As it's a feverish time of year for lists - presents to buy, 22 ingredients to stuff into a bird's bottom etc - I thought I'd add to the collection by compiling my own list. It's a favourites of the week effort and counts as a list because it has two items.
1) Tim Sanders pocket cartoon, sited at the Political Cartoon of the Year Awards at the Political Cartoon Gallery. Two glamorous girls wearing little slips of dresses stand at a bar, holding a newspaper saying 'Arrested Tory - Row Continues'. One girl comments "Mind you a lot of these MPs like being handcuffed." Well it's probably just my age and the fact it reminds me of the Tory tradition of sex scandals.
Sanders offering was positively sweet compared to Peter Brookes' take on Lucian Freud's 'Benefits Supervisor Sleeping'. Gordon Brown has been substituted for the benefits supervisor and appears to be decomposing, his skin has a creme de menthe glow and seems to be melting into the shabby velveteen sofa. My sympathies are with the benefits supervisor who is really rather attractive. I can't remember her name but she gave a very good interview to John Humphries on the Today show which is more than most people can manage.
2) Eunoia by Christian Bok which is pretty much a pocket sized book to go with Sanders' pocket cartoon. Eunoia is the shortest word in English to contain all five vowels and means 'beautiful thinking' even though it sounds like a complaint which renders you unable to speak clearly (there'll be a lot of that about over the next few weeks - no, I did not say 'Here comes the psychotic who has ruined every family Christmas for the past decade' I said 'How lovely to see Uncle Cyril and looking so well too'.)
Back to Bok's book - it contains five chapters and in each only one vowel is used - only A in chapter A and so on. The resulting verbal gymnastics are amazing and often beautiful too. Here's a very topical snatch from chapter A:
"Hassan can watch, aghast, as databanks at NASDAQ graph hard data and chart a NASDAQ crash - a sharp fall that alarms staff at a Manhattan bank. Hassan acts fast, ransacks cashbags at a mad dash, and grabs what bank drafts a bank branch at Casablanca can cash: marks, rands and bahts."
Clever or what? Or: Clever we feel, we reel, ejected, expelled then defected. Oh give up woman and return to the stuffing.
Sunday 14 December 2008
Saturday 6 December 2008
Stories and portraits
This week I was fascinated to read about Tracy Chevalier's time as artist in residence at York Art Gallery. Chevalier's novel, 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' was inspired by Vermeer's portrait of a young woman wearing a pearl earring and a blue and gold scarf, wrapped round her head, turban style.
During her time at York Art Gallery Chevalier encouraged visitors to write stories about the paintings they saw - a brilliant idea which set me thinking of paintings I'd like to write about. First up was a portrait of someone wearing a turban - yes, I've always had a sadly derivative mind. My justification is that I did actually have a dream about this painting of the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet II, which is attributed to the Venetian artist, Gentile Bellini, and now lives in London's National Gallery.
Fatih Sultan Mehmet, as he is known in Turkey, conquered Constantinople for the Ottomans in 1453. In Bellini's portrait, completed in 1480, Mehmet wears a large white turban which must contain enough material to rig out a boat to sail from one end of the Bosphorus to the other. His nose is long and sharp, his skin yellow, he doesn't look at the artist but gazes off to the side, occupied with his own thoughts. As one art critic said it is a face that always catches the eye, set amongst the pink northern European complexions which populate so many of the National Gallery's paintings.
I dreamt of Mehmet's portrait on a night coach from Ankara to Istanbul, snowflakes whirling past the window, my hands doused in lemon cologne, part of my mind waiting for the wheels to lock into an icy skid. Mehmet slept too, in a tent outside Constantinople's walls, dreaming of conquest and a more comfortable bed in a palace. His white turban sat on a small wooden chest, still maintaining its position above its owner's head.
I watched the string of prayer beads Mehmet held in his right hand. They began to move of their accord, half flowing in one direction, half in the other, like the famous Bosphorus currents. Byzantium rippled through his fingers, trying to fathom out its next move.
The next morning the coach stopped just outside Istanbul. I drank tripe soup and thought about Mehmet waking in his tent, the snowflakes turning into the pale faces of people worried about the next war.
