China and paper and chalk.

Barney went to a stamp auction last week and came home with a few goodies.  He tells me that the local auctions these days are regularly attended by at least two chinese bidders, apparently buying up the entire stock of chinese stamps.  It must be to do with the current chinese desire to retrieve their ancient cultural heritage from all over the world.*

This reminds me that when my Grandmother died, her grandchildren all went to Holland to collect her possessions, many of which came from China.  Her husband was a trader, of sorts and they lived there for many years.  Their home was full of rather lovely chinese things – most of which were not considered to be particularly valuable – though now that might be different.

Anyway, there was a large blue and white glazed ginger jar (something like this) which all three of the older cousins (including me) rather liked and when I said “I’d quite like the blue and white jar”, both the other girls said Oh but so would we.  There could have been a bit of  a problem, however one of us said, why don’t we share it?   Our older relatives looked shocked and so did my husband but we had been good friends as children and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to share.  Not completely simple since the eldest of us lived in Belgium but we agreed on it anyway.  We had it valued and it seems that it was one of our grandfather’s better investments and was worth quite a lot of money.

Several years later the eldest cousin died of cancer. The ginger jar was in Belgium at the time as it was her turn to have it.  She and her mother had some kind of feud about her four children, two of whom lived with their grandmother and two with her.  The youngest was the daughter of a second marriage – I think this marriage had been the spark which started the feud.  Such a sad situation.

Anyway, the English families supported the Julles’ (the second husband) claim to keep his child and we all seemed to be very good friends.  Then suddenly it became impossible to contact them.  They (and the vase) had disappeared.

We all rather suspected that, reduced to a tiny income and huge debts by our cousin’s illness and quite possibly being harassed by the grandmother in pursuit of the last child, Julles had sold the vase and done a flit.  The sad thing is, if he had asked us other two cousins, we would certainly have told him to go ahead and sell it and use the cash as he needed but just to stay in touch with us.

I wonder sometimes how Julles and his little daughter fared and where they are.  It seems such a shame that they haven’t got the support of their English family – we’re a weird lot but we would have helped them if we could.

Anyway, going back to China, it seems that there’s a bit of a premium on British Penny Blacks at the moment because the Chinese are buying them to give to their English business customers as welcome gifts.  So if you’re interested in stamps, the thing is to do business with a Chinese company.

A couple of weeks ago I found myself in Wiltshire quite early in the day and went exploring.  I had an idea that there was a white horse around here somewhere (Wiltshire is littered with them) and stopped at a car park, peering around in the fog.  I could tell it must be very close since you couldn’t miss the bend.

It was a bit of a ‘behind you!’ moment.  From here, you can just about see its legs.  And some snow.

*As I understand it, so much of their lovely art was destroyed during the Mao Tse Tung years when anything ancient and non-communist was suspect, that they, quite reasonably I think, feel deprived and want it back.  Being quite pragmatic people, they don’t start international incidents over it but just go forth and buy it back.