Northumberland

My mother grew up in Northumberland. Her father was a manager for the Cooperative, managed a farm at Hetton Steads. According to the couple my sister spoke to when she and I drove over there, he was a well-respected manager, good to his workforce, strong and fair, morally upright and religious. The farm used to employ 90 staff, today it is worked by 12. Grandad would walk up the hill to work with the sheep (he liked sheep - when he retired to the north west Scottish coast he had sheet on his croft).



When we used to visit our grandparents we would stay with them in their house. They'd built an extension on the side that faced over the loch - with large windows all the way round three sides - good for looking out to sea, over the hillside and across the hamlet. Granny would spot deer on the hillside, or the QE2 passing by on the sea. We'd play whist (with the curtains closed on Sundays so the neighbours wouldn't see) if it rained and in the evenings. Granny would always have an ace up her sleeve, play it with aplomb. She liked to win.

On the window sill there were photographs. One of my favourites was of the five children arranged on the drive of the house at Hetton Steads. I always thought it was at the front. The two eldest stood behind, the three youngest on chairs in the front. Auntie Jennifer very elegant in 50's finery, beautiful dress, hair and lipstick. Uncle John, the littlest ones in matching dresses, and mother. The house looked grand and huge. I was surprised at the size of it - it seemed less impressive than I had always imagined it to be. And faced away from the road over the land.

Amy and I drove past the school they used to go to (primary, before being sent off to boarding school). Its a b&b now. Then we went up to St Cuthberts Caves - Uncle John told her they used to go over there often. We sheltered in what we thought was the cave when the rains came in but later discovered we were totally not in the right spot having taken the wrong animal path when the signposts stopped - doh!)

I can see why our mother loved this place - the landscape is beautiful, green, luscious.

Sunny Days



Couple of sunny days we drove up to the sandy beaches to dig sand castles, swim (some of the younger contingent) and sunbathe. First visit we just got the suntan lotion rubbed in and the sun went behind the clouds for good - good hour worth of shade-bathing instead. Nephew cried when he got sand in his sandwich. He discarded it a short distance from the rug. Seagulls swooped in for it.

Craster

Tide comes in and goes out. At the low tide a beach is revealed below the rocks that are being smoothed into curvaceous smooth shapes by the sea. Cormorants, gulls and house martins. Three days in exhaustion is setting in. Probably a mixture of relaxing from work, sea air and different waking hours. Blogging from the kitchen table with the french doors open and the sea lapping up just beyond the fence. Occassional walkers pass by interrupting the seaview (the coastal path is just outside the fence).

Conference at Excel Centre



Brave new world of docklands. All covered walkways, elevated, self-driving trains and hotels build of lego. Wide pedestrian routes and brick pathways in various designs. Old warehouses cleaned up with glass extensions and deep moats left from the days of being dockyards. In the glaring sun the dirty film of air in the distance from the city sits on the horizon. Feels devoid of enough people to make it feel like a real part of the city. Over the main dock is a development of apartments built in identical modern-in-the-style-of-something-old houses. Great view from them. Great location on the side of the water. Some years to come before it will look anything more than a dormatory. Along the side of the docks the massive Stothert & Pitt dock cranes stand erect in pairs - reminders of what once was a hive of industrial activity. An oversized bronze statue of 3 dock workers loading up a palet to be lifted off by a crane is dwarfed by the buildings, cranes & size of the pedestrian walkways. A forest of newly planted trees are miniature. Evenly planted like in the Parisian Tuileries. Eventually they will gain some stature in their surroundings. So finally, I turn around and enter the Excel Centre for the conference...

Essential Dressing

Big thick black extra long false eyelashes. Eyes looking out from below them - surrepticiously almost as if wearing sunglasses - not realising how much can be seen. Very vampish, 60s look. Apart from the false lashes she is wearing a velor tracksuit and bright yellow teeshirt, and has just been to Aldi's. When did false eyelashes become one of the can't-be-seen-out-in-public-without items?

Luke Jackson - Goodbye London

Luke sent me this video that he made to his song Goodbye London. Watch it - I think it has a londoner's feel to it - that which other people may find ugly has value. It draws out some of the very specific things that I love about London - Eros in the dark, the lit advertising in Picadilly, Hamstead Heath, funny graffiti stencilled onto walls (fleeting imagery that stays until it is washed off - sometimes in between becoming iconic).

Jersey Tiger

In the heat of the day we sat outside Petitou on Choumert Road in Peckham (they have a lovely huge plain tree in the corner of their plot that makes lovely dappled shade) eating cheese on toast with chives and drinking fresh squeezed grapefruit juice. The windows are surrounded by walls covered in dark green tiles. On the tiles was a Jersey Tiger Moth - large triangular with distinctive black and white markings. When he flew off his inside wings were bright orangy red. Remarkable. Never seen anything like it before. Love summer. Love wildlife in London.

