I made several tests of group shots before deciding on how many colour pages would be needed. We spent many hours in our spare time mostly at weekends planning what should be near what. Because so many netsuke were in each shot, we decided that we would have to use a 10" x 8" plate camera to obtain sufficient detail of each netsuke on the printed page. Once everything was planned, we hired a photographer, and I positioned every piece for each photograph using my test shots that Dad had approved as a reference.

This was time consuming as every netsuke needed to be positioned and stuck in place with blue tac to show the best view of it. If only we had been able to use digital images, it would have been so much easier. But this was my first experience of professional product photography, and I learned a lot about plate cameras and lighting, it was fascinating.

What is strange is that once published it proved difficult to obtain sales, priced at £12.50, when most other specialised books on Netsuke were more expensive, we sadly did not achieve many sales. I do not know what happened to the remaining unsold stock, but I remember that Dad had found someone, I think in Guernsey that advertised to purchase unsold books - no doubt at a very low price, and I believe that was what happened. I do wonder what became of them all after that.

Many years later I have seen second-hand book sellers, offering Dad's book as a rare edition, for over £40 each, a couple were priced at £70!


Friends Come & Go, Then Come Back

Having got married and had our children, we soon realised that we had lost touch with most of our London friends, this was really because before I had always been the one to make the effort to organise how and where we would meet up. Sadly, once I had stopped doing this, no one made contact, I think this happens because once married and with children on the way, especially if not very near to each other, we all end up with so little free time.

However, most of our friends have remained friends for many years. Strange though how old friends, having had no contact for some 50 years, suddenly came back into our lives.

For example, Ronnie Hendon heard my voice in a restaurant, in San Pedro near Marbella and came rushing over to greet me, like us he too had an apartment and so we kept in touch again from then on.

Through Facebook my old school best friends Bob Herrick and David Fine suddenly got in touch, as did Martin Stern, this was more than welcome, and we hope to meet up again soon. Meanwhile we have had some video calls together using WhatsApp, all free and rather amazing to us.

We were invited to join a superb new club in Birmingham 'The Albany Club' six months before it opened, this was a very up-market sports club that consisted of; 4 squash courts, a swimming pool, sauna, very smart changing areas, a restaurant, bar, and a dance floor. We loved it and remained members for several years, going at least once a week till the late hours. This was where we learned to play squash and we got to know a lot of the members.

One incredibly special new friend, who became remarkably close for so many years, was Parvis Moayedi (an Iranian, he later changed his name to Paris). We first met him in this squash club. More about him will follow.

Another circle of friends came about from our love of dancing Salsa, we soon became members of 'Latin Motion' and had such a lot of fun times with them.