Weblog of Alex

From what are Modern Collectibles

 

Can be very exciting and it is always possible to start something new even with contemporary items like hand painted anniversary cards by children especially here in Canada with its multiplicity of national heritages, each adding beauty with its different culture and specialties. Beauty to me being the main reason for the acquisition of items, something with which one can live with for many years, each year passing with beauty bringing increased value.

  

Choosing an Item to Collect

 

Investment in Antiques can be a very satisfying adjunct to stocks and shares, the right pieces can be lived with for many years increasing in value and giving visual pleasure together with thoughts of increasing value. I have antiques that I have lived with for the past forty years plus, each with its own story, feeling and satisfaction. Here I found an antique I bought not as an antique but as an item to beautify my living room in an old house built in 1887, which my wife and I had just bought.

 

I have a Collotype Print by an unknown master of art, I have many these prints (about 300) all by the old masters, Caravaggio, Guardi, Canaletto, De Pisis and many others. I went to Rome Poligraphico to learn the art of producing Collotype this was in the 60’s, but all I learnt was that it was an art in which I could not emulate the skill of its practitioners there. But for all that it was another learning curve that gave me an insight into art and its many areas of beauty for which I was very grateful.

 

We bought old things to match the house itself after we had modernized all the utilities. A sculpture I liked a Parian Bust of Ophelia I bought in the Rome Market, I could not understand how it got there and asked the seller how he came to have her, he told me that a lady had come into the market that morning and sold it to him, probably a resident short of money it was still very close to war ending. What you have seen up to now is mainly an introduction to tell you who I am and to show that I know my subject, in order that you can begin to have confidence and credibility in me.  Now let me begin to give you antique information

 

Markets Change

 

Unfortunately clocks are among those whose market has changed, today good prices are still paid for some clocks, the ones that were made by known important makers of clocks with there name signature inscribed on the item. Other clocks can still get a good price but one that has not increased with the general rise in value of most antiques.

 

 

http://howland.ws/howtocollectantiques/Index.html

 

 

 

 

MY  STORY

 

For me this is where it all starts from banging on the back door of my house in Reading by a bunch of kids yelling - FRED – FRED, come out and play, football they meant in the lane at the back of the garden, I was called Fred then as I had a cousin a year older than me and that entitled him to be called Alex and I was left with Fred my second name.

 

KICKED IN THE HEAD

 

Off I went and we played football, after a little while as I dived to head the ball into the goal a foot came up with a big boot on it and clobbered me in the head. I managed to get up and I walked straight down into the back garden and staggered to the back door where my Gran came out and I fell into here arms. That was the last I knew for about several weeks as I had lapsed into a coma, so my parents told me, however, coming back to life something my parents had wanted for me was lost.

 

THE BLUECOAT SCHOOL

 

I had been fortunate to be chosen to attend the Bluecoat School with six other students from the county of Berkshire, it was free, the top Catholic School in England, but when they heard what had happened to me it was decided it was unlikely I could maintain the high standard of scholarship that would have been expected,  so my invitation was cancelled. I was then doomed to the public school where I was quite happy to go, my friends were there.

 

TRANSFERRED TO BRIGHTON

 

My father worked in the Post Office and was transferred there it was a promotion and meant more money. My father went ahead and found a house for us and a week later a moving van came, picked up the furniture together with me, my sister and mother and went off on this big adventure to the town by the sea. We lived close to the local school, within walking distance and I attended until I was fourteen years old. Each year I was in the first three positions, this pleased my parents, then it was time for me to work

 

AN APPRENTICESHIP WAS FOUND

 

My father then came to me and said: “Would you like a job as telegraph boy riding a bicycle and delivering telegrams,” no thanks Dad I said; “I want something more interesting, then two weeks later he came and offered me an apprenticeship which he would buy. He was editor of the Briove Post, a weekly newsletter, he also drew the cartoon strip and it was in the printing house that he arranged it all, a day in the week to be spent at the local Art College on Graphics Design and a day at the Local Technical College on English Literature. This must have cost him a fair sum, I started in the autumn and received the vast sum of two shillings and sixpence per week.

 

PLAYTIME WITH MY FRIEND AND PEERS

 

Barcombe Mills called and we went there for a week camping, a friend of ours was employed by a family as chauffer and they allowed him to use the car for himself one week-end each month. He always took us dancing in the country villages around Brighton between our days of boating and sailing as we got older, he also took us to Barcombe for the camping and here is a picture of us in camp, you will know me by the Babyface

 

 

AT SEVENTEEN MY FIGHTING DAYS BEGAN

 

The other lad there was related to the owner and we became fast friends, a friendship that lasted all our lives, through the days of Mosley’s Brown shirts which we and our other peers fought in streets. Seeing me do this the chief enforcer of the Brighton Race Gang, he knew me from our visits to Sherrys, came to me and said would you like to learn how to fight with an open razor, you are the smallest of your crowd and you need something to give you an edge, he taught me and it helped me survive the streets of Mosleys  nazis for two years I fought them. Then in 1938 I joined the Territorials and was called up in June 1939.

