Oh Comely magazine issue 11

issue eleven | aug/sep 2012 | ÂŁ4

Peter Blake

aND POP MuSiC 23 JuNe – 7 OCTOBer 2012 a major exhibition to mark the 80th birthday of the Godfather of Pop art charting the artist's life-long engagement with music from american rock 'n' roll in the 1950s to his designs for albums by Paul Weller and Oasis.

For full details and opening times please visit our website www.pallant.org.uk

Exhibition Sponsors

Exhibition Supporters Frank & Lorna Dunphy James & Clare Kirkman Peter Blake: Pop Music Supporters' Circle

Headline Sponsor of the Gallery 2012

Gallery Supporters

9 North Pallant Chichester West Sussex PO19 1TJ 01243 774557 info@pallant.org.uk

Peter Blake, The 1962 Beatles, 1963–68, acrylic emulsion on hardboard, Pallant House Gallery, Wilson Gift through The art Fund © the artist/ DaCS 2012

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 olivia wilson, kathryn shepherd words beth davis, tara caimi, caroline o’donoghue, jane elson, kate fridkis, jessica garner, lisa jarmin, carleen peters, eleanor smyth pictures derek bremner, jamie campbell, hector durham, fiona essex, leah goren, ryan hancock, anna hollow, max knight, sean marc lee, trent mcminn, kristin perers, norman peters, lucía silva, liz seabrook, tina sosna, jamie stoker, adelaide turnbull, andrew urwin, naomi wilkinson advertising hannah jackson, hannah.jackson@royalacademy.org.uk sarah bolwell, sarah.bolwell@royalacademy.org.uk feedback and lost property, info@ohcomely.co.uk submissions, words@ohcomely.co.uk or pictures@ohcomely.co.uk oh comely, issue eleven, aug/sep 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, Mikaela Carlén, by Liz Seabrook. Styling by Lucía Silva.

Liz uses the back cover post-it to wake up in the morning. 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.

This photo is a self-portrait taken by Anna Hollow.

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

art

18 subtle as water, light as air silk scarves painted with watercolours

36 this is not what I expected writing about the twists in life’s tale

22 love is in the detail the curious corners of j&b the shop

42 the second life of crispian mills he used to be a 90s rock star; now he’s a director

26 ultraviolent femmes roller derby is like rugby, but on roller skates 30 death to los campesinos! the band’s lyricist on bar brawls and brutal honesty

fashion

people

54 a fear of garden fences I can’t help but be a dreamer

34 guy fawkes, I think I’ve heard of him the history of london as told by londoners

58 tears in the laundry basket rebecca night was a born actress

60 the flower appreciation society florists with flair

70 summer, with a chance of rain

62 dress me with peonies mikaela in lilac and camelias

dressed to face the darkening clouds

80 paper and pen pages from the sketchbooks of yelena bryksenkova

96 everything you can feel in ninety minutes roy williams on the drama of theatre and football

82 sitting next to history the past can find you when you least expect it

98 a view from toronto portraits of people from toronto and their thoughts on their city

84 a grandad odyssey and other tales adventures in experimental tourism 94 the reluctant grown-up josie long has been a comedian since fifteen 110 the handmade toaster everyone wants to melt metal in a microwave

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46 beyond cartography maps of the imaginary

114 putting the kitsch back into kitchen the 70s desserts that time forgot 118 make your own mermaid it’s made of paper, silly

photographs of olivia on the balcony of an english summer

108 ten puppies make a team when my dog-sled pups were born, it felt like the fulfillment of a prophecy 126 what’s that funny smell in here? testing air fresheners: the good, the bad and the downright chemical 128 english rose or shrinking violet: what flower are you? this quiz has the answer

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between you and me take a walk in the shoes of a tourist Everyone is a tourist occasionally, and yet when you’re not one they seem so different from you. An average walk for you is an adventure for a stranger. It’s true that they don’t have work to go to in the morning, but they’re still appreciating streets, buildings and experiences that you’ve ceased to see clearly any more. It’s your home, but they’re the ones having the most fun in it.

This issue we tried to become tourists in our own lives. We asked strangers for sightseeing advice, and used gaudy tourist vehicles, and took a guided tour round the favourite places of one of our grandads. We sat in waiting rooms and other people’s baths, thinking about how we could make our familiar lives feel like an adventure. We noticed that the easiest way to spot a tourist is that they are actually looking at the world around them, so we did the same.

The photo opposite was taken by Hector Durham, who found himself behind a man with parrots on his shoulders during a stroll in central London. The parrotowner sported a long, straggly beard.

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special deliveries brought by our favourite carrier pigeons send letters to oh comely magazine, third floor, 116 high holborn, wc1v 6rd

I just wanted to say how great I think your magazine is.

I recently came across it for the first time. So beautiful and sad and wondrous and true. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite like it, or just been so goofily happy reading something.

Stuart

I read Oh Comely because it’s just so inspiring. It gives me the kick I sometimes need when I’ve given up on my creativity and fallen into a rut of rubbish TV and frozen pizzas. I’d like to maybe see more of a leaning towards the male readers. Maybe just some more pictures of lumberjacks and male writers and craftsmen, in nice comfortable shirts and jumpers, with their hairy chests just peeking from within. Just some eye candy, really.

Ben

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Dear Oh Comely, I wanted to say thank you for producing a magazine about interesting subjects and creative people. I had been back to Edinburgh to catch up with friends for a 50th birthday party and for my journey home wanted something to read but not a magazine full of adverts, celebrities and articles to make me feel inadequate.

Thank you for creating something worth reading and reminding me that there are young people doing so much that is worthwhile. I can have a tiny rant here about having fun, putting phones away and embracing the moment. In my day you went to watch a band and leapt around to your heart’s content, never bothering about trying to record it to prove that you had a good time.

Sheena, an appreciative older reader.

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what we listened to the songs that made the issue illustrations leah goren

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what we ate make a pint-sized pizza from a crumpet, cheese and tomatoes

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some people who helped make this issue and the dreams they wish they’d followed ryan hancock is a photographer in brooklyn

kate fridkis is a writer and a body image blogger

A series of Ryan’s photographs accompanies surprising tales on page 36.

Kate wrote about being a dreamer on page 54, and the unexpected effects of her nose job on page 36.

Tell us a little about yourself and your work. I grew up in a small town in Georgia, and both my grandfathers were preachers.

I spent a lot of time alone, climbing trees and walking in the woods. Now, living in Brooklyn, I see the influence of those distant places and people in the things I notice and choose to photograph.

Is there a dream (big or small) that you wish you’d followed? I always wanted to be a writer, a musician, and a painter. I’ve tried them all at different times of my life, thinking that if I loved something so much then naturally I should be great at it. Unfortunately that’s not the case.

Recommend a little-known tourist attraction from your home town. Everything about where I’m from is little known. It’s a very small town in Georgia called Flintstone. If you should find yourself there, I’d recommend standing in someone’s backyard at dusk and listening to the katydids.

You can see more of Ryan’s photographs at www.ryanhancock.com.

Tell us a little about yourself and your work. I am almost jarringly gorgeous and good at everything I do, which ranges from international espionage to staring in a hit TV show about my life.

No, but seriously, it’s just the usual. You know, somewhat awkward girl living in Brooklyn, NY, writing about body image and life. Collecting pictures of women eating cake, for her blog, Eat the Damn Cake.

That’s me. I write for the Huffington Post a lot, and have a column over at The Frisky.

If you were a flower which would you be? Definitely a peony. One of those very billowy, complicated ones. Very fragile, in each petal, but big and bold as a whole.

Very layered and a little confused-looking, but ultimately confident.

Tell us a recipe with only three ingredients. Bagel, egg, cheese.

Find Kate Fridkis online at www.eatthedamncake.com.

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naomi wilkinson is an illustrator from bristol

olivia wilson is a writer and a dreamer

Naomi has illustrated a cut-out mermaid is on page 118 and a piece about London’s history on page 34.

Olivia interviewed the Flower Appreciation Society on page 60 and took a bath at her aunt’s house on page 84.

Tell us a little about yourself and your work. I would describe my work as playful and hand-rendered, and I draw influences from vintage printing methods and folk art.

I like to explore both the magical and the mundane in my work.

Tell us a little about yourself. I am the eldest of four sisters who grew up in a house with a yellow front door. I like perusing paper merchants for good quality writing sets and have a penchant for the ends of a loaf for toast. I have always had far too many interests and too many things on my to do lists.

Is there a dream that you wish you’d followed? I really wish I did have some sort of poetic talent, but I think maybe I’m better with images rather than words. Trying to write creatively always makes me feel a bit silly and embarrassed.

If you were to run away, where would it be to? I like the idea of running away to Cuba and dancing around drinking mojitos on a beach, but I’d end up running back—I would miss my chap and the drizzle.

If you were a flower which would you be?

I think I would be something bright but low maintenance like a dandelion.

More of Naomi’s illustrations can be found at naomiwilkinson.tumblr.com.

Is there a dream you wish you’d followed?

I am a firm believer in following dreams and I naively think they are all still possible.

What is your favourite pudding? Puddings are one of my reasons for living. It’d have to be a crumble of some kind, probably rhubarb, with both custard and ice cream.

Recommend a little-known tourist attraction from your home town. I live in a small town with nothing particularly remarkable about it, but our one real curiosity is an authentic North American Indian totem pole tucked down a little lane.

Follow Olivia at livinggrace.tumblr.com.

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pretty lovely turn your corks into creatures and your tea towels into cushions has one of these curious critters caught your eye? drop a line to free@ohcomely.co.uk by the end of august for chance to win.

Time to bring out the sewing kit, animal lovers. This bright, bold fox print from printmaker and illustrator Sarah Young is a multifunctional crafter’s dream. Silk-screened on 100% cotton, it’s a tea-towel with handy fox shapes that to be cut out and sewed into a toy, cushion or filled with dried beans to make a doorstop. Instructions included—on the tea towel.

We have one of these delightful prints up for grabs for one fox-friendly reader. For a chance to win, send an email to free@ohcomely.co.uk and tell us about your favourite thing to do on a rainy day. You can find more of Sarah’s crafty endeavours at www.sarah-young.co.uk.

The ‘buttoneers’ at Tinker Tailors know a thing or two about what to do with a piece of wood. Based in Cumbria, they create handmade, unique buttons out of foraged, found and reclaimed wood materials from their local area. In fact, they’ve designed a range of button-based jewellery and accessories for those who like to feel that there’s a little piece of forest on their shirt. For the full range, visit them at www.tinkertailors.co.uk. We have some of their woodland wares to give away to our readers, so drop an email to the usual address and you could soon be sporting some wooden buttons of your own.

Nothing beats the sight of misshapen, colourful and handwritten post waiting for you. We get lots of exciting and beautifully-crafted letters, but sometimes the lopsided ones are the best. Cas from Leeside Studio is in the business of rescuing unwanted or neglected nautical or geographical maps and upcycling them into paper goods and stationery. Cas has generously give us two of her letter-writing sets to give away, so for a chance to claim one, draw us a map of your favourite place and send it to us at free@ohcomely.co.uk. You can explore more of Cas’ designs by visiting www.etsy.com/shop/leesidestudio.

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Summer may have taken a little longer to get going this year but fortunately these colourful scarves are all we need to brighten our days.

London-based label Cleo Ferin Mercury have the perfect antidote to the grey skies with their range of chic accessories. Taking inspiration from storytelling, pop culture and a range of fine artists, they’ve created these 100% silk scarves, collars and bandanas. We have one of their scarves to give away, so write in for a chance to win one and add a delicate touch to your wardrobe. Have a browse on their site at www.cleoferinmercury.co.uk for more from Cleo Ferin Mercury.

Here’s an excellent reason to finish off that bottle of red that’s been lingering on your kitchen shelf. Corkers, designed by Reddish Studio, are sets of pins that let you turn a bottle cork into your own critter creation.

Each pack includes the body parts for one animal: monkey, deer, buffalo, bear, bunny or crow. You’ll have a corker of a time putting these together. They are available to buy from www.monkeybusiness.co.il, which stocks other similarly playful homewares. Drop us an email at free@ohcomely.co.uk for the chance to win a pack. You don’t even have to invite us in for a glass, but it would be nice.

Valentine’s Day may have come and gone, but Enid Twiglet sent our hearts aflutter with her quirky handmade and handsomely crafted items. Perhaps we wouldn’t recommend them to your doctor, but we adore these anatomically-correct heart cushions.

Enid began designing silk-screened and laser-cut crafts while studying for a degree in fine art, and hasn’t stopped since. She is boldly giving her heart away to one lucky reader, so email free@ohcomely.co.uk and tell us the best way to declare your love. For more of her designs find your way over to www.enidtwiglet.blogspot.co.uk.

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nobrow press Holding a Nobrow illustrated comic book is a little like holding a Folio classic; it has the same solidly real quality to it. Nobrow is a comics publisher, set apart by the consistently excellent standard of the illustration they print and the elegance of their limited colour palette. Sam Arthur, its co-director, tells us how it all began.

Why the name Nobrow? Not high brow, not low brow, but neither and both.

What’s the story behind Nobrow Press?

Before we set up Nobrow Press, I worked as a director in advertising and music videos and my co-director Alex Spiro worked as a

freelance illustrator. We worked together on a few animation projects and over time we discussed the potential for setting up a publishing business. We wanted the focus on a medium that was largely over-looked and under-valued.

What illustrated books did you read and love as children? I used to love Tintin and Asterix, but also picture books like Raymond Briggs’ Father Christmas, Dogger by Shirley Hughes and The Tiger That Came to Tea by Judith Kerr. Alex grew up in Geneva so was exposed to the full range of French bandes dessinées and French picture books. So together we have quite a range of influences.

Tell us about the concept behind Ping Zhu’s Swan Lake, above. Did you commission her directly or was this a collaborative idea that grew between you? We’d seen Ping’s work when she was still a student of Illustration in the US. After graduating, she moved to London and this made working together inevitable. Swan Lake is part of a series called Nobrow Leporello. I approached Ping with a specific idea for a ballet themed book. Luckily Ping had been an enthusiastic ballerina as a seven year old and so was only too happy to get involved.

Find Nobrow’s collection of books and comics on www.nobrow.net.

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subtle as water, light as air leah goren’s silk scarves are painted in watercolour interview laura callaghan Gossamer-thin and translucent in the light, there’s something magical about Leah Goren’s silk scarves. The illustrator and surface artist drew inspiration from flora and fauna to create dreamy watercolours, which were printed onto silk. She also brings the delicacy of her palette to her wistful paintings of thoughtful women.

Goren graduated just this summer and has recently designed a range of prints for Anthropologie’s Made in Kind project, which features capsule collections by eleven young designers.

