Oh Comely magazine issue 7 by oh comely magazine

issue seven sep / oct 2011 ÂŁ4

oh comely keep your curiosity sacred editors liz bennett, des tan

deputy editor rosanna durham fashion agatha a nitecka music dani lurie craft beth davis illustration laura callaghan film jason ward features frances ambler design assistant margherita huntley editorial amie mills, lucy doolan, malou herkes words michael bennett, theo brainin, elizabeth heather, ellie phillips, hannah jane riley, victoria watts pictures steph baxter, leah bernhardt, cynthia chen barbachano, hector durham, christoph ferstad, clare gallagher, anna hatzakis, steve kennedy, chris knight, max knight, mariana pacho lĂłpez, gabriella de martino, trent mcminn, kevin morosky, alyssa nassner, veronica perez diaz, josie portillo, marisa seguin, jacob stead, adelaide turnbull, dona yamazaki advertising steph pomphrey, steph@ohcomely.co.uk. feedback and lost property, info@ohcomely.co.uk. submissions, words@ohcomely.co.uk or pictures@ohcomely.co.uk. oh comely, issue seven, sep/oct 2011. 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, Courtney Johansson by Agatha A Nitecka. www.ohcomely.co.uk Contents ÂŠ 2011 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 authorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; mothers. ISSN 2043-9857.

Elijah Majeski took this photograph. â&#x20AC;&#x153;One night, I decided to build a fort out of scrap lumber in our yard. I got a lot of strange looks from the neighbours but it was worth it. When it got dark, we put candles in it and it felt like a cave.â&#x20AC;?

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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

24 jack’s house of curiosities jack hudson draws a tiny, intricate world

38 can I sleep on your sofa? home is where the couch is

28 explosions in the sky wanted: sad, triumphant rock band

40 do you remember that scene? three illustrators, three films, so much nostalgia

30 some songs feel like butter, some songs sound like cake life is a cake mix for low’s lead singer 32 music for the moment the girl, the song and the ukelele 34 play misty for me an afternoon in photos with misty miller

fashion

people

and

56 by the riverside the colours are beautiful on long summer days

46 the only comedian in the village isy suttie tells jokes about your neighbour’s rockery 48 every ironing pile needs a hero four writers write pieces inspired by photos of home 66 courtney in make up

64 flowers to feed your skin mix a moisturiser with tenderness and petals

photographs in the water of the skin’s natural beauty, enhanced by delicate tints from the waves and the sky

78 the games that everyone else forgot meet the people who spend their weekends playing bat and trap

100 what’s your favourite biscuit? the people of london told us the best thing to dunk in a brew

86 tread carefully dave hawkins takes us on a hunt for the elusive oil beetle

102 taking sweets from strangers and all the other things we couldn’t do as children

90 press three to complain raging against flat pack furniture

110 water balloons, camera, action! bringing a video game to life in the park

92 come ride with me on my dirigible falling for the fanciful vehicles that history forgot

112 no ghosts, no junk mail my friends were shocked when I moved into a cemetery

98 the birds, the bees and the petri dish when my parents told me about ivf, I thought it was their best joke yet

114 in our kitchen after the war designing bold and brilliant tea towels for postwar britain

116 you wash and I’ll dry even in the plainest kitchen, there’s a tea towel over the cooker

120 pretty things with paper wings how to fold paper and it make it fly

118 red lolly, yellow lolly who wants a lolly swirled with yoghurt and blackberries?

126 the great mouse hunt play the board game on the back cover 128 which board game are you? without this quiz you’d have no cluedo

between you and me board games aren’t just about winning A few months ago, we sat around a hastily-scribbled sheet of paper, scattered with dice and coloured scraps of card. We were excited. We were testing out our own board game for the first time. The idea was simple but absurd: three mice scuttle around the board, collecting the ingredients for a cup of tea, while keeping away from a hungry cat. We soon realised that something wasn’t right. Everyone was confused. The board was badly planned, and more suited to continental warfare than a tea break. The cat was on a rampage. Mice got caught as soon as they stepped outside their homes. The verdict was, except for the cat, unanimous: it wasn’t very much fun. The months that followed were full of intense conversations about ten-sided dice, the pros and cons of a hexagonal grid and obscure German board games. We argued about everything from the cat’s method of moving to whether we should introduce mouse droppings. Yes, we did. We called our game the Great Mouse Hunt and you can find it on the back cover. We hope you have fun playing it.

