Oh Comely magazine issue 9 by oh comely magazine

oh comely

keep your curiosity sacred editors liz bennett, des tan

deputy editor rosanna durham fashion agatha a nitecka music dani lurie illustration laura callaghan film jason ward features frances ambler editorial charlotte humphery, olivia wilson words theo brainin, johanna derry, jessica garner, lisa jarmin, rhona lawson, ellie philips, helen true, elly watson pictures pip atra, steven beckly, clare byrne, grace coombes, fiona essex, rosie gainsborough, eric guillemain, joachim johnson, anna emilia laitinen, marco leão, agnes lloyd-platt, desiree mcclellan, kevin morosky, mark peckmezian, egor rogalev, laurie rollitt, dara scully, ross trevail, tetsushi tsuruki, joe waldron advertising hannah jackson, hannah.jackson@royalacademy.org.uk steph pomphrey, steph@ohcomely.co.uk feedback and lost property, info@ohcomely.co.uk submissions, words@ohcomely.co.uk or pictures@ohcomely.co.uk oh comely, issue nine, mar/apr 2012. Published by Adeline Media Ltd six times a year. Third Floor, 116 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6RD. 020 7831 8645. Printed in the UK by Buxton Press, www.buxtonpress.com. Cover portrait, Kate Kukushkina, ONE Management, by Eric Guillemain. The instructions on the back cover were for Elly Watson’s brownie badge. www.ohcomely.co.uk Contents © 2012 Adeline Media Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission from the publishers, although conscientious and beleaguered fair users can relax and have a cup of tea. The views expressed in oh comely are not necessarily those of the contributors, editors or publishers, or the authors’ mothers. ISSN 2043-9857.

Tetsushi Tsuruki took this photograph of a friend, who wanted a picture of the dress that she made and her favorite place, overlooking the river in Asakusa, Tokyo.

22 44 68

100 88 122

contents i t ’s n i c e t o s e e y o u h e r e

art

22 travels with a pencil lost in the lines of paper-cut voyages and illustrated landscapes

40 my engagement was a joke that got out of hand now I’m worried that I can’t stop it

28 cassettes wrapped in comics the musician jeffrey lewis used to sell his art in parking lots

42 the raccoon in the bathroom portraits of creatures with lives of their own

32 the lady with the butterfly wings laura veirs is playing folk songs for children with bubbles and funny outfits

fashion

people

and

44 the beast and me four writers and their stories of animals 52 the discipline of a good actor ewen bremner on being the second man

34 someone once told me how to stop the wind blowing you away, and other bits of illustrated advice

54 the perennial gardener a green-fingered artist explains why vegetation is magical

58 the strange ways of leather turning little hairs with soft leather bags

68 a room of her own

60 white light in the morning soft shapes, warm knits

photographs of five models in their own homes and conversations about what home means to them

80 twenty years late for guide camp brownie badges are the most satisfying kind of fun

98 views on a life a documentary film about the woman whose body lay undiscovered for three years

86 food for thought we asked people in north wales what they were afraid of

100 tell your troubles to the bees tasting honey and mead made from hives in the centre of london

88 a portrait of a country photographs of ukraine the week before christmas

106 why dancing makes me sad the deepest regrets aren’t always the big things

96 note to lovers baby talk is not the answer

108 something curious in praise of ugly possessions and why you shouldn’t be afraid to love them

110 we’ll change the world stitch by stitch sarah corbett was an exhausted activist who turned to craft for solutions

122 help, I feel so hungover I’ll try the egg yolk but not the tomato juice: testing hangover cures the hard way

112 three activist crafts cross-stitch graffiti, speech bubble badges and bunting with a message

127 the face blindness test can you recognise the people from this issue?

116 guinness is good for you especially when it’s baked in a chocolate cake

128 the best films you’ve never heard of this quiz will tell you which unlikely classic you’re missing out on

between you and me goodbye, professor apocalypse Last issue, our music editor, Dani, wrote about how she and her hamster were drifting apart. He was getting old, and keeping to himself more and more. Before oh comely began, we used to meet in Dani’s ramshackle shared house in East London. We perched on the edge of her broken-down sofa, ate leftover cream cakes and talked about starting a magazine. That’s where we met Professor Apocalypse, with his small furry body and ridiculous name. He peered at us through many meetings and clambered over our hands when we needed a break from writing headlines. He was soon the magazine’s unofficial pet. We would ask after him in the office, and wonder how he was doing. Two years are a long time for a hamster, though, and the Professor passed away at the start of February. We’ll miss him. They’re complicated and revealing, our relationships with animals. This issue, we asked writers to tell their stories. There’s a pet owner whose reluctance to flush her dead goldfish brought on years of indecision. A biology student reflects on the summer she spent in a laboratory experimenting on baby mice. A lonely teenager remembers the months when his best friend was a dog. These relationships can be precious, destructive or fraught, but they are always a mirror of who we are.

Make Something Beautiful Patchwork Pictures Floral Prints Fabric Collage Ballgown Illustration Corset Craft

Image ÂŠ Erin Petson, www.erinpetson.com

Find out more at www.vam.ac.uk/workshops

special deliveries nothing beats a nice letter

Tristen asked us to write back but we couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t find a return address. Sorry, Tristen.

what we listened to the songs that made the issue illustrations grace coombes

what we ate the whoopie pies in maine look like burgers made of cake

subscribe to oh comely and get a bag by pyrus for a tenner subscribe online at www.ohcomely.co.uk/pyrus We’re really excited about these bags, and so are our mums, who think they ’re getting one for free. A subscription to oh comely is £22 for a year, and you’ll get six issues. If you order a bag at the same time, it’s only £30

for the lot, including postage. You can subscribe online, or post a cheque to the address on the back cover, payable to Adeline Media. Make sure you include an email address so we can drop you a line confirming the order.

some people who helped make this issue it’s nice to see them smiling this time johanna derry is a writer and magazine editor

pip atra is a portrait and documentary photographer

She talked about the magic of gardens with social artist Thomas Pausz, page 54.

He photographed people in north Wales on page 86 and asked them what they were afraid of.

Tell us about yourself and your work. I edit two magazines for cancer charities and write about travel, design, architecture and technology. I like cheese, coffee and sausages, a good discussion, a bit of mystery, prayer, nice dates with nice men and laughing at silly things. I’m easily entertained. What was the last foreign country you travelled to? I was in New Zealand for Christmas. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve visited. I don’t think I saw anything ugly. You once interviewed Wayne Rooney. How was that? Daunting. He was very well media-trained, but I surprised him by asking who he gave his first autograph to. It was his old science teacher, and it felt like I got a glimpse of the real Wayne—a normal, nice bloke living with intense scrutiny.

Tell us a little about yourself and your work. I take photographs to remind myself. Where do you call home? Chiang Mai, Bangkok and London. What makes you feel at home when you’re away? The food that I cook. Tell us your favourite pastime. Watching old people. I am attracted to the way they move. I’m interested in deterioration and imperfection and they represent that for me in human form. What’s your best hangover cure? Katsudon with extra curry sauce from Misato on Wardour Street, London. It’s like a Japanese pork schnitzel served with egg on top.

Tell us a bad joke. What’s the difference between tango and pea soup? You can tango, but you can’t pee soup.

What are you afraid of? I’m afraid of nineto-fives. We’re born to work so I think they are inevitable.

More of Johanna’s writing is on her blog, meandthegirlfromclapham.wordpress.com.

For Pip’s photography and a collection of his mixtapes, visit www.piptelevised.com.

charlotte humphery is a writer, blogger and foodie

fiona essex is a documentary photographer

She talked to a craft activist about the power of cross-stitch, page 110, and made Guinness chocolate cake, page 116.

She took portraits of musician Laura Veirs, page 32, and beekeeper Camilla Goddard among her hives on page 100.

Tell us a little about yourself. I write, I bake, I make tea all across the capital. Given the opportunity, I would be wrapped in a duvet reading books, magazines and blogs.

Tell us about yourself and your work. I grew up in Switzerland and used to work there as a screen printer. I moved away when I was 23 to live by the sea in England near my lovely grandmother. I use cameras to tell stories and discover the unexpected in people and surroundings.

What are you afraid of? Needles and blades, mostly. I can’t watch horror films and need a handy blanket to hide behind for medical dramas. Even if the blood is clearly ketchup it makes me feel faint. Do you have any possessions you love that are really ugly? I have a soft spot for kitsch Catholic iconography. I love Jesus statues covered in fairy lights and glitter, and Marys made of seashells that glow in the dark. I don’t actually think they’re ugly, though, I think they’re joyful and bonkers. Describe your perfect breakfast. Half a toasted sesame seed bagel with lots of butter and peanut butter. Every morning I’m surprised by how good it is. More of Charlotte’s writing is on her blog, chucksmiscellany.blogspot.com.

Tell us about Sisters, your series of photos from a nunnery in Zurich. The daughter of one of my neighbours joined a sisterhood in Zurich and I was always fascinated by that. I used to see her in her habit and her presence made me imagine her life, and wonder how differently to us she lived. It was a choice of going to that sisterhood and sharing time with the sisters to find out what their everyday lives entailed and who they were as individuals, their hopes and dreams and sources of strength. What are you afraid of? I’m afraid of overconsumption and of wasting time. Visit fionasphoto.co.uk to see more of Fiona’s photographs.

pretty lovely these things are canny and cute would you like to win any clever creations? send a note to us on free@ohcomely.co.uk by the end of march

Do your flowers dream about being the first daisies in space? This vase is for them. Illustrator Sarah Lippett is fascinated by the history of space exploration, and she collaborated with ceramicist Emma Gaston to make this Mercury Seven capsule vase. It’s in memory of the Mercury Seven, a famous group of Nasa astronauts formed in 1959. Sarah and Emma also made some mugs together with enigmatic, thoughtful faces on them, and we have one to give away. Let’s drink to excellent creative collaborations! See more of Sarah’s work at crayonlegs.com, which has one of the best site intros we’ve seen. We love pinning things on our collars and this one is cuter than most. Air your laundry in public with perfect decorum with this double brooch from Ruta Kiskyte at Hairy Socks. Ruta’s jewellery label celebrates everyday ephemera, and mixes a joyful unpredictability into the designs. We have one of her Pearl Person brooches to give away. Pearl Persons are made from freshwater pearls, and have little metal legs. To win, email free@ohcomely.co.uk with the tale of a surreal encounter. For more, see www.hairysock.com. Factorypress make screen-printed children’s books so fine and delicately-made that they double as art books for grown-ups. The printing house began when Elizabeth Loveless became frustrated by the restrictions of children’s book publishing. In an act of rebellion, she self-published the Bee That Sneezed, a gentle tale with the odd smoking and gambling bee slipped in, just because she could. Her books are still aimed squarely at children, but anyone with an eye for a beautifullyprinted drawing of a vintage car can enjoy her artwork. To plan a visit to her east London boutique, which is housed in an old ice-cream factory, see www.factorypress.co.uk.

Inspired by a love of animals and a fascination with taxidermy, Laura Cronin from Bumble and Earwig specialises in felting pygmy animals and turning them into adorable brooches. Each piece is a labour of love, made with the intricate process of needle felting. Much to our delight, Laura has given us an irresistibly strokable Yorkshire terrier brooch for you to look after. For your chance to pamper your own pygmy pooch brooch write in to free@ohcomely.co.uk. No felt pygmy animals were harmed in the process of creation. You can even commission a pet portrait on her website, www.bumbleandearwig.com. It’s a rabbit! No, a butterfly! Turn off the lights, grab a torch and play with these whimsical shadow-puppet necklaces by Inca Starzinsky. We love her mysterious menageries of shadowy deer, dinosaurs, rabbits, geese and frogs. They are laser-cut from black acrylic and come packaged in a bespoke box featuring an illustration of the hand shapes used to make the shadow. You can explore more of Inca’s pursuits on www.incastarzinsky.com. We also love her silk scarves with postage-stamp print on them. We have a ring and a pendant to give away to two lucky readers, which you can win by emailing in to free@ohcomely.co.uk with your choice of animal. Is it a t-shirt? Is it a magazine? Is it a piece of graphic art? Actually it’s all of the above. Subscribe to T-Post and they will send you a t-shirt printed with an original design on the front and a mini magazine on the inside every month. Your wardrobe will be stocked with new clothes and your head will be stocked with new ideas. We have one year’s subscription to give away. To win one email us at free@ohcomely.co.uk, telling us the best thing you’ve seen on a t-shirt. Alternatively, subscribe online from www.tpostmag.com.

the joy of ex The Joy of Ex Foundation is on a mission: “We’re here to ensure that anyone going through a break-up doesn’t end up snorkelling in vodka, or cake mix.” It is a noble goal (even if we think that cake snorkelling sounds like quite good fun). Sally Beerworth started the foundation in May 2011 after going through a difficult divorce and since then her hilarious tote bags, tea towels and posters have been consoling many. We are thrilled to have five of each to give away. Drop us a line at free@ohcomely.co.uk with your best cure for a broken heart to be in with a chance of winning. Find out more about the Joy of Ex at www.joyofex.org. Tell us about your work at the Joy of Ex Foundation. We spread joy. When in doubt, we refer back to this. It’s about trying to help people going through a break-up. I had the idea when I was going through my divorce, and later when I was editing my novel about a woman going through one. I wasn’t satisfied with the way the novel ended: my character needed to do more than run off into the sunset. I started to suspect that comic relief might be something I was qualified for. It was, after all, the only way I had survived. How do you start mending a broken heart? I’m pretty sure that most people, like me, try everything and anything. Where do you find your spirited mottos? Our sayings are all real, and maybe that’s why people like them. “My book club only reads wine labels” was scribbled on a table napkin from one night at my book club. I obviously wasn’t hosting, as I don’t have napkins. You’re originally from Australia. Do you miss it? I wear a swimming costume to work, which helps the homesickness, but I wish we had room for a pool.

present and correct Present and Correct, founded by Neal Whittington, summons up all the joy of a clean, new notebook, multiplies it by good, geometric design and wraps it up with a fine bow. To win some of their well-made paper goodies, write us a letter in your best handwriting. See more at presentandcorrect.com. What inspires you about stationery? There is a positive feeling about a clean piece of paper or new notebook. A desk tidy might organise your mind as well as your work surface. It’s also pure reminiscence, to days when we had gold stars on our homework or collected stamps just because they looked nice. Did you have any special notebooks or pens as a child? I always think of the first day of school term. I would be sad if I made a mistake on the first page of a notebook. I had neat rubbers, which weren’t for using, just looking at. I also tried to make a new rubber once, out of the old rubbings. I put them in a case and sat it on the radiator for ages, but nothing happened. Describe your ideal working space. It would be big and bright, perhaps in a great modernist block, a converted factory or a solid 1950s cabin. There would be lots of raw plywood shelves, a bit of brass somewhere—the lamp shades, maybe. And a hatch where I can serve people if they wanted to pop by for a rubber. Do other countries have a stronger tradition of stationery that the UK? Japan and Korea have a massive, varied stationery culture—I’m not sure it can be beaten. Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria made the loveliest pencils, Portugal too. I like old French educational things and they seem to treasure rubber stamps. I think the UK has a good tradition, but I’m not sure if the items are treasured so much.