I love your collection of illustrated silk scarves. How did that come about? I’ve always been interested in making a range of silk scarves. The large, square shape seemed really open, like the perfect blank canvas. It was also a pretty daunting project: three square feet is a lot of space to fill. I ended up designing a series of nine scarves.

The patterns look hand painted. How did you produce them? They’re actually digitally printed. Before I began, I had no idea where to have them produced or if I would have to print or sew the silk myself.

After a lot research, I found a digital printer who also offered cut and sew for scarves, and it was easy to just paint, scan, and edit freely knowing I didn’t have to worry about highquality production any more.

Your work shows a lovely use of dreamy watercolour. What are your influences? Most things I’m drawn to are colourful, feminine, and full of patterns. I really love the work of mid-century female artists. Sonia Delaunay, Vera Neumann, and Niki de Saint Phalle are a few of my favourites. I’m also always looking Above: ‘Picasso Cats’ scarf. Left: Leah Goren’s colourful self-portrait painting.

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at flowers and plants and trying to pull different textures and patterns out of my surroundings. I think a lot about California, where I grew up, and try to transform the memory of that place into drawings and paintings.

It seems as though place is quite important to you. How has living in Brooklyn influenced your work? Living in New York is so important to me, because even though I’m just starting out, I still feel like a small, small part of everything that is going on here in illustration and design. In my home town, no one is really doing anything like I’m doing here.

We’ve started a series featuring artists’ sketchbooks (the first is on page 80). Do you keep any yourself? I’ll be honest, I have been so busy I’ve got away from it a bit. I’ve started again recently, though, and it’s something quite free that you don’t have to worry too much about.

Are there any of your pieces that you’re especially attached to? I like the photos of the scarves where I’m holding them. I just like how the quality of the fabric looks as if it’s transparent. My drawings and paintings of girls are probably one of the things I enjoyed doing the most.

You’re collaborating with Anthropologie on their Made in Kind line. Congratulations! Yes, it was a really great opportunity. They have set up a new limited edition line featuring new artists. Not all of us are illustrators. I developed ten prints for them. I haven’t really seen any of it yet so I’m looking forward to seeing them come together. They should be in stores pretty soon.

See more of Leah’s work on her website, www.leahgoren.com.

Above: Goren’s California Poems scarf. Left: a painting from her series of portraits of girls.

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love is in the detail jessie and buddug have a shop full of finds photos kristin perers words beth davis Jessie Chorley and Buddug Humphreys scour markets and secondhand sales for found objects that they rework into beautiful things: handembroidered bunting, china tea cup candles and decoupage picture frames. Their shop belies its years, spilling over with memories and mementoes of bygone times it can barely lay claim to recalling, but with which it seems to share a dream-like affinity.

Like the beautifully-stitched works themselves, the longer you look into the interiors, the more you uncover. But equally you will find that the more you look, the more clue you lose as to the era you’re standing in.

Chintzy fifties pastels and melamine sit next to thirties bed jackets and antique lace doilies, while the bookcases are lined with a higgledypiggledy history of story-telling to be reworked as journals and diaries.

Although haphazard and chaotic in many ways, there’s a sense of magic in the place and a feeling that everything is treasured in some small way, just waiting for its part in the story.

You can find J&B The Shop at 158a Columbia Road, London, E2 7RG. See jessieandbuddugtheshop.blogspot.co.uk for opening hours.

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ultraviolent femmes the woman who brought roller derby to britain words carleen peters, portrait trent mcminn

To me, Courtney Welch is a real-life superhero. By day she has a highflying job in the City and is a devoted wife and mother, but at night she straps on her skates and becomes Bette Noir, a gum shieldwearing member of the Ultraviolent Femmes, one of London’s most successful roller derby teams. She is best known as the co-founder of London Rollergirls, the league that spearheaded the sport’s introduction to Britain.

One of the fastest growing sports in the world, roller derby sees women from all walks of life donning naughty noms de plume and retro roller skates to whizz around an indoor track at high speed and smash into each other. The aim is for each team to get their ‘jammer’ around the track first—the scoring player who earns points by lapping members of the opposing team—whilst the remaining team members try to stop her by almost any means necessary.

It’s fast-paced, it’s ferocious and it’s fantastically good fun, a bit like rugby on roller skates, but with much better costumes. Like rugby, even the most established players can get injured. From bruised coccyges to broken bones, these women have faced them all and yet, like Kara Zor-El, still make it in to the office on Monday morning.

My love of roller derby did not start with Bette—in fact it started in an over-too-fast thrill of beer and body slamming in the bleachers of a sweaty sports hall in south east London—but, as a co-founder of the London Rollergirls, Noir is one of the most influential players in UK roller derby history. I caught up with the California-born skater to find out more about the sport she terms her full-time hobby.

How did you first discover roller derby? One of my good friends told me about the Gotham Girls, one of the early revival leagues, and it was like a light went off in my head. I was like, “I must do this!”

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Bette Noir’s self-portrait with a quad skate.

When you left California, did you make a conscious decision to introduce roller derby here? Yes; in fact, I wouldn’t have come to London if I thought that wasn’t going to be a possibility. The minute I started roller derby I was addicted and didn’t want to have to give it up. I started thinking I was going to have to start a league in London all by myself!

That would have been really hard.

One day I saw a post online from two American expats living in London saying they wanted to start a league. I immediately emailed them saying, “I’ve already picked out the name and registered the URL, let’s start a league together!” I was still living in LA, but I flew over in April 2006 for a long weekend and we ran the first practice of the London Rollergirls.

How many people came to that first practice? About fifteen. We didn’t really do much skating. They were enthusiastic, but the majority really had no idea what roller derby actually was. A couple girls turned up in in-line skates, and one lady came with this full body armour suit, because she thought that would make sense for roller derby.

Why is it quad skates only? A lot of it has to do with tradition. People didn’t have in-line skates in 1930s America when the sport was in its infancy, so when some girls in Texas decided they wanted to bring roller derby back in the early noughties, part of the idea was to reinvent the original roller derby and the old school rules, one of which was always play on quads. So it’s a retro thing. Roller blades also go really, really fast. You’d need a bigger track to take advantage of that.

I love the puns and the humour of the skater names. Do you have any favourites? I like two skaters’ names in London Rollergirls. One is Fox Sake. Her number’s 04 so when you call her name out, it’s oh four Fox Sake. The other one I like is Correctional Felicity.

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Photos of London Brawlin’, a London Rollergirls derby team, by Derek Bremner.

Do you find that you use the alternative persona as a way to ‘get your grit on’ when you skate? I’m pretty outgoing and strong in my real persona as well as my derby persona, but there are definitely some girls who are a bit shy and quiet and retiring and it does help them to get into the mindset of being aggressive and forward and strong.

What do your friends and family think about roller derby? They have mixed feelings. Everyone in my family has always been involved in some kind of extreme physical activity. My mum mountain bikes and kayaks, my brother races motorcycles and sports cars, and my grandfather was a sports car racer, so when I found derby they were like, “Ah, that’s your thing! Don’t break anything...” My husband doesn’t really like roller derby, but he knows how much joy it brings me.

Is there anything unexpected you’ve learnt from being a roller girl?

There is a huge amount of support from and for the LGBT community in roller derby. We do feel a real need to be inclusive and supportive of everybody, so maybe people who don’t necessarily feel accepted in other areas think, “I’m going to come and be a part of that.” I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty liberal, educated and open-minded person, but maybe the most unexpected thing that I’ve personally learned is about the struggles of people who have had to live on the edge of mainstream life.

Some people see this contemporary incarnation of roller derby as the ultimate embodiment of third-wave feminism. What do you make of that? I don’t think it started to make a statement about feminism—maybe it is the ultimate embodiment because it’s not trying. We’d be loath to be a poster child for feminism, because the sport means different things to so many different people, but at the same time we are about empowering women, so I don’t think there is anything wrong with claiming that badge and saying, “Hell, yeah, we’re feminists.”

What is the best way to get started as a Rollergirl? Anybody who is interested in derby should get a pair of skates and go out and do some skating, because if what you really need is to learn how to skate, that’s going to take you a long time in a derby context. People should also be aware of what they’re getting into! They should go and see a few games. And if they want to get really hard-core and serious about it, they should prepare their lives for it. When I started, I had a lot of other hobbies and activities, like salsa dancing, and I said, “I’m going to finish that, and now I’m going to do roller derby,” because it does take a lot of time. It’s a full-time hobby.

To find out more about the London Rollergirls or to go and watch one of their tournaments, visit: www.londonrollergirls.com.

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Los Campesinos! were just about to have their portrait taken when a woman pushing a trolley walked past. We thought this minor disturbance suited the band.

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death to los campesinos! when love tries to kill you, turn it into a song words jessica garner, portrait max knight

Gareth and Tom of Los Campesinos! say they’re just regular guys who started a band and caught a break. “We don’t consider ourselves proper musicians,” says Tom. “We’re just seven dickheads in a band who got lucky.”

Few bands give voice to heartfelt teenage angst quite so powerfully.

At their gig in a crowded Camden venue the night before, hundreds of teenagers were singing along to lyrics that told of someone else’s love story, of someone else’s break-up. They didn’t know the people in the songs or the heartbreak behind them, but everyone in the room was singing with so much emotion that it was hard to believe this wasn’t their story.

The music is frenetic, loud and, above all, youthful. The themes of the songs and the fervour with which they are sung capture the spirit of being young: sometimes angry, sometimes bitter and cynical, but always hopeful at the core. The often heart-wrenching lyrics are juxtaposed by a raucous, clamorous sound. Gareth, who is the band’s main lyricist, says, “I think it works best when we’re performing live. The lyrics might typically be suited to something that’s more downbeat, but it’s in our nature as a live band to be raucous and energetic. Some audiences have this real aggression in them that a lot of people find meaning in. It’s cathartic.”

aggression and an unfortunate Dumb and Dumber impersonation. But a little below the surface, there is a depth to Los Campesinos! that is too emotionally raw not to convince of its sincerity.

Their fourth full-length record, Hello Sadness, is a frank, sometimes dark album. Gareth’s lyrics walk the line between moroseness and humour, peppered with a healthy dose of self-deprecation. Gareth has no qualms about unflinching honesty as he writes about moments from past relationships: sometimes tenderly, sometimes scornfully, but always, he insists, from the heart. “It’s the only way I feel I can write,” he explains. “I just write what I feel I need to say, and it is what it is.”

But while this earnest commitment to honesty gives the lyrics such universal resonance, it’s difficult to listen to his songs without feeling that you’re only hearing one side of a story. Every situation he’s written about is true, be it an unrequited crush or a relationship that dragged on for too long. When you’re involved with an artist, perhaps its inevitable that you’ll wind up in their work for better or worse, but one can’t help wondering how the other side feels.

Even after six years of playing shows, Gareth seems genuinely overwhelmed by the passion of their fans: “It’s flattering and entertaining at the same time. When people invest a lot of emotion into our music it’s mind-blowing. We don’t feel as though we’re worth it.”

Gareth replies, “I think the most recent record was particularly difficult in that respect, because it was written all about one relationship and the subsequent break-up. The person it’s about knew what was going to happen. We’d been going out for three years and it was completely obvious I was going to write a record about it. So before the album was released I played it to her and she was very understanding. She said, ‘I don’t like that bit and I don’t like that bit, but I understand why you said it.’ So that was very good.”

The energy on stage is in tune with their youthful followers. Indeed, with their last tour come tales of bar brawls and broken noses. The latter, at least, was an accident. The former they blame on pent-up-tour

He’s never got into real trouble by sharing too much, but there have been some near misses in the past. “There was a really funny incident with a song called We Are Beautiful We Are Doomed,” Gareth says. The

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lyrics are more than blunt about his then-girlfriend’s friends (The lyrics go, “I tell a joke that I’d like to meet them, but they loathe me and I hate them back.”) Gareth describes, “Later her friend came to see us at the gig. I was speaking to her afterwards and she said, ‘That song was amazing, it was brilliant.’ and she totally hadn’t made the connection at all.”

Although the immediacy of his writing might make you feel otherwise, Gareth is too much of a romantic to ever be tempted to pull out a lyrical notebook in the middle of an argument. “I’m not comfortable with the idea of being that kind of person. I always leave writing lyrics until the very last moment, so there’s little time for me to stew over it. When I’m involved in an argument or a break-up, I’m far too idealistic. I think it’ll all work itself out and it won’t matter.”

I wonder if, for Los Campesinos!, listening to their earlier music is a bit like reading through old diary entries: marvelling at your former self, cringeing at a turn of phrase here and an overzealous proclamation of love there. “We sometimes find it a bit awkward and embarrassing.” Tom admits. “But it’s just like looking at an old photo of yourself and seeing how you’ve changed. We were being honest at the time we wrote those songs.”

At an average age of 25 or so, Los Campesinos! show no sign of slowing down yet, but it is difficult to see how their energy and tone could transpose into, say, middle age. “The idea of performing a song like You! Me! Dancing! when we’re thirty is strange to me.” Gareth says. “I’d just feel like an old man trying to be hip. It wouldn’t work. There are probably lyrics in our songs that won’t sound right coming from the mouth of an old man.”

“It would be tragic if we tried to keep writing the same way,” adds Tom, “If we tried to emulate our former selves that would be the worst thing we could do.” The Rolling Stones are still going, he jokes, because they have no choice: “If they give up the band thing, their CVs are going to look pretty shit.”

There is already a marked difference between the Los Campesinos! of six years ago and the band today. Their songs seem calmer, more reasoned. If anything there is less bile and more contemplation. They’re more mature. “I just keep writing about myself,” says Gareth, “So whatever’s happening to me at the time is going to get written about. A lot of people say, ‘Hold on Now Youngster‘s your best album, I wish you could still write songs like that,’ but if we carried on writing songs like that we’d be lying.”

Contrasting vintage objects with contemporary decoration for fashion and textiles, Karen Nicol will inspire you to come up with lavish creations beyond your wildest dreams.

www.acblack.com

J U LY 2012 路 拢30 路 HAR D B AC K

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guy fawkes, I think I’ve heard of him a history of london as imagined by its inhabitants illustration naomi wilkinson, words liz ann bennett The Olympics are upon us, and London resembles a student whose parents are about to visit for the first time: there’s a scrubbing of wine stains, much purchasing of fresh fruit, some frantic airing of windows.

When I was a student, my parents also always wanted to know about the history of the town where I was at uni. (“What’s that building?” “Oh, I dunno. But the cafe down there does an amazing breakfast for £3.50.”)

London’s history? The office shows a derisory handful of guessed dates, so we decided to see if our fellow Londoners fared any better. Our first attempt should perhaps have been more subtle.

Do you know when London was founded? Ha ha ha.

Well, that went well. Perhaps, like us, no one knows very much. Then we spot a woman selling ice cream outside the British Museum.