During her time at York Art Gallery Chevalier encouraged visitors to write stories about the paintings they saw - a brilliant idea which set me thinking of paintings I'd like to write about. First up was a portrait of someone wearing a turban - yes, I've always had a sadly derivative mind. My justification is that I did actually have a dream about this painting of the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet II, which is attributed to the Venetian artist, Gentile Bellini, and now lives in London's National Gallery.
Fatih Sultan Mehmet, as he is known in Turkey, conquered Constantinople for the Ottomans in 1453. In Bellini's portrait, completed in 1480, Mehmet wears a large white turban which must contain enough material to rig out a boat to sail from one end of the Bosphorus to the other. His nose is long and sharp, his skin yellow, he doesn't look at the artist but gazes off to the side, occupied with his own thoughts. As one art critic said it is a face that always catches the eye, set amongst the pink northern European complexions which populate so many of the National Gallery's paintings.
I dreamt of Mehmet's portrait on a night coach from Ankara to Istanbul, snowflakes whirling past the window, my hands doused in lemon cologne, part of my mind waiting for the wheels to lock into an icy skid. Mehmet slept too, in a tent outside Constantinople's walls, dreaming of conquest and a more comfortable bed in a palace. His white turban sat on a small wooden chest, still maintaining its position above its owner's head.
I watched the string of prayer beads Mehmet held in his right hand. They began to move of their accord, half flowing in one direction, half in the other, like the famous Bosphorus currents. Byzantium rippled through his fingers, trying to fathom out its next move.
The next morning the coach stopped just outside Istanbul. I drank tripe soup and thought about Mehmet waking in his tent, the snowflakes turning into the pale faces of people worried about the next war.
Sunday 23 November 2008
Mexican poet laureates
Xochipilli (see below) now resides in the British Museum which may explain why he looks rather morose for a god of poetry and dancing. He is hemmed in with a sculpture of a rattlesnake at his back and camera-clutching day trippers like me goggling in front.
I wanted a picture of X, partly because his name means 'flower prince' and partly because I'd just read an article in Red Pepper about poetry and activism. The Red Pepper article talks about poetry used as a weapon against oppression, a way of challenging authority and exposing the lies and shortcomings of those who have power.
As poetry often has pattern and rhythm, like an incantation, it can act as an adrenalin shot, revealing the world more sharply, if not more clearly. So is its natural home on the barricades or can it just as easily become an ode to the general in his palace?
One of the wonderful things about poetry is that it can often feel like a personal message, whispered to you alone. Paul Valery said prose is to poetry what walking is to dancing. Perhaps Xochipilli, god of dance and poetry, had whispered in his ear.
Evidence of poetry's enduring power is embodied in Xochipilli. Here is a medium so alluring, so persuasive it has to be controlled, channeled through an officially designated representative - a sort of Aztec version of Britain's poet laureate. Maybe that's why X looks depressed, he's contemplating yet another official royal occasion to be celebrated in verse.
I wanted a picture of X, partly because his name means 'flower prince' and partly because I'd just read an article in Red Pepper about poetry and activism. The Red Pepper article talks about poetry used as a weapon against oppression, a way of challenging authority and exposing the lies and shortcomings of those who have power.
As poetry often has pattern and rhythm, like an incantation, it can act as an adrenalin shot, revealing the world more sharply, if not more clearly. So is its natural home on the barricades or can it just as easily become an ode to the general in his palace?
One of the wonderful things about poetry is that it can often feel like a personal message, whispered to you alone. Paul Valery said prose is to poetry what walking is to dancing. Perhaps Xochipilli, god of dance and poetry, had whispered in his ear.
Evidence of poetry's enduring power is embodied in Xochipilli. Here is a medium so alluring, so persuasive it has to be controlled, channeled through an officially designated representative - a sort of Aztec version of Britain's poet laureate. Maybe that's why X looks depressed, he's contemplating yet another official royal occasion to be celebrated in verse.
Monday 10 November 2008
Stained glass and stinging nettles
I can't resist returning to St Margaret's church at Lower Halstow, even though my first visit involved a long walk and a lot of stinging nettles - good for the circulation according to Pamala, my unsympathetic and much fitter friend. So is corporal punishment I assume but we won't pursue that subject now.