Hiroshima Mon Amour was inspired by the film of the same name. Stevens completed the illustration as part of Postcards to Alphaville, a project that portrays characters from film in illustration.

travels with a pencil liam stevens gets lost in the lines interview laura callaghan Liam Stevens loves simple materials that he can make expressive lines with: his pencil, a scalpel, and coloured paper. The things he makes with them are remarkably varied. He creates detailed, sweeping landscapes and three-dimensional worlds in media as distinct as graphite and cut paper. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lured by the possibilities of animation, resulting in an accomplished and superb music video for My Robot Friend that was painstakingly created entirely from pencil and cut paper. What are your tools of the trade? Do you have any rituals when approaching a project? I always start with my 0.7mm Pentel mechanical pencil. I like to keep things from looking too slick, and try to retain a craft aesthetic. I like to initially work as much as possible away from the computer so my mood is visible. It is very important to me, as my marks often document how I am feeling. My work could be considered crude by some, but for me it carries an honesty in my mood, reflecting the time of creating it. A habit that has probably helped the slow degeneration of my eyes is my tendency to often draw with my head almost touching the paper, drawing each little section at a time and escaping into the work as I render each line. Drawing like this allows me to shut out the world around me and take a break. Tell us a bit about how you became involved in illustration. I was torn between a degree in graphic design or illustration. My heart was in favour of developing my drawing and giving a tangible home to my daydreaming, so I opted for illustration. It was a great course and encouraged experimentation. It helped to develop the freedom I have in my method of working: itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not all intense lines and graphite. I used to refrain from putting my paper-cut Above is Liam Stevensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; self-portrait.

A scene from Stevensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; music video for Waiting, a song of yearning love by My Robot Friend. Stevensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; video is an intricate paper-cut animation inspired by Japanese scenes.

or more graphic work in the mix, as I was concerned that it might feel too diverse. But after a while I found that to be very limiting. Embracing my forays into drawing, paper-cut, type, animation, logo design, even furniture design, enables me to keep my practice varied and my mind inspired and engaged. Much of your work depicts sweeping landscapes. Where does this fascination with place stem from? Do you draw from life for these drawings or is much of it instinctive? Some of it is memory, others are my reaction to a place or photograph that has made me want to create the area around the picture that the picture doesn’t display, or create an observation of its characteristics. Some are just straight doodles taking elements of all the above, mixing in a little randomness and channelling it onto paper. My jaunts in the country and my travels to Japan feature more strongly in my work when I work from memory. There are so many places that I would like to draw on location. I am very inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs of Yosemite that feature in my work (Grizzly Falls and No 35, 1872) and I would love to visit the area. Where do you go to for inspiration? I find the rhythm of music influences my mark-making. Sometimes I play a nature documentary on mute while I work with some kind of zone-out music like Tim Hecker, Steve Reich or Oneohtrix Point Never, music that for me creates visions of landscapes or narratives, that feels visual. Trawling on Ffffound has influenced my work more than other blogs, just for the random variety of things you find in there. It’s a bit like a junk shop. The gems are rare, but it’s satisfying to find them. I love the music video you created with Chris Tozer for My Robot Friend. It seems a very natural transition from your paper-cut relief work. How did you find working on moving as opposed to still image? Strangely, I actually made that video before I turned to creating 3D illustrations. Moving image is something that has always taken me, and it’s something that I will be pushing more and more. I ignored its lure for a while, as it takes so long to achieve something, but I can’t resist it. The possibilities are endless and it warrants some hefty investigation.

Journey Inland (above) and Home, from the series Set Sail for New Shores.

cassettes wrapped in comics jeffrey lewis spent his teenage years selling his art in parking lots words helen true, portrait kevin morosky

Jeffrey Lewis never meant to be a musician. He spent his teens selling hand-drawn comic books on the streets of New York and dreaming of a career as an artist. The best way to get people to buy his comics, he discovered, was to wrap them around music. Lewis began to record cassettes of songs he’d performed at open mic nights, using his comics as cover art. “I was aiming to just be a comic book artist when I got out of school,” he says. “In the meantime I was making up songs, and the music developed in a very unexpected way.” Lewis made his first money from comic books in the parking lots outside Grateful Dead concerts. Aged sixteen, he would sell comics he’d drawn to illustrate the band’s lyrics. It was a good place for it. “The parking lot outside their shows was always a big kind of flea market in combination with the concert. I’ve never been to Glastonbury, but I imagine a similar hippy festival atmosphere: people swapping beads for fruit and artwork.” He would also approach strangers in Washington Square Park. “I would just walk up to them and say, ‘Do you want to buy a comic book?’ I’d do that for a couple of hours until I had ten, twenty, thirty bucks, then I would go buy a sandwich and spend the rest on records. That was usually my record-buying money for the week.” Lewis grew up in New York in the seventies and eighties. His family was artistic—“just in the general ‘weird’ sense”—and he and his brother were subject to a peculiar pressure from his parents. “It wasn’t said in so many words, but rather than pressure to get a real job there was certainly more pressure in the opposite direction, that there was something wrong with you if you got a real job, that jobs were just a way to get ripped off. There was encouragement to find something else to do.” His childhood home was full of comics and he can’t remember a time

when reading and drawing weren’t part of his life. He found it hard to imagine a career that wasn’t based around drawing and writing. It wasn’t until he was 22 that he began to tape his songs. The idea of his music as nothing more than bait for comic books now seems a little ridiculous. Lewis is a highly-regarded anti-folk singer with a cult following. He is an exceptional songwriter, shuttling between modern folk melodies, psychedelia and punk with ease and self-assurance. At their best, his lyrics have the simple power to conjure a precise feeling. He spans subjects as disparate as human evolution, bad acid trips, anxiety attacks and thoroughly broken hearts. Lewis also incorporates ‘low-budget videos’ into his performances. Ask him to separate his two loves, and you’re doomed to failure. In fact, comics and music are so intertwined that he’s often not sure which form an idea will take. Each medium’s strengths leads him in different directions. He explains, “With comics, you can tell a more patient story. Because music is tied in to live performance, it needs to be suited to the immediacy of that, whereas with comics I feel comfortable doing a story that takes three pages to draw you in. I don’t think I’d do a song where you’d wait three minutes to get to the good lyrics.” Every line of a song is more significant than every line of a comic: “I suppose it’s the same as the difference between writing a novel and writing poetry. Poetry is so much more compact, and with a novel you have a bit more room to get a bit more sprawling.” The two forms meet in his ‘low-budget videos’. These aren’t videos at all, but large-scale comic books narrated to music, which he flips through, telling stories from history and politics. They are surreal to watch as part of a gig: Lewis holds up a large sketchbook and halflectures, half-sings the viewer through the history of Communism, for

example, or Barack Obama’s biography, while the audience crane their necks to see. They’re bizarre, well-illustrated and highly educational. His ‘videos’ have a diverse curiosity to them, alighting on different topics like a magpie, something Lewis attributes to the internet. “The development of me being able to branch off into different histories, and then into different aspects of those histories—like doing the Cuban Missile Crisis in addition to just doing the history of Communism in Russia—is very similar to the way Wikipedia has developed, where you can link onto something, and open a little door inside that door. It’s possible that I might not have branched out in that way if Wikipedia hadn’t developed right alongside. There’s so much information that’s findable, that leads you down these weird labyrinths.” Lewis plans to release an album of his illustrated songs at some point, but their peculiar nature means that they will need to take a multime-

dia form in order to span both modes of expression, as they do in live performance. “I can’t quite figure out whether it should come with a book, or whether it should just be a DVD. It’ll probably be released just in time for it to be technologically irrelevant. Nowadays every record that you put out you think, ‘Are there still going to be CDs for the next time?’ You’re better off doing things faster than slower. The whole music industry might not exist next year.” One thing has stayed the same. Lewis’s songs still come wrapped in his art. He has released twenty albums and EPs, all with his own work on the cover. “I can’t imagine farming it out. It seems so weird that there are bands where the record label comes back to them and says, ‘We hired a designer and a photographer and here’s your album cover.’ The art was the primary thing for me. From the beginning it was a good way of tricking people into seeing my comics. They’re going to buy this tape, and find that it folds out and tells a story.”

the lady with the butterfly wings laura veirs has made an album of folk music for children words jason ward, portrait fiona essex

Laura Veirs has butterfly wings and a guitar in her hands. Half-way through a song, she’s interrupted by an excited child, killing the sound with a careless knock of the amp. “Watch out,” she warns gently as a technician fixes the situation, “our equipment is made of lava.”

producer, Tucker Martine. “We were so tired,” she says. “It was really exhausting. I wanted to do something creative that didn’t involve writing songs. I knew I didn’t have enough in my well to create a great album of new material.”

At her gig in the crowded basement of the Museum of Childhood, parents politely jostle to catch a glimpse of her, forgetting themselves and singing along madly. Their children are more concerned with the mass of bubbles unfurling above their heads, giddily raising their sticky hands trying to catch one. From the youngest baby to the oldest grandparent, everyone is happy, and everyone is wearing the most excellent jumpers. It is like heaven.

Instead, the pair combed through the history of folk music to find the right songs. “It was like a history project. We found some old folk songs that we hadn’t heard before.” Wary of the cloying nature of most children’s songs, they had strict criteria for what they wanted to include. “There’s a fine line. You can easily make something that’s dumbed down. We wanted something that would have heart, and hold the attention of the parents, and also be historical. We were going for things that were up-tempo and melodic and also lyrically appropriate enough for kids.”

Laura Veirs is eight albums into a prolific career that began when she abandoned a life as a Mandarin-speaking geologist in favour of forming a punk band, which she then forsook for the literary, wistful folk for which she is now known. Her songs have a tendency to cuckoo their way into the listener’s brain: beautiful with hints of darkness. Unashamedly adult, her music is marked by its ornate lyricism. But even considering the left turns made earlier in her career, it is still a small surprise that one of the brightest, most grown-up of modern songwriters has released an album of folk songs for children, Tumble Bee. The idea came from the birth of her own child, Tennessee, and from the many sleepless nights that she shared with her husband and long-time

Considering the love children have for repetition, Laura wanted to make an album that had enough depth to stand up to endless replaying. Some songs have more meaning than is immediately apparent. “We did one song called All the Pretty Little Horses and it’s a lullaby. From my research I saw that it was written by a slave woman who was singing it to her master’s children because she couldn’t take care of her own. It’s such a heartbreaking story and when you hear the lyrics and the melody in that context it puts it in a completely different light. But a child doesn’t know any better. They’re just hearing a song about horses with a beautiful melody that’s soothing.

“There are a few songs that aren’t quite meant for children, but those are the ones with the darker lyrics. We were freaked out, wondering if I could really sing about lambs being dead in the field with bees and butterflies pecking out their eyes. But that’s one of our oldest folk songs. These songs teach about life and death through the medium of art. I think that’s important, to not let everything be completely watered down.”

“He asks me to improvise songs all the time. He’ll shout out names of people he loves and I have to make up a song on the spot.” Living in the achingly creative northwestern city of Portland, Oregon, Laura’s a friend and neighbour with everyone from the Decemberists to Jim James of My Morning Jacket, and gets to collaborate frequently. “It’s really nice to be able to call someone up and say, ‘Come around and record something, and let’s get tacos afterward!’”

Like all of Laura’s music, Tumble Bee was written and recorded in the converted garage at the back of her house. “It’s kind of like a little cabin,” she says. “It’s very secluded. I don’t have the internet back there and it’s a saving grace to not be checking facebook all the time.” If anything, she’s found the experience of motherhood useful to her productivity. “My window for song writing is half as long, but I feel like it has just made me more focused: this is my time to write, this is my time to be with my son, and I have to be as present and in the moment with both tasks as I can. It’s hard for me to quit sometimes. I’ll be writing and then I realise the babysitter is leaving in five minutes, and I have to switch out of that mode and go into the mothering mode. It’s a struggle to find enough time to do my art. But it’s my own choice. I’m choosing my hours and I want to spend time with him while he’s small.”

After an understandably long period without playing live, Laura is starting to tour again. Considering Tumble Bee has a primary audience for whom a standard gig would be far past their bedtime, this raises some issues. The solution she found was to do matinees for the children and regular gigs in the evenings. She says, “It’s a challenge to figure out how to pull it off in a way that’s fun for the kids and for us and for the parents too.”

While the reality must surely have its share of stresses, Laura’s life can’t help but sound idyllic, splitting her time between recording music and her toddling child, two halves of her life that occasionally overlap:

Hence the bubbles and butterfly wings: “Funny outfits are the key! Things to keep their attention visually. They really go crazy for the bubbles. It’s like crack for them. We have to turn it off after a while or they just obsess over it. We try to balance letting them have a release and some fun and also trying to get them to pick up something from the music.” Laura appreciates the unpredictability of it all, though, “There’s just more chaos, you know. My shows with adults are organised and seated, a little bit formal and not too loose.” She smiles to herself. “In a way it feels more like my old days at punk shows.”

someone once told me d o nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; t d r a w o n y o u r f a c e , and other good advice

My gran was a very slight woman and she told me that this is what she would do on windy days to stop her from being blown away. Being much bigger than my gran, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve not yet felt the need to take her advice.

illustration ben javens

This was my grandmotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s advice to my sister and I before we were even old enough to drink. When I take this advice I like to believe I exude the same elegance that my grandmother did.

illustration mary kate mcdevitt

This is something my mum used to say to me. Once, when I was quite small, I drew on my face with pens and got a rash all over my body. She continued to say it to me for years whenever I got out my drawing things, even though I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tempted to draw on my face any longer.

illustration anke weckmann

I tell myself this on an almost daily basis. A cup of tea wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t solve the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s problems, but it definitely helps the small day-to-day woes. Pass me the kettle.

illustration sarah abbott

Moving from house to house, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to make a room feel your own. As a hoarder of dresses, a friend once suggested I use these to decorate. Ever since, they have had pride position around every new bedroom, sometimes acting as temporary curtains.

