Saturday 14 November 2020

Regrets?


With all next year's post-Brexit nonsense in the air, someone asked me recently if I'd ever regretted moving to France. The answer was obvious; of course not.

It set me thinking. Do I have any regrets at all? I suppose I do have one or two, but they are only regrets 'in passing'.

Firstly I do vaguely regret not having accepted Prof Carel Weight's offer of a place at The Royal College of Art. With the letters ARCA after my name instead of just BA Hons, There is no question that the art world would have taken me more seriously. It was the thought of another two years at college that put me off; and back in central London too. I also had a wife and son to support, and I needed to make money.

Another (half-hearted) regret is that when I sold my original farmhouse here, that I didn't buy another even bigger, older, house, with more land, and more buildings (property was so cheap). I still dream of owning an ancient home, surrounded on all sides by plenty of land; and maybe a lake even. Not only would I have liked the increased privacy, but I would have liked to have established some loosely based agriculture business to pass on to which ever of my children may have been interested.

I suppose I do also regret not tracking-down the little toe-rag who stole my Richard Hamilton 'Adonis in Y Fronts' print (above). I believe it's now worth over £35,000; not a life changing sum, but it still hurts. Had I found him I suppose I might have ended-up at The Old Bailey on a GBH charge; he was an old school friend too!

Otherwise, it's all been plain-sailing. 

21 comments:

  1. I long ago made a decision not to regret anything. The truth is that there is almost nothing in my life that I do not regret. So much I would do differently. And on the other hand, I'm happy with what I have.

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    1. Yael, that sounds dreadful. I had to think quite hard about things I regret, and only came-up with the three things above.

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  2. Not so bad. I meant there were a lot of things I would have done differently or better. Now with my life experience and looking back. Overall life is fine.

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    1. Good, I must have misunderstood you. Even the three things I mention above, I don't really regret any of them too much.

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  3. I do not regret very much (maybe a few chances to make a lot of money by buying some offered (!) real estate, or handing my M.A. thesis (which is still quoted after all those years) in as a doctoral dissertation - but I was the first to study in my family, so my parents could not give me advice. And yes, I might regret that I did not keep my mother's aristocratic name, as in Germany the "von" counts even more than a doctor's degree)

    But I decided that regret is a waste of energy and time. And concerning regrets in personal affairs I do not have, I lived my life to the full.
    What I regret is that for some great insights I learn NOW I might not have very much time to use them.
    As George Bernard Shaw said: "Youth is wasted on the Young". :-)

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    1. My advice would be to put the Von back where it belongs! Luckily it's been my property and stock exchange dealings that have kept me afloat.

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  4. By the way: do I understand it right that you know who the thief is???

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    1. Yes, indeed I do. I originally paid him about £200 for the print, then he asked to buy it back and offered £2,000. I didn't want to sell it, but I stood to make a good profit and eventually said OK. I was never paid. I consider that 'theft'. He was a nasty character.

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  5. My regret at leaving my beautiful cottage in Goudhurst is only now subsiding. The pain I have carried with me until recently. Living in a quiet backwater of Ludlow I am slowly beginning to appreciate how lovely it is and more importantly how fortunate I am! The decision to move was made in haste and for all the wrong reasons.

    Explain Cro if you would prints and their value? Must confess I don’t fully understand how it works. I often wonder why anyone would pay good money for a print, the original of which is never yours.

    LX

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    1. I think your confusing 'Prints' with 'Reproductions'. A print is literally printed by the artist in a limited edition. A repro is a photographic process done by a commercial printer and there's no limit to the amount printed. A print will always contain the artists signature and the number in the run of prints (i.e. 1/20).

      I know Goudhurst well; I was born in Lingfield.

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    2. Thanks for your explanation Cro, I do get the difference however I do still find it hard to understand, even taking into account the early prints are going to be crisper. The number of imprints taken obviously has a bearing on the value? Then what is there to stop the artist printing off a few more, does this enhance or decrease the value of the early ones? I do find the whole subject fascinating.

      LX

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    3. Early state engravings by Rembrandt can be worth a lot of money. Unfortunately he didn't destroy his plates, so copies continued to be made, sometimes by re-cutting the originals to make them sharper. These later state engravings can still be bought for a few pounds... there are thousands of them around, and it's not always easy to tell the difference between the early ones and the later ones. Usually an artist will say it's a run of 20 or whatever, and not make any more.

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    4. The principles of supply and demand do not apply to the art market Lettice.

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  6. A very wise boss said to me when everything at work was going wrong and nothing we did seemed to put it right: "the decisions we made were right at the time we made them, and we could not have done any better than that."

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    1. 'Everything happens for a reason'. My Mother used to tell me that when things went wrong. I never believed her.

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    2. My mum says the same Cro! Tasker, I similarly tell my work colleagues that we do the best we can armed with the knowledge and resources we have at the time and that's all we can do!

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  7. You are a male version of Edith Piaf - perhaps Fred Piaf or Boris Piaf. Sing it baby:-
    Non, rien de rien
    Non, je ne regrette rien
    Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
    Ni le mal
    Tout ça m'est bien égal
    Non, rien de rien
    Non, je ne regrette rien
    Car ma vie
    Car mes joies
    Aujourd'hui
    Ça commence avec toi

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  8. I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention...

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  9. I've got regrets, and plenty of them, but the fact is that there is no real point of wasting the time I have left pondering them. They can't be changed, only learned from.

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  10. I think we all have a few things we would have done differently. That said, a different action means a different outcome. We can only imagine the outcome. Overall, I feel grateful that I am comfortable and enjoy life.

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