Do you mind if we ask you a few questions about London? Oh, I’m not sure. Do you know who Jack the Ripper was? Prostitutes, he murdered prostitutes. All along the Embankment, wasn’t it? And who was Guy Fawkes? They burned him on the fire, that’s why we celebrate bonfire night.

The frightening part about the Ripper’s story is that he was never identified, after a series of brutal murders in the slums of Whitechapel. Next, it was time to find out about Guy Fawkes.

What was the plot that Guy Fawkes was involved in? To burn down the houses of Parliament. Why? Because he didn’t like it, I guess! Actually, the idea was that he was a time traveller and he saw his greatgreat-great-great grandson was a struggling fireworks salesman and he thought, “Ah, what we really need here is a national celebration.” So he went back and did that, and this is why. Do you know how he got caught? Was he betrayed by someone, and then caught in the tunnels?

The tunnels under the Houses of Parliament.

Oh, if only that were all true. The lesson from Guy Fawkes is: don’t let anyone leave you in charge of the explosives. He was involved in a Catholic plot to remove the Protestant king James I from the throne in 1605, and met his end when he was found under the House of Lords with enough gunpowder to blow the place sky-high. London cabbies are reputed to be the most knowledgeable people in the city, so when we catch sight of one rolling a cigarette by his cab, we cornered him.

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Do you know what London was first called? Well, Londinium is the Roman name. How about the Great Fire of London, do you know when that happened? Yes, 1666. Do you know where it started? It was a bakery in Pudding Lane. How about Guy Fawkes, what did he do? The story goes he wanted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. But some people think he was just a Catholic who was framed by the Protestant church and that the whole bonfire night is just an anti-Catholic festival.

Do you have a favourite London fact? Do you know why Soho is called Soho? Why? Because it was all hunting grounds, and that was the hunting cry: “So—Ho!” Soho for hunting one animal and tally-ho for something else. I don’t know which animals. That’s great, thank you!

So you don’t know if I got the answers right or not?

No, we didn’t, not exactly. He said plenty more too: a stereotype had just been confirmed and our history knowledge put to shame. The Soho story sounded like it might be apocryphal, though. Next, the Queen’s coronation.

Do you know the story of the Queen’s coronation? I don’t know the story but you should try Google, on the internet. It’s got everything.

He’s not wrong, that’s for sure. Next, we waylay a woman who tells us she’s a retired teacher.

What do you think about the Olympics coming to town? I’m going back to Cornwall for the Olympics. So you don’t want to be here?

No! I don’t blame you. Do you know when the Great Fire of London was? Yes. Hang on, it was James II. No, Charles II! That’s right, Charlie boy, who was a bit naughty. You had the Black Death and the Great Fire. About the middle of the 1600s. It started in Pudding Lane. Do you know where? A baker’s I should think. Which magazine are you? (We show her the magazine.) Oh, comedy! No, ‘Oh Comely.’ It’s a lifestyle magazine. Oh, lifestyle, I’m a bit old for lifestyle. So it’s done by youngsters like you? Yes. Good, good, I’m all for you youngsters.

Her kind words cheer us up no end. We return to the office to google Soho. Google does indeed have everything and the cabbie is right; he is corroborated by the Oxford English Dictionary. West of Wardour Street, which is now the home of an Ann Summers branch and many a chi-chi cafe, used to be hunting grounds. We’re looking forward to passing this on to many a tourist.

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this is not what I expected three writers on the twists i n l i f e ’s t a l e photographs ryan hancock

words lisa jarmin I was a lousy office temp, the despair of my agency. I’d blundered my way through several positions, leaving a trail of botched account books and frozen switchboards in my wake. As a result, they sent me to the worst places on file. I’d just spent a week answering the phone in an office that smelled like ham, and the week before that having my bottom patted by a creepy bloke with a six-figure salary and an alcohol problem.

I did not have high hopes for my new placement, three weeks on reception in a civil engineering office.

‘Reception’ turned out to be a windowless cupboard containing a desk and a phone.

As I climbed over piles of paperwork and wedged myself behind the desk, a bit of plaster fell off the ceiling. Later, I determined that the engineers—eight nervous, tanktop-wearing gentlemen, at least three of whom were called Norman—worked over huge drawing boards in the large room next door.

“Hello,” I called. “I’m here on reception for the next few weeks.” They avoided my eyes and looked busy. Great: three weeks in a miserable, crumbly office with a load of men who were scared of women. At least nobody would grope me this time.

The first few days crawled by in a sea of clock-watching and solitaire. “Morning!” I called as I arrived every day. And “I’ll be going then,” as I left at 5.30. I got a few grunts in return but remained mainly unacknowledged until the morning of day four when I noticed somebody lurking by my office door. It was a Norman.

“Do you like pork?” he asked. “Um, excuse me?” “Pork. Do you like it? Only, I made you a sandwich.” He held out a greaseproof paper package. “So you don’t have to walk into town to get lunch, you see. Must be hellish uncomfortable in high heels. Made the bread myself.”

I took the packet. “That’s… really kind Norman, thank you,” I said, wondering if I dared to eat it. “S’alright,” he said and shuffled away.

Later on, some of the others came into my office to introduce themselves. Some time later, somebody else appeared, blowing the dust off a radio. “Found this in the stock cupboard. Why don’t you put it on? Cheer the place up a bit.”

Over the following days, a stack of magazines, a spider plant and an apple pie that someone’s wife had baked all appeared in my office to make me feel welcome.

Spurred on by this, I brought in a dish of sweets and left them on my desk. Soon, engineers were popping into my little office for a chat and a Quality Street. It was cramped, so I ventured into their room and asked what they were working on.

“Nobody’s ever been interested before,” they said, and showed me how to fold plans and use the reprographics machine. One of them talked me through what the plans meant. I didn’t understand, but I liked being included and the soothing action of folding the large sheets of paper.

By my second week, I was one of the team. I helped them where I could, binding booklets and packaging proposals up, kicking off my shoes so I could run back and forth to my room to answer the phone. The engineers remained quiet and reserved, but were not averse to singing along to Van Morrison on the radio and weren’t too shy to tease me. On Fridays we sat in the park eating fish and chips in the sunshine and

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talking about the weekend ahead. They were interesting men once you got to know them, tank tops or not.

On my last day, I took in plates full of cakes as a thank you to them all, although it didn’t feel like enough. Not only did they give a glowing report about me to my agency, ensuring no more dodgy temp placements, they also taught me a lot about books and covers and the importance of baked goods in the workplace.

words jane elson I lied the day I stuck my hand up in assembly. I was eight and had just sat for an hour with cramped crossed legs listening to the old man on stage talk about being old and the sponsored swim for Help the Aged. I wanted to help him. It did not seem as if it was very nice to be old.

“I’ll do it,” I shouted waving my hand in the air. “Can you swim two lengths?” asked my teacher. Doubt was heavy in every syllable. “Yes, Miss,” I said looking straight at her.

I had only ever swum a width. I was not good at sport. Being skinny with no coordination and asthma did not help. I was the one no one ever picked for their netball team, the one always last in the egg and spoon race.

I took the form home. That night in bed I heard my dad come in from the pub drunk. I sneaked to the top of the stairs and watched. He was waving my sponsor form in the air, laughing. It was full. “I told them she couldn’t swim, told them she would never make it.” My mum was furious. A few of his friends had sponsored me, believing that they would not have to cough up much, but most of the form was filled with strangers. Strangers there for the night passing through the pub for a quick drink, strangers who would never pass through again. “You realise you will have to pay all this money yourself, don’t you?” she screamed. “Oh, stop moaning,” he shouted. “It won’t be much.

She can’t swim.”

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The day of the sponsored swim came. I felt sick. I changed into my blue swimming costume. It was two swimmers to a lane. I was sharing with Patricia, a rich girl who lived in a house with gates round it, guarded by a greyhound. She did not talk to me at school, never picked me for her team. She did not look pleased to be sharing a lane with me. The whistle was blown. Patricia did a spectacular dive and shot into the distance with her powerful front crawl. I held my nose and jumped in to the cold chlorinated water. I started to doggy paddle and then ventured into a timid breast stroke.

Patricia shot past me on her way back down the pool, splashing stinging water into my eyes.

I turned onto my back and kicked my legs to give my arms a rest. I watched Patricia reach the side after her two lengths. She got out, not waving goodbye.

My head bumped the side. I had swum my first length. Now for the second. As I had the lane to myself I started to experiment with different ways of moving through the water, sometimes just wriggling my body like a fish. I reached the end of the pool. I had swum two lengths. I was not a liar after all, it seemed.

I looked up at the spectator gallery. My mum was cheering. My dad looked shocked.

Then something kicked in me. I did not get out. I carried on swimming. I could not feel my arms any more. My legs were like weights, but up and down I swum. Up and down.

My eyes stung. I swallowed water. I felt sick, but up and down I swum.

My dad stood up and shouted from the gallery, “Get out of the pool! Get out!”

I ignored him. I felt like a person who people picked first for their teams, not last. After my tenth length the coast guard lifted me out of the pool. My skin was white and wrinkly like the old man’s. People were clapping. On the way home we laughed at my dad. He would have to pay £150 out of his own pocket, the money that the strangers had promised. He was very quiet.

A few days later, I looked Miss straight in her scornful eyes when I handed in my dad’s cheque with the sponsor form. “I swam ten lengths, Miss,” I said. The old man smiled at me as he handed me my certificate. I was glad I had lied.

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words kate fridkis It’s been over three years since I got a nose job. Honestly, I can’t remember what month it was. Sometime during the summer.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember how much I hated my face. Enough to lie asleep while someone hacked it open. Enough to show up for the surgery even after my dad watched a live special on rhinoplasty and described it in horrifying detail to me. (“And then there’s just this giant hole in the middle of your face because they flip the skin back, after they cut the piece, you know that little piece in between your nostrils? That one.”) It’s hard to remember how badly I wanted to look different. I was casual about it. I played it cool. “It’s just something I need to do, you know?” But sometimes when I was alone, I would look in the mirror and cry because I hated my face so much. It felt unfair. So many other girls got a regular nose. And then they had regular faces. Why me? Seriously, God, what the hell?

And then I got the nose job and, well, it didn’t really make a difference. “This has only happened to me one other time,” the surgeon told me apologetically, explaining that something had gone wrong. Instead of my face being fantastically transformed, it was just slightly rearranged. Now my nose is a little crooked in places it didn’t use to be. It’s a little thinner at the bridge.

But I don’t think about it so much any more. Except when someone posts a picture of me on facebook and the flash creates strange, imaginative shadows on my nose that emphasise its largeness and crookedness in new and fantastic ways. Then I am momentarily devastated. And then I move on.

Like everything about the way I look (at least to myself ), my nose is complicated. My face is complicated. It’s different in every photo. It’s occasionally perfect and striking.

It’s occasionally, when reflected in the window of a parked car I’m walking past and, inevitably, the dark windows of the F train, hopelessly proportioned. But the hate has been dulled over the years. Maybe all that emotion was tiring. It slid down, anyhow, to other parts of me. “Oh no,” I moaned. “My arms! And why is my neck so short?” But I

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never reserved the same bitterness for other places on my body. My face felt like me.

And then the other night, in the bathroom of a little restaurant, I caught myself looking hard at myself and, without thinking, I said, “This is it.” I was talking about my face.

This is it.

This is how I look. Bumps and complications—a history of violence just under the skin, hints of my great grandmother, who escaped Austria during a time when soldiers with pitchforks were stabbing the bales of hay in wagons at checkpoints, in case there were hidden Jews underneath. Her husband found her stunningly beautiful. Based on the photos, she was unphotogenic like me. This is how I look: an unusual combination of ideas, sometimes a turtleneck works really well, sometimes make up does, sometimes it doesn’t. This is the face that will age with me. This is the face that my children will get some of, whether they like it or not. This face is a legacy. It’s a battlefield. It’s totally ordinary. It’s full of surprises. It’s completely unique.

“And it’s fine,” I said to my face in the mirror. This is it. And it’s fine.

That moment has been a long time coming. Actually, it came so quietly, I didn’t hear its approach. But I didn’t miss it. And I remembered other times, years ago, when I stood in my parents’ bathroom, staring into the wide mirror behind the sink, and thinking that my face was anything but fine. It was the opposite of fine. It was a nightmare that fine had when fine was attacked in a dark alleyway, drugged and tied up in the basement of a nondescript house in an expressionless suburb somewhere the police would never even think to look.

Not anymore. Because, as much as we struggle against ourselves and diet and gain it back and put on make-up and change our hair and wish we could be reborn in a different body that looks somehow exactly like Minka Kelly and say, “I don’t care,” even when we secretly care, and if sometimes we even get cosmetic surgery, ultimately, this is it. And really, it is fine.

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the second life of crispian mills a nineties rock star turned film director words jason ward, portraits andrew urwin

Crispian Mills has been alright for a while. “I’m not fighting against myself,” he says. Polite and thoughtful, if a little wary, he concedes that this wasn’t always the case. “I was pretty delinquent at fifteen, sixteen, and I spun out on a whole tangent. I was in love with music and that’s what drove me mad.”

We’re here to talk about Crispian’s directorial and script-writing debut, A Fantastic Fear of Everything. A funny, peculiar, very British film, it stars and is co-produced by Simon Pegg. The film tells the story of a paranoid children’s book author who is convinced that death lurks behind every corner. At nearly forty, this is Mills’ second high profile career.

After his teenage years had passed in an intoxicated fug, Crispian gathered some friends together and formed a band in 1993. It’s not an unusual story, but the difference from all of the other music-obsessed youths doing the same thing is that the band was called Kula Shaker and within three years of forming they’d become one of the biggest groups in the country, with their debut album K selling over a million copies and echoing the success of bands like Oasis and Blur. Crispian was 23 at the time and famous almost overnight.

“I didn’t enjoy being successful. I appreciated that I was lucky and that it was rare and all of that, but personally I didn’t enjoy it because I had a very idealistic relationship with music and being in a band. I wanted a band of brothers, an extended family.” In the face of sudden popularity, Crispian became instantly nostalgic. “The happiest times we had were during the struggle. We struggled together for about three years,

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Crispian’s self-portrait has the words “Aum sweet aum.” Aum is an ancient mystical sound of Sanskrit origin.

which felt like thirty at that age. When we became successful it happened quite quickly—within a year of being signed—and the pressure interfered with the relationships, with the joy we had of just being in a band.”

Crispian describes the situation as if success had taken something away from them, turning what was a private joy into a business. Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone who feels that their first record,“ was really a little film,” he particularly resents the music videos the band were pushed into making at top speed. “We made possibly the worst videos of any band at that time. They were the heart of the series of disappointments of being in a band. You want to have great videos and they’re terrible, and you suddenly feel like you’re losing a grip on your passion. It’s being presented by other people now, not by you.”