illustration sarah julia clark

my engagement was a joke that got out of hand I’m worried I’ll have to go through with it words theo brainin, photo dara scully As I opened the local paper and saw my engagement announced in heavy bold lettering, I realised things had gone too far. There, in a rose-bordered box surrounded by the obituaries of the passably famous, were the words ‘Forever Bound’. I gulped. It wasn’t that I was experiencing pre-wedding jitters. In part, I was concerned because I had received the offending item on my birthday in an anonymous brown envelope. The main problem, however, was that as far as I knew I wasn’t about to get married. I was pretty sure I didn’t even have a girlfriend. The Ham & High had scooped me on the entire relationship. I called my friend Charlotte, who I suspected was responsible. She was allegedly my fiancée, so that was a clue. She was particularly pleased with herself when she picked up the phone. “Did you get it?” she trilled. “Yes, I can’t believe Sheila Allen died,” I quipped. “Ha. Very funny. Happy Birthday.” Yes, this was a birthday present, of sorts. A few years ago I started a joke with her, and now it was getting a bit out of hand. Charlotte is like the little sister I never had. We met through our families aged fourteen, young enough for our relationship to depend entirely on mutual irritation, but old enough to be awkwardly flirtatious. It was a bit like an episode of Hey Arnold!, but with both of us playing Helga. This occasionally verged on the inappropriate: in retrospect, the time I ended up in the kitchen wrapped in cling-film probably seemed a little fetishistic to adult company. Eventually we made peace, but I was less successful than her in dropping our acrimonious double-act, so the years proceeded with affectionate insults, diagnoses of psychological delinquency, prophesies of perennial spinsterhood and so on. This curious dynamic may explain why I decided three years ago to give her a self-help book and an autographed picture of myself for her birthday. It sounds odd, even cruel, but I knew she’d find it funny. When she’s truly amused, Charlotte has a tendency to dissolve into silent laughter for extended periods. She looks like she’s in the grip of a nervous attack. I always feel particularly satisfied if I can make her do this, and the best way seems to be to insult her whilst simultaneously making myself ridiculous. That day, immobilisation through inaudible cackling was achieved. But the joke didn’t stop: Charlotte adopted the identity of a crazed fan, and started sending me obsessive gifts. Not wanting to be outdone, I responded with more homemade merchandise featuring myself. An escalating cycle emerged. My collection of gifts from her now includes a mug with a photo of my name draped across an S&M-garbed woman’s bum—which, I often forget, makes me look pretty misogynistic at breakfast—a pillow with the tagline “I want your babies”, and a horrific CGI-rendition of our hypothetical child (it had my stubble). In addition to the photo, Charlotte has a Twelve-Months-of-Theo Calendar and a gold-framed oil painting of me riding Napoleon’s horse, shirtless. At her last birthday party, I sneaked into her room and replaced her bedding with a full me-themed set, including a duvet cover with an A0 self-portrait, and two cheekywinking-me pillow covers. This, I felt at the time, was a decisive move. Then she announced our engagement, which is problematic, because I may have to go through with it. Partly, it’s the publicity. To this day, if I google myself, it still shows up twice on the first page. Former schoolteachers have already congratulated me on facebook. More importantly, though, I don’t know how else to top it. I’m a victim of my own warped reality. I’d rather be Forever Bound than back down. The only option seems to be to organise the ceremony, and hope she’ll blink at the altar. If she doesn’t, well... I’m not sure how I’ll tell our kids that they’re the result of an extended practical joke. But then, on the bright side, the divorce will be a lot easier on them. Plus, I’m fairly sure I can make her snort at the alimony hearing.

the raccoon in the bathroom portraits of animals with lives of their own photos mark peckmezian words des tan Mark Peckmezian started to photograph animals right after graduating from art school. His portraits of dogs, raccoons and other creatures show them differently to how they’re usually photographed. He photographs people differently too. Sometimes you’re not sure whether he photographs animals as if they’re people or people as if they’re animals. See more of Mark’s work at markpeckmezian.com.

the beast and me I l e f t m y g o l d f i s h i n t h e f r e e z e r, and other stories of animals photos desiree mcclellan

words rosanna durham When I was at university, I shared a flat with my best friend from school. The first thing we bought together, after porridge and lentils, was a goldfish. He was bright orange; cost £2.50 from the local pet shop and we called him Azzedine. I’d never kept fish before and they surprised me. They didn’t bubble, their poo trailed behind in a long finger as they swum, and they had a better memory than the three seconds people supposed. We got into the habit of buying other goldfish. Myrtle was next and then Pig, so called because he was both beautiful and ugly with a captivating, inbred look. These effervescent and colorful little creatures were the currency of our friendship. But until Pig died, aged six months or so, I’d never considered what to do with a dead goldfish. We had discovered Pig dead, belly to the air and floating next to a large fly. It was a macabre encounter, particularly with the other two fish lingering at the bottom of the tank in stale water. My flat mate didn’t hesitate: she picked Pig up with paper towel and flushed him down the loo. A bright orange point in the city’s waste, he got buried in pee and bleach. Long after we’d stopped living together, Azzedine died. He floated in the middle of the tank, long tail touching the bottom. The first time I held him was when I picked him dead out of the water. He was so light and cold and wet: sensations that showed the obvious, that goldfish are pets you watch rather than touch. It seemed like a sad and hopeless thing, to flush him down the loo. I remembered staring down the porcelain toilet bowl at Myrtle when she’d died: a tiny, colourful friend put in the place of waste. Instead, I laid Azzedine out in a long matchbox and put him in the freezer. No one knew he was there until my brother asked about the plastic package at the back of the meat drawer. By then, he’d been on ice for over a year, and after that the truth soon trickled out. Friends, family and colleagues started finding out about the goldfish in the freezer. Frozen is an undecided state, neither rotten nor fresh, and undecided was just how I felt. I kept pretending to be trying to find the time for a burial, to be planning to dig up a patch of ground next weekend. But next weekend never came. Secretly, I hadn’t confronted the question, how to dispose of Azzedine? The freezer decided for me: it needed defrosting. The fish fingers were inaccessible and the broccoli florets were caged in by furry ice. Now with a dripping freezer and packets of wet warm peas to worry about, there seemed only one good place for Azzedine and that was back to the water. So I took him to the Thames, tied a stone around his matchbox and dropped it in. The parcel floated away and sunk into the river. Azzedine was defrosting two years late.

words ellie philips On rainy days he liked to sit on the bench in the bus shelter. He allowed us to sit next to him while we waited for the bus. When the bus came I expected him to board. But he didn’t because he was, after all, a cat. Someone told us that his name was George and he was famous for three things: fighting the neighbourhood dogs and winning, savaging small children and begging at café tables.

George was definitely Top Cat in the neighbourhood. The other strays gave him a very wide berth and he had a fan club of local tough guys who ruffled his ears when they thought no one was looking and called him ‘Killer’. On hot nights, George liked to sleep on the tops of the awnings over the butchers and the barbers. When the awnings rolled down at the start of the day so did George, landing crossly with a splat on the pavement. He was a terrible nuisance. He took up residence in the shops as if he owned them, wandering in and out as he pleased. But even though everyone complained about George, local legend had it that once, when somebody had tried to adopt him and taken him off the street, posters began to appear on Lauriston Road: “Where’s George? Bring him back!” So they did. We had only been living there for a week when George appeared in our house one warm afternoon. It had everything to do with the piece of steak we were frying. He walked straight into the kitchen and miaowed until we had no choice but to share our tea with him. He was our mate for life after that, appearing whenever we cooked and making sure we shared. After a while, he didn’t want to go back onto the street and into his various hidey-holes around Lauriston Road. He made it clear that he wanted to have a sleepover with us. So we let him. I have never liked cats. I am not a cat person. To begin with, I did not particularly like George. He was unpredictable. He was uncontrollable. He would attack any dog that came near him. I would watch small children trying to stroke him and then cringe when I heard the wails that went up when he inevitably bit them. But when he took up sentry duty outside our front door and made it clear that he had chosen us, I began to like him. I felt strangely flattered. He was a local celebrity after all and, in addition, there was something good about just having him around. Something reassuring about coming home from work, putting my key in the door and watching him appear, as if by magic, around my ankles. There was something relaxing about watching him sleep plumply on the couch. He was a picture of utter contentment,

and when he disappeared for days at a time to mysterious places where the menu had caught his attention, the house just wasn’t the same without him. “Can we keep him?” asked my son. “It’s not really up to me,” I explained, “it’s up to George. It’s whether he’ll keep us.” George was there because he chose to be and equally he was free to leave at any time. But eight months later and George has stuck. He even stuck when we relocated to another city 200 miles north, to a road with no shops or cafés or passing people to beg from or small children or dogs to savage. When I visited the old neighbourhood recently I worried that there might be posters or an angry mob demanding that we return George. But there wasn’t. Life had moved on and there was a new stray cat in residence at the bus stop. George would be furious, I thought.

words jason ward Unless there’s some food being provided, most other animals don’t give a damn about humans. Any perceived emotion is the reflection of our own feelings, or their undisguised self-interest. Your cat isn’t rubbing against you because it cares, it’s rubbing against you because that’s the button it’s learnt to push in order to get fed. Your cat wouldn’t even pull you out of a burning building; it would just appreciate the warmth, and think about dinner. Dogs are different. It’s easy to put this down to their lower intelligence, or to attribute it to centuries of careful breeding, but that doesn’t change the fact that dogs are loyal, that they ache when you’re not around. Their affection for you isn’t dependent on whether you’re about to feed them or not. Does that prove the truism that dogs are

man’s best friend? I’m not sure, but what I do know is that for a brief spell when I was seventeen, my best friend was a dog. I was spending the summer on a farm in the middle of Scottish nowhere. The farm was lonely, maybe even lonelier than the bedsit where I lived when I was sixteen. It was just me and my father, who was usually at work, and the nearest village was an endless, muddy walk away. The remoteness meant there was no phone reception, and in those days the internet was paid for by the minute. I was living in the start of a bildungsroman, but a little sadder: I didn’t meet a new group of friends, nor did I fall for a local girl. Any romance to be had was of a desperate sort, conducted over rationed internet minutes or on the one bit of the hill where I could make a call. I was marooned. The thing is, I didn’t mind one bit. How could I? It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, filled with the sort of landscapes that inspire great poetry. It only ever inspired bad poetry from me, but I understood the feeling. It filled the heart. I spent my days walking up rivers, and exploring aqueducts, and teaching the farmer’s children how to swim, and getting hopelessly lost in forests, and lying in tall grass atop hills watching stars that were brighter than I’d ever seen. It’s easy to romanticise your pre-adult life out of all proportion, but it was as wonderful at the time as it appears looking back. Perhaps it was even more wonderful, because I had just escaped from a year living in a bedsit in Carlisle. Every morning I awoke to a view from a jigsaw puzzle. It was heaven, that nowhere, and what enabled me to experience it was Sam, my dog, who was by my side throughout. There were times where I was unreachable, miles from any human at all, and yet I never felt alone. Solitude became an adventure. I wasn’t a lonely teenager, wandering hillsides; I was a young man, ambling with his dog. Sam had no concept of isolation, he just felt joy, jumping into rivers and dashing across fields. It would have been churlish not to follow his lead.

Of course, the summer ended, as summers are meant to, and things went back to normal. Humans returned to my life. I returned to my life. Sometimes it was as if the summer had never happened at all. Sam was still around, but our walks became shorter. After all, we finally had a proper internet connection. He died, my dog, shortly before I went away to university. It’s still the only time I’ve seen my father cry, and it was that groundswell that made me realise what I’d lost. I understood why he’d been so moved, as I had too: that’s just how you feel, when you lose a friend.

words rhona lawson In my final year of my undergraduate degree, I spent a summer sitting in the dark, snipping off the heads of baby mice with scissors. Such an unpromising beginning may lead you to suspect that this is not a delightful story about Albert the abandoned pet dog who taught me how to love again and gain meaningful motor skills with a frisbee. It’s also partially untrue. I never personally cut any heads off, as I did not have an animal handling licence. It was my supervisor who cut the heads off and took the eyes out. I received and processed the eyes to extract their precious RNA. In order to do this, we had to work in the dark, lit only by a dim red light (mice lack red-sensing cones, and any other light would have saturated their retinae), and surrounded by dry ice to keep everything cold cold cold. Sitting in the dark, swirling mice retinae around my petri dish, peering at billows of redly-lit smoke, I felt more than a little like Dr Frankenstein. If PETA saw me, they would probably not have known what to do with such a stereotypical animal experimenter. “Don’t talk about the mice,” my supervisor warned me, “not even in the lab building.”

“Then how...” I began. “Bananas,” she hissed, walking past me and looking suspiciously down the corridor, “We’re experimenting on bananas.” There were over 150 students on my course, and every one of us experimented on animals. Once, my job was the guinea-pig electric blanket controller. Yes, that is a mini electric blanket, guinea-pig sized (cute). Someone else was injecting dopamine into its femoral artery (less cute). Don’t worry, it felt nothing, and I can say this with confidence, because its spinal cord had been removed. This makes things even more uncomfortable, of course, because guinea pigs are worse than baby mice. Written down in a matter-of-fact manner, this is truly gruesome, something from a B-horror movie. This has probably upset you, even if you are not against animal experimentation—especially if you came onto this page hoping for pet stories, worse luck. The flippant description is kind of disrespectful. And, seriously, baby mice? Was it really necessary to use the word ‘snip’? And ‘scissors’? Firstly, some facts. Cutting heads off with a pair of scissors is the fastest and most pain-free way to kill a baby mouse. Other methods are less humane, even though they have the important advantage of making the experimenter feel better. It is hard to feel good while holding a wriggling mouse in one hand and a pair of blood-stained scissors in the other. It is not so hard if you put a mouse in a box and turn a little tap, but it is more unpleasant for the mouse. Secondly: why did I use the word ‘snip’?. I wanted to tell it like it is, because we so rarely do when we talk about animals and humans. I wanted to write a piece that was true, all of it, unpleasantly true. I could have said we ‘euthanised’ those mice. Even ‘decapitate’ is better than ‘snip’. Imagine an ambulance trolley rattles into the A&E of a busy hospital. A man is screaming in pain; his leg has a nasty compound fracture. Doctors are working to put a drip

in, take blood, order medications. A pause in the action, and the man sits up. “Before you give me this medication,” he says, “was it tested on animals?” This scenario is absurd, because at some level, we all acknowledge that humans are worth more than animals. It is a selfish perspective, but it is pretty uncontroversial. The question is, of course, how much more? Developing new medicines is perhaps forgiveable. On the other hand, cosmetics testing definitely isn’t. Note, however, that if a compound in hair dye is found to cause cancer, there will be a public outcry, because it is widely accepted that it is better for animals to get cancer than humans. “Someone should have found out,” people will wail. How they should have found out will be unclear. We hate cosmetic testing because it shows the worst in us. It places human pleasure over animal suffering, yet we ignore the billions of animals raised and slaughtered in conditions far worse than a cosmetics testing lab so we can eat a tasty cheap burger. We know human life is worth more than animal life. When it comes to leather shoes, most people think that even increased quality of human life is worth more than animal life. When it comes to fur coats, we’re not so sure. All bets are off when it comes to pets. We rarely acknowledge to ourselves the measure we place on our lives and theirs, even when it involves scissors, even when it involves snipping. We would prefer not to know. It was fifty baby mice, more or less. Is it what I did cowardly or brave, cruel or kind, or so inconsequential it’s barely worth classifying? Can we apply such labels to eating meat, to wearing fur, to owning pets, to zoos, to the myriad ways we exist with animals? When I think back to that summer in the dark, cutting the heads off baby mice, I cannot remember what I hoped for, exactly. Perhaps I hoped that one day my work will underpin the return of sight to the blind, neuro-regeneration for stroke patients, or simply expand our knowledge in ways currently unforeseeable. Perhaps it will turn out to be worthless. We don’t know yet. I bitterly regret that we reach our goal through suffering, but I don’t regret the medicines, or the clothes, or the transportation. Or at least, not much. Not enough. We all need to live with our eyes open.