Stormy Weather

We're having one of those storms that start with yellow electric light at the tail end of a humid close day. After the yellow light were huge heavy drops of rain that were warm on the skin. I just managed to get the stuff in from the garden when it downpoured. Then there were large hailstones. And finally the thunder and lightning. Forked and streak lightning cracking and looping across the sky from one cloud to another, flashes and their accompanying thunders rolling across the sky rumbling. Rain falling faster and faster, bubbles and back splashes on the concrete. Somewhere dogs have been left out and are barking in distress.

Stupid stuff makes me laugh

I've always known this, crap jokes, puns etc - like 'em. At the moment is the Lynx (smells cheap and horrid) Muchos Maracas advert. I laugh aloud. I think its too late for my sense of humour to grow up...

And again...

We've moved office again. Hopefully the last time. State of the art (lights come on when they sense your presence, one of the greenest buildings in London), and conceptually slightly behind (hotdesking - seems to me to have been tried, tested and moved away from in business but we're just adopting it), all at the same time. Its nice to be by the river, in a pleasant part of town, but its expensive, busy and suity. It provides space, light, good facilities but takes away the personal and individual - makes you feel rather like a battery hen, and reduces productivity because of the unpacking and packing up at the beginning and end of every day. There will be 300 staff on my floor when they all get moved in. Thats a big hum of people.

Each day I go in I feel like I'm working in an american movie, only without all the knick knacks that they have. We go through automatic revolving doors that revolve slightly too slowly, walk through the impressive stone floored foyer, through the security gates (nobody gets through without a pass) and take one of 4 lifts up to the floor (doesn't matter which one, they all look the same), touch into (new fangled clocking in, but clocking in none the less), and look for an open desk space. Once identified we logon to the phone and into the computing system.

In the first week, despite being surrounded by people, I felt somehow isolated - all those people who I normally sat near were spread across a much wider area. Its the same work, the same colleagues but different. Less friendly. More territorial because there is less to have control over. Still its early days, it'll take time to get used to it.

Body

His hot leg and left arm leaned on me in a way that made me accutely aware of our bodies pressed together as the bus trundled along. I was reading. He was on the phone. One call to a girl whose number he had just taken. ONe to a mate about later. ONe to a girl he was more familiar with about hooking up soon. I used my bottom and leg muscles to create some microscopic distance, drawing myself together. He let his leg and arm fill the space created.

He was shaven headed with a beard. Grey trackpants and a short leather bomber jacket. Made contact with my cotton velvet coat. He got off and walked away, puling the seat of his trackpants up to the elastic of his undergarments.

My side felt cold. The bus passed the photograph shop that has the picture of a woman sitting on the floor with one knee up and the other one lying against the ground in a pose that focuses too much on the crotch of her shorts. Its a troubling picture that always reminds me of a discussion I had with my life drawing tutor about full frontal nudes. You have to draw the genitals (one class someone left a smudge rather than putting anything more explicit detailed) but in the same style and detail as the rest of the figure (after the smudge incident during a long pose the tutor and I discussed the detailing I had drawn because it drew the eye too much). A drawing (or photograph) needs balance as well as being accurate. Generally, after that, I preferred to not be in a position with a full frontal view.

Optimism

I've just started reading Louis de Bernieres' A Partisan's Daughter. There is a lot about London in the 70s - Archway in particular. "It was winter, not that you'd ever know what season it was in Archway, because in Archway it's always late November on a good day, and early February on a bad one." Its still like that - always windy, a bit miserable (not as miserable as it would have been in the 70s - it would have been worse then - grey, drab and probably messy).

I was a kid then. There was an advert on tv with 3 young people walking along a wide york stone pavement beside the cream columnaded houses around Regent's Park to a soundtrack of old fashioned millionaire. The boy gave one of the girls a piggy-back. It was everything that being a young adult was going to be (in my childish mind). And there were the multicoloured hair men (before punk made that more normal) - extraordinary and exciting. We were allowed to swim in puddles that formed in the playground of the nursery school (something that health and safety executives would never allow now). Covent Garden was full of sunken gardens made in the voids left by demolished buildings that could be overseen through spy holes in the hordings. Years later Mum told me they were full of hippies smoking grass, but that wasn't something I noticed at all as a child. It was just the secret, hidden, mysterious spaces - not perfect, not commercially produced. Openings in the dense city. I miss the curiousity of childhood, the potential and the optimism.

I hate the fact that the world is smaller than it used to seem, that the news is so overwhelmingly bad, that our politicians are corrupt and that working is such a drain on our time. Now that I've finished The Partisan's Daughter [this blog post has taken me over a week to complete] I think that's how the adult non-alternative life is portrayed. I hate that my life has turned out like that. I was supposed to be an artist. With an alternative lifestyle. I admire women who lead their own lives, uncompromisingly. And those who wear their passions on their sleeves - emotional, experiencing life in its fullest. I'm just not sure that early 21st century life allows for that kind of throw-caution-to-the-wind living (with all its doom and gloom economy & climate, politics and killing).

So this year I think I want to continue building the creative back into my life. I'm keen to do a jewellery course and I'd like to learn basket weaving. Perhaps I'll do some more regular blogging...