St Margaret's sits at the head of a creek on the Kent marshes - Great Expectations country. The air smells of grass and salt and at low tide there's a network of tiny streams wandering over the mudflats. When the tide rises the fish begin to jump.
On the summer evening when Pamala and I picnicked and I suppurated from plant inflicted wounds by the creek the fish show was spectacular. So many were leaping and fly catching the water's surface was dimpled all over as though we were sitting in the midst of a great rainstorm that was coming from below rather than above.
So to the font - it's lead and dates from the eleventh century. The figures on it are angels and kings and they stand beneath archways, one next to the other, in a ring that reaches all round the font.
One of the charming ladies who guards the church has a theory the font was brought to England from France by an Anglo-Norman aristocrat who owned land in north Kent and Romney Marsh. As the font must weigh a ton I can't imagine why he bothered. Still it was the days of plentiful, cheap horse and serf power and it's a rather romantic idea. The night after visiting St Margaret's I dreamt of the font floating up the creek on a rising tide like a little leaden coracle.
As we've just passed Armistice Day I must mention St Margaret's stained glass 'Abide with me' window. It shows a soldier in the trenches facing an apparition of Jesus. In the background the sky is splintered by an exploding shell.
The window is based on a Christmas card Brigader General Roland Bradford was going to send to the men of his platoon in 1917. Bradford was killed in December 1917, just before Christmas, aged 25.
St Margaret's sits at the head of a creek on the Kent marshes - Great Expectations country. The air smells of grass and salt and at low tide there's a network of tiny streams wandering over the mudflats. When the tide rises the fish begin to jump.
On the summer evening when Pamala and I picnicked and I suppurated from plant inflicted wounds by the creek the fish show was spectacular. So many were leaping and fly catching the water's surface was dimpled all over as though we were sitting in the midst of a great rainstorm that was coming from below rather than above.
So to the font - it's lead and dates from the eleventh century. The figures on it are angels and kings and they stand beneath archways, one next to the other, in a ring that reaches all round the font.
One of the charming ladies who guards the church has a theory the font was brought to England from France by an Anglo-Norman aristocrat who owned land in north Kent and Romney Marsh. As the font must weigh a ton I can't imagine why he bothered. Still it was the days of plentiful, cheap horse and serf power and it's a rather romantic idea. The night after visiting St Margaret's I dreamt of the font floating up the creek on a rising tide like a little leaden coracle.
As we've just passed Armistice Day I must mention St Margaret's stained glass 'Abide with me' window. It shows a soldier in the trenches facing an apparition of Jesus. In the background the sky is splintered by an exploding shell.
The window is based on a Christmas card Brigader General Roland Bradford was going to send to the men of his platoon in 1917. Bradford was killed in December 1917, just before Christmas, aged 25.
Saturday 8 November 2008
Sitting with the scent of wet fireworks in my hair and listening to the wind and rain at the window I've just realised All Souls day has slipped past me unnoticed. Squeezed between Halloween and Guy Fawkes All Souls probably never stood much of a chance in Britain, at least not after Henry VIII sat on Catholicism.
Coming from a household that liked a party and mixed Orthodoxy (Christian variety) and atheism under a capacious C of E umbrella I was accustomed to celebrating All Souls and feel rather guilty if I don't spare a thought for the dear departed.
My mother - the Unbeliever - is a great All Souls party woman. She makes circular cakes similiar to Viennese whirls and dusts them with coloured sugar so they look like multi-coloured haloes. One year she even got hold of some Mexican 'day of the dead' sugar skulls and we lined them up on the mantelpiece and lit candles to them. Godmother - Orthodox - performed a vodka toast and danced the mazurka.
On a more serious note I think an All Souls celebration can be a good way of introducing older children to death's place in life. Keep the dead as friends and companions - talk to them and they'll talk to you.
Coming from a household that liked a party and mixed Orthodoxy (Christian variety) and atheism under a capacious C of E umbrella I was accustomed to celebrating All Souls and feel rather guilty if I don't spare a thought for the dear departed.
