A Most Disagreeable Person
Val Prinsep was a first class mimic and could do hair-raising imitations of Rosemary Ellis. I never liked Rosemary, nor met anyone that did except possibly Clifford and he seemed an all right sort of chap. Despite Rosemary’s many excellent qualities as an educator and her unfailing energy in managing the Graphics department, she could sometimes be extremely rude for no apparent reason. Val had a trick of sending shivers down our spines as he arrived at the studio at Beechfield with a perfect rendering of her querulous shriek: "You know, the trouble with you is that you never do any work ..." or words to that effect. We really thought it was her coming in, and somehow Val always managed to fool us! Rosemary always seemed to begin her nastiness with "The trouble with you is ...".
It is unfortunate having to speak ill of the dead but I really can’t remember anything positive about her manner. I thought her a most disagreeable person; she put my back up on more than one occasion and Margrét’s too. Rosemary once said to me, possibly with some justification though I can’t remember what sins I had committed, "I am never angry with anyone I consider stupid, but I am very cross with you." I was never sure whether to construe this remark as a compliment!
Talking Tongues
Upon my arrival at BAA we all had to take a colour-blindness test under Anne Phillips's supervision. Anne was the Admissions Registrar and Senior Librarian, a very tweedy lady but extremely nice to both me and Margrét. There were spotty numbers in red and green where people with normal vision saw one number and colour-blind people were supposed to see another. I had seen this test before and found that by squinting my eyes I could see BOTH numbers. Anne was very surprised and said she had never met anyone before that could do that trick!
I also remember that we all had to fill out a form with details about our interests and that sort of thing. Under Hobbies I wrote Languages because I have always enjoyed trying to understand what people are talking about. At school I sometimes listened to Dutch broadcasts after the English pop transmissions on Radio Luxemburg had shut down for the night. I had learnt French (the Belgian variety, fairly fluently) and German at school and also a bit of Latin. I also had a smattering of Flemish as Dad had been in Belgium during the war and had a lot of friends there whom we sometimes went to visit. Most of them were Flemings who only spoke French for Dad’s convenience because he didn’t know any Flemish. They had the habit of beginning sentences in French and ending them in Flemish so of course I picked up quite a lot of it. I found that the technique was not to listen to the words in any connection with their meaning, but rather to listen in the same way that children do, listening to the talking and not the words. I think it’s something like what you do when you’re drawing, looking at the shapes without thinking about what they mean. Different bits of the brain doing different things, or something like that. Anyway, I was always called upon whenever some foreign bumf turned up at the office at the Court and needed translating, thanks to Anne Phillips. And nowadays it’s Icelandic so you never know your luck!
Vegetable Marrows
Early on in the Pre-Dip we were roped in for life drawing in the Barn. Telfer Stokes was supposed to teach us but I think most of us didn’t understand what he was on about. Or didn’t really care. He often said cryptical things like, “I don’t actually want you to draw the model. I want you to feel the model and draw what you feel.” Too deep for most of us Graphics bods and certainly for me! The result of the life drawing classes was more often than not some kind of a representation of a vegetable marrow. I never did like life drawing much, not that I was particularly bad at it. But I was only allowed to draw vegetable marrows! A very strange experience.
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