special deliveries postcards from sunny places To Oh Comely, Looking forward to seeing the new issue ... my husband and I just LOVE the magazine. I leave it on the breakfast table for him to read, and when I came down to breakfast the other day, he was playing his guitar and said that the magazine had inspired him so much that morning, that he just had to go and create something! And this is a man who swears that he isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t creative ... so thank you for helping me in my quest to prove to himself that he is creative ... we all are! Best wishes, Philiy

Dear Oh Comely, I have kidnapped my daughter’s copy of your beatific magazine but won’t tell you my age as it is somewhat uncomely. From this I have gleaned an idea for £1 (or even just the hell of it) and she says I should pass this on—flattery indeed. You just need a pad and pencil. Walk down roads near you that appeal and when you come across the front garden of a house with a particularly arresting flower / bush / tree / doorway / window / bower / sleeping cat, lovingly draw it, sign your initials (delightfully mysterious), claiming beneath how much the sight of this flower / bush / tree / doorway / window / bower / sleeping cat has moved you then post it through the letterbox. How many would end up framed, I wonder? Or sent to the local paper as a reflection of goodwill and altruism? Or scanned and posted on Facebook? I have now returned the kidnapped copy for a ransom of allowed readership of the next issue. Yours, looking out onto our own front garden, Yolande

what we listened to the songs that made the issue illustrations alyssa nassner

what we ate to make these delicious biscuits, just add fifteen of everything

some people who helped to make this issue and the pictures they drew of themselves max knight is a photographer and video-maker

chris knight illustrated the board game on the back cover

Max’s portraits of pub game players on page 78 showed us a hidden world.

You can print out Chris’s hand-drawn pieces and start a game of cat and mouse.

Tell us a little about yourself and your work. I enjoy creating still, composed and colourful imagery. My work is popular in the music industry. In the last two years I’ve worked on campaigns for Brit Awardwinning artists Ellie Goulding, Mumford & Sons and Laura Marling.

Tell us a little about yourself and your work. My work plays on the tradition of poster design from the thirties to the sixties, through its use of limited colour palettes. Other inspirations include Russian Constructivism, badly printed cardboard boxes and my childhood love of Lego.

Tell us your favourite moment from a film you love. I could mention a hundred moments from Wes Anderson films, but his stuff is built on a foundation of little moments so it feels like cheating. At the start of Die Hard, there is a sweeping crane shot from inside the ballroom at Nakatomi Plaza, across all the panicking people and onto Alan Rickman holding a gun. You know you’re in for an awesome ninety minutes.

Tell us your favourite moment from a film you love. The ride of the Rohirrim from the Lord of the Rings. Whenever I hear Howard Shore’s score for that scene I can’t help thinking, “I should really learn how to play the fiddle.”

Which children’s party game did you always used to win at? I definitely never won at kiss chase, that’s for sure. What is your drink of choice after a game of skittles? I wish I could name some obscure Cornish ale, but I’m just a massive fan of the humble lager.

Which children’s party game did you always used to win at? I can’t remember ever winning a party game, but come to think of it I can’t remember playing one either. I was probably eating cake at the time. What do you like to do on a free summer’s afternoon? Try to play my guitar like Bert Jansch, go for a long walk, avoiding any rebellious cows, before settling in a comfy chair to read into the evening.

jacob stead illustrated vehicles from bygone times

adelaide turnbull is a stylist and photographer

Have a look at Jacob’s work on page 92.

Adelaide styled a colourful shoot by the river on page 56 and a photo series with the young folk singer Misty Miller on page 34.

Tell us a little about yourself and your work. I am from Bradford, and I live and work in Bristol, after recently graduating from the University of the West of England. My work is mainly influenced by folk art, Hammer films and old engravings of witches. Which board game did you always used to win at? I’m not sure I’ve ever been much good at board games. I used to buy the most expensive properties in Monopoly and come crashing down financially. I don’t think I ever learnt from this. What is your favourite biscuit and how do you like to eat it? Nothing matches the excitement of risking ruining a well-deserved cup of tea just to dunk a ginger snap, but overall I think Leibniz get the vote. Which of the illustrated vehicles would you like a ride on? I think they all look fun, except the necropolis train, but I reckon the bathysphere would provide endless entertainment down at the beach. A little dirigible would come in handy for avoiding rush hour. Perhaps I could combine them.

