The Bavidge Times
Is Homer Screwy?
Corkscrews for Collectors
Bernard M. Watney
Homer D. Babbidge………... please explain!
WAG AWARDS 2000
A Devon cat has succeeded in reaching the National Finals of the WAG Awards 2000, run by the Animal Health Trust. Milton was housed in a retirement home by Honiton Cats Protection. An elderly cat himself, he has settled in wonderfully well, and his abilities have been recognised in reaching the finals for the category “Companion Pet of the Year”, for loyal, loving cats and dogs.
Milton (By Judith Jupp)
In 1998, Milton, (named after the Poet for his gravitas), was adopted by Mary Bavidge, Manager of a Residential Home, when I was Homing Officer. An abandoned old cat—a tad scrawny, but sweet natured—he was always overlooked in favour of the younger and better looking: now we hoped that he might offer some companionship to residents, while enjoying a safe home.
He has exceeded our expectations—indeed he has blossomed. Disdaining the magnificent gardens, he prefers to sit on laps, (and beds!), or catnap in strategically placed cushions.
When we lunch with my father-in-law Milton invariably joins us: he attends the entertainments, delighting in the Carol Service and Christmas Party. He hasn’t put a paw wrong. In his own declining years, this gentlest of cats gives comfort and solace to those isolated by their illness, whom we humans find difficult to reach.
Quite simply, he is a treasure.
http://www.cullompton.org/cullycobbler/may00/page5.html
Amelia Louise Babbage will be 100 years old on the 12th. March 2002. She could be the oldest living Babbage. Further details from, (and congratulations to her), via her Grandson Alan Barsby,
But the $50,000 starting price has bemused McCahon's family, and art historian Gordon Brown.
"Sure enough it's where McCahon worked. But I don't really think that makes it a sacred site," Brown said.
"It's part of the current mentality of seeking things famous people have owned."
McCahon's daughter, Victoria Carr, thinks the sale is a joke. "So long as they don't go and try to flog it off as an art work... I just think it's really quite hilarious. People will try anything, won't they?"
She says the floorboards - with their black outlines of her father's canvases - could hardly be considered a national treasure.
"I mean, really. I haven't heard of Picasso's studio floor being sold anywhere, have you?"
She labelled the sale "opportunistic", but was pleased the studio had not been kept as a shrine.
"The floor is not an art work. As a piece of history, well, without the rest of the studio, so what?
"If people want to remember my father, the best way to do this is by viewing his works and by getting out and engaging with the landscapes he painted and enjoyed."
McCahon's Muriwai studio has been through two incarnations since the artist, who died in 1987 and whose works now fetch millions, painted there.
Brown, who wrote Colin McCahon: Artist, used it as a library and workroom, and current property owners Anne Maree Holden and Bruce Bavidge turned it into a children's rumpus room.
Bavidge said he sold the building for $10,000 18 months ago to a photographer.
Bavidge said that when he and Holden got rid of the studio to make space for a new house, they contacted the office of Prime Minister Helen Clark - also the minister for arts, cultural and heritage. They were referred to the Titirangi-based Colin McCahon House Trust, but nobody was interested in the building.
"And then this chap just came in off the road..."
Bavidge said the buyer on-sold the building's shell for $7500, but saved the floorboards, carefully dismantling and labelling them for a photographic project.
"I'm a bit shocked really," Bavidge said. "I thought, `well, he's going to do something with it', that's what I wanted to see. But not for the person to go out and just make money on it'."
Bidding on the floorboards closes tomorrow. The internet auction site listing says "it is a unique and highly collectable piece of New Zealand history". The seller's details are not listed, but other items being traded under the same log-on are linked to Taranaki photographer Kevin Capon. Capon - who was once the target of a racial smear campaign in the small town of Mokau - was not available for comment last week.
The Muriwai studio - an industrial shed - was built in 1968. McCahon called the surrounding area "shockingly beautiful".
"I am painting what is still there and what I can still see before the sky turns black with soot and the sea becomes a slowly heaving rubbish tip. I am painting what we have got now and will never get again," he wrote in the 1971 Earth/ Earth exhibition catalogue.
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Not for his curly mop and freckled nose, his concertina socks and scabby knees, nor for his cleverness, but just because he was my sort of person, I suppose, I felt this tenderness, but could not name my feeling at that time. I was too young, but Shakespeare could have named it, Shakespeare knew a thing or two of love.
And we were sitting talking, side by side on the high vaulting-horse, when someone said ‘Is Roger your fiancé ?’ I denied that I had any feelings, though I had, and afterwards disguised my tenderness with scorn, like Beatrice insulting Ben four hundred years ago, for Shakespeare knew a thing or two of love.
I mocked his curly mop and freckled nose, his concertina socks and scabby knees; though I was scruffy too, I mocked his clothes. We were ten or eleven, I suppose. ‘Your socks are full of holes, your shirt is ripped; why doesn’t someone mend them?’ Roger wept. Benedict could answer blow for blow, but Roger Bavidge, forty years ago, knew something even Shakespeare could not know.
Our teacher told me later: ‘Roger cried because, six months ago, his mother died.’ Never again did we sit side by side discussing this and that. I should have tried to make amends for being such a savage to one who was my friend. Dear Roger Bavidge, do you remember me? And do you know what Shakespeare knew four hundred years ago?
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| By the Glow of the Tungsten Gracia Babbidge
The city slept. The streetlights glowed eerily. I sensed death approaching. I challenged death as I stepped forward. I felt death rush before me. I walked on -- Death's cold wake numbed my senses and chilled my bones. Death rushed behind me. Again passing by -- I walked on -- Somewhere in the night, souls were departing. Death had passed me by. Twice. My time had not arrived. Copyright © 1996 Gracia Babbidge |