Early memories, and Uncle Alf…

Dave Whatt

Oct 2

But first...
Dulltown, UK: Today's carefully selected colours are: veal violet, raspberry rouge, toast turquoise, omelette orange, bacon blue, Gorgonzola green, butter burgundy, and pork pink.
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Ever since I was small, I always liked to draw things.
'Since I was small', what a funny term that is. Anyway, childhood stuff popping into the brain:

I remember sitting at home, with a pencil and a piece of paper in front of me, saying to anyone passing, 'But, I don't know what to draw! But, I don't know what to draw'!
Someone might answer, 'You can draw anything you like'!
I started to draw ships. I liked ships. We had ships nearby. My father worked on dredgers.

We never had many visits from relatives, apart from a fat loud lady who came about once a month, to drink tea, and eat biscuits; a relation of my father, she tried to be a lot posher than us. The only other regular visitor was Uncle Alf. He was a bit odd, was Uncle Alf. He was my mother's brother, and it was said that he could draw too.

Uncle Alf would come round to our house on Sunday afternoons, after he'd visited the Red Lion pub.
Apparently he had a bad time in World War II several years earlier, and he used to tell us all about it.
He would tell us such things as - one summer's day, picking up some cigarettes from a dead German soldier. They had blood on them, so they put them on a low wall to dry out in the sunlight, before they could smoke them.
I didn't like stories like this, but you felt obliged to listen.

His son, probably about my age, used to go to one of those Saturday morning kid's film shows at the cinema up the road. One week, the cinema had a competition the kids could be involved in. It was drawing competition. I don't even know what subject the kids had to draw, though.
Anyway, Alf's son won first prize! And I didn't even know that he could draw!
My mother told me, quietly, later on, that Uncle Alf did his son's drawing.
I was quite shocked, and surprised.
But that's cheating! Isn't it?
I suppose that Uncle Alf, and his winning son, thought it was a very good idea...