 

ARMY AND BOXING CAME NEXT

 

I then ended up boxing for the British Army Championship, reached the semi-finals and was beaten on points by the Indian Army Champion, I was then put into special training in which I said to the instructor: “That’s the end of Queensbury Rules, I want to stay alive,” he agreed and said: “When you leave me if you get involved with real fighting, remember one thing, if your opponent is still standing after 15 seconds your dead.” I took his advice, very good advice. From there it was France and away we went.

 

FRANCE THEN THE BELGIAN FRONTIER

 

We were not there very long, when the Nazis came cracking round the Maginot Line just as if it wasn’t there, we were smashed, the order came down everybody for himself, get to Dunkirk and await help to get away. This I and another mate grabbed a jeep and set off on the way across France, we were about half way across when the Stukas caught up with us and the refugees, we dived for the ditch as the bombs came down and the machine guns rattled round our ears. Laying there I heard a little girl screaming, got up and went to her, she was about six years old and her abdomen was split, her innards sliding out I tried to hold them in but she died in my arms, I wrapped her in my groundsheet and put her between her dead parents and cried my eyes out, my eyes are watering know as I remember, and it built up a hate in me that allowed me do what I had to do in the coming years.

 

DUNKIRK WE ARE COMING

 

We arrived at the perimeter around Dunkirk, it was a couple of days after the first of June, my birthday twenty years old, and a Sergeant stopped us said Pay Books please, we gave them to him and he said you’re machine gunners I’ve got just the job for you and he took us to a hole in the ground surrounded by sandbags and said: “Here you stay here until your dead or in the Bag,” prisoners he meant. No way I thought I have got a war to fight and at the same time afeeling came over me that I would be hurt so I looked at my mat and said: “The jeeps still here let’s go.” We went and reached Dunkirk and became part of the lineup for the boats, then the Stukas plus other planes came and dumped bombs and machine gunned us, I suppose I was lucky I got wounded in left foot a minor wound but it got me on the boat to Ramsgate, one of about eight small boats being towed by a bigger cruiser, practically one of the last boats to leave on the 6^th of June.

 

RAMSGATE - A BIG WELCOME

 

I was taken to hospital with the rest of the wounded and late the next day my wound was dressed, given two weeks off and sent away. I called my apprenticeship friend and we took a boat on the Thames for two weeks after I had spent two days with my mother, and we enjoyed ourselves I was very thankful to have made it alive that far. After a happy two weeks back to the war, I arrived back to my unit with what was left of them, trained for a few weeks and we were off again, Alexandria, Cairo and the desert.

 

AN OASIS AND A VISIT FROM THE NAAFI

 

The nicest time within a few dreary months was just before Christmas we leagued there for two weeks rest, then to our surprise a Naaffi truck arrived with lots of goodies on board, how they came to come up there still behind nazi lines we didn’t know but we were very please they topped us up with supplies Tea, Tinned Milk, tins of Beef, Bacon, we enjoyed it then the girls said as you have captured female clothes from an Italian Brothel truck put on a Christmas show to night, we did, I was the only one who would wear the female dress, I played Mary. As we finished the boys set up a yell and started towards me, Oh No I thought I am off and I ran and hid, the next morning the Naafi girls, I call them girls but they were older more like our mothers, they took the female clothes away from me and gave me back my sort of uniform. The picture is of the Oasis.

 

BACK TO THE WAR

 

Rommel had started off back down the desert towards Cairo so off back we went to try and stop him, one critical place was north west of Tobruk and boxes were set up to hold him back, the Free French had a box just a short way from us and they took most of the fighting, a very bad time they had, Rommel turned on us in the Knightsbridge Box, we had short time of it one chap had his heel blown off and I being the only one there with some training in first aid was called on to dress it, I looked around for his boot took his heel out washed it, and bound it up, some time very much later I was called to the captain and told that I had been commended as the foot was reworked in hospital and they saved his foot.

 

TOBRUK

 

We were withdrawn to Tobruk and got caught up with Tiger tanks just short of the perimeter, we knocked some out but one got my gun with an eighty-eight I was wounded in the left arm and hit between the eyes with some shrapnel which blinded me, I was moved into Tobruk where they put me into an American 15 cwt ambulance with a driver and one nurse, and got me out it was just before Tobruk fell and I was taken to the Hellfire Pass where there was a medical facility. They dressed me looked after me and sent me off finally to arrive in South Africa where I completely recovered, returned to my unit just in time to get into the Battle of El Alamain.

 

EL ALAMAIN

 

Ten sweating days and ten sweating nights we poured a barrage over to soften up the enemy, then the Scots Regiment went in, I was up at the OP at that time and saw g them over top, I suppose you would call it, led by two Pipers, one of the Pipers was shot and that made the Scots mad they went in yelling there battle cry and was I glad I was not one of the enemy. Orders came we were to pack and drive south through the Sahara go north to get round behind the enemy and fight our way through to the Mareth Line, a pass between the mountains before proceeding up the coast to Tripoli.

 

TRIPOLI

 

The fighting now was very light and shortly begins another story that turned my life to where I was taught how to live again like a human being by a beautiful young Italian Girl. - Thank You we were married 32 years.