Morning rush

A man's mouth contorts. Jeans, K Swiss, a cap, reading a magazine. He takes he glasses off and rubs his eyes. Tired? Migrane? He holds the visor of his cap down low and wipes a tear from his right eye. Crying? He sits head down for a moment or two. Then he puts his glasses back on. Heartbroken? Bereaved?

Underground Overground Googling Free

Google street view - some love it some hate it. I like the fact I can see my sister getting into her car outside her house - its so ordinary and yet somehow feels like being in touch. Maybe over time as the image gets old it'll stop feeling like that. I've also been round to all my relatives houses all round the world to check them out.

I was emailed a link to something much more interesting done with street view. The overground route of the Northern Line Charing Cross branch. There's something demanding about the arrows on the street that have to be followed. I think of London like this - sort of a huge mound - from suburbs to suburbs through an increasingly chaotic and built up centre. This is a visual representation of the journeys I sometimes write about. The work of Ian Buchan. Take a look. The Overground Underground Northern Line.

Love

The stinking alcoholic leaned heavily on his woman, talking over her shoulder to anyone listening - about how they'd been together for 14 years. Love of my life, fantastic she is. She was dark brown with filth. Eyes staring listlessly out the window. His voice was coarse, heavy with drinking and smoking. She was silent.

Turning left onto Upper Street her eyes passed over an advert on the side of a bus going the other way. £54 to Corfu. Wouldn't it be nice to get away? Yeah, he said, it would be great to get away from this shit hole.

Ball games

Four men from the hand care wash (one of those businesses that spring up in an empty petrol station or car lot) are playing football and volley ball becuase they have no customers. Its sunny. The weather is warm. They keep kicking the ball over the wall. One in particular is over-zealous and can't control his kicking strength enough. They have to balance on a crate and drag the ball off one of the out building's roofs with a broom. Next time its running round into the garden of the neighbouring block of flats. Its funny. Like kids.

Boundary

Today I have mostly been thinking about the boundary of my house. At the moment it s a rotting fence to the front and a big cloud-trimmed hedge between me and my neighbour. I keep thinking it would be good to trim it into some topiary shape but I'm not brave at the moment. Pops is going to buy me a brick wall for my birthday last year - still haven't found a brickie to do it. I'd like the bricks to match the house - they are mostly yellow London clay - some are pinky and some are slightly blackened like they've been burned. There's a two row detail of red brick running through the building. Pops has a metal gate in his cellar that I can have. I might paint it pink or something that metal gates aren't usually painted.

I'm also looking for metal numbers - large ones, preferably brass. I want to replace the ones that are up there already.

I've also got a lollypop trees that I'm desperate to cut down. My neighbour has a chainsaw - he's willing to help. I want to replace it with a pale pink flowering tree. I've got lots of plans, but no action yet.

Reminiscence
and a couple of jokes I was reminded of at work today


How many social workers does it take to change a lightbulb?
One, but it must want to change.


The huge yellow orb is hanging low in the spring sky. Drawn to it I look and then get spots before my eyes. Sun setting over Hackney. Tops of buildings caught in light of gold.

Tiger Lillies flow onto the ipod. Reminds me of different times. Hedonistic nights in the Kings Head back room, late nights, surrounded by people. Georgia flashing her tits. Never getting tired. Endlessly seeking adventure and good times.

Pass Rosemary Works, a ceramics studio across the street from a pub where the Tiger Lillies used to play, I have a brief dream of a different life. Having kept the artists studio I used to have, I spend my days making work. I wondered how many pots I could fit into one of those toploading kilns that Kerry used to have at Cockpit arts. A life of making. In the late, bright spring light its a thrilling alternative life thought.


How many goths does it take to change a lightbulb?
None - they'd rather sit in the dark.


Pink blossom tree. Beautiful. Frivolous. Candyfloss and cake icing. Debate again in my head whether I want a pink blossom or white outside my house. White is more tasteful but pink gives me greater joy and elation somehow.

Sun has dipped and the sky is left with a glorious arc of gold cloud. Sometimes I think I should be where I can see more sky - it uplifts me so. Two fidgeters have sat in front of me on the bus this evening. Ants in their pants. Their presence is disturbing my thoughts. Interesting how thoughts come back to the present when you get into a part of time you didn't know in the past. My neighbourhood holds no old memories for me. The memories are the present and the future.

Ceramics class

So, this term I've been making big things.





(That last one is not finished yet - its a monster - takes two people to move it - I want to grow waterlillies in it once its fired).

Of Vacation, Tiling the Kitchen and Kew Gardens

Two weeks off have just finished. Spent the time gardening (1st week, first couple of days), and tackling the DIY job I had been putting off for over 2 years - tiling the kitchen. Once started the tiling really wasn't as bad as I was anticipating. Did take me most of a week, especially after I had to repaint the kitchen (black grout is filthy stuff).

When I finally got through we spent a day at Kew to relax. I love spring. Its uplifting and hopeful and energetic.