the discipline of a good actor ewen bremner plays the second man with aplomb words rosanna durham, portrait ross trevail

Ewen Bremner was twenty-four when he got his big acting break. Cast as Spud in Trainspotting, he played the innocent guy stuck in a hard-edged circle of drug users. Although Spud was a secondary character, his goofy, frenetic energy stole the show. Bremner followed up with parts in Pearl Harbour and Black Hawk Down, and most recently Perfect Sense, an apocalyptic drama filmed in his native Scotland. We wondered what it takes to make an actor. Do you think an actor makes his own career? It seems to be dependent on so many factors, on luck and choice. It took me a long time to find my place. I didn’t really take acting seriously as a career until I’d been doing it professionally for about a decade or more. Why was that? I thought it was a really preposterous thing to try and have a career doing. It didn’t seem realistic to try and make that my career. There is no job security. Nobody owes you a job. Actually it was working out fine for me, but it didn’t seem realistic at the time. I’ve certainly been fortunate enough to find myself working in theatre and lots of film and television, and it’s all an education. It’s interesting to be engaged in a film and live with people and then break up. I used to find that difficult, because it is very disorienting. You thrive on the momentum of a project, and then it’s gone and you’re back to real life. Now I enjoy completing a production and then disengaging. When I was younger, I would take my work home a lot. It is quite a discipline not to. And also, working with people like Ewan McGregor, you’re working with them and then the next time you see them might be on screen. It is quite strange. I was thinking the other day, I almost feel like his ghost because I’ve worked with him a lot. But his life is his family and my life is mine. You have to keep a respectful distance from the people that you work with, as well as the characters. If you don’t do that, it can be quite hard. When I was younger, separating at the end was like leaving a relationship. You often find yourself playing parts that aren’t the main character. Could you talk a little bit more about that? It is simply that in most of

the productions I do I tend to play an interesting character in the story rather the guy the story is about. Would you prefer to be the guy the story is about? As an actor you have to be adaptable to everything. If I was asked to play a fourteenyear-old girl who was having her first period then that is what I would have to adapt to. Actually, I have played a fourteen-year-old girl having her first period. It was an eleven-year-old girl, actually, and I was fourteen at the time. I admire the way that you felt there’s no embarrassment about it! As a teenager to have to play something that subverts your identity is quite a big ask. But also that is something that opens the mind a bit. One thing about acting is that you have to look at the world through different eyes, from somebody else’s perspective. That’s not bad for your head. That is quite good for your head. I haven’t mentioned Trainspotting. How does it feel to have been in the defining film of a generation? You must get asked about it so often. Do you ever get tired of it? No, I haven’t got tired of it because everyone seems to have so many warm feelings about it. I feel good to have been involved in it. It was a really wonderful experience making it and not all films are, most films aren’t. But that was a really joyous film to shoot. Spud is kind of an iconic character, he certainly means a lot to people. To some people! In a lot of ways he is the clown and the clown has a long tradition in European theatre. On your Wikipedia page it says that you wanted to be a clown. That is completely untrue. It also says I was discovered by some complete stranger who I’ve never heard of, some TV producer who doesn’t exist. I should invent something more ridiculous. Have your children watched Trainspotting? Do they know about it? Oh yes, my daughter’s bored stiff of it. People come up to her. But she’s still too young to see it, a few years shy of the age certificate.

Thomas Pausz (far left) relaxing in one of the chairs woven by teenagers at his garden project in Luxembourg, Hortus Praxis.

the perennial gardener thomas pausz is a social artist with green fingers words johanna derry, photos andrés lejona, illustrations anna emilia laitinen

It’s hard to get to the bottom of Thomas Pausz. He is, at first, the perfect stereotype of a French intellectual. He leans forward to sip his coffee and then relaxes back in his seat to expand on theories of how people interact with design. His bag is filled with sketchbooks, notes and obscure texts bookmarked with underlinings. His enthusiasm for ideas is engaging, but he’s an enigmatic character. By his own description, he’s an open designer. If a product designer is someone who designs chairs, an open designer plans installations where people can build their own. Pausz’s work examines the process of making, not the final piece. He loves seeing what people create from his installation projects: soap workshops using foraged plants, gardens where you might make your own deckchair, and sheds reconstructed from old people’s memories. But for all his fascination with people, I think secretly he’d like to be a gardener. “I have a fetish for ground cover herbs,” he confesses. From his notebook he pulls out a tatty photograph of the plant samphire. “It’s such a weird plant, but I really like it because it’s magical. Vegetation can grow everywhere and it kind of grows because of adverse situations. All it needs is water.” Like his projects, he believes that gardens at their best integrate human activity. “Gardens take a long time to make and you definitely need to seek advice to make them work, because there are lots of ways of growing plants. You can’t fix things and you can’t control everything,” he says. “As a model for the activities I would like to create, I think gardens are the archetype.” Social Soap was a characteristic project of Pausz’s. In the summer of 2010, he set up a small soap-making factory in the Parisian suburb where he grew up, Garges-lès-Gonesse. His idea was to gather the

community to make soap using ingredients that could be found where they lived. He didn’t choose the easiest of sites to set up his factory: a housing estate in the suburbs, with modernist apartment blocks. The community of Garges-lès-Gonesse has a long tradition of soapmaking for May Day, and Pausz spoke to older people to gather recipes and to find where the ingredients grew locally. He sought out gardens and found lilac, sage and marigold, and comfrey, borage and saponaria from a medieval nursery nearby. Over the course of a week, people gathered to make soap together, the older residents sharing their knowledge of traditional skills with the children. They planted a garden, which is still there today, on the terrace of the estate so the project could continue every year. The influence of Pausz’s first job, set design for dance, is still visible in his work today. He’s fascinated by the way people move around installations, and how they interact with objects. He loves creating opportunities for other people to make things together, and revels in the unpredictability of collaboration. He reminisces with satisfaction on a project for which he made some wooden modules, as blocks for people to build things with. He says, “The visitors took one of my pieces and stuck on something completely different. It completely exploded my imagination. That was one of the happiest moments ever.” For Pausz, design is an open process that everyone can contribute to. “I’d never make a chair. I would always be happier to make a bench. That’s my kind of philosophy.” Last summer in Luxembourg, he built another public garden in the grounds of the Modern Art Museum, Mudam. This project was called Hortus Praxis, and the idea was for people to mingle with the plants throughout the good weather and share their knowledge and ideas

Left to right: borage, burdock, lupine, hibiscus, sage.

about what could be made using the garden. He set up an outdoor laboratory for making natural dyes from the flowers, a library and a sound system. Again, the results were beautifully unpredictable. “I ran a workshop with some teenagers to weave some chairs, and they came up with the most amazing ideas, which I happily fed on.” But gardens can also be inconveniently capricious, “We had planned this thing like it was going to be sunny and we’d get to hang out. But the weather was so horrible! It was pouring with rain and windy, and it was an effort just not to lose everything we had made. The whole thing became, you know, epic.” He enjoys making things difficult, and the journey long. It gives him time to watch the scenery. “I like to deliberately take the long way round to get a result,” he says. That’s what he liked about Hortus Praxis. The project lasted a month, and involved joggers, gardeners, families, tourists, and others who passed through. “We had the possibility to really lose a sense of time, and to get into the rhythm of making slow things. The ink took a while to make. You had to go and find a plant, then you had to play and experiment with them.” In a month, Pausz’s team produced only six colours of dye they were happy with. “Maybe next year we’ll be printing something with them. I see design as not about efficiency, so much as about what happens on the way.” His latest project is a study of how people use their surroundings to shape themselves. It’s an eight-month residency at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, where he’ll be part of a team that includes economists, scientists, artists and others all working out together how we create our surroundings around ourselves. He hopes to explore the

role design plays in this. “It’s a bit complicated to explain, but it’s about how you define or make yourself in work, in using your surroundings or making your surroundings. It’s really very close to the way I see design. I’m always thinking of how people will move when I design something: what will they do with it, how it will affect the way they move and what they do. I made this watering can recently.” He produces his notebook and draws a rough sketch. It’s a roundbodied bronze watering can, with a handle so large and circular that it almost looks like a hoop. “It’s not just a watering can,” he explains, “but a sort of prop so that people can feel the magic of making plants grow. It looks a bit like Aladdin’s lamp, and when you use it, it makes you feel like you’re from another world.” It does look as if there could be a genie living inside it. More than merely a practical tool for watering plants, Pausz’s redesign of this common tool is an example of how he believes objects can make you feel a certain way. His watering can is meant to make you experience the magic of making a garden, as well as perform the function of keeping it watered. These are the things he finds magical about gardens. It’s the disorder, the lack of efficiency, the time they take, the people involved and the surprising things that spring up to delight you. “They make you feel really small. The Luxembourg garden had so many big trees around it. It just made us look like bugs running around. I love going to the botanical gardens in Berlin, and Kew Gardens. It’s just fascinating how rich they are. Plants are cleverer than we are sometimes. They seem to be doing better than us.”

a soap garden composition by thomas pausz We asked Thomas Pausz to teach us how to make soap, but he insisted on telling us about a garden composition. It’s a list of plants to grow in the garden that make good soap ingredients. They soothe the skin, foam the soap or add colour. As for the soap recipe, we were left to find it for ourselves. If you want to look up a recipe and try it, please remember the scenes from horror films: soap making can be dangerous. Bardana (burdock). A medieval plant that has been used to soothe the skin for centuries. Borago officinalis (borage). A blue shrub, which tastes like oyster. Calendula (marigold). An orange miracle with cleansing power. Hibiscus. A vitamin bomb, and the juice turns from red to blue when the acidity changes. Koelreuteria paniculata (goldenrain tree). The soap tree. Use the leaves for foaming effects. Salvia (sage). Calming, and wise. Lupinus arboreus (tree lupine). A power plant, it has been used to develop cancer treatments. Salicornia (marsh samphire). The magic ‘corn of salt’, which turns into soda when burned.

Thomas drew his self-portrait as the plant samphire. “You can eat it. it’s really good with fish. It was also used a long time ago to make vegetable soda, which you need to make soap. It was also used to make glass, because of its high sodium content. The ancient glassmaking workshops in the east of France moved according to where this plant was. I like the idea of a workshop that goes where the materials are is.”

the strange ways of leather ally capellino designs bags with practical beauty words rosanna durham, portrait agnes lloyd-platt After Alison Lloyd’s twenty-year-old clothing brand went bust, she took some bits of leather that she had lying around and made a soft-shaped bag on her sewing machine. That was in 2000 and was the beginning of the rebirth of the label, Ally Capellino. Today, the company makes hard-wearing, loose-structured leather satchels, rucksacks and handbags. She uses material usually for outdoor gear: waxed cotton, canvas and leather, with a dash of florescent piping.

a firm shape. We started by sewing things from the inside and turning them out like clothes are done.

Alison drew her self-portrait, on the right, to appear on a tote bag designed for the thirtieth anniversary of the label.

Your first major bag deal was with the Tate gallery, designing their artists’ bags and accessories. Do you look at paintings for inspiration? I’d rather make bags for artists than be inspired by artists’ work. It could be buildings or absolutely anything, when you look around there’s no reason to look more in one area than another. Even if it’s the high street, why not get inspired by that? When you do clothing, it’s very easy to say you’ve picked influences from here and there, but bags are really practical things. To be honest, a bag is most likely to be inspired by a bag. You might have a colour story that comes from something you’ve seen, but it still has to have a top and a handle.

Tell me the story of Ally Capellino. You began designing clothes about thirty years ago, wasn’t it? After art college, my boyfriend and I started by making stuff from materials that didn’t cost anything: knitting needles, cardboard and bits of plastic. We managed to set up our own business without really trying, and that’s why our name is a bit silly, because there wasn’t a grand plan, but then it stuck. What does the name mean? We thought it meant ‘a little hat’, but we spelled it wrong. In fact it means ‘a little hair’. We only discovered that when we started selling really well in Italy! I don’t really mind, as it trips off the tongue. When did you first make a bag, and what was that like? Well, our old clothing business collapsed in 1999 and we split up. That was a twenty-year business, gone. In some ways, though, that was a load of baggage I didn’t have to think about anymore. I had got quite a lot of consultancy work, which was paying nicely, but I was working on my own, which I wasn’t very good at. It was driving me a bit potty, and I didn’t have enough to do. I had a bit of leather, so I made a bag or two on a domestic sewing machine, and they weren’t too bad. At the time nobody was doing soft bags that were shapeless, soggy and not constructed. Bags were quite hard: they were all boxy. That’s largely due to how they were made by gluing edges together so you got more of

I like the way your bags are calm and beautiful to the eye. My work is always relatively classic and pretty functional. When I’m designing, I want things that are right for the moment, but that won’t look out of style in a year or two.

What do you enjoy about working with leather? I’m still learning about leather. There’s a lot to it. It’s kind of a dirty business: there’s a lot of mis-measuring and you often don’t get what you order. It’s a bit like ordering your flowers from Sainsbury’s but when you get the next lot, they’ve come from Tesco. The same cow can’t be the same cow, so they may have been able to buy the raw material from Northern Italy before, but now they’ve got to go to Belgium or to Poland, and those cows could have had a different diet. Lots of things affect the quality of the leather from the climate, to if they are kept indoors or outdoors. Do you value reusing and salvaging materials at work and at home? I don’t like waste for sure, but I suppose I’m also stingy. In our shops we reuse a lot, old doors and things. At home, I have got a new telly although I’m not a great telly watcher. The only other thing I’ve ever bought were two sofas. Everything I’ve got is junk or second hand.

knit sweater: thursday sunday / jeans: cheap monday

white light in the morning photography eric guillemain styling clare byrne model kate kukushkina | one management

shirt and knit: won hundred

knit top: won hundred / knit shorts: lonely hearts

dress: tomĂŠ

knit sweater: wool and the gang / cotton bloomers: alas

blouse: dion lee line II

a room of her own five models in their own homes photographs from a project by joachim johnson and sonia adamczak portraits and interviews joachim johnson

These portraits are an extract from an ongoing project by Joachim Johnson and Sonia Adamczak to photograph models they know in their own homes. Johnson and Adamczak were inspired by the self-possession of the models they knew. They began to think about the special significance of home for people who work under the gaze of the camera. Sonia said, “Whenever I visited my friends’ apartments, I always felt that it was something special for them.” It was as if the individual space gave them the strength to flourish outside it. A quote from Virginia Woolf has a special significance to the project, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Here’s to the privacy and independence of a room of one’s own. These photographs are of friends of Johnson’s, and he talked to them a little about what home means to them.

