Below you will find the original “About” piece that was put up on the site when it first went on line in March 2007 in anticipation of a garden that I was doing at the Chelsea Flower Show and a show feature at the Hampton Court Flower Show. What was not foreseen at that time was that, after the shows were over, and for several weeks, the site would mainly be devoted to a running blog covering the proceedings of the Phil Spector Trial for Murder in California. As the trial drew to a close the focus shifted to putting to good use my unpublished writings and work in progress on art and art-related subjects. Space has also been found for various of my earlier exploits including the 1998 Artistic Happening on London Bridge, the collection of Second World War aircraft that I once had, and other stuff.

Anthony Samuelson

21 September 2007

Original “About” article posted on 15 March 2007

If you are here you are looking at a web site which is very much under construction. Not very long ago from this writing a news release was issued on my behalf announcing to the world that I would be presenting a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show and another at Hampton Court. For various reasons, not least of which is the fact that I have never been to a flower show in my life, it seemed to be something worthy of the attention of the media. Whether the media is of a like mind remains to be seen.

It was something of an afterthought that I had my PR lady (Rosie) put in a reference to a “warts-and-all” Gardening Blog that would be available on a new web site, www.samuelson.co.uk, a week hence. A week became ten days, but here we are.

It was always on the cards that this web site would turn out to be much more than an account of my experiences as a novice show gardener. Anyone who has reached the age of 77 has a web site in them. In my case there is a whole lot of opinionated stuff that stems from years spent researching and starting-to-write and writing books on various subjects, mostly art, which I will happy to see given an airing and which, I trust, will be printed, bound, promoted, reviewed, slated, purchased and remaindered, just like any other book and just as soon as a publisher puts in an appearance. [Link to ANTHOLOGIES OF UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS to go here!] There are a handful of Samuelson’s Laws [Link to SAMUELSON’S LAWS to go here] that need to be promulgated. There are articles from my two ill-fated ventures into newspaper and magazine publishing that I have always felt worthy of a wider currency. [Links to DAILY LOONYLUGS and THE CUCKOO to go here.]

There are literally dozens of areas that I have identified as deserving of further research and action and which I am having to accept that (given my age and not enough minutes in a day) I shall never personally get round to doing anything about. Or if I am going to do anything about, this web site will be the place to get things going. I will lay out the problem as I see it, indicate a possible remedy if I know of one, and invite any one visiting this site who thinks my idea worth pursuing to pick up the baton and run with it. [Link to BATON STUFF to go here]

In the course of my writing and publishing activities I have commissioned a considerable body of original art some of which deserves to be made available not only as illustrations to the books on which I have been working but as stand-alone works of art. There is a general rule that if the book ain’t published the illustrations ain’t published either – which is rotten luck if you happen to be a brilliant illustrator working for a wackie sort of writer. In all my ventures I have had the good fortune to be able to call upon just such a brilliant illustrator whose name is Ian Tovey. We worked together on re-interpreting twelve erotic works in London’s National Gallery to illustrate my forthcoming Guide to Erotic Art in London’s National Gallery and the result of our collaboration will find itself blinking in the light of day for the first time on this web site. (Some of the works were not that erotic – this is the fusty old National Gallery, remember – but they were when we finished with them.[Link to TOVEY’S TWELVE to go here]

After I retired from active business life in 1987 I researched A Contemporary History of Venice living there with my wife Carol on and off for a couple of years. Venice will have its own page on this web site [link: VENICE to go here] where you can expect to see many pictures of vaporetti (water buses) of which I am the world’s greatest and perhaps only fan.