Suddenly the band were making money for people, and their record label had a vested interest in their future. Crispian explains, “As you fight to take control, you fight to break out of a certain straitjacket that you’ve allowed yourself to be put in unwittingly, or a straitjacket that you’ve woken up and found yourself in. Trying to wriggle out of that is very difficult, and you can end up self-destructing in the process.

Which is what I did.”

Kula Shaker’s self-destruction came in the form of a front page exposé in the Independent on Sunday about comments that Crispian had made about wanting to have swastikas on stage. Mills later clarified that he’d been referring to them in the context of his long-standing

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love of Indian mysticism, of which they are an ancient symbol, and that he was totally opposed to Nazism. However, the damage was done.

The spiralling result was that the band’s next album barely made the top ten. Crispian carried on producing music for a few years, but the moment had passed.

In a way, he feels that Kula Shaker’s demise happened at just the right time: “Somebody said to me once that becoming a man is really difficult, hard work. You don’t just suddenly grow hair on your chest and that’s it. It’s a long struggle. It was important to hear that because I was finding it really difficult. I was about to be thirty and it was like my own little secret that I still felt like a kid.”

Now nearly forty, he has what seems like a wryly-amused detachment from his past, as if it all happened to someone else. Crispian is reflective about the dramatic rise and fall of Kula Shaker: “That’s the music business. You get young people, pump them up, chuck them out into the colosseum and see what happens. It’s an invaluable life experience, if you survive it.”

As Crispian’s music career wound down and his options narrowed, he rediscovered a love of cinema: “It upset me when I realised I wanted to make films. I was conscious that there was a huge apprenticeship that I’d missed out on when I was doing music.” He spent the following decade writing scripts that were almost made or that never got close.

It was a morale-sapping process, in which scripts would be quietly canned without the writers even being told.

Crispian says, “In hindsight it was a pretty good experience to get battered like that. What was comforting in the last year or so was realising

that there’s an amazing amount of experience, knowledge and skill that you can apply from music into film, and that’s actually quite invaluable: tempo and pace and editing.”

Simon Pegg has a theory about Crispian’s first career. He posits that Crispian’s time in Kula Shaker was “a rebellion against what would inevitably be his calling”. Crispian doesn’t shoot the idea down: “I think it was an unconscious rebellion. Maybe I would have been more open to being honest about how much I loved films if I hadn’t associated it with the family.”

It’s understandable that Crispian’s family once cast a shadow over his youthful ambitions. The son of actress Hayley Mills and director Roy Boulting, as well as the grandson of John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell, filmmaking has been the family business for so long that it’s not surprising that Crispian would want to establish himself in his own right. “When you’re fifteen or sixteen you want to find out who you are, separate to them, don’t you? That’s the important thing. But as you get older you realise there’s so much more. You’re partly a product of that heritage. So you join up the dots.”

Crispian has now come full circle: in the middle of shooting A Fantastic Fear of Everything, his mother visited him, and pointed out the soundstage they were using was the same one on which she’d met his father whilst making a film called The Family Way at the age of twenty. He seems to be at peace with the idea. “It’s all part of the same experience of being young and wanting to be your own person. You find your rebellion. You’re fighting against the man, and that can be your family, or it can be your record company, or it can be your manager. But really you’re just fighting yourself.”

Throughout the summer take part in hands-on workshops. Make a bespoke A line skirt, create a hand-painted scarf, learn to hand stitch, or work with photographers to develop your skills.

Find out more and book online at www.vam.ac.uk/workshops Victoria and Albert Museum

Telephone Call, Naomi Ryder

Make Something Beautiful

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beyond cartography

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underneath the sofa and other imaginary maps maggie li’s map above is an imaginary arrangement of real romantically-themed street names

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illustration william grill

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illustration marisa seguin

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illustration charlotte trounce

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a fear of garden fences I can’t help yearning for open skies words kate fridkis photos tina sosna

I am a dreamer. I want big things. I want gorgeous settings. I am idealistic and impractical. I am old enough to know better, so I don’t think I will ever know better.

I want to be famous. I don’t want to be famous and get invited to all the best penthouse parties and know all the names of the owners of the sexiest clubs. I don’t want fame to follow me outside, into the street. I want to be a famous writer. I want people to read my words and disappear briefly inside them. That’s what happened to me as a kid, reading fantasy novels. I slipped inside another world. I want to do that for people.

I tried being practical. At fifteen, I got my first serious job. I worked through college.

For a while, I was making more money than all of my friends. I was a little smug about it: when a guy who liked me bragged about how much he made at his job, repairing computers, and I made more. Don’t say anything, I thought. I only considered Ivy League grad schools, and I got into the one my professors wanted for me. There was a straight, groomed path, and I was on it, and I was going to take my degrees out into the world and knock on a bunch of impressive doors with them, and things would fall into place. And then I couldn’t.

Three internships, at a desk wedged in a corner with no windows in sight, a job, commuting to work in a car with a guy who kept talking about his penis—how amazing his penis was. It was the most amazing one ever. He was almost positive. Working for organisations that were trying to improve the world in little, gradual ways. I was the irresponsible one. I wanted to change the world myself. I couldn’t adjust. I couldn’t believe that after everything, this was the way life would go. That after all of the adventures that played out in my head, this would be the reality.

The smallness of life scares me. The trip back and forth to the ShopRite. I am scared of small yards with fences around them. This is where your life stops, the fence says to me. Right here, by the swell of the septic tank, up against the back of the neighbour’s flaking grey shed. This is it. When I write about my friends who are moving to the suburbs, it’s not so much the house, but the borders that bother me. It makes me angry.

Why don’t I want the things that other people want? Why don’t I even like them? I don’t like House. Or The Office.

Sometimes I think everything I want started when I was eight or so, when all I did was read. Once I found a book that I loved more than every other book. It was the story of two kingdoms at war. The humans and the demons. The demons were a species that lived in caves, the humans lived above ground. The human princess was a fiery, opinionated young woman who sneaked outside the gates of the castle and met a young, furry, short demon man who thought that war was unnecessary. They fell in love. And then his people found out what he was up to, and tortured him. And just at the last moment, the princess rushed in and rescued him. I think they lived happily ever after, but more than that I remember the look in his eyes when he saw her, her hair streaming behind her, exploding into the underground chamber where he was being held captive.

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I read the book once and then returned it. Later, I couldn’t remember the title. I combed through the shelves in the enormous public library. Week after week. The title was his name. I thought his name started with an X, or maybe it was a Y. Or a Z. I never found it. My life’s goal is to write a book that good. I want to write a book for my eight-year-old self to read. I want to write her perfect book.

Maybe I shouldn’t have read so much as a child. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone into the forest and pretended, alone for hours and hours, that I was a powerful mage. That I was a human princess who loved a forbidden demon man. Maybe then I would have had more practical goals. Maybe then I wouldn’t have stood at the edge of Morningside Park, by the statue of some old dude who no one cares about anymore, at the end of grad school, and said, out loud and with total conviction: “No.” I wouldn’t have decided to do something immature and ridiculous and which was impossible to respect by the people who would later ask me what I was doing with my life and then smile blankly and look awkward when I told them. I wouldn’t have taken a huge risk despite not being a risk-taker. Despite being cautious rather than bold and hesitant rather than cool and anxious rather than confident. I wouldn’t have decided to start again, after all that work. To write all the time, instead of doing something that would involve real money and the possibility of promotion and the security of social status and the hard-headed realism that separates so many successful people from people like me. From people who dream and dream and stubbornly refuse to wake up.

This is all very confusing. I don’t know who to aspire to be. The people I admire most are happy people who have never done anything that will end up in a history book and don’t care, and also the people who click automatically onto that tight, greased track that you ride at the top of the world. But really, no one, not even those people, is remembered by history.

Once, a couple years ago, across the country from here, my partner and I sat on a stone bench on the crest of a tall hill overlooking everything, and we talked about life. “No one is ever famous enough to be remembered forever,” I said. A hawk wheeled by in the wide blue sky, and then sank, thoughtless and hungry and deceptively gentle, towards the trees that carpeted the floor of the world. “Who is ever remembered?” I said. “Like, five people, and we don’t really know their stories. There’s something about a cherry tree. There’s something about a kite and a key. And no one can even spell Gandhi.”

“I think we should just let ourselves be temporary,” he said. “That’s the great thing about life—we don’t have to hold onto things. We can’t even do it when we try. We should just think about being whatever we need to be next. And then one day we’ll die and it’s over, and you never have to worry

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about anything again.” “That’s the terrible thing about life,” I said. “You can’t really ever make a difference.”

But for some reason, it didn’t feel so terrible. It felt a little like a relief. I won’t be remembered. Thank God. Because if it was really a possibility, then I’d have to try to be perfect all the time, so that the best of me lasted. But instead, I want to write and write: little books about girls who fall in forbidden love in a world where there are no fences and no litter. And definitely no septic tanks, but also some secret, potentially magical form of plumbing that makes it non-gross.

So maybe my dreams are smaller than I think. Maybe they are more practical. Maybe this ferocious struggle I wake up inside of every day—the effort to figure out what I should be doing and the old, sour fear that I made the wrong decision—maybe that’s just looking through the wrong end of the telescope. My life is bigger than that. There are mountains in the distance, and the ocean, and I am going to follow my stupid, incessant dream right up to it.

Sometimes life isn’t about failure or success or one path or the other. It’s not about doing the right thing or being remembered or the title you have or don’t have or whether or not you got the degrees you were supposed to or if those degrees opened the right doors. It’s about what you are, fundamentally, underneath all of that. And I am a writer who needs to write a book about a girl who lives in a big, open world. I am a goddamn dreamer.

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Self-portrait by Rebecca Night

tears in the laundry basket rebecca night’s acting debut came early words jason ward, portrait liz seabrook

When Rebecca Night was five, her mum found her sitting in a washing basket, crying her eyes out. “She asked me what was wrong, and I said ‘My mum’s dead! My mum’s dead! A train has hit my mum!’ And she replied ‘No, I’m your mum, it’s fine.’ It took ages to get me to snap out of it.”

There was no way that Night was going to become anything other than an actress: the odd one out at a particularly academic school, by the age of thirteen she had already ordered prospectuses for drama schools. “Being someone else was really fun,” she says. “It was a place to escape to, not that I had much to escape from. I remember going away to Sheffield with my mum, and the whole time I was a spy—I had an earpiece. She would say I was too old for it and I’d say ‘No, I’m a spy!’”

For Rebecca, her imagination was a way to transform everything around her. “It was a confidence thing, maybe. I was always either really shy or really bold. I was obsessed with puppets. I was an only child, so I created my own world, I suppose.”

Rebecca is enthusiastic and warm, qualities which have seeped through to her performances, making a fresh Fanny Hill in the BBC4 adaptation and a beguilingly steely Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest. Her latest role is a pregnant 23-year-old in Starlings, a heartwarming comedy drama about an extended family living in the same overcrowded house.

The first episode begins with the daunting scene of her character giving birth. “Half the country is sitting there saying, ‘I’ve done this. That’s not what it’s like.’ You want to get it right. I don’t know what it’s like, and I can’t imagine how painful it is. But I think the scene was made easier by everyone pretending together. Lesley Manville was touching my forehead with a cloth and comforting me, and there were genuine

midwives in the room. Everyone was really going for it, so I couldn’t shy away. You have to take a leap of imagination.”

If anything, it sounds like the research was the more nerve-wracking part of the process. “I went to a bookshop and ventured into the New Mother section. I didn’t want any of my friends to see me—I was afraid they’d get the wrong idea. I came home with this book called Breastfeeding and Mothers, and made sure I wrote all over it in marker pen, ‘Research!’ in case that my husband saw it and thought, ‘What’s that?’”

Rebecca’s breakout role was the eighteenth-century prostitute Fanny Hill in an adaptation of the eponymous novel, appearing in every scene and carrying the weight of the drama on her shoulders. Rebecca’s portrayal was both coquettish and knowing, tender and strong. “I was so lucky because the character went on such a journey, from a northern, working girl to a society lady by the end. It’s great to have an interesting character, but there’s something about being in every day and being able to really get your teeth into something.”

The part was a striking one, and soon Rebecca found herself offered lots of period pieces. “I was in a corset for a while. I was in The Importance of Being Earnest, and then Lark Rise to Candleford, and then Wuthering Heights. But the parts were very different, and they were interesting women to play.”

These days Rebecca finds herself firmly in the present with Starlings, and a starring role in Mike Figgis’ new film Suspension of Disbelief coming up. But part of her misses the effect of the corset. “It instantly affects your movement, it affects what you can eat, and it makes you feel a certain way. Just dressing up, you can feel, ‘I’m playing now.’

And coming back at the end of the day and getting into your regular clothes, you think, ‘Oh, I’ve had a transformation today.’”

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the flower appreciation society ellie jauncey and anna day are not your average florists interview olivia wilson, portrait jamie stoker

We liked the sound of the Flower Appreciation Society right from hearing the name. There was a ring to it that seemed to say that florists Ellie Jauncey and Anna Day were doing something rather interesting. Indeed, the pair use native British flowers, a surprisingly rare find among florists, and eschew formal arrangements for natural ones that let the flowers just be flowers. For all their creative prowess, Ellie and Anna are a down-to-earth pair. Anna is training to be a midwife, and Ellie runs a EDE, a clothing label of handmade knitwear in simple, traditional-inspired shapes. As seemed only natural, we collaborated with The Flower Appreciation Society on the shoot, which is on page 62.

Tell us about how you came to set up the Flower Appreciation Society.

Anna: Before we met, I did a floristry course for a year and I was really uninspired. It was just unimaginative: putting plastic polyester ribbons around heart-shaped carnations, really old school floristry. I realised by the end that what I like about flowers is just being. You don’t need to manipulate them.

Have you always loved flowers?

Ellie: Not at all. Flowers have been a huge part of my life, but I used to be so scared at the thought of arranging flowers in a vase. I didn’t connect with them. I was very aware of them, but it made me feel nervous.

freezer lorry have been force-grown. They don’t smell, a lot of them.

English flowers actually smell. It’s like fruit.

I’d love to hear about your experiences at flower markets.

Ellie: It’s such a funny thing going to the market. You wake up at six in the morning and you’re exhausted and in the winter it’s dark and just awful but you come away feeling really happy because you have spent an hour and a half surrounded by millions of flowers, which is great.

The men are also so brilliant, they are such characters. There is a fiftyyear-old man called Derek who I’ve got a crush on. He wears a leather gilet and he’s got a bright red nose. He’s not attractive, but there is something about him and I just love him. It’s so weird. I’ve got to sort it out, actually.

Anna: The foliage guys outside make us a mug of tea when we arrive.

It’s a tough, tough job for them, and we like supporting them.

Is a scented bouquet important to you? Do you think about that?

