”

He currently sells his work on here, here and here, and describes that as being “a very sustainable market place in future”.

And it’s particularly the case when you consider the cost of renting a gallery. Indeed, in just the last few weeks, Gary was quoted $3,600 per annum for a New York gallery to represent and market three works, plus commission on sales.

“I politely declined,” he says.

“I would like to be is in the log cabin studio in my garden,” he muses. “The ground is cleared already for it. The actual log cabin only exists in my imagination at the moment, but that’s where I’ll be, log-burning stove in the corner, decent coffee always on tap, the dog at my feet and several huge canvasses on the go at any time.”

“The wife’ll be banned from venturing up the garden path, and I’ll be on first-name terms with our local postmaster from handing bubble-wrapped canvasses over his counter for shipments most every day.”

So what’s his favourite painting so far?

“The one that I hang above my desk is a small painting – 12” x 12” – that took me literally 10 minutes to complete and started off with me simply painting over a canvas that had gone wrong. (see left)

“Somewhere in those 10 minutes something came out of the paint and that’s what I ended up with.”

He says he’s heard “a lot of artists refer to ‘being in the zone’. It’s “the moment when you’re mixing colour and slapping paint on a canvas and you are not thinking about what you are doing”: so probably a bit like those prop forwards knocking seven shades of something or other out of each other on a rugby field, really.

“Everyone has a creative section of their brain, which is suppressed by their practical side. To lift up a paintbrush, to mix colours is all very practical – you can learn it very quickly: to be creative cannot be learned and just every now and again something just flips a switch and your creative brain dominates.

“It doesn’t happen often, but good work always comes out of it. This (see pictures at the start of this article) was literally just watercolour daubed on a sheet of paper while I was waiting for my wife to get ready to go out.

“Again it was 10 minutes tops – and it was the first painting that I sold on the internet.

“I’ve repeated the first one many times since, because its an easy one to copy, but the watercolour one defeats me every time I try and do it again – that’s the nature of watercolour.”

So there’s just the one of those that may end up in a Sotheby’s – and at least Gary gets the money himself these days.

So, there's a suggestion for Christmas. Because if you look at his galleries, Gary's prices are insanely cheap. But get in there before he sees this and ups those price tags.