Joachim: Imogen is wild, lovely, and bright, all in varying degrees of subtlety. We had a chat at a quiet café in Williamsburg over tea. How old were you when you first moved away from home? Imogen: Eighteen. I could have quit school and jumped across the pond to New York at sixteen, but I would have lost out on my education, and probably been confused and lonely. You hear about girls who move away at fourteen to become models. I feel that’s a bit young. Everyone is different, but I couldn’t have hacked it. When I left, it was time to go. I had been living a half-life for three years, half on a plane and half in school, and nothing was real. I was craving something more fixed. How do you make a home a home? Using it: using the kitchen, spending time in the living room and having people over. That accumulates memories from people, friends and family, who come and leave something behind. Is there a special ritual you have after being away? This is bad, but the first thing I do is sit down and have a cigarette on the sofa. I don’t even take my coat off, I just drop my bags and smoke a cigarette. And then, catch up with one of my roomies. I love talking no matter how jet-lagged I am. Does your job ever affect your life? I do wear a lot more black than I did four years ago. I am pretty strong-minded, so I try not to be swayed too much by the industry. There is a fine line between being inspired, and being influenced. I try to take other people’s advice, but never forget my own. Do you think the fashion world made you grow up quickly? The turning point when I grew up overnight was my first show season: being away from home, juggling many things, and facing hard rejection for the first time. I was sixteen and I went from what used to be my normal day-to-day thought process to something completely different. Your confidence gets shot to hell, but then it gets stronger: you learn to be the best you can be for you. And even when it was negative, my God, it was so exciting.

imogen morris clarke, nineteen, from london, england

Joachim: I met Sheila some time ago during fashion week. She is a strong woman, both honest and open. We chatted as she showed me around her home, and made smoothies. She lives with her boyfriend Christian in Brooklyn. What does home mean to you? Sheila: I have been collecting things as I have been working and travelling so my home is a little presentation of my whole life for the last three years. How old were you when you left home? 21. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think you should move away any younger then eighteen. You need to be able to find your roots, who you are and where you come from in order to appreciate whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ahead. Is there a special routine you have for when you are on the go to try and preserve the home feeling? I take my time when I first arrive, at least an hour or two. I like to set up my clothes out of the suitcase. I bring some incense and candles and light those, and sometimes I bring photos to put down. It is all about making the temporary not so temporary. When your family come to visit, do they notice you changing? My dad has only visited me once, and my brother has visited me twice. It was important for me to let them see that I was doing okay, supporting myself and taking care of myself. My dad was very happy and proud of what I have been able to do.

sheila marquez, twenty-six, from vitoria-gasteiz, spain

Joachim: I met Kasia out and about in New York. She is hilarious and very honest with her opinions. We made sangria and chatted in her backyard. What does home mean to you? Kasia: A place where I can sleep. I can’t sleep in hotels, so I know I am home when I can finally sleep. Is there any special ritual you have after being away for a while? I check all my plants in my backyard. Everything can change back here while I am away. But that’s summer. In winter, I stand inside and look at the snow. Winters in Manhattan—there’s lots and lots of snow. Do you ever feel your job bleeding into your life? It depends where I am. In cities like Paris or London, I have friends I can meet and see and feel good with them. But when I am in the middle of nowhere, it just becomes work. The travelling is work, the place is work. So you are able to differentiate between work and life? Some people struggle with that, especially in this industry. You are always on the go and meeting lots of people, so you lose the ability to maintain relationships. The ability or the desire. You meet someone for a day, it’s very intense, and then you don’t see them again. I like to meet new people, so the whole thing is like a big adventure. Was moving to New York hard? I was really open. I didn’t speak any English, but I still made a ton of friends. I wasn’t sitting at home by myself, I was going out, meeting people, and the language barrier was never a problem. It was pure excitement. This industry tends to influence every aspect of life, from what you wear to how you look. Have you been able to make your home a safe haven from that? Yes, as an adult now. That is why I moved to Brooklyn, instead of Manhattan. Here it’s a normal community. That world hasn’t invaded. I don’t need to care about what I wear to the deli. Yet.

kasia struss, twenty-four, from ciechan贸w, poland

tilda lindstam, eighteen, from gothenburg, sweden

Joachim: Tilda is great. I met her during fashion week a few years back, and she introduced herself not with words but with creepy stares and gestures. She is sarcastic, and has a very dry humour, and sometimes it just seems like she is making fun of you. We had a little chat on skype while she was in Paris, eating sandwich meats and Babybel cheese. How do you make a home a home? Tilda: I bring people over, or I make it messy. What makes your home special to you? My roommates, and the lights. The lights make me feel really warm, and homely. They remind me a bit of the lights in my parents’ home. Do you bring anything with you on the road to make it easier? I always find the same tea and buy it, so I can drink that tea no matter where I am. It relaxes me a bit. Do you ever feel your job influencing how you act in the everyday? Have you been able to make your home a safe haven? You can’t really make something a safe spot, it’s more of a mentality. My roommates and I have made a sort of mental agreement, I guess. Its a place where we can be and escape. Escape in a good way, of course.

Joachim: Hanne Gaby is a dear friend of mine. She is honest to a fault and never shy to be herself, which is something I admire in people. She lives in Manhattan with her boyfriend. We had a chat as she made me her special spaghetti bolognese. What does home mean to you? Hanne: Home in a technical sense is a place where my stuff is, where I sleep, where I can find shelter, where I cook, where I can welcome people. That’s the technical term, but home can be everywhere. Smell is an important thing for me in terms of home, that sense of the familiar. What’s the first thing you do when you get home after being away? I change my calendar, I check on my plants, and my fish. And then I go and check to see if I have anything I can drink in the fridge. Do you find it hard to make a home when you’re on the road? Sometimes it’s hard. I try and stay in the same places, so they end up becoming familiar, home away from home. But during fashion week, for example, my friends are all travelling with me, so it makes it feel like home even though I am away. Do you do anything to make it more homely? I usually bring scarves or fabric with me. I put them up around my bed. The colour reminds me of being home. What’s your favourite thing to do in your space? I like to put the candles on and make it really cosy and welcoming and then just relax.

hanne gaby odiele, twenty-three, from kortrijk, belgium

twenty years late for guide camp we discovered the joy of winning a badge words and deeds liz ann bennett and frances ambler illustration joe waldron

Girl Guides (properly known as the Guide Association) is a heartily innocent organisation, but it still makes for a divisive topic of conversation. Brownies and Guides are a web of happy memories for many people: camping, badge-collecting, knitting challenges. They’re firmly tucked away in the childhood box of nostalgia, along with the pop ices, the penny sweets, and the book whose name you can’t remember with a story about bridges made of spider webs. However, Girl Guides began in 1910, a little after the Boy Scouts were founded and a little before it was acceptable for girls to swim or ride a bike. The Guides have moved on since then, but their reputation sometimes struggles to keep up. There’s enough truth in this to keep the misconceptions alive: a distinct whiff of self-righteousness hangs around the Brownie pledge to serve God, queen and country and do a good deed every day. Things get worse, of course, if you’re an atheist or a republican. One thing makes us forgive the Guide Association its faults: it has never tried to be cool. Kirsty Smith is a Guides helper in North London, and our go-to person for plentiful badges and funny stories. She says, “It tends to be perceived as being out-moded and twee, and I don’t think it is. It’s not very fashionable, but that’s not its purpose.” Her group is oversubscribed, with a lengthy waiting list. Not many of the Guides at her group will admit that to their school friends that they come along, but they relish the chance to try things they wouldn’t usually do. She loves the way the group wins the girls over to new activities: “They enjoy doing things you quite often think won’t go down that well. If you said to them, we’re going to do some sewing, they’d say they wouldn’t like it, but if you say, we’re going to make these things that look like cupcakes with a pin cushion on top, they really like it. They loved choosing the colours, designing the icing, and at the end of the day they are still going to have the skill.”

In fact, sewing no longer features heavily in Guiding activities these days, and camping is far from the preserve of the Scouts. On a recent Guide camp, Kirsty’s troup leaders cut stars from reflective material and hid them in a clump of woodland. They sent the girls into the wood at night with torches to find them. She says, “All you could hear were these shrieks as the Guides leapt out at each other, and shone their torches and got lost in what frankly was the smallest bit of wood ever—with a boundary fence! Two had to be taken out as they were too frightened. They don’t get much of a chance to do things like that. I think that’s brilliant.” We also liked the sound of the Music Zone badge. Guides can do activities ranging from making and playing their own musical instrument, to organising a disco. Her group spent an evening sharing music on their ipods with each other. “They went to the corners of the hall and all crowded round with their earphones in, listening to each other’s music and talking about it. 45 minutes, and still not a peep out of them. It was miserable weather, and if they’d been at home they wouldn’t have been doing anything special. They enjoy sitting and being, because they are at an age now as young teenage girls where they don’t want to run around all the time.” Kirsty still loves the badges, she says. “They’re cute. I loved doing badges as a child. You could do it in your summer holidays and just sit and write up your story, make things, and it had a purpose as you knew at the end you’d get a badge for it. I still get a kick out of it.” We decided to look both rosy nostalgia and wary cynicism straight in the eye, and test out some Brownie and Guide badges for ourselves. Brownies are seven to ten year olds, Guides are ten to fourteen year olds, so we tried a handful of Brownie and Guide badges, plus an old Scout badge. Kirsty kindly agreed to assess our efforts, promising to fail anyone who didn’t tick off the clauses correctly.

some girl guide badges we tested agility Standing, sitting, walking are the first tasks of the Brownie agility badge. It was unlucky for our candidate that the start of this badge was deceptively simple, but hardly the badge’s fault that she didn’t read to all the instructions until a few days before the test. The later clauses were a nasty surprise, demanding forward and backward rolls, headstands, skipping with a perilously over-long LAN cable (not specified in the instructions) and an underwhelming leapfrog. The most bizarre requirement was to produce a ‘pleasing’ pattern of floor movements to be performed to an audience, with a suggestion that the Brownie “use different directions and different speeds”. Was it pleasing? We said we were pleased, but that may have been a lie: Charlotte Humphery’s floor display looked suspiciously like someone miming breast stroke. Charlotte’s comment: The extent of my preparation amounted to remembering to wear my sports bra. I should have practised my floor show of consecutive movements. It might have made the experience slightly less embarrassing. At least my attempts to skip backwards with an internet cable—no skipping ropes to hand—brought joy to those around me. Tester’s comment: You’ve just about limped to that badge. I’d say this one’s borderline.

jester To win this Brownie badge, you have to entertain an audience in three different ways, and entertained we certainly were: Jason Ward

completed out the clauses with heart-warming earnestness, untainted by the suspicion of a smooth conjuring patter. There was an off-key a cappella performance of the Welsh national anthem, a chilling short story and a wonderful, terrible pun with which he turned a pigeon into a telephone. Don’t ask what the pun was: it’ll only spoil it. We were particularly impressed with the magic, ready-sliced banana, even if we generally like our banana slices thinner than that. Jason’s comment: I learned that enthusiasm is as important as actual ability. I can’t imagine the twelve-year-old me being any better or worse than I was, and I don’t know how to feel about this. At least I got to eat a banana afterwards, though: a win is a win. Tester’s comment: Very good. Pass.

air spotter Frances Ambler arrived at the badge-testing session looking weary, and the badge was at least partly to blame. All she had to do for this 1980s Scout badge was memorise fifty military plane shapes, learn the RAF system of letter designation and keep a log of all the aircraft she’d seen for three months. It doesn’t sound too bad until you’re trying to describe an aeroplane by its windows and the shape of its tail, at which point a total lack of interest in planes and twenty pages of diagrams makes things very bad indeed. Hearing her reel off obscure plane characteristics was deeply impressive and wonderfully incongruous. She exclaimed at the end, “Yesterday, it was like a stupid school exam. I was thinking, ‘I need to learn these planes—what’s happening on the internet?’ It was just awful. I don’t ever want to do that again.” Frances’ comment: I was an eager collector of every Brownie badge going, as a child. I have no idea how I achieved my agility or my knitting badges back then, but my determination obviously outweighed

my ability. True to form, in selecting my badge this time around, I overlooked my existing skill set and decided to opt for the Scout air spotter badge. Part of my challenge involved memorising the names, which were mostly numbers and letters, and features, mostly things like wings and engines, of fifty different aircraft. This only served to illustrate my innate lack of interest in either machinery or aircraft and wasn’t really helped by my fear of flying. Of course, I couldn’t accept defeat and I stubbornly continued on my mission. I gave over hours to blankly staring at pictures of planes. I stopped talking to friends to look at pictures of planes. On the morning of the test, I had a desperate two-hour cramming session, and was still swotting up on the bus on the way there. My descriptions of the planes were probably some of the least precise in the history of aviation (“err, small windows, pointy bits”) but I got through, in fact passing with what could be called flying colours. I was pleased that I managed to pass a test in something I know very little about. I was less pleased to learn that no matter how old I am, or what the prize is, I will get disproportionately stressed about the importance of a test. Tester’s comment: I am insanely impressed that you learnt this.

thrift It gets a little tiresome to be told how old and well-kept someone’s possessions are, especially when your own are relatively new and much tattier. Des Tan tells anyone who will listen that his ten-year-old mobile has out-lasted all of his relationships: “It’s seen every awful romantic text I’ve written.” Well, ten years is a tough record for any new girlfriend to live up to. It was perhaps in a spirit of unkind revenge, then, that we nominated Des for the Brownie thrift badge. We knew, much like ten

Surprise! A ready-sliced banana, courtesy of Jason Ward’s jester badge.

years ago, he wouldn’t do any revision until the night before and that, however thrifty he really was, the last clause would catch him out: collecting clothes or stamps for charity for three months. Des’ comment: No comment. Tester’s comment: You’ve not yet demonstrated sufficient interest. I’ll catch up with you again in three months.

house orderly When Dani Lurie picked this badge, we had high hopes. This Brownie badge seemed an excellent opportunity to get our hapless contender to do all the office’s washing up, since the criteria mainly consist of household chores, as well as demonstrating that you can use appliances with adult supervision. Sadly, that was not to be. We did end up with very clean windows on the inside, but the outside was so streetstained that it was a little hard to tell. Dani’s comment: I wowed everyone with a great window cleaning trick for a streakless shine by using a sheet of newspaper instead of a cloth. No one believed me, but they were won over by the results. Tester’s comment: Well, she’s successfully identified a kettle. Badge accomplished, congratulations.

independence One of the things the candidate can do for this Guides badge is make a list of their weekly expenses. We were hoping, with a touch of voyeurism, for a complete inventory of Elly Watson’s weekly spending. Instead,

there was a disappointingly PG list of her purchases at Boots. Had it been censored? We’ll never know. Her poster of washing instructions was both impressive and informative, though, and we found ourselves referring to it later to work out how to wash the office rugs (the answer was “do not wash”, so we ignored it). It’s even on the back cover of this issue, so you can use it too. She also made an adorable mini sewing kit, tucked inside an antique cough sweet tin. Elly’s comment: Ever since I wore my first pair of plastic high heels aged three, I have considered myself an independent lady, and the Girl Guides would now agree. I know how to fill out a cheque. I can tell you the difference between the three types of triangles on your clothes labels. I can also put together an emergency sewing kit and read a train timetable. Yes, I did take the badge too seriously and got nervous before the test and, yes, it is satisfying to meet the skills level of a twelve-year-old. Being independent doesn’t mean you can always go without other people’s recognition. Tester’s comment: I really believe you should give talks about healthy living to small children.

circus skills We were beyond impressed with Carleen Peters’ dedication to this badge. She had to learn at least four circus skills, and attend a workshop in one of them. The list of options was terrifying: club swinging with two clubs! Lasso! Unicycling! Even the tamer ones were fiendishly difficult: juggling and diabolo. We’re only sorry we missed her post-dinner juggling performance on Christmas Day to an audience of turkey-stuffed friends and relatives. Carleen’s comment: It was a bizarre challenge to maintain alongside my everyday life, so I felt a bit like an agent on a secret mission. I found

it by turns exhilarating, embarrassing, oddly stressful, educational, quite time-consuming and actually a lot of fun. The most interesting thing I learnt while perfecting my skills was that in China during the Warring States Period an esteemed juggler called Xiong Yiliao reportedly quelled a war by performing mad circus skills in the middle of the battlefield, stupefying the officers and warriors on both sides. I also learnt that if you are strapped for cash, you can get an impromptu juggling lesson from the guy in the Occupy St Paul’s tent if you ask nicely. Tester’s comment: One of Carleen’s ‘skills’ was a cartwheel, another was hula hooping in Amy Winehouse-style clown make-up, but what she lacks in circus skills, she more than makes up for in enthusiasm, commitment and bashfulness.

communications We suspect that it was not in a true Guides spirit of exploring something new that Liz Bennett picked this badge. Instead of choosing to send a message in morse code or attempting to record the noises of five animals, she decided to explain the differences and similarities between two different magazines. It was most disappointing, and there was also the worry that she would go on far too long. She was brief, thankfully, but we regretted that we hadn’t had the chance to hear a flapping of pigeons or the yowling of an urban fox. Liz’s comment: This badge was a cheat for me, I’m afraid. Chasing after five different animals actually sounds like rather an hilarious challenge, and I regret not giving it a try. Tester’s comment: You’ve cleverly played to your strengths which is a skill every brownie should have.

food for thought pip atra went on a road trip around north wales and asked people what they were afraid of portraits pip atra, assistant stephanie clair

Charlie. Afraid of: freak accidents. Perfect breakfast: Camp coffee.