Ellie: Scent it’s really important It is always really depressing when you give someone a bouquet and they always smell it and it doesn’t smell.

Anna: The peony would be the most perfect flower if it had a beautiful scent. It is such a shame.

Ellie: It smells like a fish when it dies. That is a sorry death. It’s awful.

Anna: I always loved having flowers around. I lived in Barcelona for a year and I was so poor, sometimes I would try and buy one flower a week for my room.

Ellie: That’s heartbreaking.

Anna: It was lilies, which now we don’t use very much, but you get so much life out of them. They have the smell and they last a week if not longer. I’d go to the market and buy my one lilly and keep it in an old wine bottle in my room.

You’re not very traditional florists. What’s given you the confidence to go your own way?

Ellie: We both love wild things looking really natural and wild.

You’ve said you like to use British flowers and those in season. Why is that? Is it an environmental or an aesthetic thing?

Ellie: Flowers that have come from half the way across the world in a

What do you feel about the short life of cut flowers?

Ellie: Some flowers die really badly, but some are amazing in the dying process. Have you ever watched a bright pink peony? You get it shut and then it opens. It starts off pink and then it basically bleaches out and turns cream and that’s incredible. When I walk into a house and the flowers are dead, I’m like, “Get them out!” whereas other people don’t even notice. It irritates me that no one else is in tune with it.

Would it be difficult for someone to buy you a bunch a flowers?

Anna: Ellie made me the most beautiful bouquet for my birthday last year. I still think about that bunch of flowers. I think people are really terrified of buying for us. One of my sweet little cousins came round for dinner and bought me a bunch of flowers the other day. It was carnations and something else wrapped up in foil and it was just so, so ugly it was almost perfect. It was really nice to get them because you forget just how nice it is to get flowers when you are doing it all the time for other people.

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shirt: sister jane / flower: coral charm peony

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dress me with peonies

photography liz seabrook styling lucĂ­a silva model mikaela carlĂŠn | m + p models flowers the flower appreciation society

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tunic: lala berlin / flower: delphinium

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top: evil twin / shirt: sister jane / flower: lilac

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shirt: maarten van der horst / belt: beyond retro / flower: camelia

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blazer: monki / shirt: cos / flower: wild garlic

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shirt and dress: beyond retro / flower: peony

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shirt: lala berlin / flower: hydrangea

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blouse: beyond retro / skirt: american apparel

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summer, with a chance of rain

photography max knight styling adelaide turnbull model olivia hull | oxygen models

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dress: vero moda / top: brora

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blouse: vero moda / jumper: urban outfitters / shorts: pyrus

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shirt: element eden / shorts: beyond retro / jacket: agnes b

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shirt: vero moda / skirt: beyond retro / jacket: all saints / necklace: l’orangerie

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paper and pen sketchbooks by yelena bryksenkova interview laura callaghan

Yelena is an illustrator who was born in Saint Petersburg and raised in Ohio. She shared her sketchbooks with us and explained what they mean to her.

I keep a sketchbook to organise my visual experiences and to process emotional reactions to beautiful objects, places, people, ideas or words. A sketchbook serves as a visual catalogue of things I find overwhelmingly beautiful or moving, so that I don’t have to be in a constant state of unrest about them. It’s like giving those sudden notions a home where I know they’ll be safely preserved.

My trusty tools of the trade include an old box of Leningrad cake watercolors, a .005 micron pen, Holbein gouache, a tube of Windsor & Newton watercolour in Payne’s Gray, Daler Rowney pro white opaque watercolour and a handful of tiny brushes. I carefully tape off the borders even in my sketchbook, draw with pencil, then outline in pen, and finally paint over the drawing.

The painted horses here are examples of a traditional Russian folk handicraft called the Dymkovo toy. They are made of clay and cheerfully painted with tempera and sometimes gold leaf. They have a very specific smell, which is nostalgic for me. These days, when you can buy nesting dolls in any subway underpass in Russia, I like to imagine a time when peasants would spend the long winters whittling, moulding and embroidering all sorts of beautiful things to amuse themselves and their children. The Dymkovo toys are one of the few folk crafts that haven’t fallen into banality.

I only have about four or five sketchbooks, as well as a bunch of loose pieces of paper on which I sketch out preliminary drawings for final illustrations. The sketchbook from my time in Prague holds the fondest memories. It was a beautiful time in my life and because my days there were numbered, I made an effort to make each one count. I treasure the sketchbook because it contains all of my sometimes happy, sometimes melancholy self-reflection from those days.

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sitting next to history remarkable encounters can happen when you least expect it words caroline o’donoghue illustration laura callaghan Let me be the first to say that a sick day is not the best day to know me. One morning I woke up at six, unable to swallow or talk without stabbing throat pain. I called in sick and spent the rest of the day whining. I whined on Twitter, I whined on Facebook. I whined in text messages to my mother, my boyfriend and my sister. I whined when no GP would see me because I had never bothered to register with a doctor. I whined because the doctor at the drop-in refused to give me any decent prescription medication, and I whined because it rained the whole time.

On the way home, I get on the bus and sit next to a man who is anywhere between a well-preserved eighty or a hard-living 65. He is wearing a hat and an overcoat, and when he starts talking to me, the first thing I tell him is how great I think his hat is. I’m telling the truth. It’s one of those soft trilby numbers. Old men get away with hats in a way men under sixty can never hope to achieve. Hats are a serious item of clothing, and when a man who hasn’t earned the right to be serious wears one, he looks like an utter plonker.

This man wears his hat in a way that implies he knows when to take it off as the situation requires: when a lady walks into a room, when someone is playing bagpipes. We start to talk. Like all older English people, he is amused by the idea of me. “I know an Irish girl when I hear one!” he says, but what he’s really saying is, “We used to own you, you know!

Troublesome lot, you!” I do not take this personally.

“Do you like Peckham?” he asks. For readers who do not live in south London, know this: nobody likes Peckham. There are nice bits, sure, but it’s the kind of place that Londoners italicise when they’re talking about it. “I’ve lived here my whole life,” he says proudly. “Well, except for during the war years.”

The war years. This is what’s so great about English elderly people. Because Ireland never officially fought in a war (aside from the War of Independence, of course, which I think is recognised by the rest of the world as a strop on our part), all they have to talk about are some grizzly tales about being dicked around by the Brits. By contrast, every old English person I talk to seems keen to tell me about the jolly time they had fighting Nazis in Snoopy’s plane, and this dude is no exception.

Then, suddenly: “I spent three years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.” A pause. “I’m sorry, what?” I say. “After the war. Three years. I worked on the railroad. In Burma? You know the railroad? You heard of that?” I reply, “Yes, I think so.” “That was us. We helped build that.”

Another long, terrible pause. At this point, I notice that my stop is getting incredibly close, and if I want to get off, I’m going to have to stand up right now. I can’t, though, because that would mean asking a man who at one point in his life spent three years in a Japanese POW camp, to stop talking about it. In that moment, it seemed like the rudest thing I could possibly do.

“And... How was that... for you?” I ask. My old friend shrugs. “Fine.” I can’t believe this. Of course, I know these things happened. I know that people suffer through awful things during war, and I know that a lot of them live to tell the tale. But what I cannot get my head around is the idea that this nice old man riding the bus with me and the man who spent a chunk of his life being forced to build a railroad are the same person. And here he is, talking about it like it ain’t no thing. He is saying the words, “I spent three years in a Japanese p-o-w camp,” like people of my generation say, “I dyed my hair red once.”

My stop has come and gone. I stay on the bus for ten more minutes, while we eat chocolate raisins and talk about the railroad. When I do get up, he kisses my hand in that exaggerated way people do when they know they won’t ever see you again. “It’s nice,” he says, “it’s always nice to have a little chat.” I do not complain about being sick for at least another five hours.

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a grandad odyssey and other tales

adventures from the laboratory of experimental tourism

The Laboratory of Experimental Tourism, Latourex, isn’t a laboratory at all. It’s a society whose aim is to see things afresh, whether you travel the world or step outside your back door. The French journalist Joël Henry began the society when he started to mischievously invent tour themes to subvert the standard guide. He wanted to prompt travellers to escape tourist traps by playing a game with the places they visited.

We couldn’t wait to test his ideas: pretending to be a tourist in your home town, spending 48 hours in an airport and visiting a neighbour’s house for a bath.

We sent out some intrepid travellers with a camera and a notebook and here’s what they came back with. As you’ll see, while Latourex began to prod the plane-hopper away from the Eiffel Tower, its best secret is that you can become a tourist again in your own life. A wrong turn down a familiar street can open out into a view you’ve never seen before.

All the challenges we tried are from the Latourex website, except Grandad Travel. You’ll find plenty more ideas from www.latourex.org. We’ll also be featuring more adventures on www.ohcomely.co.uk/blog.php over the summer months.

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how to be a tourist in your home town words and photos beccy shore My instructions: Explore a place following the suggestions of the locals. Do exactly what they say. Try doing this in your home town, on the pretence that you are a foreigner.

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I live in Aberystwyth, halfway down the Welsh coast. It is technically a tourist town, but most people who live here seem perplexed by why anyone would want to visit. It is beautiful, but strange. The local museum once had an exhibition on toilets. The town has had a cliff railway since 1896, but only got its first escalator in 2011. I’ve lived here for nearly four years, and yet I’ve never done most of the touristy things because I’ve always had essays to write and bar shifts to show up for, and this seemed a good excuse.

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Aberystwyth’s Royal Pier. It was longer in the 1850s, but a storm damaged the end.

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Every holiday starts with a journey! Walking into town, in our case. When you’re coming from the university campus on the hill, it looks as though the sea is higher than the town.

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The opportunity has come up for a sailing lesson. I have only been sailing once, ever. I hoped I wouldn’t fall in. I would have taken pictures out in the boat but I was scared of losing the camera.

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Ultra Comida, a delicatessen specialising in Spanish, French and Welsh food. A good place to fritter away time and money.

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Aberystwyth Bay. Sometimes, you see dolphins here. On that day, the university took photos for their prospectus.

The rest of the time it looks like this. In the distance is Constitution Hill. Some of my crueller friends enjoy telling freshers that there is a Pizza Hut on top.

We were seduced by the bright lights of the machines at the amusement arcade. We started with 107 pennies. We finished with 23 pennies, and a small pack of Love Hearts, which was quite awkward.

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Nick, my fellow ‘trepid traveller, in one of those Victorian-style sheltered benches on the sea front. The third love heart said ‘relax’, which was more pragmatic advice than I’m used to getting from Love Hearts.

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The castle! Mostly kids skive off school and smoke here.

In the summer, day-trippers have picnics here. Our picnic consisted of a cigarette for Nick and a stick of chewing gum for me.

------For one of us (Nick) this was actually a holiday of sorts. I tried to get a picture of him waving goodbye but he turned camera shy. Aberystwyth is the last stop on a train line which only runs trains every two hours. They were going to film a zombie film here once. That didn’t happen.

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have a bath at a friend’s house words and photos olivia wilson My instructions: Citing an invented burst water pipe or lack of hot water, invite yourself to take a bath at the house of a friend. Take with you all of the equipment that you would use in a spa: soap, shampoo, towel, bath-robe, relaxing music, seaweed scrub, champagne.

I love baths. I often have them to relax and unwind, but I hadn’t anticipated quite how odd it would feel in someone else’s house. Family bathrooms are rather personal places, full of the people who use them. In my Aunty Liz’s bathroom, I was never quite comfortable. That said, her bathroom really is lovely. There were aromas of incense and candles dotted about. I liked that, and so did my duck, Wilma. She shared none of the same anxieties as me.

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Into the car to drive over to the next town to my aunt’s house.

All packed up and ready to go, waiting by the door. I was very organised, taking something for every eventuality. I even took different smelling soaps and a radio.

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-Arrived! Waiting patiently for Aunty Liz to answer the door.

Painting my nails while the water ran. I should have waited until after, but I’d already started so I carried on.

Two coats as well. It was a very long time filling up, but I did want it right to the top and full of bubbles.

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Leaving a little note to say thank you: ‘I love baths’.

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The remaining foam left pretty patterns.

I’ve never stayed here, but I’ve always liked her bathroom. It’s homely and filled with plants and there are hearts on the walls.

Knobbly knees!

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spend 48 hours in an airport words and photos sarah bunce My instructions: Spend 48 hours in an airport without getting on a plane. Enjoy the comfortable lounges, the different washing facilities, the shops and the various eateries. Watch people skip through to the departure lounge and let your eyes glaze over as you peruse the ever-changing departures board.

I love the anonymity that comes with an airport, and that special airport feeling. I imagine it’s something like living in a department store—another dream of mine—with all the stuff already there. My boyfriend absolutely loves airports, but hates flying, so I decided to take him along with me. The lesson learned from Airport Travel is that airports are for going through, not for staying in! Having said that, it definitely was an adventure.

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The moving walkways never loose their appeal, no matter how old you get! It felt so weird going to the airport knowing we weren’t going on holiday.

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We set up camp and picked the places we’d go on the departure board. Liam chose Hong Kong and I chose Venice or Amsterdam.

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Around 1 am the place filled up, like a rough youth hostel. Turns out sleeping in an airport isn’t comfy!

The lights don’t go out and there was a warning about letting children play on the luggage trollies played about every half an hour. I ate a chocolate bar and a pack of yum yums around 5 am.

Breakfast! Well, one of the places we could’ve gone. We actually ended up in the Wetherspoons when we went to look around the South Terminal.

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We spent way too much money on food and drink. I’m hoping a hot choc will help me sleep tonight—these chairs aren’t the comfiest ever.

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--------------------------If you stand at the front of the shuttle between terminals and cup your hands around your eyes it’s like you’re flying! By this time breakfast was brunch. The South Terminal didn’t feel as homely as the North, but we took a trip to International Arrivals and saw a few cute reunions.

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It was a constant effort to keep Liam away from the children’s toys. Eventually I caved and had a go myself.

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Returning home. Humble old Brighton Railway Station failing to live up to Gatwick standards! A reminder that, with a stay-cation, you can’t really avoid the beautiful English weather.

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your grandad is your guide words and photos laura cartledge My grandad knows Bognor Regis better than I do, even though he is a visitor and I’ve lived there for nearly eleven years, so he was my guide. He knows where you can get a 50p cup of tea anywhere, any time.

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Granddad isn’t one of many words. He likes what he likes and what he likes is weekends in Bognor with his friend Susan. When we visit one of the charity shops he recognises the lady behind the counter as she works at a cafe up the road. Everyone is a friend and he will chat to anyone.

This is why I wanted to have him play at being my tour guide to my own town—and the fact I knew we would probably end up getting fish and chips.

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The pier. “It needs some work but it is alright.” We played on the penny arcades inside for a bit and Grandad was happy when we found a penny.

