clarity

 

AFTER FOUR WEEKS AND FIVE DAYS I am once more in attendance at the RD&E, this time on a Saturday morning. Early. I am again the last to go to theatre…  Do I complain? Of course not, it is not my style: someone has to be last. I just sit tight as before… until my turn arrives. 1205 in, 1235 out. Mary is summoned from her time killing activities on the Exe Estuary, geese, waders, avocets, Powderham etcetera – and arrives exactly at 1310 (after my tea and biscuits) to transport the patient back to the distant homestead. It is done. The second eye sorted, the end of disparity, the move to clarity. 

Within twenty-four hours I have much of the improvement in evidence: I'm on the way to quality long distance sight, never before experienced at this level of acuity, and never at all without specs – or those never-comfortable gas permeable fenestrated contact lenses. 

The second eye fix has given me a slightly wider ranging competence than the first: I am able to read moderate text sizes at arm's length. If I can't locate the reading specs, already. Nevertheless, 'reading' specs will need to be prescribed, the ones I am using now are borrowed or date back to that last contact lens period. Probably not quite the business.

Within forty-eight hours the slight double vision has gone. Clarity has quickly replaced the disparity, it was rather getting to me, having two eyes incapable of working as one, but trying, confusing each other, one all seeing, the other reduced, sans specs, to delivering nothing but muzz. One eyed Jack.   

So the Zeiss era is over, those very pricey specs, redundant. Am I bothered? Bring it on!

Isn't the scenery sharp… and bright… I can go fetch the milk and eggs again… in colour… 

marmalade maker (updated 2024)

I MAKE MARMALADE annually – it is ever popular: it is not for sale. Originally for home consumption, you only get gifted a jar if I like you a lot (or I am deeply indebted to you for something or other, possibly both). 

In 2018 I marked two centenaries: Hugh Melling, Mary's Great Uncle, killed in the last days of the Great War; and Stan Smith, my father, born in the last months of the same war . . .

2019 labels featured a generic, a 'Victoria', and two significant birthdays. All carried reference to the expected departure of the UK from the EU, a disaster that was postponed until the next decade. See also the 'NB' below.

2020 just had to have reference to 2020 vision, hence the faux optician's chart (featuring of course the typeface 'optician'). It remains my all-time favourite. I couldn't pass over the Bullsmead tradition to mark an historical event of significance: this time it was the quatercentenary (yes that's right, check the sp. with your handy OED) of the Pilgrim Fathers' jaunt to the New World. 

The 2021 label designs were somewhat neutral(ish), probably reflecting what a miserable year 2020 had turned out to be (the pandemic). Add to that the sudden refusal of the Bullsmead ink jet printer facility to output the labels at a time that replacement machines were as scarce as hen's teeth, well my patience was tested to the nth degree: rude words were aired and unsavoury suggestions tabled concerning the manufacturer of said IJP. Let's draw a veil…

Notice the five variations of the unapplied labels (shown above) reflect the five makes undertaken in the first week of 2021. [NB: this state of affairs was put to rights shortly after I recorded the above. The labels got printed and duly attached to the year's output…]. 

The 2022 marque features lighthouses. French lighthouses that is. And for the first time each jar features a different phare, can you believe. You'll find the whole lot featured in another post (you can see them all there and some labels that were not employed as I cut the number of makes to four rather than five). You'll love them! I include a single example, plus a special in the archive below, but there are forty-five designs in all on this post: marmalade 2022/3 spectacular 

2023 marmalade celebrates 4472 The Flying Scotsman locomotive which has been pulling trains since 1923! A Centenary edition then, and illustrating five of the railway engine's guises: as first seen in apple green livery, then in LNER livery (brunswick green) and sporting a corridor tender, the black variation for wartime, the blue paint job with the 'banjo' steam collection dome, right up to the form the engine is running in now, with double chimney and german-style smoke deflectors. The marmalade make was four in number and rendered thirty-seven jars! Furthermore I did all this in three days. Single handed as usual, but it is man's work after all.

And in 2024 I present the five all-weather lifeboat classes of the RNLI in the charity's bicentenary year,  plus a handful of limited edition jars, for no other reason than I thought it was about time to restate the essences of the Bullsmead house style (pompous twaddle, four variants). Four makes, thirty three jars in total, twenty RNLI specials… the rest, the definitives: Limited Edition, Special Reserve, Premium Export, and Connoisseur (Gourmet Marmalade) – you couldn't make it up!

The 2024 lifeboat series invites those who are in receipt of the conserve to donate the price of a jar (or preferably a bit more) of good shop-bought marmalade, if such a thing exists, to the RNLI, given that Bullsmead Marmalade is never handed out for pecuniary reward.  

I've been crafting this noble confection now for nearly forty years; the annual theme and identities exhibited below date back only to 2012, starting with the 2020 identities. After that the labels are not altogether in the right order … sorry about that, my fault entirely. This year's labels are, as a consequence, right at the end of this gallery…

NB The first label showing below this text (The Munro) should have been applied to some of the jars of the 2019 production, but wasn't because I overlooked the centennial it commemorates. So I designed the label in 2020 and shoved it in, notwithstanding. I suppose I shouldn't include it, as it didn't see the light of day on jars of the 2019 make…but I have, so there…