There is some material generated from periods, sometimes lasting years, during which I was driving my children to school (a twenty-minute-each-way journey) and which has never been written down. By turning it into a car game I came up with the most sure fire way ever conceived by man of teaching a child the up to twelve-times tables. [Link to TEACHING TABLES IN THE CAR to go here] There are also stories concerning Donk-the-Wonk, who lives in Trotters Bottom near Potters Bar in Hertfordshire [Link to DONK-THE-WONK to go her] and “That Lady” who is one very rich lady, signs of whose presence are everywhere to be seen when making journeys by road with children swarming in the car or waiting to be served in a snooty restaurant or similarly fraught situations. [Link to THAT LADY to go here] Uncle Money Bunny, who was sort of the doyen of the Trotters Bottom crowd, will have his own page on this web site in which financial matters are discussed. [Link to UNCLE MONEY BUNNY’s MONEY PAGE to go here]. Horsal, who lived in a field near Uncle Money Bunny’s grand house and once attempted to eat his way out of Uncle Money Bunny’s underground carrot larder, does not have his own page being subsumed by Donk-the-Wonk’s page. Likewise the New Instant Super Bunny.

For many years I was very involved in inventing and patenting products based upon paper engineering technology - in the print trade known as cutting and creasing. I still have a Crossland cutting and creasing press which is capable of producing such items as the Brain Defender. This is an amazing piece of headwear which has the effect of keeping knowledge out. There is greater need today for a Brain Defender than ever before and I confidently expect this web site to unleash the demand. [Link BRAIN DEFENDER]

Another product developed by me is the Mister Ears range of greeting cards which has the potential to take the greeting card trade by storm but which needs the Internet to do it. [Link to MISTER EARS to go here] A third product which has been lying in wait for the Internet is the StickaGofer which I expect to be able, via this web site, to put at the service of the community – particularly that part of it that is distressed by the proliferation of breasts and bottoms in family newspapers. [Link to LIVING STICKERS to go here]. As part of the Sticker venture Ian Tovey and I did a sticker book called Fighting Bears which is an account of a wrestling match (“Grizzlyfest”) in which the teddy bears and their attendant lady assistants bear some resemblance to the stars of TV wrestling. Representing as Fighting Bears does my one and only venture into rhyme it has to have a place on this web site. It is yet another book looking for a publisher. [Link to FIGHTING BEARS to go here]

The most successful of my inventions to date has been the split headband headwear, an inexpensive way of putting large cardboard ears on either side of the head. It has become a favourite promotional device and many millions have been produced under licence. A spin-off from this side of my activities was an artistic happening that took place on London Bridge on 29 May 1998. There is an 18 minute video of this event filmed and edited to a professional standard that needs to be made available to the participants and it would be nice to think that a re-union could be arranged for the tenth anniversary next year.
I have had three previous web sites to this one and the first one, “www.londonbridge29may.com, was set up to alert commuters crossing the bridge on the way to their offices in the city to the coming event. It carried with it a chance of winning the Tate Gallery’s famous Turner Prize. The design of the ears - a closely guarded secret until the day - was a banner headline reading Art-iz-Us. [Link to ART-IZ-US to go here]. The BBC has a piece about the event on its web site that you will find HERE.

My second web site was misterears.com [link to MISTER EARS to go here] pursuant to his declared mission “to ear-up the world” and there was a third, tonysamuelson.com, which I set up when I stood for parliament in the Kensington and Chelsea by-election and got 15 votes. [Link: BY-ELECTIONS]

And then, of course, there is the catalyst for this site, the Gardener’s Blog. This blog will enable readers to put in their own two penn’orth if they feel like it. Art and the garden are mixed in together but there will be a separate blog at the disposal of those visitors who have an interest in art and wish to have the opportunity to say how much they agree with everything they have to say on the subject.

In due course there will be a specially dedicated page for Opera for which I love with a great passion equalled only by my fury at the profligate waste of taxpayers’ money on stuff categorised as Opera that is totally incapable of putting bums on seats without a heavy subsidy paid for in part by deductions from the wage packets of shop girls. This includes most if not all works by Britten, Tippett, Birtwistle and Glass. [Link OPERA to go here]

Most of this, laudable though it undoubtedly is as I am sure you will agree, will not happen straight away. The thing most pressing on my time are the flower show gardens at Chelsea and Hampton Court. I hope early visitors will keep an eye on this web-site, particularly from the late Summer onwards when I anticipate that it will get much more of my attention.

Anthony Samuelson

15 March 2007