“Always good to make a profit.”

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Susan, Alan (Grandad) and me before our adventure. We park in a secret free location Grandad has found and I have to promise not to reveal it. “I’m not paying to park and I don’t want lots of people taking my spot,” he says.

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Crazy golf. “This is how families should spend their time. Not watching television.”

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Grandad’s favourite bookshop. “This bookshop goes on for miles. You can bring books in and get vouchers to trade for new ones,” he explained, before showing me pink bits of card with numbers on in his wallet.

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The dolphin cafe. It has the best coffee and newspapers to read.

The green charity shop, Grandad and Susan’s favourite. “I got a jumper from here for 50p the other day!” says Susan.

“It’s pistachio, which is apparently in at the moment.”

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Bowling green. “We often come and watch them play,” says Grandad. “It’s a nice way to spend an afternoon, especially if you bring a packed lunch.”

The best chippy.

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The Regis Cafe, cheapest coffee in town at 60p.

“They have the cheapest coffee and they don’t advertise it. They need a sign; that would bring the punters in. I could help them sort it out easily.”

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the reluctant grown-up why comedian josie long eats three meals a day words rosanna durham, portrait idil sukan

Not many comedians could state: “Comedy has been my whole life.” But for Josie Long, it has been just that. Her first stand-up gigs came when she was still at school. Fifteen at the time, she would skip class to do a show: “I felt like a secret agent and I loved it.”

For Josie the teenager, comedy was comedy, not the politicised, occasionally hardwearing job it is today. Back then, even large audiences didn’t phase her: “I would do a gig in front of five people or five hundred people,” she tells me, “and it would be the same to me. I didn’t differentiate.” Once asked about the bias against women in comedy, she barely registered the question. “I would be like: ‘Blah, blah. I’m fifteen. I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Watching Josie perform has always felt like having a front row seat in her head, so this attitude fed into her comedy sketches, too. With their charming and convoluted names like ‘Kindness and Exuberance,’ Josie’s early professional shows are a pleasing patchwork of her way of looking at the world. Here, she would demonstrate the peculiar pleasure of

drawing on one’s tummy with felt-tip pen or advise on how to make friends with the manufacturer of your favourite brand of bread.

Josie’s love of comedy goes along with a heart-in-the-mouth addiction to improvisation in the real world. She quit her post-university temping job after three years, when she was finally able to live off her comedy earnings. “It was like a summer holiday that never ended. I was sleeping until one o’clock every day and thought, ‘I’ve won, society. I don’t need your rules. I can stay up until five in the morning.’”

When we met, Josie was soon to turn thirty. She is no longer a fearless teenager but a reluctant grown-up. At last, a grudging acceptance of the order of the world has won out. These days, she understands why people get up in the morning—“It’s nice to get as much sun as possible and you can do good work.” Apparently, three meals a day and not deferring waking up til the afternoon really is a sensible way to divide the day. But she still feels a little cheated. She complains, “I feel like society won by stealth.”

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Her comedy has altered, too. She eschews the image of the macho comedian with a slew of punch lines up his sleeve: “I’m not yet enough of a proper comedian to come out and be like ‘Hey pricks, listen to this.’”

Confrontations with the audience used to be rare. But then Josie made a political jibe and, for the first time, her audience soured.

She was performing her show Be Honourable!. Near the end of the show, during what one reviewer described as a “final diatribe... on the Conservative Party, no less withering for the trumped-up charges,” she throws out the line, “The Tories are cunts.” She says, “The audience was like, ‘Ooh,’ and I was like, ‘Wow. Voting Conservative is not for young people, it is for old people.’ It was a silly joke but the first time I had ever said something that would genuinely get people’s backs up.”

And here’s the change: Josie’s unremitting political engagement. It has developed from her strong disagreement with the policies brought in by the Conservative-majority government, specifically the increases in university tuition fees and cuts in health care budget. “I can’t not think

about what the government is doing,” she says, “It is all I have wanted to talk about. I want to fight it.” By bringing politics to her shows, she’s going back to the old business of stand-up comedy as something that offends the ordinary business of the world.

After fifteen years of making people laugh, polarising an audience is a new thing for Josie. She’s used to regarding crowds as future friends not present strangers. “It makes me sad when people disagree,” she says, earnest and urgent, “because I really care about these issues. It’s really what I am interested in.”

Before, Josie was asking, “How can I muck around?” Now she has become an activist; she demonstrated with UK Uncut, addressed protesters on the street and made protesters of her comedy fans. “The most incredible thing,” she tells me, “Is people who do protests because of the show, people who feel they’ve been politicised by it a bit.” In a story of unwilling adulthood, Josie Long may at last have unwittingly become a comedian who says to her audience, “Hey pricks, listen to this.”

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everything you can feel in ninety minutes roy williams explains the beautiful game of theatre words jason ward, portrait fiona essex

Roy Williams sits at his kitchen table, quietly ferocious. In front of him lies a neat black notebook which he is filling up with a new play, crowded with writing that looks distinctly like shorthand until you examine it closely. Quick to offer a handshake and a cup of tea, it would be difficult to tell from his cosy kitchen and polite, thoughtful demeanour that he has written some of the most emotionally devastating plays of the past few decades.

One of our finest playwrights, Roy’s work offers clear-eyed, occasionally brutal assessments of race, class, identity and aspiration in modern Britain. His writing, while fundamentally hopeful, is nonetheless acutely aware of the many contradictions and corruptions that make up society.

Roy has created close to a play a year since his 1996 debut The ‘No Boys’ Cricket Club, which may have something to do with his fearsome work ethic. Today, Roy has been writing since six in the morning, as he does every day, and yet is still alert and bright. “I’ve always been an early riser. I don’t know. It suits my character. You wake up and you’re feeling fresh and alive: you want to get your thoughts out of your head and on to a piece of paper. I like going to bed with a problem and waking up with a solution.”

Williams was raised in Notting Hill, and remains a staunch supporter of QPR football team. “I grew up in an area where football was a common

thing you could talk about with your mates. It just sort of stayed with me, really. I love it. It’s a vibrant, passionate game.” His relationship with football reveals something of his approach to theatre. “A good game of football can be like a great night of theatre—it can be exhilarating and exciting and unpredictable. Last night’s game proved that: Arsenal lost three nil in the first leg and needed to score four in the second leg.

People said it was impossible, but they came one goal from succeeding,” he says, recalling the team’s sensational exit from the Champions League the day before, despite trouncing AC Milan three-nil in their final match.

He continues, “No one could have predicted that, and that’s what you want from a good play. You want something that’s going to make you experience all of the emotions that human beings have in the course of two hours. It’s something that has stakes.”

While Roy still continues to be in love with the theatre, he has become increasingly involved with film and television. He adapted his Olivierwinning play Fallout for television a few years ago, and has co-written the upcoming Fast Girls with Noel Clarke and Jay Basu, about a group of teenage girl athletes. “It’s a challenge. It’s such a different medium. In theatre you’re dependent on dialogue, but TV and film can do so much for you with the camera and editing. Those tools can tell the same story, so there’s not such a need for the characters to be talking. I’m relearning it all: how can I tell the story through the way the charac-

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ters look at each other or act rather than what they’re saying.” Even so, theatre provides a perfect medium for his talents. “I think, for me, it’s still the best. It’s alive.”

After sixteen solid years of work, Roy is still writing as much as ever, his output slowed only by the long programming schedules for theatres and the glacial pace of producing film and television. “I don’t think I’m as prolific as I was. My time has been taken up. But I think it’s okay because you can write a play and disappear for two years and come back and deliver another piece. Playwrights come and go anyway. It’s not like actors, where you follow their career and go, ‘That last one wasn’t as good as his others, I think he’s going out of fashion’. We don’t have that star quality. I’m glad we don’t. You’ve just got to ignore all that stuff and keep plugging away.”

Drawn into theatre by playwrights like Barrie Keefe who wrote characters that sounded like him, Roy’s plays are likewise populated with characters, often young, poor and troubled, who speak like regular people, colloquially and in short sentences. The naturalism of their interactions is key to making you believe in them: you’ve met his characters before in your own life, which makes the sudden spirals into tragedy or violence so much more affecting.

As a result, there’s a disparity between the people the plays are about and the people who are seeing them. “I think audiences—let’s be hon-

est here—are attended predominantly by white, middle-class people.

And if I go to the Royal Court or the National, those are the faces I see.

I’m not complaining about that, that’s just the way it is.” This might be a shame considering how Roy first fell in love with theatre, that the people who might be similarly affected by his work don’t see it, but he’s philosophical about it. “My plays are about certain people, but they are for everybody. Ultimately, I’m writing for theatre, for a theatre-going audience. I honestly don’t care if the audience is black or white. Would I like to see more black faces? Of course I would, but not everybody likes theatre. They’ve got to have an interest first.”

This might be a reason why television has started to increasingly appeal to Roy. “I suppose the real difference is that film and television are seen by a lot more people. I’ve had stuff on TV and in one night more people will see it than will see six weeks of a play I’ve had on at a theatre.”

The cups of tea finished, Roy has to get back to work. There’s a notebook that needs filling. He reflects on how he is able to keep it still interesting for himself, sixteen plays later: “You need to keep writing about what makes you laugh, what makes you pissed off. What makes you pissed off may be in complete contrast to what pissed you off ten years before, so you write about that—about that difference. You write about what matters to you now. So those are questions I’m always throwing at myself. I’m just trying to keep my wits about me.”

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a view from toronto portraits of the city through the people who live there photographs jamie campbell

Douglas Brown is an artist. He has lived in Toronto for eleven years.

This photograph was taken on the Rooftop of Doug’s home and studio in Parkdale, Toronto. What is Toronto to you? HOME. Do you like or dislike the city? I don’t like, but love Toronto. See the above answer as to why.

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Cameron Lee is an artist and programming co-ordinator at XPACE Cultural Centre. He has lived in Toronto all his life. This photograph was taken outside of the XPACE Centre. Do you like or dislike the city? Depending on where you are in the city, you will find some pretty varied social cultures, with key people orchestrating or leading the general

interests of that neighbourhood and community. What I dislike about the city is how remote it can feel. The city is spread out physically and socially. Sometimes it can feel like a whole world and the people in it are out there, and depending on your choices or the neighbourhood you live in, you may never encounter these people.

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Vanessa Maltese is an artist. She has lived in Toronto for five years. This photograph was taken inside Vanessa’s Studio located within the Junction Triangle, Toronto. What is Toronto to you? My home. Can you give a small moment that sums up Toronto for you? Breakfast at Saving Grace followed by a day in the studio while listening to Beck.

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Sheila Heti is a writer. She was born in Toronto and has lived here ever since. This photograph was taken at her home in the Little Portugal neighborhood.

What is Toronto to you? For about five or six years, starting in the early 2000s, everyone in the art and music scene was facetiously, but also sincerely, calling the city Torontopia, because all of us in a certain scene were collaborating and making things together. There was a lot of creative energy floating around, and everyone was helping out everyone else with their projects; you could always find someone to do the door. That’s changed over the last few years. I can’t explain what it feels like now. But for me, Toronto’s home, just home. It’s where my parents are, my friends, where I was raised. It’s a place I have the luxury of not thinking about.

Do you like or dislike the city? I love the city, but love is a complicated thing, and it includes loathing and boredom and all those other things.

What’s really nice about Toronto is it is certainly a metropolitan place, a big city. Yet unlike a lot of big cities, it retains something of the quiet of the forest. You feel like you can hear yourself think in Toronto.

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Airin McGuinty sells vintage goods. She has lived in Toronto for two years. This photograph was taken in Airin’s home in the heart of Parkdale. What is Toronto to you? Toronto is a place with a seemingly endless amount of things to do and places to explore. This can get pretty overwhelming and much of the time causes me to be a hermit in my house. Do you like or dislike the city? I have slowly begun to fall

out of love with Toronto over the past year and am considering moving elsewhere. The rent is blasting sky-high in Toronto and it is almost impossible to find an affordable place to call home. Lately it seems like every week a new condo is being built on ground that once supported beautiful turn-of-the century homes, and the city seems to be losing its charm.

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Sean Brown is an entrepreneur, dreamer and brand director. He has lived in Toronto all his life. This photograph was taken Downtown.

What is Toronto to you? A multi-cultural melting pot oozing with talent and creativity. They say if you can make it in New York.... Nah, if you can make it in Toronto, you can make it anywhere. Do you like or dislike the city? I love the passion the city injects into its creatives.

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Otis Stang is four years old. This photograph was taken in a small parkette within the Roncesvalles Village area. Do you like the city? I like Toronto Island. I don’t like the loudness. It’s noisy all over this city. How long have you lived in Toronto? 100 days! Actually more like 1642 days because I’m four and a half years old!

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ten puppies make a team I moved 2000 miles to follow my boyfriend’s dream of becoming a sled-dog driver words tara caimi photo sean marc lee

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When I was 28 years old, I moved across the USA to follow my boyfriend’s dream of becoming a sled-dog racer. Nick and I travelled from Pennsylvania to Utah, settling into a rented mobile home that we came to refer to as an oversized cardboard shoebox.

Over the next eighteen months, Nick built up the team to include ten solid sled dogs.

But all that was about to change as the result of an accidental breeding in the kennel.

Tracy, the pregnant bitch, looked like she’d swallowed a beach ball. Based on their ogling and fawning over the kittens other staff brought in by the basketful, I assumed the owners of the publishing company I worked for would respect the significance of my first litter of puppies. So when Nick called the office on a Friday afternoon to tell me Tracy was in labour, I leapt out of my chair, yelling behind me as I flew out the door, “I have to go! The puppies are coming!”

I arrived at the kennel as Tracy gave birth to her fifth, and she showed no signs of slowing down. I sat motionless, mesmerised by the surprisingly gory show. Tracy’s instincts served her well as puppies continued to emerge. Nick, who had been monitoring the proceedings for several hours, relinquished his post to look for a cardboard box, so he could transport the puppies across the street. They’d live in the shelter of our garage with Tracy until they were weaned and old enough to move into the kennel. When Nick returned with the box, she was up to number eight.

“Isn’t she done yet?” he asked. “Apparently not,” I said. “Oh my god!” he laughed, and I realised he’d just gained an entire team of sled dogs.

“Poor Tracy,” I said. Her eyes had assumed a wild cast. With her snout saturated in blood, she struggled to clean the puppies that pushed forth with each contraction.

Nick and I stared at the untouched sac beside her, trying to determine if it was a puppy or afterbirth. When she got around to working on it, the sac revealed a puppy.

“Do you think they’ll all survive?” I asked, worried for the first time. “I doubt it,” Nick said. “I’ve never seen a dog have this many puppies. She probably won’t have enough nipples to feed them all.”