Lynn. Afraid of: geckos. Perfect breakfast: bacon and eggs eaten outside.

Diana. Afraid of: cigarettes. Perfect breakfast: toasted English muffins with homemade marmalade.

Mike. Afraid of: snakes. Perfect breakfast: laverbread cake, cockles and tomato.

Mary. Afraid of: animals with more than four legs. Perfect breakfast: a full English.

Dilly. Afraid of: polyester and gimp masks. Perfect breakfast: ice cream and pineapple juice.

Dilys. Afraid of: cameras. Perfect breakfast: muesli and water.

Dave. Afraid of: deer. Perfect breakfast: syrup and pancakes.

John. Afraid of: dying. Perfect breakfast: porridge and sausages.

Wendy. Afraid of: trees. Perfect breakfast: lemon curd and crumpets.

a portrait of a country ukraine the week before christmas photos egor rogalev words rosanna durham Days before Christmas, Egor Rogalev went on a walk around Lviv in western Ukraine. These are some of the people he met.

Bohdan Klymchak keeps warm in the snow and promotes Runvira, a pagan religion particular to Eastern Europe. Runvirans believe in the Slavic Arcadia, a paradisal time existing before Christianity, when the Slavic race was unified.

There is a book market every day in Lviv. Here’s a market trader holding an edition about Levitan, a nineteenth century Russian landscape painter. In 1979, Levitan had the rare honour of having an asteroid named after him by the Soviet government. It’s called ‘3566 Levitan’.

Taking part in a Christmas nativity, using footballs and straw bales for props.

Kolyada is a traditional masquerade happening on Christmas Eve in the Ukraine. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an old Slavic tradition that today involves nothing more than having fun and walking around town. Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an enthusiastic participant on the central square in Lviv. Opposite: Olga has a ginger bread snack on her way down into town.

note to lovers baby talk is not endearing words elly watson, photo marco leão

Love is temporary, love is disappointing. That’s what the tracks on my itunes say, anyway. You Don’t Love Me. Rocks and Daggers. I’ll Kill Her. Love is a Losing Game. But while songwriters focus on the tragic ending, there are many interesting chapters to love’s demise. One such passage involves the couple concocting a series of tactics and manoeuvres to convince themselves that their relationship is still fun. This might be a stock of inside jokes, dabbling with costumes in the bedroom or even being openly spiteful towards each other and justifying it as proof of their trust and openness. Most common and depressing of all is the advent of the baby talk. You know what it is. You’ve probably done it. I’ve definitely done it. I remember a point in a certain relationship where we not only talked to each other like Disney characters but started using various Estonian farm animal names as terms of endearment. Tibu. Notsu. Hulies. I wish I was joking. At what point in a relationship do you decide that the only way of getting attention from your loved one or having them find you endearing is to talk like a three-year-old? Surely it’s a little bit creepy, if anything: the assumption that your other half wants to feel like they’re dating one of the stars of High School Musical. And more worryingly, why do you like it? There really is something strange about this trend. It’s as if we’ve somehow associated being vulnerable with being loved, as though people will only care for us if we’re incapable of doing it ourselves. Besides being incredibly sad, surely it’s also a terrible idea. Nobody loves a puppy because it’s weak. They love it because it’s small and fluffy and looks great in a bandana. If it could also cook itself dinner and flush the toilet, so much the better, because there’s nothing we like more than capable creatures. Apart from anything else, it seems a shame, when you’re a perfectly competent person by yourself, to become a hopeless mess when you’re with someone else. Being in a couple should be about sharing all the strength you’ve got, like a sort of super collaboration on the project that is life: double servings of wit, spontaneity and empathy. We should stop pretending we’ve just learnt to tie our own shoe laces and listen to the Dalai Lama, “The best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.” Maybe I’m just being a romantic, but if your plus one is making you feel needy I’d say it’s probably time to jog on.

views on a life carol morley explores painful events by filming the words of witnesses words jason ward portrait rosanna durham It’s the sort of story you find yourself repeating to friends. Phone conversations, chats at bus stops: “Did you read that thing in the paper about that woman?” The kind of story that lodges somewhere in your brain—unbelievable, horrific, depressing, and absolutely true. A woman, Joyce Vincent, is found dead in her flat, surrounded by Christmas presents, the TV still on. Her body has been there for three years, and no one has noticed that she’d been missing, or the awful smell coming from the open window, or that she hadn’t paid a single bill. Neither a drug addict nor an alcoholic, Joyce was just 38 years old when she died. Once bubbly, vivacious and an aspiring singer, now the police can only confirm that the decomposed body is hers by comparing its teeth with a photograph of her smiling. It’s not the sort of story that one forgets. If anything, the actual cause of Joyce’s death is the least compelling part about the quest to discover what happened to her. What about

her friends? What about her neighbours? How can a person just be forgotten like that, for so long? It makes you wonder how it happened. More selfishly, it makes you wonder if it could ever happen to you. It’s easy to see the case’s appeal for a documentary filmmaker: a tragic real-life mystery that raises questions about community and friendship in modern society, a society where communication has never been easier. The kind of documentary that might be made about the case can also be imagined: a retelling of events by a reassuring narrator, carefully laying out all the known facts. Interviews with the police, perhaps a few loved ones expressing shock. A generous smattering of photographs of Joyce from when she was alive. Over the five years that it took Carol Morley to finance and make Dreams of a Life, her examination of Joyce Vincent’s lonely death, many funding organisations would push her to do this very thing. “They’d question who would want to see this story told the way I wanted to make it,” Carol says. “It might have been easier. But if you’re telling people what to think, don’t make a film—write a journalistic essay, or make factual television.” A film without voiceover, captioning, or many of the other crutches employed by mainstream documentaries, Dreams of a Life instead relies on testimonies from the people that knew Joyce, with dramatic re-enactments of their stories featuring the actress Zawe Ashton. “I was really interested in the idea of constructing somebody,” Carol explains. “She’s not here to actually contribute herself, so you can only ever construct that identity through other people.” These glimpses of her life through anecdotes and re-enactments show the many different sides of Joyce Vincent, while also being distorted by

This self-portrait is all Carol Morley.

time and the slipperiness of memory. The interviewees’ stories are often contradictory, not just in the details of events in Joyce’s life, but in how they viewed her. “We’re trying to get close to somebody, but it was important to me imply that what you’re looking at is a reconstruction, that it didn’t feel like I’m presenting you with the ‘truth’.” By being honest about the limitations of filmmaking, Carol illustrates how difficult it is to truly know a person, and without Joyce present to give her own version of events these fragments are all that anyone has. “I think that’s what film does so beautifully, better maybe than any other medium. You can push forward ideas of contradiction within a person.” It leads the viewer to contemplate the nature of identity, both in how someone presents themselves and how our own perceptions of people are coloured.

getting older. So now it’s also about the person who made that film. I recognised what was going on, but I’m not even sure if I do know who I am.” The slander of the Alcohol Years is no more or less truthful than the eulogising of Dreams of a Life. The testimonies reveal as much about the interviewees as about the subjects themselves. Their interviews are fundamentally about themselves, too: in Dreams of a Life, again and again an interviewee will talk about the last time they saw Joyce alive, and imagine that if they’d done something differently then perhaps she might still alive. “They’re writing themselves into the narrative,” Carol agrees. “You’re going to look back at something and imbue it with a significance that you wouldn’t have. When somebody dies the tendency is to think, ‘What did I last say to them?’ or, ‘What did I last leave them with?’”

The theme is a familiar one in Carol’s work. Her first documentary, the Alcohol Years, also built up a picture of a woman’s life through the testimonies of the people who knew her. In that film, the person was Carol herself, exploring her libidinous, intoxicated youth in Manchester from the ages of 16 to 21. Aside from a shot of her tongue, Carol is absent from her own documentary too, refusing to confirm or deny any of the claims made about her.

As much as that response is to do with ego and self-image, it also stems from friendship. The interviewees feel guilty because they fear they might have been able to do something to save Joyce, and they’re burdened by their awareness that they can never know for sure. Even after her body has been found, most of Joyce Vincent’s friends didn’t make the connection.

You can imagine that a part of her wishes she could: the difference between the interviewees in the two films is striking. Where the recollections of Joyce’s friends are complimentary and rose-tinted, perhaps due to her death, Carol’s old friends and associates aren’t so forgiving, questioning the mythologising nature of the documentary and her own actions of the time. One interviewee claims that everyone hated her, a sentiment that isn’t unique. Did she recognise herself? “It’s weird. I saw it a couple of years ago, and it means different things, because I’m

Carol thinks that these lapses in effort, tragically, may be the real reason it took so long for Joyce Vincent’s body to be discovered. “You don’t necessarily worry about these people, even though you think about them. You just assume that they’ve gone on to better friends, or someone more interesting than you.” The guilt of the interviewees is an extension of the guilt we all feel, as we let friendships drift, assuming that we’ll see our old friends again at some point. All the while, the years pass.

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tell your troubles to the bees there’s a faint hum in the churchyards of the capital words frances ambler, photos fiona essex

A strong, honey-like smell hangs in the air at Camilla Goddard’s home in Brockley. The room is stacked high with bits of hives that have been dismantled for the winter. There are homemade wax soaps on the side and bookshelves full of organic gardening books. Camilla is the director of Capital Bee, a London-based beekeeping company. She maintains sites around the rooftops and churchyards of south and central London for people as diverse as Greenwich University, the Garrick Club and St Ermin’s Hotel. She also offers a rescue service for abandoned colonies and frightened people with a swarm in their back garden. Your home smells amazing. Can you smell the beeswax? I take it off the hives in the winter. It’s crazy at this time of year: I’ve got about thirty hives, so it’s a bit mad. Why did you start beekeeping in the first place? I bought a wood with a friend, and I got a beehive for Christmas. It was about eight or nine years ago and people started getting worried about bees being under threat. Bees are such hugely important pollinators; they’re so valuable to crops. Something like a third of our food production is directly related to bee pollination. You know the tiger sanctuaries you get, so they can preserve the genes? I wanted to do something like that in London, because you don’t get the same levels of insecticide problems here. I started on a church site and I went on from there. Why a church site? The church is actually quite into it all and there are lots of churchyards that aren’t being used. Beekeeping is quite complementary, it ties into their thoughts about the environment. There are lots of associations with the church like milk and honey. In medieval times, the monks used to keep them for the mead.

I wanted to ask if you’d ever made mead. Would you like to try some? It’s not mine, but it’s quite good. It’s strong, be careful! It’s a very sweet particular smell—I wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s nice. It is, isn’t it? It’s really nice with ice as a summer drink. It tastes different each year. Like honey itself? I’ve heard that you get different tasting honey from the different areas of the city. Yes, in the country it’s one crop, so the taste is very strong, or nothing. But in London, you have such a crazy mixture of flavours because you have the gardens. You get a darker and richer honey from the horse chestnuts around Greenwich Park. Then in town you get more of a mixture. All over London you get privets from people’s hedges. Is it true that local honey is meant to be best for hay fever? Yes, raw honey. In May, when the pollen count goes up, I always get loads of calls from hay fever sufferers wanting my honey. There’s lots of interest in comb honey now, because it’s the purest form of honey in a way and it hasn’t been treated. It’s really fantastic. I used to get hay fever and I don’t anymore. Getting stung is good for allergies. Do you get stung a lot? I probably get stung every couple of weeks in the middle of the season. As long as they carry on stinging you, you get resistant really quickly. They have a way of stinging you at very specific points, it’s like they’re making a point. I was doing a class and a bee stung me right on the nose. It’s never the side of your face, it’s always bang in the middle. And don’t they die once they sting you? Yes, wasps survive, bees don’t. So it’s a bit tragic.

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Camilla and her bees, a self-portrait.

Do you get upset when your bees die? Or when they suffer, like when they’re under attack from wasps? I do. I’ve had insecticides; I was quite shocked you get that in London. I had a pile of bees covered in this pollen; it was obvious that they had picked something up. It was quite sad. So I had to move that hive. I put them into my A&E area. It’s round the back of the house with lots of lovely nectar everywhere. If they’ve had a bad time I give them some time in there. If you have a few hives, you get very attached to them after a while. They’re working all day, producing this honey, and someone goes and ruins it! There’s been a real growth in beekeeping lately. What I’ve seen is environmentalists taking up beekeeping over the last three years, and they do seem to care more about the bees than the honey, which is great. It’s not the kind of old school thing that was going on before.