Tell us a little about yourself and your work. I live in the city, but look for nature everywhere. I like to know what the moon is up to. I’m a Virgo who enjoys taking photographs of dogs with interesting expressions or sleeping strangers. I love to take and arrange photographs as it allows me to show other people the wonder and excitement I see that I couldn’t describe in words. Which board game did you always used to win at? Connect Four. I once sat in a corner at a party and challenged everyone there to take me on in turn. I became giddy with victory. I’m not much fun at parties. What is your favourite biscuit, and how do you like to eat it? I like biscuits that you have to dissect. I have an ongoing love affair with those posh German ones that are more chocolate than biscuit. I like to break off the edges of chocolate with my teeth, then dunk the remains in a cup of milky Earl Grey.

pretty lovely little things with big stories drop a line to free@ohcomely.co.uk by the end of october if you’d like the chance to get your hands on some well-crafted creations

25 years ago, George Treves and Sean Thomas had an idea. They were college friends skiing in the Alps and desperate not to head back to uni, but were running out of cash. The pair started making souvenir t-shirts and selling them to friends and folk. The idea caught on and White Stuff was born, its name a reminder of the label’s snowy beginnings. Today, you’ll know it for comfy clothes that make you feel like you’re ready for an adventure, even if you’re just snuggled up at home on the sofa. We have a White Stuff leather bag and £200 of vouchers to give away. Their story got us thinking about our own adventures in the snow. To win, drop a line to free@ohcomely.co.uk with your snowy tales. They can be anything from last winter’s larger-than-life snowball, to rambling across glaciers in summertime.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Actually, it’s both! Peanut & Pip is an adorably bird-themed business, selling equally adorable things for little people, including these origami paper planes by supercute French toy makers Djeco. The whimsical, retro-style planes couldn’t help but bring out our inner child, and left us longing to throw them from behind our desks at the back of the office. The packs are available from their website at www.peanutandpip.com, but the good news is that we have three to give away, so drop us a line or write us a message across the skies.

Zosienka & Rosie’s story began over a lionshaped biscuit at a baking company south of the Thames, and they haven’t looked back since. Together they make paper goods, textiles and ceramics. These hand-painted hearts come in a range of designs and will be whatever you want them to be: a secret love token, keepsake or a beautiful tree-hanging. The hearts are available from www.zosienkarosie.bigcartel.com. The heart-warming news is that we have four to give away, so email in to free@ohcomely.co.uk and tell us who you’d give yours to. It’s okay, we can keep a secret.

The office has been a haven of lavender-scented tranquility ever since these cute and useful stitch-your-own animal kits arrived from Loglike. Each adorable creature—giraffe, elephant or alligator—is hand-printed on upcycled vintage fabric in a lucky-dip riot of colours and patterns. They come with needle, thread, pins and illustrated instructions, ready to be turned into a pincushion or animal. Loglike operates from a small studio in a beautiful Welsh valley with wild pheasants, old slate quarries and plenty of local character. You can buy their wares through their website www.loglike.co.uk and we have one of each kit to give away.

This gorgeous apron by Polly’s Textiles is the work of Danielle Wade, a textile designer from Suffolk whose screen-printed designs are beautifully purposeful and cut a domesticated dash. Danielle’s hand-printed products are deeply influenced by the natural and botanical world as well as her wide-eyed outlook and love of textile designs from the 50s and 60s. She says, “The natural world is just so rich and the colourways lend themselves perfectly to textiles.” The 100% linen apron is available in two sizes, and you can find out more at www.pollystextiles.com. We also have two of her hand-printed wallets to give away.

“Meet Mr and Mrs Wyomingile of Cheyenne, Wyoming; a stay-at-home mum who dreams of climbing mountains and a talented man of science who invented the ore and the moon.” This family of Russian dolls confess to being unlike any other, and we’re inclined to agree with them. They belong to Tracey Meek, an artist based in the Midlands. Her wondrous world of created characters and creatures appear on everything from button pins to cards, t-shirts and Russian dolls, of course. Tracey says, “I love seeing people’s reactions as they handle my work. It’s like a tiny pet they are able to take home and never have to feed.” Take a look into Tracey’s world and its curious inhabitants at traceymeek.weebly.com.