The words unlatched a portal to the past, and I saw myself at eight years old, standing beside my mother at the porcelain sink in our kitchen. “I’m going to have puppies instead of babies when I grow up,” I told her. It’s possible, at the time, she believed me. An ‘old soul’ is how my mother sometimes referred to me, saying I knew things I shouldn’t have known at my age. In the twenty years that followed, my conviction had receded, pushing the declaration into the pits of my subconscious until this moment.

Sitting 2,000 miles across the country, I now watched as that childhood prediction unfolded in the form of my boyfriend’s dog mushing dream come true.

“You can do it, Tracy,” I said quietly. She looked at me with a vacant gaze. Tiny wet puppies of various colours squirmed around her. At last, she hit the magic number and was finished. We sat in silence as she stretched out to feed all ten of her offspring.

They looked like piglets with their eyes sealed shut and their ears barely perceptible on their heads. They inched forward on round bellies with rubbery legs paddling toward their mother.

“Nick,” I said, craning my neck toward the puppies, “it looks like they’re all feeding.” He leaned above Tracy, and reached in to separate the puppies. “Wow,” he said. “She’s got that crazy long torso.” “Do you think she can do it?” I looked at him. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Tracy lifted her head at the sounds of our voices, her eyes now steady and clear. She shifted her gaze from Nick to me then lay her head back down with a sigh. Nick put his arm around me, and we watched his sled team continue to nurse.

This piece is an extract from Tara’s ongoing memoir about following the sled dog dream, Mush. Find out more on taracaimi.com.

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the handmade toaster thomas thwaites took nine months and two broken microwaves to make a piece of toast words liz ann bennett, portrait jamie stoker

Thomas Thwaites has made a toaster from scratch. It doesn’t look much like a toaster: it looks like a melted cheese toastie gone wrong. So much so, I thought the final product was actually one of his mid-way failures. But while not an impressive achievement of itself, what’s formidable about the challenge is his definition of ‘from scratch.’

In his book, The Toaster Project, Thwaites describes his initial fantasy of truly making a toaster from nothing. He pictures himself cycling into the heart of a remote forest, throwing his bike into a deep lake and setting fire to his clothes: “I’m naked in the woods and I’m making a toaster from scratch.” He ponders the struggle for food and shelter he will have to win before he can get started. The words of the astronomer Carl Sagan ring in his ears, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

Common sense intrudes at last. He writes, tongue in cheek, “Luckily, my naked contemplation of Dr Sagan is interrupted by some startled ramblers, who report me to the local constabulary. I’m apprehended and receive a caution for breaching the peace and a small fine for contravening bylaws by starting a fire in a national park. They do, however, give me a lift in their police car back to the real world.”

The toaster began as his degree project for a course in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art. Reluctantly, Thwaites grounded his project in the midst of modern life: he could watch TV, go online, even make toast now and again. But he set himself some rules. The toaster must look like the ones you can get in the shops: electrical plug, popup mechanism and all. And to those who argue that a toaster isn’t really anything more advanced than a fire, he explains: “A fire is not a toaster, because when you ask in a shop for a toaster, they don’t sell you a fire.” All the parts must use materials as they come out of the

ground. Lastly, he had to carry out all the processes himself with nothing more advanced than medieval technology.

The whole idea, Thomas tells me, could have been taken from a single short passage from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. Adams’ hero is a thirty-something man from the south of England who finds himself marooned on a distant planet inhabited by a primitive tribe. He dreams of transforming their lives with the wonders of modern science, but after a few days realises he is pretty much helpless without the rest of human society. Adams comments, “Left to his own devices, he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.” Thwaites wanted to beat Adams’ hero.

To start, he bought the cheapest toaster he could find. It was from Argos and cost £3.94. He took it apart piece by piece. Some of the components, like the timer control, had sub parts. All told, there were 404 bits, made of over a hundred different materials. And from the toaster’s hundred or so materials, Thwaites simplified the design down to just five: steel for the structural parts, a plastic casing, mica for insulation, copper for the wiring and nickel for the heating element.

There’s something infectious about Thomas’ puppyish enthusiasm.

He set out on the project armed with a large dose of naivety, and proceeded to charm a dizzying range of people into helping him along the way. The custodian of a disused mine near the Welsh border gave him iron ore from the mine’s visitor display case. His long-suffering mother put up with the loss of an ornamental chimney pot, several microwaves and the good opinion of her neighbours (most of the parts were made in her back garden). First, though, Thwaites had a chat with the Chair of Mineral Processing at the Royal School of Mines at Imperial College. The Chair, Jan Cilliers, was enjoyably overwhelmed by Thwaites’

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Above: A £4 toaster deconstructed into its 404 parts. Left: Thwaites’ final homemade toaster.

ambition: his insistence that yes, he would like the toaster to pop up, have a plastic casing and be made of modern materials. Cilliers gave him a piece of advice: the later he went in history, in terms of discovery, the harder it would get. The Bronze Age preceded the Iron Age for good reason, to say nothing of the Plastic Age. Thomas would do best to stick to making a copper toaster: “For you to make iron and steel, it’s going to be a real bitch.”

But Thomas had rules to follow, and that means a toaster with a plastic coating, and steel parts inside. Following the instructions of a sixteenth-century metalworking manuscript, Thwaites constructed a primitive foundry to smelt his steel, made out of the chimney pot, a metal dustbin, a leaf blower and plenty of loft insulation. He fed the ore into the ferocious heat of the furnace. The next day, in the ruins of the chimney pot, Thomas found a grimy lump that was heavy, magnetic and metallic to the taste. But his ‘iron’ fractured as soon as he hit it with a hammer, and Thomas was plunged into gloom. What he had ended up with could be iron mixed with unreacted ore, or iron mixed with too many impurities or some horrible mixture of the two.

That baffling lump of maybe-partly-iron seems emblematic of the project: an utterly unremarkable material has been transformed into something mysterious and impossibly difficult, by a simple act of attempting to make it from scratch. In a world with electron microscopes, there is a thrill to being utterly ignorant about the material you hold in your hands. Take but a single step away from the reassuring hand of

technology and the blank patches on the map return, as inscrutable and dangerous as anything that medieval travellers knew.

Back in the 21st-century, a patent for smelting iron in a microwave brought Thwaites out of his sulk. “Everyone wants to put metal in microwaves,” he says, “It’s like a forbidden pleasure. But I was a bit cautious. I’d turn it on and then go and stand around the corner. I didn’t want to microwave myself, because you cook from the inside out.” He broke his half-smelted pig iron into little pieces and put them in on high for twenty-five minutes, wrapped it in thick ceramic wool. The only casualty was two broken microwaves, and one of his rules: no post-medieval technology.

In the materials that follow, Thwaites’ rules were not so much broken as pulverised, as he flouted them more and more outrageously to replicate technologies that are increasingly modern. The mica is pretty genuine: he hacked it off a mountain in the Scottish Highlands. But his attempts to make plastic out of potato starch ended in sticky, cracked failure, so he ‘mined’ some existing plastic from a recycling plant instead. By the time he reached nickel, his time and money were almost gone, and he resorted to buying some Canadian coins on eBay and melting them down.

The final product is not even quite a toaster, let alone a pop-up one.

It’s a temperamental bread-warmer at best. Thwaites didn’t dare to plug it into the mains, with good reason, but powered by a battery, the

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element heated up at least enough to burn his finger. As an attempt to make toast, this is a pallid failure, so under-done it barely melts the butter. But the project has a further endgame in which it succeeds magnificently: a look under the skin of the slick objects that fill our lives. There is far more to it than a survivalist vanity project.

The book’s inner cover quotations seem to think that it’s in fact an environmental polemic. One reviewer, Bookslut, says, “Thwaites makes his point in the most straightforward of manners: we... really ought to think long and hard about the complicated lives we have boxed ourselves into living.” Thomas makes the point that the true cost of a four-pound toaster is almost certainly far higher than four pounds, if you could bill for the damage the processes have caused to the environment.

“Something doesn’t feel right about really cheap consumer goods,” he says. “It seems just mad to get something like a toaster, which has such a simple function, to be both so complicated and yet so cheap.” But the Bookslut comment doesn’t feel in the spirit of the project. It’s too worthy by half. If this is an environmental polemic, it’s one masquerading as a joke.

Thwaites’ mission is a more subtle one. His joke is on unrealistic environmentalists as well as die-hard capitalists. “I suppose I’m trying to poke fun at the idea that to solve the global environmental crisis we should all go back to the woods and become self-sufficient,” he says. He points out that his toaster has a vast carbon footprint from all the miles he travelled to produce it, far more than Argos’ one. If the world ends

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up with a population of ten billion, it’ll make a lot more sense if their toasters aren’t handmade.

Ultimately, his project is a plea for sanity, and an attempt to explore the grey area between a simplistic acceptance of the wonders of, say, air travel and a simplistic rejection of it for its effect on the planet.

Polarised debate angers him. “If you start reducing it and reducing it, it’s just a sin to be alive,” he says. He’s also acutely aware that the solutions will be tough to implement, and require vast cultural and political shifts. The science is the least of it, in a way. “It’s no good thinking, ‘Oh, if everyone would just read the Guardian and recycle more, that would be great,’ because that’s not going to happen. Everyone’s completely different and some people couldn’t give a shit about the environment.”

Making a toaster from scratch isn’t an argument, it’s more of a question.

Modern life is like a tangled ball of wool, with so many interconnected threads linking countries and people and processes and things. The question it poses is this: What happens if you take a single thread, like the production of something as everyday as a toaster, and give it a little tug? Thwaites has taken the thread and pulled and pulled, and brought to light a system of deep complexity.

I have a hunch there was something whimsical about Thwaites’ initial idea. That it was something fun to tinker around with. That it owed more to a desert island fantasy than a debate about globalised production. Like all good journeys, the journey has changed him.

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putting the kitsch back into kitchen forgotten and fabulous desserts of the 1970s testing eleanor smyth, photos dani lurie

One of my mother’s oldest cookbooks is the Hamlyn All Colour Cook Book. It was published in 1970 and has her maiden name written in the front. It was Mary Berry’s first cookbook, and there she is in foreword, aged 35, looking very different in a plain pale top and a single string of small pearls. Lots of pages have my mum’s notes. “Excellent, for an occasion—a very rare one!” is written next to an unusual dessert featuring chestnuts. “OK/Good. Does cheese go with chicken?” accompanies a chicken dish baked in cheese.

Then there are the un-noted pages. These include savoury tarts, or odd-looking cold salads. But the ones I always wondered about were what my mum would call, “fussy old-fashioned desserts.” These last ones are fantastical affairs involving cream and layers and shaped moulds and very often gooseberries. There are savarins, coffee party souffle and gooseberry meringue gateau. We decided to resurrect some lost desserts of the 70s, and rediscover a flamboyancy lost in the mists of time.

We were aided by Kristie and Coralie of Drink, Shop and Do cafe, where we felt such confections would find a natural home. The cafe is also a design shop and a craft hub, based in King’s Cross London. More importantly for our purposes, they have the best cake stands we’ve seen.

The photos were taken there, and our taste-testers were a curious class of balloon-animal-makers whose attention we attracted while posing the desserts in every corner of the cafe.

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montelimar pudding This is from the Hamyln All Colour Cook Book. The picture shows a tall, white scalloped ring, faintly gleaming and its surface gently flecked with red cherries. I’d never heard of it before and, much more surprisingly, neither had the internet. There were a few hits, but they’d all been obviously copied from the Hamyln book, right down to the ‘quick tip’ included with each recipe. Still, it looked easy.

I checked on this before going to bed the night before our Drink, Shop and Do photo shoot, to find that the mixture was not remotely set. It showed no sign of setting at all. It was entirely liquid. I fished it out of the fridge, strained out the marshmallows and floating cherries. I then added enough gelling agent to the mixture, or so I thought, to make it as solid as a rubber tyre.

Our adventures at Drink, Shop and Do were to prove this assumption rather mistaken. Photographing the dessert turned into a race against the clock as the ring of jelly slumped further and further down on the cake stand and began to drip gently. We never really found out what the testers thought of the taste. They pushed it aside in favour of grape cheesecake on the next page. When pressed, one balloon-maker apologetically referring to the appearance as resembling ‘baby sick.’

Still, here is the recipe for your interest. The original required half a jelly tablet, which may have meant a different sort to those obtainable now.

You will need: 6oz evaporated milk 1oz glace cherries 2oz marshmallows 4 lemon jelly tablets ½ pint very hot water juice of ½ lemon 1oz caster sugar extra glace cherries to decorate One. Chill the evaporated milk in the fridge. Chop up the cherries and snip the marshmallows into small pieces using wet scissors. Try doing it with dry scissors to begin with, as I did, and you’ll discover just how effective the wet scissor trick is.

Two. Dissolve the jelly in the hot water and cool until it is thick but not set. Whip the evaporated milk until it is light and foamy.

Three. Add the cooled jelly, blending it in well, then stir in the lemon juice, cherries, marshmallows and caster sugar.

Four. Turn into a mould or serving dish and chill until set. Decorate with more cherries. Hope it doesn’t collapse before you can serve it.

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grape cheesecake As I see it, the only reason this is called a grape cheesecake is because of the grapes on top. It’s not so much a cheesecake as a sponge layer cake. We burnt the sponge slightly, but rescued it spectacularly with a thick layer of the cream cheese. The original recipe requested ‘jel mix’ for the glaze, but this proved elusive. This recipe is from Best of Baking, another 70s classic, also by Hamlyn.

This did not live up to the glossy perfection of Best of Baking’s photograph, which shows straight sides and grapes as neat as a rippling sea, but it delivered the promised glamour. It’s not quite cheesecake, though. More of a cake, with cheese.

You will need: For the sponge: 4 eggs 5oz caster sugar 4oz plain flour 2oz cornflour 1 tsp baking powder For the topping green and black grapes a small packet of flaked almonds apricot jam

For the filling: 1lb curd or cream cheese 2 egg yolks 5oz caster sugar juice of 1 lemon 8floz double cream 3 or 4oz powdered gelatine or agar flakes

One. First, make the sponge. Grease a 23cm/9in loose-bottomed or spring-form cake tin. Preheat the oven to 190°C, Gas mark 5.

Two. Separate the eggs and whisk the yolks with 2 tbsp of lukewarm water and half the sugar until frothy. Whisk the whites until stiff, and then add the remaining sugar and fold in gently. Fold the egg white mixture into the yolk mixture.

Three. Sift the flour, cornflour and baking powder together and fold that into the egg mixture too.

Four. Turn the mixture into the tin and bake for 40 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack until completely cold, about 2 hours.

Five. While it’s cooling, make the filling. Beat the cream curd cheese with the egg yolks, sugar and lemon juice. Make up the gelling agent according to the instructions on the packet.

Six. Whip the cream until thick and fold into the cheese mixture along with the cooled gelatine.