My mother - the Unbeliever - is a great All Souls party woman. She makes circular cakes similiar to Viennese whirls and dusts them with coloured sugar so they look like multi-coloured haloes. One year she even got hold of some Mexican 'day of the dead' sugar skulls and we lined them up on the mantelpiece and lit candles to them. Godmother - Orthodox - performed a vodka toast and danced the mazurka.
On a more serious note I think an All Souls celebration can be a good way of introducing older children to death's place in life. Keep the dead as friends and companions - talk to them and they'll talk to you.
Monday 3 November 2008
Seeing red
All this talk of the devil is rather appropriate because I've being seeing red over the past week. A discussion about prejudice in the press lead me to the National Union of Journalists Code of Conduct. I see journalists must not encourage discrimination on the basis of 'age, race, colour, creed, illegitimacy, marital status, gender or sexual orientation'.
This statement woke the mini-Lenin bit of my brain which bellowed 'What about class?' Here we are with one of the lowest levels of social mobility in the developed world and yet we don't want to mention the c word. Almost deafened by the sound of doors slamming in my head I recalled my demo days of waving red flags in Trafalgar Square and riding the Circle Line with a coffin we intended to pull apart on the threshold of some council office or other.
Now I must admit I've spent rather more of my life dreaming of the red soles of Christian Louboutins than of red flags but it seems to me UK plc could do with a touch more militancy on this issue. Perhaps us aging Trots should shake out our faded red flags and get them on the road again.
Incidentally the coffin we trashed all those years was ago was empty which seemed a bit anti-climatic to me. May be I should make another one and drop in a pair of Louboutins? There's a metaphor for the credit crunch era - a coffin filled with designer shoes. Move over Carrie Bradshaw it's Tussle on the tube touting designer revolution.
This statement woke the mini-Lenin bit of my brain which bellowed 'What about class?' Here we are with one of the lowest levels of social mobility in the developed world and yet we don't want to mention the c word. Almost deafened by the sound of doors slamming in my head I recalled my demo days of waving red flags in Trafalgar Square and riding the Circle Line with a coffin we intended to pull apart on the threshold of some council office or other.
Now I must admit I've spent rather more of my life dreaming of the red soles of Christian Louboutins than of red flags but it seems to me UK plc could do with a touch more militancy on this issue. Perhaps us aging Trots should shake out our faded red flags and get them on the road again.
Incidentally the coffin we trashed all those years was ago was empty which seemed a bit anti-climatic to me. May be I should make another one and drop in a pair of Louboutins? There's a metaphor for the credit crunch era - a coffin filled with designer shoes. Move over Carrie Bradshaw it's Tussle on the tube touting designer revolution.
Friday 31 October 2008
The Devil ..... inspired by a treasured ring from Brazil, worn last night whilst trick or treating and drinking with friends......
The Devil came down from the mountain and took off his horns. He wanted to rest and they were too tiresome to wear whilst reclining on the chaise-longue. Cradled in the valley the Devil beleived himself invoilate and unseen but while he dozed and planned his next house party creatures of clay and water stole his horns.
When he woke the Devil roared with anger, his rage split the mountain and the stolen horns into thousands of tiny pieces, each one shaped like a horn.
When he woke the Devil roared with anger, his rage split the mountain and the stolen horns into thousands of tiny pieces, each one shaped like a horn.
Monday 27 October 2008
Beat the crunch
Visited my mother this weekend- given that I'm a woman of a certain age I think we could say my mother is a woman of vast and varied experience. There was only one slightly touchy moment when mother failed to thread a needle at first attempt and I dared to suggest she might have to consider getting glasses. She reacted like Truman Capote's rattlesnakes on amphetamines, hissed "You want to put me in glasses? Isn't it enough that my neck has gone?" and retired to the kitchen where she threw daggers at the wall for half an hour. Well, not exactly but that's what it sounded like.
Later on when calm was restored we sat on the balcony, propped our feet on the window ledge and watched the sea sparkle and shift between our toes. As the papers are full of tips on how to beat the credit crunch and mother has survived a few economic nose-dives in her time I asked for her thoughts on the subject. This cheered her up no end - "Die" she roared, "that's a sure way to beat the crunch."