jessie chorley Jessie Chorley tells stories using scraps of silk, old dresses and re-worked books, which she embroiders, draws and stitches into in her treasure-packed shop in east London. You can pay Jessie a visit at J and B the Shop on Colombia Road. For more info on her work go to www.jandbtheshop.com. I’ve always thought of your work as storytelling. Is this conscious? I’ve always been fascinated by books and their beautiful paper and typography. I love them as objects in their own right. I’ve got quite bad dyslexia and always found reading an absolute nightmare. I’d open a book up and not be able to see the text at all, but I’d see something else. People have sometimes been quite shocked by the books I’ve used. You seem to see any surface as a canvas. The other day I was going through a Jewish area where all the men were wearing these beautiful, wool coats and it just sent my mind reeling. I’d love to get my hands on one! Do you have any particularly memorable finds? I walked past a house clearance where an old lady had died. It was really sad, but the house was incredible: four stories tall and the ceilings were all crooked, with wallpaper peeling off the walls. I could have moved in on the spot. I ended up buying all of her cookbooks and aprons. I found out later she was called Phyllis Ellis, which is such a wonderful name. I’m doing an exhibition in September and I’m going to make it about her, using her things and keeping her memory alive. Jessie has offered a lucky reader a place on one of her eccentric craft workshops over at her shop. Be in for a chance of winning by dropping us a line at free@ohcomely.co.uk.

neal’s yard remedies Neal’s Yard Remedies is the home of organic things to nourish your skin. We had a chat to Fran Johnson, who formulates their luscious lotions, oils and balms. What inspires you? So many things: interesting people, colours, smells, the outdoors. I love watching things grow and develop, whether it is my gorgeous nieces and nephews, or the plants in the garden. Neal’s Yard products always smell delicious and full of essential oils. What are some of your favourite smells? Three of my all-time favourite essential oils are frankincense, rosemary and pink pepper. Favourite smells would be the garden after the rain, sea air and ground coffee. What’s the journey that took you to work for Neal’s Yard? My father was a pharmacist and I have very early memories of standing in his dispensary watching him make up ointments and lotions. In a previous life, I worked in corporate finance, but the time came for me to move back to my Dorset roots. Product development marries technical with creative—the perfect place for me to be. What’s a reliable homemade beauty treatment? There are so many beauty treatments that you can make using the contents of your kitchen cupboards: olive oil, oats, salt. Personally, I am a huge fan of balms. They are just a combination of beeswax, butters and oils, are really easy to make and you can use them to moisturise, cleanse and exfoliate. We have some tubs of Neal’s Yard wild rose beauty balm to give away. It’s an all-in-one face treatment loaded with soothing flower oils. To claim a pot, tell us your favourite smell by dropping an email to free@ohcomely.co.uk.

oh comely copywriting The squiggle game is simple and fun. Start with the squiggle and draw something around it. It can be whatever you want. Have a go, then compare yours with a friend’s. The creative people behind oh comely like taking a simple thread and weaving something beautiful and imaginative from it. It’s what we do. We’re a small and passionate team with big ideas who love words and photographs as much as you do.

If you like oh comely’s work, our writers and photographers can help shape your publication too. We love the challenge of an exciting idea and we’re used to bringing far-off dreams to life. We can edit, design and polish your project so it’s beautiful and accessible. Get in touch if you’d like a new approach. You can find out more at ohcomely.co.uk/copywriting. Or drop us a line at copywriting@ohcomely.co.uk.

jack’s house of curiosities jack hudson draws the tinier side of life interview laura callaghan Bristol-based Jack Hudson’s impressive illustrations have been cropping up in a variety of places from posters to album covers. His images are filled with long-limbed characters, surreal settings and a plethora of detail that coaxes the viewer to look a little harder. An exciting colour palette and a fresh and recognisable style runs throughout his illustrations, which are often inspired by vintage film posters and 1960s film-making. The illustrations featured here are some of Jack’s personal work. Tell us a bit about how you work. I often work on drawings hands-on at the studio and then I’ll usually come home and work up images digitally. I’m now back in Bristol but I enjoyed time at ‘home’ back in Birmingham for three months after graduating. I worked in my conservatory and had the pleasure of my mum cooking me some delicious meals while I could give full focus to my work. It also gave my parents a better insight into how I make my artwork. Freelance illustration can be fairly lonely. Sometimes I like it, particularly at night when everything’s silent and there aren’t many distractions. I’ll most likely get ideas for the job in the late hours of the evening when I’m trying to get some sleep, which can be both exciting and frustrating at the same time. Tools of the trade are an imagination, a mechanical pencil, black Indian ink, a set of gouache paints and a pot of coffee. What has been your favourite project to date? If I were to pick a particular project it would be the album artwork for Sky Larkin’s Kaleide that I worked on last year. When I received the finished vinyl artwork through the post it was such an amazing feeling to see the work in print. Financially speaking, if I were to be totally honest, my favourite commission was the work I produced with the Google Left: a poster design inspired by the Explorers, a 1985 sci-fi film directed by Joe Dante. Above: Preserve.