Seven. Cut the sponge into two layers and sandwich thickly with the cheese mixture, spreading the rest over the top and sides of the cake.

Arrange the grapes on top.

Eight. Realistically, you won’t find jel mix. The alternative is apricot jam.

Heat a generous couple of spoonfuls in the microwave for 20 seconds or so with a little splash of water. Stir, and leave until cool, then gently brush over the top with a pastry brush. (Or a sterilised paint brush, in my case.) Finally, press the flaked almonds onto the sides.

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make your own mermaid just don’t put her in water illustrations naomi wilkinson Remember those paper puppet dolls? Well, Naomi Wilkinson has made this mermaid one for you to cut out and put together. Just remember that not all mermaids are made for the sea.

You will need: scissors a 3 mm paper punch 6 brass fasteners a piece of card (optional) One. Cut out the page opposite. Your doll will be stronger if you back it onto a piece of card, with page 120 facing outward.

Two. Cut out the paper pieces, and punch holes where the dots are marked.

Three. Join together with brass fasteners.

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issue twelve is out in september and we’re sharing a favourite movie to celebrate There’s something special about sitting in a cinema and waiting for the lights to dim, watching the room fill with people and expectation. Going to the cinema should feel like a proper event, and so we’ve decided to create our own film night.

treasured cinematic things, from old favourites to new discoveries. It’ll be a club for oh comely readers to meet up, as well as watching some wonderful movies together. Like all good things, drinks together in the bar afterwards will certainly be involved.

From September, we’ll be holding an evening each issue in London, but we hope to take it to other cities around the UK soon. The programme will include a collection of short films and documentaries, followed by a main feature. We’ve filled the programme with our most-

We’d love for you to join us for the evening. Keep an eye on ohcomely. co.uk/film for updates.

Norman Peters took the photo above of a film screening on the beach.

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hello, reader fill in our reader sur vey for the chance to win a f re e s u b s c r i p t i o n a t w w w. o h c o m e l y. c o. u k / s u r ve y We’re always curious to hear your thoughts about the magazine, so we’d love you to take the chance to fill in our reader survey. Just go to www.ohcomely.co.uk/survey. Four survey-completers will win a free subscription.

This issue, so we asked oh comely subscribers in Cardiff about their ‘lost in translation’ moments. Peggy Seymour sent us this story from a holiday in Sweden, as told by her writer girlfriend. Peggy is an artist and jeweller by trade. She’s from London and now lives in Cardiff, but says, “I once lived for a year by myself in a medieval castle, selling vintage My Little Ponies for a living.”

Once upon a time in Sweden, I had a very heavy suitcase on a hot day.

It was so heavy and such a hot day that, despite a lifelong fear of lifts, I decided to take this lift up just one floor, where it would place me right outside my best friend’s door. Alas, it took me halfway to the door and then died, leaving me panic-ridden and confused, staring out of a square inch of glass that permitted me to see the doormat I would have been merrily skipping across.

My Swedish is rough and, whilst I managed to ring my friend, who told me to keep calm as it would only be an hour or so for someone to come and release me, a small crowd of curious children gathered both

above and below me. They shouted many Swedish words. The only one I understood was “fire!” and obviously that didn’t help at all.

“Jag har frukost,” I whimpered, pitifully. I thought that if I explained that I was scared, saying, “I have fear,” that they’d at least stop shouting. They did stop shouting. Then they immediately went away to find adults with a mild command of English. The adults came and bent down and looked through the glass and asked me if I was hungry. It seemed a slightly mean thing to ask, given their inability to change the situation one way or the other, but I nodded sadly because, well, I was.

Much later, I was freed and given a plate of extremely good chicken by the children. I felt bad for thinking the adults mean. Later still, when my friend arrived home, halfway through the narrative and curious about my Swedish progress, she asked me what I had said for “I have fear.” I told her.

“Oh,” she replied, giggling, “No. You told them you had breakfast! Frukost. Breakfast. Fruktar. Fear.” “Ah.” Also, the children were helpfully letting me know that at least the lift was not on fire, so that was lucky. Such kind children. Tiny misunderstandings, amidst a monumental afternoon of feelings.

This photo is from reader Natalie Lynn. You can see more of her photographs on cargocollective.com/nattalynnphotos.

subscribe to oh comely send us a photo of the magazine at home subscribe online at www.ohcomely.co.uk/subscribe A subscription to oh comely is £22 for a year, and you’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, made out to Adeline

Media. Include an email address so we can confirm your order. We loved these photos of the magazine. Thanks to (left to right): Hannah Daisy, Charlotte Overton-Hart, Becky Garratt, Rosie Grindrod, Tara Shamal, Aki Saito.

home from home places to go, people to see

here today here tomorrow

luna lighting

30a ball’s pond road, london // www.heretoday-heretomorrow.com

www.lunalighting.co.uk

What’s for sale? Fashion garments, accessories and homewares.

Prices range from £4-£180. What’s your mission? We hope sustainable fashion will be about longevity of products, beautiful design, reconnecting with nature, understanding limits and recapturing values. Recommend us something special. Our Made In Nepal collection, as a gift or to treat yourself!

What’s for sale? We sell handmade ivory white porcelain tea lights, pierced with dozens of charming decorative designs. They make perfect presents if you can bear to part with them. They’re £15 each including postage. The tea light holder letter sets spelling out ‘love’ caught our eye too. What’s your motto? Get on your bike this summer!

ray stitch haberdashery & cafe

loop

99 essex road, london // www.raystitch.co.uk

15 camden passage, london // www.loopknitting.com

What’s for sale? Funky fabrics by the metre, organic cottons and designer prints for dressmaking, crafting, home dec. Sewing accessories and haberdashery, ribbons, buttons. Cake, pastries, sandwiches, Climpsons coffee, Tea Pigs tea. Recommend us something special. Want to make use of our lovely fabrics but not confident with your sewing skills? Come to one of our sewing classes.

What’s for sale? Loop stocks gorgeous knitting supplies sourced from all over the world. We have a vast range of yarns, haberdashery, vintage ribbons and buttons, books and handmade objects made by independent designers. Recommend us something special. Hand-dyed yarns in natural fibres such as Shilasdair, Uncommon Thread, Skein, Madelinetosh and Artisan.

brighton sewing centre

the royal school of needlework

68 north road, brighton // www.brightonsewingcentre.co.uk

hampton court palace, surrey // www.royal-needlework.org.uk

What’s for sale? We sell sewing machines and overlockers, machine parts, fabric, trimmings and haberdashery. We also do sewing machine repairs. What’s your mission? To provide an inspirational range so people get excited about sewing. Recommend us something special. Our recycled thread made by Gutermann made from 100% recycled polyester. It sews very nicely.

What’s for sale? Hand embroidery courses including day classes (from £69), Certificate, Diploma and Degree courses. We have regional teaching centres in Bristol, Rugby, Durham and Glasgow.

What’s your mission? To keep the art of hand embroidery alive.

Recommend us something special. It’s our 140th anniversary and we’re celebrating this autumn with an exhibition of 140 highlights.

muftii

analogue books

www.muftii.com

39 candlemaker row, edinburgh // www.analoguebooks.co.uk

What’s for sale? Shirts, coats, tweed gilets, wool and silk and linen scarves, from £20 to £250. What’s your mission? Muftii finds the best craftsmen and sources the finest fabrics in Asia to create clothes with style that not only are good to wear, but are helping the community in which they are made. Recommend us something special. Our swing linen coat in sand with a sky linen lining.

What’s for sale? Art, design and contemporary culture books, small press books, specialist independent magazines, zines and prints, from £2 to £50. What’s your mission? We love art and design and print. We have held dozens of exhibitions, published a range of zines and books, and hosted intimate gigs and talks. Mostly we just like sourcing interesting books and chatting to folk who come in.

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what’s that funny smell? testing air fresheners is no bed of roses words liz ann bennett I’m not sure how I feel about air freshener. The lived-in smell of homes is inevitable, and I wonder about the wisdom of perfuming it out of existence. But my flat collects smells like hoarders collect old rubber bands. It’s hard to air out. Right now, I’m getting traces of last night’s dinner, mingled with the neighbours’ cigarette smoke and a whiff of that baffling damp patch that recently appeared on the bathroom wall.

I wanted to find an air freshener powerful enough to defeat them all, without everything smelling of “air freshener.”

glade

clean laundry

This comes in a white plastic box shaped like a tiny space craft. To use, you peel a sticker off the front revealing a lurid green block of jellified air freshener. I used to find its texture endlessly fascinating as a child and I still do. It positively wibbles. It positively does not smell like lily of the valley. It smells vilely artificial. I put it in the corner of my bathroom and soon enough the whole place smells artificial, with the exception of the mouldy washing up, which is a relief in comparison. Worst of all, the smell is so reminiscent of childhood visits to older people’s houses that I can’t relax. “Glade” keeps asking me how my exams are going and how many books I’ve been reading. I put the contraption in the bin.

Inspired by the smell of Airwick’s ‘clean linen’ I decide to try the real thing. Most air fresheners come with a stern notice saying that they are no replacement for good hygiene practice. Real clean laundry, on the other hand, is a win-win because it is good hygiene practice: a rack of drying clothes and the whiff of freshly-washed cleanliness permeates the corners. You might even get back some nice things to wear that you’d forgotten you had. The only drawback is that you can’t do it all the time and, purely as air freshener, it’s pretty effort-intensive. You also have to time it just right, or else your dinner guests will be faced with your smalls drying on the radiator.

Meant to smell of: lily of the valley Smells of: chemicals Price: £1

Meant to smell of: clean laundry Smells of: virtue and fresh socks Price: free, unless it makes you wash your clothes more

airwick plug in

home fragrance oil

When I plug in the Airwick Plug In, it releases an industrially-brewed ‘crisp linen’ fragrance. Best of all, the smell more or less lives up to its odorous promise. It’s like my flat is a busy laundry, churning out heavily-perfumed crisp linen 24/7. And it’s a good thing I like this one since Airwick Plug In & Refill “crisp white linen and lilac” dribbled all over my desk, eating through the varnish and making my room smell of laundrette for ever and ever. I think a more suspicious person might wonder if it’s good for you to breathe in substances that can act as paint-stripper.

With this, you put a tea light in the bottom of a burner and a few drops of the oil in a bowl of water on top. The warming water gently lifts the scented oils into the air. This was a revelation. It’s delicious and pervasive without being pungent or overwhelming. Using it feels ridiculously extravagant, as if you’re staying in a nice hotel that happens to be sloppy on decor. This also taps into my fondness for homely rituals like making coffee and going out to buy cookies (though maybe that one’s just a greedy ritual). This is probably pretty expensive to run, but you’d only want it for special occasions anyway.

Meant to smell of: crisp linen and lilac Smells of: clean clothes with a kick Price: £6.50 for plug and refill

Meant to smell of: sandalwood and ginger Smells of: sandalwood, ginger and heaven Price: £3.50, plus burner and tea light

marks & spencer floral collection

rock incense

This claims to be a three-in-one body, linen and room spray, which seems like a very modern, time-saving concept for a humble air freshener. It comes in a heavy, frosted-glass bottle that reassures me it’s pretending very hard to look more expensive than it actually is. I try it on room and linen, but skip the body deciding not to aromatically mimic the smell of my bed. That said, the heady rose perfume is not exactly unpleasant, just redolent of rooms decorated with gold and ivory-coloured wallpaper. This doesn’t smell of home.

This incense was from Prinknash Abbey in Gloucestershire, whose monks have been blending it since 1906. I associate incense with gift shops that sell mystic gemstones and tarot-card tat. Perhaps it’s the Prinknash monks’ long-honed incense-blending skills, but this was a lot better than feared: gently-scented and woody and smoky. It was also an almighty hassle: you have to make a little heap of charcoal, light it, blow on it and practise your fire-building skills. It’s fun though. One to bring out on a long, rainy and malodorous Bank Holiday.

Meant to smell of: the timeless aroma of English Rose Smells of: the timeless desire to seem expensive Price: £6

Meant to smell of: a well-swung thurible Smells of: years of skill Price: £2.20 for a 50g box

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How do you make a sausage roll?

A nice bit of puff pastry, a chunky sausage and a brushing of beaten egg.

Push it down a hill.

Tell us a secret.

Say “quasi”.

Kway-sigh.

Whenever my partner goes away, I discreetly bin some of his carefullyhoarded collection of free aeroplane eyemasks.

Quozzy.

Hold on a minute! You just stole my favourite sausage roll joke!

What wakes you up in the morning?

When I do a quiz, I read the answers first.

What annoys you?

What do you take when you’re going somewhere new?

Charity muggers.

An alarm clock on the other side of the room and a trail of increasingly desperate notes-to-self leading all the way from my bed to the kettle.

The soothing sound of Radio Four.

Sorry, Dad.

You have a loud laugh and you like puns that aren’t all that punny.

You’re not very good at taking hints and your dandelion clocks are apt to show up uninvited.

You grew up straight and now you stand tall. You’re happiest in formal settings: in a line with other tulips or gathered into a vase with some tastefully-contrasting foliage. The bohemian life of a wild flower isn’t for you, but so what? Your bright and cheerful petals bring a smile to old and young alike.

words liz ann bennett, illustration laura callaghan

Parabens.

Sunlight, birds, the sound of my next door neighbour breathing.

The instinc ts of a jungle cat.

Also sometimes an A-to-Z.

Neat back gardens aren’t your style. You find the showy petals of those other roses a bit much and you worry about the effect of all that insecticide. You like to think you’re just not like them, but don’t forget that many a cultivated rose has a wild root.

A smartphone and a hearty respect for GPS technology.

Oh, you ain’t the prettiest of flowers, but you’re nurturing and dependable, and you’re always ready with a nutritious dish. Some people say you scare small children, but that just isn’t fair. They better be careful: if they ignore you for too long, you can turn bad quite quickly and once that happens, it’s just too late.

For all enquiries please call London +44 207 426 9696 shillingtoncollege.co.uk facebook/shillington.fb twitter.com/Shillington_ LONDON • MANCHESTER NEW YORK • SYDNEY MELBOURNE • BRISBANE

MAYBE YOU SHOULD CONSIDER A CAREER IN GRAPHIC DESIGN! Do you spend your time at work daydreaming, doodling or trying to push the design capabilities of Word?

Given you’re an Oh Comely reader, you obviously have a love for ideas and creativity. Just flick through this magazine or check out their website and you’ll see that every part has been touched by a graphic designer.

Shillington College has a 3 month full-time Graphic Design Course for people just like you. You will be taught by passionate professionals in a studio environment and graduate with an in-depth knowledge of design theory and the Adobe Creative Suite. Most importantly, you’ll leave with the studio skills and an outstanding portfolio to help you land your first role in this exciting industry where no two days are the same.

Enrol now for September 2012.