If death seems a bit radical may I suggest another tactic to make you feel less crunched? Learn some poetry, track down and memorise your favourite poems and recite them as you search for a pair of socks or run for a train. This recommendation is also courtesy of mother because as we watched the waves she reeled off James Elroy Flecker's The Old Ships, 'I have seen old ships like swans asleep, Beyond the village which men call Tyre'
I realised my mother has endless vistas of poetry stored in her head, a personal, mobile library she can call on any time without benefit of batteries or mains electricity. In comparison my head seems very bare and boring, stocked only with a limited selection of cliches. So I've decided stock up on poetry then if the lights do go out in this credit crunch winter I can light a couple of candles and declaim until dawn.
Later on when calm was restored we sat on the balcony, propped our feet on the window ledge and watched the sea sparkle and shift between our toes. As the papers are full of tips on how to beat the credit crunch and mother has survived a few economic nose-dives in her time I asked for her thoughts on the subject. This cheered her up no end - "Die" she roared, "that's a sure way to beat the crunch."
If death seems a bit radical may I suggest another tactic to make you feel less crunched? Learn some poetry, track down and memorise your favourite poems and recite them as you search for a pair of socks or run for a train. This recommendation is also courtesy of mother because as we watched the waves she reeled off James Elroy Flecker's The Old Ships, 'I have seen old ships like swans asleep, Beyond the village which men call Tyre'
I realised my mother has endless vistas of poetry stored in her head, a personal, mobile library she can call on any time without benefit of batteries or mains electricity. In comparison my head seems very bare and boring, stocked only with a limited selection of cliches. So I've decided stock up on poetry then if the lights do go out in this credit crunch winter I can light a couple of candles and declaim until dawn.
Saturday 25 October 2008
Memories of Hydrangea bushes .......
Sometimes I stand a vase of hydrangeas on the sideboard, next to a photo of my mother and aunt sitting on a motorbike .........
Uma on Memory
I've spent a bit of time recently lying on the sofa, contemplating my old sideboard of surprises and thinking about the nature of memory.
How does your memory work or fail? It's worth chewing over this question a little because memory is one of life's free indulgences with no interest to be paid on outstanding items and no obligation to follow up a sample by taking on a full set which you just know will prove to be overpowering.
Being a visual person who has spent time in the rag trade, my memories tend to start with shapes and patterns and textures. Here I am standing in my aunt's garden by the hydrangea bushes. The large, papery flower blooms are just brushing the top of my head and the bushes are massed together by the low garden wall like camouflage, a chintzy defence against the outside world.
Now, next to these pretty, puffball patterns made by the flowers and the little girl's curly hair I see another shape, a different presence - my aunt, my Slightly Dodgy Unreliable aunt. The Unreliable One had a different shape from the other women in my little girl's life, she was sharper, glossier, more defined, very much not a pretty puffball. Her trousers were always skin-tight her nails lacquered to a mirror-sheen and she wore high, high shoes which gave a sway to her hips as she walked Unreliable smelt more perfumed than my mother yet somehow also dirtier, more reckless.
I loved to play with my aunt's shoes, arranging them in a circle so it looked as though a collection of glamorous women were sitting around a huge dining table, enjoying a delicious meal and discussing their latest adventures. The shoes covered all over in striped, rainbow coloured silk, right down to the ends of their narrow, tapering heels travelled regularly to India and danced across the marble floors of a Maharajah's palace. Sandals trimmed with bead tassels spent every winter in a hotel by the river Nile, watching sailing boats and crocodiles. My favourite pair of giant, stomping wedges with patent straps could have had a future as a support for my trusty sideboard if it ever lost its legs, had they survived being thrown at a boyfriend's head and on into the middle of the A1. That was particularly sad shoe death; the mourning only intensified when my mother pointed out that the loss was entirely due to Unreliable's 'rackety' behaviour.