People are quite concerned and they want to do something. It’s very immediate; you’re changing your local environment. I won Organic Gardener of the Year a while ago and, for me, beekeeping is all part of the same thing. With bees, you can identify all the plants they are visiting so you are in touch with what’s flowering before you see it. You see the brightest and most amazing variety of colours of pollen on the bees. That’s what I like about it. This June the bees weren’t coming back with very much on them. That’s before I noticed things were starting to dry up and we weren’t having much rain. So they are ahead of everything. What’s the impact of all these new beekeepers? It’s fine in some parts of London, but when you get into the centre it becomes much more

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competitive. If people do want to keep bees, I suggest they plant beefriendly plants, like crocuses in spring, so there’s plenty of forage for them. There’s such a demand for bees at the moment that people are sending colonies by post. I don’t think that’s great for the bees. At one point last year, there was such a shortage they were importing bees from Hawaii. You couldn’t get hold of a queen in this country because so many people are taking it up. It’s quite a funny time for everybody. Is the shortage because colonies are struggling, or just because more people are taking it up? It’s a combination of both. There’s the bee disease, varroa. It’s a horrible parasite, and all colonies now have it, but you can manage it. It can wipe out whole colonies, so that’s the one area that people have to be more vigilant in. It’s a big part of looking after bees at the moment. If you don’t treat it, it just spreads

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through the whole colony and they can’t breed properly. It’s horrible. You can treat them: you just put icing sugar through the top and they all clean themselves to get rid of the icing sugar. And that gets rid of a lot of it. Can you understand your bees? After a while you know whether they’re in a bad mood or not—you can hear it. There is this superstition that you talk to the bees. If you had a problem, they used to say to you, “Oh, go and talk to the bees.” Have they ever helped you solve a problem? Yes, they have at various times. I’ve thought there’s no harm in trying; you might as well have a go. I do believe in the personalities of bees. They’re like their own crazy micro world.

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Camillaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house was full of pieces of hives that had been taken inside for the winter.

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why dancing makes me sad sometimes it’s the small things that we regret the most words jessica garner illustration laurie rollitt My father died when I was 22. It’s not like we were terribly close; our relationship was at times turbulent, at others, non-existent. Months would pass with hardly a word spoken between us. However, he remains a man I very much admire: fiercely intelligent, gregarious and witty. He wasn’t without his vices, but these served to strengthen the character of a truly memorable man. People often ask me what I regret most in life. “If you could change one thing, anything at all, about your past, what would it be?” It’s never the big things, for me, the hearts I’ve broken, the lies I’ve told, the friends I don’t speak to any more. My regret, my secret shame, the one thing out of any other I would change, is really rather small. I was a terribly shy child. I would hide behind my mother whenever we bumped into somebody at the shops, and would freeze if I came across a school friend on one of my solitary trips into town. The world I inhabited was inside my head: books, records, illustrations. This developed into what can only be described as awkwardness. What came off as aloofness was in fact a shy teenage girl being dragged into the real world. When I was sixteen, I spent Christmas with my father in Cyprus. Meeting at first was strange. We hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years, and I was at the age where a couple of years can seem like an eternity. I had changed in ways that I feared would make me unrecognisable to him. Christmas was lovely, if a little sad. My dad said that putting up a Christmas tree on your own is one of the saddest things you can ever do. He didn’t know what to feed me—I was a vegan. He didn’t know what to do with me—he looked for nightclubs, bars, places where young people might go. I couldn’t tell him that all I wanted was to talk to him. We’d sit up drinking into the small hours, learning and discovering each other all over again. There were arguments of course, frustration and tears, but it was wonderful to have my father to myself for the first time. For New Year, we travelled to a hotel in the Troodos mountains to spend it with a couple of his acquaintances, to a village famous for its roses. His ‘friends’ turned out to be the kind of couple that are so insufferable that they turned my father and I into a pair of naughty school children, escaping for moments to giggle and impersonate them. On New Year’s Eve, the hotel threw a party for all the guests. The wine they served was made with roses. The food they served was made with ennui. The music they played was that wonderful, raucous Greek music that tells stories of love and war and death and heartbreak and hope. My dad was a fantastic dancer. He had dad dancing down to a fine art. He would never, ever, remove his feet from the ground, and all his energy and enthusiasm was thrown with wild abandonment into the upper half of his body. He would swing his arms, wiggle his hips, and bust all kinds of Elvis-esque moves out, with a look on his face of determined concentration, and his tongue protruding ever so slightly. It was the end of December, we were full of food and wine, we were ever so slightly tipsy, and about to embark on a new year. There was music, there were friends (sort of ), and there was us. Then he asked me to dance, and everything stopped. I was the rabbit in the headlights again, that startled deer, that child burying her face in her mother’s skirts. I was stuck to my chair. My body froze, with all the years of awkwardness and self-consciousness pushing me further and further into my seat. It was all I could do to shake my head and stare into my glass of wine. That is my biggest regret. The one thing I would change. I’ve shed some of the crippling shyness, and when slightly inebriated, I can be found dancing. With friends, in dingy Stoke Newington basements, or around my bedroom to the Supremes. But I really wish I’d danced with my dad on New Year’s Eve in the rose hotel in the mountains.

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something curious you shouldn’t be afraid to love something just because it’s ugly words lisa jarmin My granny was a woman of great taste and refinement. Her house was beautifully and expensively decorated and my nine-year-old self delighted in looking through her trinkets and treasures. But one ornament stood out. It was a hand-carved wooden bowl made from dark wood, riddled with woodworm and ridiculously lopsided. Its lid was topped off with a handle that looked exactly like an erect nipple. I always wondered what it was doing on her dressing table amongst the antiques and pot pourri.

Knitted cat, Bethan Jones. “My nana was an amazing knitter—lots of nanas are. I grew up with her homemade cardies and scarves and hats. One day she asked if there was anything I would like her to knit, and I said the first thing that came into my head: a black and white cat just like my little cat, Cougar. It was the last thing she ever made for me and, as old and rough around the edges as it becomes, it will never be thrown away. Cougar the cat died recently, making my knitted cat doubly precious.”

“My friend brought it back from Africa,” she explained. “It was hand carved by a young boy on the street just for me. I’ve had it for thirty years now.”

Crocheted dog toilet roll holder, Elsie Anderton. “This is the first thing my daughter ever bought with her own pocket money, and she chose it for me. It says an awful lot about her taste, and is a good reason for banning pocket money until she is at least eighteen. Or has passed a style test, whichever comes first.”

“It’s, um, lovely,” I ventured. “No, it’s not. It’s hideous.” she replied. “But I love it all the same. Don’t ever be afraid to love something just because it’s ugly.” Right on, Granny. Wise words indeed. We asked some people to tell us about the ugly beautiful things that they will never be parted from.

First bra, Sarah Coombs. “My mum bought me my first bra from Tammy Girl in 1989. It was a 30A. Despite the fact that it is stained with age, the elastic has gone and I am now a 36E, I just can’t bring myself to part with it.”

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Chair in a bottle, Bronagh Fegan. “I got this at a bric-a-brac shop for the princely sum of 50p. The chair inside is a thing of beauty and made with a lot of skill, yet undeniably pointless. There is an inscription on the stopper, ‘To Father Reveyro, thank you for your friendship.’ It’s rather sad. If someone made it with such care as a gift, how did it end up as a reject in a junk shop? I just had to give it a good home and it is very well loved.” Spitting Image hand, Richard Jarmin. “When I was seventeen, I wrote in to Spitting Image to ask if I could have a Sonic Youth poster that I’d seen on the programme. The props company phoned my house when I was at school and spoke to my mum, who told them about my habits, including my tendency to avoid shaving at all costs. They sent me this hand, which had a razor and a can of shaving foam attached to it. I never did get the poster. Apparently it was plastered to a wall, which would have been rather expensive to post.” Spangly grotto, Victoria Watts. “I used to go to Lourdes with my mum every year as a helper for sick and disabled people and we had a competition to find the tackiest souvenir. This was our entry. I love everything

about it: the glitter, the fluorescent pink flower, the little gold Lourdes sticker and, best of all, the glue you can see stuck to Mary’s head. Sadly, we didn’t win; the prize went to a toilet roll holder that sang Ave Maria.” Squeaking sperm cushion, Caroline Lewis. “My friend and I bought one each from the kids’ section of Ikea in 2002. I have no idea if it’s supposed to be a tadpole or a sperm or possibly an apostrophe, but it has a squeaker in it, which makes it brilliant. My Squeaky Sperm has been on my bed for nine years. Not many people can say that.” ‘Eagle’, Mel Campbell. “I made this in woodwork class in 1986. We were asked to create a majestic eagle head with a slot through it for stunning wings made of contrasting wood. My peers managed this and their eagles looked amazing. I whittled both sides away for weeks to make them equal until on the very last day Mr Robson bellowed, ‘Wings, Melanie!’ In my haste, I punched out three circles, stuck them on, glued the eagle head to a plinth and handed it in. They placed him at the very back of the display. He may not have had wings, but in my heart he soared over mountains.”

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we’ll change the world stitch by stitch how sarah corbett became a craft activist interview charlotte humphery, portrait des tan

The work of the Craftivist Collective decoratively protests against the status quo, aiming to expose global poverty and human rights injustices through the power of craft. They are best known for their miniature cross-stitch protest banners, but this is going to be the year of the hankie. For the Don’t Blow It project, craftivists embroider personal messages to their MPs onto handkerchiefs asking them to use their influence to make a positive difference. The Collective was set up in 2009 by Sarah Corbett, an exhausted political activist with a fondness for cross-stitch. I came across craftivism when I was feeling burnt out as an activist. I had moved to London for a job, and I tried to join lots of different activist groups because I’ve always been very political and so have my parents. All we ever do around the kitchen table is talk about religion and politics, which is really good for us but a bit random for everyone else! I wanted to join like-minded groups and I quickly found out that I was knackered, and the idea of joining another activist group with lots of meetings and with the goal of no more weapons in the world... Well, it is hard to measure and quite stressful, because you never feel like you’re getting anywhere. At a lot of the activist groups I was joining, I didn’t feel like I fitted in. I don’t ride a bike because I’m too scared, I’m not vegan, I really like reading Vogue. Lots of them are very extroverted and you have to be really outgoing sometimes to do things—placards or street theatre or dress up—and I don’t really like that. I missed time to reflect on stuff and, also, I got really into cross-stitch that summer.

and sit with me and craft, so we had our first meeting. It has just grown very organically. None of it was planned, and I love that. Now we do formal workshops with training, but we still have our regular stitch-ins where you come along and do whatever you want. People come with their own projects or buy one of our kits or just come for a cup of tea and a natter. You can do craft everywhere. I love travelling, so it’s perfect. People will often ask me what I’m doing. Especially old ladies—they love it! Then you can talk about it, which is the real benefit. At the moment, I’m doing a lot about inequality in the UK and globally and really good conversations come out of it and with people that you wouldn’t normally talk to, like retired businessmen. These aren’t people who would otherwise interact with activists. You’re not preaching to the converted: this is an open conversation with people who aren’t on the same page as you or people who might be nervous about politics. One of my favourite projects this year was our hankies. I was given these hankies by an old lady who was going to put them in the bin. It was a set of three really kitsch ones. I didn’t want to put them in the bin, but what was I going to use them for? So I came up with the Don’t Blow It idea. I’m quite shocked at how much everyone has taken to it. We always try and hand-deliver them and lot of us have seen our MPs. Most of them are really positive about it and now we’re starting to do them for teachers and bankers and religious leaders.

The cross-stitch was helping with my stress levels so I googled craft and activism groups and nothing came up but this word craftivism. There were no craftivist groups in the UK, so I just started doing it myself. I started making mini protest banners when I went up to the Shetlands where my nan lives in the middle of nowhere. I needed to be an activist again, and I needed to try and find something to do outside of work.

I like the idea of the mini cross-stitch protest banners, because you can communicate quite hard-hitting facts and stats on them, but you’re not telling people what to think—it’s waving on the wind on a bit of fabric. If you have a giant banner, you are forcing it on people, but because these are small you have to walk up and read them. People have to choose to engage with them and psychologically they’re much more open to what you’ve written. As an activist tool for provoking thought, it makes sense to do non-threatening, personal things that give you time to reflect and feel part of a community.

I set up the blog, A Lonely Craftivist, because I thought it was a way to deepen people’s engagement with the issues. But I started getting these comments and emails from people all around the world asking, “Ooh, can I join in?” I was like, yes, course you can—it’s easy! I never went to art school and I wasn’t taught how to craft, so if I can do it anyone can do it. Then Londoners began to ask me if they could come

Sarah taught us some activist crafts (over the page) to make people stop and think. If you try any of the ideas, she would love to hear from you. Take a photo and email it to her with an explanation of your craftivist piece, craftivist.collective@gmail.com. The Collective will then put it on their blog and share your piece with fellow craftivists online, at craftivist-collective.com.

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three activist crafts bunting and cross-stitch get political words sarah corbett, illustrations rosie gainsborough badges to provoke conversation The idea of these badges is to stimulate conversations about global issues in an indirect way. One craftivist wrote on his badge, “I’m not poor, I’m broke.” He wears it to work so he can talk to his colleagues about the great provision of the minimum wage, when people in the world are living on less than a dollar a day. I wear a badge that says, “Do you care?” which has started some really thoughtful conversations with barristers and waiters. You will need: white shrink plastic, preferably already sanded badge back super glue permanent black marker a short, provocative, non-threatening question clear nail varnish

One. Trace an A4-sized speech bubble on the plastic and colour in the frame nice and thickly in permanent black pen. Your plastic will shrink to approximately a third of its original size and six times as thick. Two. Write your question in the speech bubble in black marker, again nice and thick. Cut out the speech bubble neatly. Three. Shrink the plastic in the oven on a baking tray, according to the instructions on the packet. Take it out of the oven and leave it to cool under a big heavy hardback book so it cools flat. Four. Paint the front in clear nail varnish to protect the design and make it last longer. Add the badge back on with super glue. Five. Wear with a friendly face, so readers feel confident to ask you what your badge means.

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inspirational bunting Nothing is more kitsch and non-threatening than bunting, so it’s perfect for an inspiring short statement. Hang it in a location that needs prettifying and where people need to be reminded that the world can be a wonderful place if people have the heart to improve it. My favourite statement is “Become Who You Are,” because it asks people to become the best human beings they can be, using their skills and passions to improve the world. You can ask the Craftivist Collective for a label to sew onto the last flag, so people can find an explanation of your piece on the blog. You will need: cotton fabric scraps of cotton or felt sewing equipment cotton bias binding tape

One. Cut the fabric into the shape you want your bunting flags. You can leave the fabric frayed if you want it to look unloved and delicate, or sew the edges for a clean finish. Two. Cut out cotton or felt letters for your flags and pin them on your flags. Hand-stitch or machine stitch into place. Remember, the more handmade the letters look, the more endearing your craftivism piece is, so leave a few rough and untidy edges. You don’t want it to look completely perfect. Three. Sew your flags in a line using the bias binding tape, leaving approx 50cm extra tape at each end so you can tie the ends around fences or railings. Four. Find a suitable spot for your bunting. Tie it in place, and cut off the excess tape from each end.

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cross-stitch graffiti Weaving a message about global poverty into a wire mesh is a great way to make people think about it in a non-threatening, interesting way. It’s also good because it’s temporary—you can cut the wool off. A recent design by the Craftivist Collective was a simple person symbol above a pound sign. You will need: wool camera scissors One. Go on a research trip to find your perfect location. It needs a good-size wire mesh grid that is easy to reach and has enough squares

for your design. Take a photo and count the grids to help plot out your design on paper. Two. Wear warm clothes and fingerless gloves. Bring thick, brightlycoloured wool, scissors and your design on a handy piece of paper for reference. Three. Cut your wool approximately a metre long so you don’t get tangled in it. Tie and weave the wool in the mesh just like a giant crossstitch method. Four. It can be difficult to find an accessible wire mesh large enough for your image. You can create the design at home on garden mesh instead and then cable tie it to your chosen area.

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guinness is good for you a three-course meal with the irish national brew words charlotte humphery

Guinness is special. It is beautiful and surprisingly universal, sold in over 150 countries around the world and drunk by millions. Guinness is 252 years old and the recipe has barely changed. This is a can of history in your fridge. Unfortunately, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really like the stuff, at least not to drink. I like to look at it, but when it comes to raising a cold glass to my lips, I always chicken out. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve not yet managed to acquire the taste for its meaty, bitter flavour. But whether or not it is your pub drink of choice, Guinness is great to cook with. It adds richness and intensity without being overpowering. It brings out the best in meats and woody vegetables. More unexpectedly it is a perfect complement to chocolate, cutting through the sweetness and heightening the cocoa.

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guinness mushrooms on toast It is time to embrace Guinness for breakfast! These are great for Sunday brunch and also make a delicious starter. The Guinness complements the earthiness of the mushrooms and enhances their mushroomy goodness. A rich and flavoursome way to begin a meal or start the day. Serves four.

Two. Add the mushrooms, salt, chilli powder and Worcestershire sauce to the butter and toss gently. Three. Add the Guinness to the pan for about twenty minutes, until most of the liquid has evaporated.

You will need: 350g button mushrooms, quartered 1 clove garlic, crushed 50g butter 4 slices of sourdough bread fresh parsley to garnish

One. Gently brown the butter, without burning it, in a large frying pan over a medium heat.

½ tsp salt ½ tsp chilli powder 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce ¼ can of Guinness 2 tbsp double cream

Four. Take the mushrooms off the heat and swirl in the cream. Five. Serve on hot, buttered sourdough toast and garnish with a blob of sour cream and parsley.

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beef and guinness stew This stew is hearty and filling, dark and unctuous. It will warm your cockles and protect you against all manner of winter ills. My mother taught me this recipe and I would like to think that her mother taught it to her but, given my grandmother’s cooking, this seems unlikely. Serves around five people, and would go nicely with mustard mash and some garlic-fried kale. You will need: 2 onions, diced 750g stewing steak, diced 2 tbsp brown sugar 2 tbsp white whine vinegar 1 x 440ml can of Guinness 2 slices of bread, crust removed 2 tbsp Dijon mustard 2 sprigs of fresh thyme 2 dried bay leaves olive oil salt and pepper

One. In your largest cassoulet, soften the onions in olive oil for 15-20 minutes. Once the onions are soft and translucent, add the brown sugar and white wine vinegar to caramelise. Two. While the onions are cooking, brown the beef in olive oil in a high-sided frying pan. Be careful not to cook the beef through—it only needs to be sealed and coloured on the outside. When it’s done, add a swish of Guinness to the meat pan, as much as necessary to lift all the delicious flavours. Three. Add the meat, Guinness meat juices, remaining Guinness, thyme and bay leaves to the onions. Slather the bread with mustard and add that too. Season with salt and pepper. Four. Bring the mixture to the boil, and then turn down to simmer. Stew on a low heat for 2-3 hours. Stir occasionally and, if necessary, add extra liquid. Five. Serve the steaming hot stew with a large dollop of the mustard mash and garlic-fried kale.

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chocolate guinness cake This cake is ridiculously luxurious. It looks amazing and it will surprise everyone. It is unfeasibly black and moist and chocolatey. The Guinness enhances the dark, base notes of the cocoa and keeps it dense and damp. The stout cuts through the sweetness in the cake and the sour cream cuts through the sweetness of the icing. The recipe is based on one by Nigella, who is a master at combining the sweet and the savoury, with some useful tweaks. For the cake:

For the icing:

250g butter, cut into small cubes 250ml Guinness, poured and allowed to rest for 15 mins 75g cocoa 400g caster sugar 150ml sour cream 2 eggs 1 tbsp vanilla extract 275g plain flour 2½ tsp baking powder

300g full fat cream cheese 100g icing sugar, sifted 2 tbsp sour cream

One. Preheat the oven to 170°C, or gas mark 3. Grease and line a deep 20cm spring-form or loose-bottom cake tin. Two. Place the Guinness and butter in a large saucepan and heat gently, stirring until the butter has melted. Three. Beat the sour cream, eggs and vanilla together and stir into the beer mixture. Four. Gently whisk in the flour and baking powder one third at a time. Don’t worry if the mixture appears very wet. Five. Pour the cake mixture into the tin and bake for an hour, or until a skewer entered into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before removing from the tin. Six. While the cake is in the oven, make the icing. Whip the cream cheese until smooth, then beat in the sifted icing sugar. Stir though the sour cream to loosen the icing. Spread thickly over the cooled cake. Cut a generous slice and enjoy with a large mug of tea.

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issue ten is out in april Wish us luck, please. Next issue weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re trying our hand at auctions of all shapes and sizes: county auctions, police auctions, suitcase auctions. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll go along with a crisp twenty or several, and see if we can come away with something interesting, beautiful or bargainous. If you know an auction we really should try, drop a line to words@ohcomely.co.uk and let us know. The photo of the vintage camera is by Desiree McClellan. We wonder where she found it.

subscribe to oh comely have the magazine posted to your home subscribe online at www.ohcomely.co.uk/subscribe These are photos of the magazine taken by oh comely readers. A subscription to oh comely is ÂŁ22 for a year, and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll get six issues through your door. You can subscribe online from ohcomely.co.uk/subscribe, or post us a cheque to the address on the back cover. Cheques

should be made out to Adeline Media, and include an email address so we can drop you a line confirming your order. Thanks to (from top left) Charlotte Overton-Hart, Rosie Grindrod, Rosie Blunt, Aki Saito, Rhiannon and Hannah Daisy.

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help, i feel so hungover do egg yolk and hair of the dog ever work? words jason ward, photo steven beckly

Death is pretty inconceivable. An eternal, yawning nothingness is something that we are incapable of comprehending. And yet, when death comes—and it will—we can at least be relieved that it won’t feel as bad as a hangover, because nothing feels as bad as a hangover. Fatal illnesses and limbs dropping off and getting elbowed in the swimsuit area are preferable to that distinct misery where your brain has swelled in the night and is now rubbing against your own skull. This is why people clutch at any random solution that hangoveraccruing old wives claim will help. Once you’ve been sick through your nose, the idea of having a raw egg yolk for breakfast doesn’t seem quite so insane. The cost of testing these hangover cures has been substantial, not just to my liver, bank balance, and flatmate’s liquor collection, but to my personal life. What follows isn’t just a collection of unscientifically-tested cures, but a document of what made them necessary: the ill-advised texts, the arguments over nothing, the hasty apologies.

a greasy spoon fry-up My foolish heart keeps telling me there must be some specific combination of fried foods that will stave off cerebrum horribilis, but I’ve yet to find it. I dragged myself to the nearest café and ordered the largest breakfast on the menu, hoping to block out the pain. Alas, the toast was cold, the bacon tasted like licking a dinner lady, and a reservoir of grease slowly coagulated near my woeful fried egg. Not great. Also not great: the mocking, omnipresent televisions, showing endless images of footballers running around fields like they weren’t close to death. Even if the food had been edible the breakfast would have remained unloved and uneaten: my appetite had been less-than-truthful. There’s little more disappointing than realising that the thing you think you want isn’t actually what you want at all. 5/10. Keep reminding yourself: opening that extra bottle of wine seemed like a good idea at the time, too.

irn-bru

egg yolk

Research on possible cures to test didn’t go much further than asking everyone I knew what their preferred elixir was. The answer I received most was some kind of sugary drink, with each person asserting their own drink’s superiority, as if the very idea of drinking Coca-Cola over Lucozade was ludicrous.

The more paranoid parts of my being are convinced that the concept of the prairie oyster is secretly an international, decades-long ruse created with the sole purpose of one day making me eat a raw egg yolk. If that is the case, then all I can say is that you’ve been successful, and I hope you’re all feeling ashamed of yourselves.

As I’m allegedly Scottish, I had my own drink to champion: Irn-Bru. While its sugar content and fizziness probably differs little from its competitors, there’s something comforting about its girder-originated orange, something that says everything will be okay. Drinking it makes you feel like you’ve just come from swimming with your dad, rather than the reality of being slumped over the living room table holding the can to your forehead because maybe that will somehow help.

If egg is delicious when fried, scrambled, poached and boiled, or even when eaten raw in cake mix, logic suggests that it might also be delicious when consumed with Worcestershire sauce and pepper, even if one is hungover. That logic is wrong. The egg yolk slid down the glass into my mouth, where it sat for a second before sliding back down again. This happened three times in a row, and then I was sick. If that was the intention, then it worked.

8/10. Good. If nothing else, the opportunity to feel like a tramp is not to be missed.

2/10. Eating an egg yolk to cure a hangover is like stabbing yourself in the thigh to cure a cold.

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sleeping it off

exercise

Some fights aren’t fair. This hangover cure has the significant advantage that you don’t need to get out of bed to do it. Not only that, but it requires little more than going back to sleep, which is all you want to do when hungover anyway. But what initially seems like an easy win doesn’t quite work out that way.

Anyone suggesting that the best hangover cure is exercise should be forced to exercise whilst hungover. As I pedalled along the canal, just before the hatred subsided, a thought occurred to me: how many murders had been committed by those who’d just exercised whilst hungover? It wouldn’t be surprising if the answer had been all of them. They could hardly be blamed.

The problem with sleeping off a hangover is that the sleeping bit is scuppered by the hangover bit. While curling up into a ball like a sorrowful hedgehog is a natural inclination, actually drifting off again is troublesome. When sleep does come, fleetingly, it is thin and dreamless. For much of the time you’re just lying there, experiencing your hangover in decreasing segments. This is marginally better than staring at a wall, but it’s hard to shake the conviction that you’re stewing in your own misery, waiting for it to end. 6/10: Hangovers end, but sleeping in doesn’t hasten or ease the problem. Maybe it’s better to just face the day.

hair of the dog The traditional hair of the dog is a Bloody Mary. I’ll happily try to swallow an egg yolk, but everyone has their limits, and mine lie with tomato juice. I’d rather have the hangover, thank you. Lacking a traditional hair of the dog, I conceived of an alternative: get in a jacuzzi with my flatmates and drink prosecco until everything was good again. Essentially the plan was to enact a hip-hop video. (It helped that my landlord had inexplicably installed a jacuzzi in our pokey shared flat.) Self-conscious and craving bed, we blearily pulled on our swimsuits and slipped into the water. Shyness was soon replaced with glee and it didn’t even matter that our bodies were distended husks. We felt wonderful. Perhaps it was due to the abundance of bubbles. A hangover is a terrible weight—it makes sense that the solution is to make oneself as light as possible. 9/10: It’s impossible to stress this enough: a truly effective salve for a hangover is to get into a jacuzzi and drink prosecco with people you adore.

For the first half an hour of the ride my defining emotion was obsidianblack misanthropy. I hated my bike. I hated the canal. I hated the smiling families. I hated the other cyclists. I hated the cormorants. My legs didn’t work properly and the world was bright and unpleasant. Change came not with an epiphany but with steady, undramatic progress. With no greater task than ensuring the bike didn’t careen into the water, I was free to enjoy myself. Bit by bit, colour returned to the world. It felt good to be moving. It almost felt good to be alive. 1/10 until it became 7/10. Let’s split the difference and say 4/10.

curling up on a sofa with a dvd box-set and someone warm Here’s an idea: perhaps hangovers can’t be cured. People have overindulged in alcohol since people became people, and still no one has come up with a satisfactory answer. Maybe it’s time to put away the egg yolks. The human race has endured thousands of years of greatturned-horrible nights and horrible-turned-great nights; thousands of years of inappropriate advances and advances that should have come sooner; thousands of years of waking up next to someone ghastly and waking up next to someone who makes the thrum in your head not matter; all a prelude to thousands of years of awful, raging, loathsome hangovers, and there’s still no respite. Maybe it isn’t coming. If we can’t stop hangovers, then the least we can do is try to make them bearable. The best way to do this is to do the thing that also makes the non-hungover parts of our lives bearable: spending them with the loveliest people we can find. Preferably this should be under a blanket in a dim room, three discs of the box-set still to go, another pizza in the oven, and an unlikely bliss stumbled upon. 10/10.

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the face blindness test can you remember who these people from this issue are? It turns out that one of our editors has face blindness, so we spent some time in the office taking tests for it online. Rosanna is the one to beat, with an astonishing 96% success rate. How good are you at remembering the faces from the magazine? Drop a line to free@ohcomely.co.uk with your answers. We havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t decided what the prize is yet. A free subscription, maybe. No cheating, please.

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Your crime boss brings you a mysterious briefcase that you are to open under no circumstances. What’s inside?

Used bank notes

Hopefully some nice sandwiches to have later. There’s been a spate of murders in your home town. You find yourself alone. The phone rings. You…

A news report, very conveniently giving details about the exact thing you’re investigating.

Ignore it. Cash in the Attic is about to start.

Answer it and talk to the stranger on the other end of the phone. It’s only polite, really.

You’ve bested your superhero nemesis. He lies broken at your feet, nearly unconscious. What do you do?

Pull off his mask to discover his secret identity and then throw him down a mine shaft.

Bide your time. It’s not as if he’s imbued with super powers or anything.

A man stands before you and says he has the answers you’re looking for. He holds out a red pill and a blue pill. Which do you take?

The red pill

You go home and turn on the television. What’s on?

Frustration

Neither: no one who wears that much leather can be trustworthy.

For reasons best known to themselves, Triads kidnap Jason Statham and inject him with a poison so he has to keep his heart rate above a certain level or he’ll die. It’s like the film Speed, except the bus is being played by Jason Statham and has to go around being mental.

illustration laura callaghan

Richard Pryor is blind. Gene Wilder is deaf. They’re accused of a crime they didn’t commit and have to go on the run together. Hijinks ensue: The blind one has to drive a car! The deaf one has to overcome his insecurity! How have you not seen this yet?

Your bearded wizard friend gives you a ring to keep safe. You…

Immediately try on the ring. Turning invisible, you decide to do what any sensible person would and start hanging around the Queen.

Some sort of... Well. Oh, that’s not too bad. Quite relaxing really. Wait. Who’s that girl crawling towards the camera? Why is she wet? Why is... OH GOD SHE’S CRAWLING OUT OF MY TELEVISION AND I’VE ONLY JUST GOT FREEVIEW!

Put the ring in a drawer somewhere, end up losing it and then later, when he asks for it back, act like he never gave it to you in the first place.

Cinema has a long and storied history, but it’s been missing one thing: a dramatic film where Gary Oldman plays the midget twin brother of Matthew McConaughey. As the trailer says, when the going gets rough, it’s only the size of your heart that counts.

Whoopi Goldberg is a wisecracking, black latex bodysuit-wearing detective forced to be the partner of a talking dinosaur as they try to find a dinosaur killer trying to start a new Ice Age—wait, don’t go!

issue nine | mar/apr 2012 | ÂŁ4