What I like about these early memories of my aunt's house is that they bring together two worlds - the pretty, safe garden with its flowers like coloured clouds, a world I now realise my mother fought to make for me and guard against all threats and the unpredictable world of my aunt, full of vivid patterns and sudden, surprising events. Sometimes I stand a vase of hydrangeas on the sideboard, next to a photo of my mother and aunt sitting on a motorbike. Perhaps my aunt was thinking of a road trip whilst my mother planned the grocery run but it's one of those moments where the worlds they created came together, even if only in passing on the back of a Harley Davidson.
How does your memory work or fail? It's worth chewing over this question a little because memory is one of life's free indulgences with no interest to be paid on outstanding items and no obligation to follow up a sample by taking on a full set which you just know will prove to be overpowering.
Being a visual person who has spent time in the rag trade, my memories tend to start with shapes and patterns and textures. Here I am standing in my aunt's garden by the hydrangea bushes. The large, papery flower blooms are just brushing the top of my head and the bushes are massed together by the low garden wall like camouflage, a chintzy defence against the outside world.
Now, next to these pretty, puffball patterns made by the flowers and the little girl's curly hair I see another shape, a different presence - my aunt, my Slightly Dodgy Unreliable aunt. The Unreliable One had a different shape from the other women in my little girl's life, she was sharper, glossier, more defined, very much not a pretty puffball. Her trousers were always skin-tight her nails lacquered to a mirror-sheen and she wore high, high shoes which gave a sway to her hips as she walked Unreliable smelt more perfumed than my mother yet somehow also dirtier, more reckless.
I loved to play with my aunt's shoes, arranging them in a circle so it looked as though a collection of glamorous women were sitting around a huge dining table, enjoying a delicious meal and discussing their latest adventures. The shoes covered all over in striped, rainbow coloured silk, right down to the ends of their narrow, tapering heels travelled regularly to India and danced across the marble floors of a Maharajah's palace. Sandals trimmed with bead tassels spent every winter in a hotel by the river Nile, watching sailing boats and crocodiles. My favourite pair of giant, stomping wedges with patent straps could have had a future as a support for my trusty sideboard if it ever lost its legs, had they survived being thrown at a boyfriend's head and on into the middle of the A1. That was particularly sad shoe death; the mourning only intensified when my mother pointed out that the loss was entirely due to Unreliable's 'rackety' behaviour.
What I like about these early memories of my aunt's house is that they bring together two worlds - the pretty, safe garden with its flowers like coloured clouds, a world I now realise my mother fought to make for me and guard against all threats and the unpredictable world of my aunt, full of vivid patterns and sudden, surprising events. Sometimes I stand a vase of hydrangeas on the sideboard, next to a photo of my mother and aunt sitting on a motorbike. Perhaps my aunt was thinking of a road trip whilst my mother planned the grocery run but it's one of those moments where the worlds they created came together, even if only in passing on the back of a Harley Davidson.
Friday 24 October 2008
Losing - and Gaining - Time
Why do I like this clock so much? Why has it travelled with me from boarding house to penthouse and back again?
Well, the buttery yellow sheen of the brass makes the clock look like a rising sun. And I admire the delicate engraving of the word 'Wisbech', a small town in Cambridgeshire. Paris, New York, London, Wisbech...from Fifth Avenue to the Fens.
But, most importantly, the clock has lost its hands and therefore its ability to order our lives. All that moves on its face are shadows and memories. I like to think of its hands, destroyed in a fire, spinning round in a plume of smoke and ash. Now they're specks on the face of planets that live for a trillion years, not teatime. And I'm free from the methodical tick of measured minutes - a perfect excuse to put the kettle on and dream of sunrises.
Well, the buttery yellow sheen of the brass makes the clock look like a rising sun. And I admire the delicate engraving of the word 'Wisbech', a small town in Cambridgeshire. Paris, New York, London, Wisbech...from Fifth Avenue to the Fens.
But, most importantly, the clock has lost its hands and therefore its ability to order our lives. All that moves on its face are shadows and memories. I like to think of its hands, destroyed in a fire, spinning round in a plume of smoke and ash. Now they're specks on the face of planets that live for a trillion years, not teatime. And I'm free from the methodical tick of measured minutes - a perfect excuse to put the kettle on and dream of sunrises.
Thursday 23 October 2008
Uma's Essentials - A Sofa and a Sideboard
Everyone needs a few essentials in their life, a few landmarks in their personal geography and Uma's happen to be a sofa and a sideboard. Here's why :
"My sofa and sideboard have accompanied me over the years from city to city, attic to basement, veranda to lock-up storage unit. In these days of paint samples, fabric swatches and home improvement catalogues that weigh more than my back pack did when I went off for a month in Mongolia it can be quite liberating to pare the whole creation project down to a couple of basic possessions.
My 'sofa and sideboard' philosophy is based on the principle that, like most people, I have a lot of 'bits in between' in my life, that is all the untidy, recalcitrant stuff that can reside in a sideboard and then uncoil in your memory when you lie down for a bijou napette on the sofa.
I don't know what's in your sideboard collection but I'm willing to bet that, like mine, it looks like a jumble sale but feels like a treasure chest. Spread out on a table, accessories to a giant memory game, all these bits and pieces are a map of birth and death, triumph and failure, delight and disillusion. In short, all the stuff that's happened to make you, you and only you.
Over the years I've encountered many sideboard residents and their stories. Alongside the repeat offenders - love letters, divorce papers and children's paintings - I've counted bullets dug our of a house's walls and doors by a family returning after a war and tried to do the Charleston partnered by a 1920s chain mail evening bag which attended flapper balls in Paris and danced along the Seine's banks.
After a day doing battle I like to give my trusty sideboard a wink and a tap in passing and remember all the secrets we share, before collapsing on the sofa."
"My sofa and sideboard have accompanied me over the years from city to city, attic to basement, veranda to lock-up storage unit. In these days of paint samples, fabric swatches and home improvement catalogues that weigh more than my back pack did when I went off for a month in Mongolia it can be quite liberating to pare the whole creation project down to a couple of basic possessions.
My 'sofa and sideboard' philosophy is based on the principle that, like most people, I have a lot of 'bits in between' in my life, that is all the untidy, recalcitrant stuff that can reside in a sideboard and then uncoil in your memory when you lie down for a bijou napette on the sofa.
I don't know what's in your sideboard collection but I'm willing to bet that, like mine, it looks like a jumble sale but feels like a treasure chest. Spread out on a table, accessories to a giant memory game, all these bits and pieces are a map of birth and death, triumph and failure, delight and disillusion. In short, all the stuff that's happened to make you, you and only you.
Over the years I've encountered many sideboard residents and their stories. Alongside the repeat offenders - love letters, divorce papers and children's paintings - I've counted bullets dug our of a house's walls and doors by a family returning after a war and tried to do the Charleston partnered by a 1920s chain mail evening bag which attended flapper balls in Paris and danced along the Seine's banks.
After a day doing battle I like to give my trusty sideboard a wink and a tap in passing and remember all the secrets we share, before collapsing on the sofa."
Wednesday 22 October 2008
Ms Uma Tussle, Compere and Confidante, Magician of Life and Art
Do you wish you knew a Mr Lun? Some time ago, when men still believed they could speak to angels, Mr Lun was 'Conjuror-General of the Universe' and had a 'Great House' in Covent Garden. He could sort out feasts and floods, children's parties and impossible relatives, whilst arranging for you to have a glow that was born of joy, not rage.
Now, let us introduce Ms Uma Tussle, Mr Lun's most successful descendant, a true twenty first century woman. Uma is a master of mystery and surprise, able to advise and inspire, whether you're organising a banquet or picnic, travelling to the South Seas or re-tiling the bathroom. She's a self-made woman who understands that life is a work in progress and the unexpected is pretty much guaranteed to happen. Never one to let an opportunity to pass by Uma's motto is 'Hell yes' but she knows exactly when to say no too.
Now, let us introduce Ms Uma Tussle, Mr Lun's most successful descendant, a true twenty first century woman. Uma is a master of mystery and surprise, able to advise and inspire, whether you're organising a banquet or picnic, travelling to the South Seas or re-tiling the bathroom. She's a self-made woman who understands that life is a work in progress and the unexpected is pretty much guaranteed to happen. Never one to let an opportunity to pass by Uma's motto is 'Hell yes' but she knows exactly when to say no too.
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