This illustration is called the Great Hoard and was inspired by hoarders, anti-gravity and spheres.

Chrome team in California a few months after graduating. This enabled me to take my career in illustration more seriously and go fulltime. In this issue, we asked artists to draw their favourite scene from a film, which made me think of your illustration Behind the Scenes and Everything Else In Between. Does film have a big influence on you? Film is something that has always intrigued me. That was an exploratory, fun piece of work, placing references to some of my favourite films into a tower block building. You’ve got R2-D2 on his cigarette break, Augustus Gloop stuck in a chocolate tube and in the training room we have Team Zizzou on a treadmill sandwiched between Forrest Gump and the Terminator. The particular aesthetic of that piece was inspired by the ‘let me tell you about my boat’ scene in the Life Aquatic. The audience is taken on an intriguing room-by-room tour of the ship at the heart of the film. It was also inspired by a film called Synecdoche, New York, where a man’s life becomes a play within a play and it becomes very difficult to know what is real and what is not.

Behind the Scenes and Everything Else In Between is a drawing that shows the work of film-making.

explosions in the sky they’d be musical geniuses, if it wasn’t for so many cancelled practices after lunch interview rosanna durham portrait kevin morosky Halfway through talking to Michael James, Munaf Rayani, Mark Smith and Chris Hrasky from Explosions in the Sky, I noticed that they all had an identical tattoo on the inside of their wrists. The instrumental rock group have been together for over eleven years, and they explained that they got the tattoos a few years ago as a momento of their time making music together. It’s a drawing of an angel taken from the cover of their second album. We spoke to Explosions in the Sky after the release of their sixth album Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, which has been four years in the making. Is it true that the band started when Chris posted a flyer looking for a “sad, triumphant rock band”?

Munaf: The rest of us all grew up in a small town in western Texas called Midland. We were living in Austin and playing music but were short of a drummer. One particular day, we were in a record store and came across Chris’s flyer. Michael: Chris had put those little tabs on the flyer so you could take a number. But we didn’t even take one of those, we just took the whole flyer down! We thought, “No one else needs to call this number.” A sad triumphant rock band is just what we are. It’s been four years since your last album. Why did you take such a long break between records? Chris: We’d sort of hit a wall in terms of the songs and were getting discouraged. We decided not to walk and talk music, and we didn’t play for some weeks. Munaf: I think it worked, because after about a month everyone was itching to play again, or even to discuss music. Chris: When I think back on older bands, I wonder how they did it. I mean, the Beatles were only around for seven years but they wrote so much great stuff. It just freaks me out. They put out an album a year and all of them were pretty much great. How did they do that? Mark: The Beatles were geniuses. Munaf: If we applied ourselves, could we become geniuses?

Chris: Yes, I just put up a note. I moved to Texas in early 1999 and wanted to play music again, so I made this absurd flyer. I’m not really the type to do something like that, so it was a strange thing.

Chris: Er, no. Too many cancelled practices after lunch. “We ate too heavy a meal. Let’s just go home today!” That’s what we always say.

Explosions in Sky drew their self-portraits looking like a line-up, but why does Mark have no legs?

What other musicians of the past do you admire? Munaf: Nina Simone. If she was living now, and we were at the same festival, I would make my way to her pretty fast. Although, I’m sure security would stop me. We used to do this exercise where one of us would bring in an album, and we would all just sit down and listen to it. One week I brought a Nina Simone collection. It was overwhelming, her voice and the pace in which she sang. Your music doesn’t have any vocals, but your song and album titles are always poetic and heavy. That fascinates me. Michael: For instrumental music, it can mean anything to anyone. So having these wordy titles is our chance to tell people what a song means to us. We do tend to weight them a little bit and make them evocative. Mark: They used to come easier, but they were also a little more ridiculous. Munaf: A little more over the top. Like our second album called Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever. I don’t think we’d call a record that now.

have to love it. If one of us doesn’t like a song then we throw it away, which can be frustrating. We do try to be respectful of one another, because we’re friends. Munaf: It’s so much harder to be a jerk, and boss everyone around. But if we didn’t get along, we wouldn’t be doing this. Michael: Imagine having to tour with people you don’t even like. Mark: Jeez Louise. It wouldn’t be worth it. Michael: We would have murdered each other already! It’s really beautiful that you can do that. It’s difficult for many others to do the same. Chris, you’ve said before that you feel like amateurs. Chris: I still don’t feel like we know what we’re doing. We’re not at a point that everything we do is good. Most things that we do are going to be bad. So we have to work to make them good. Munaf: But, honestly, if we were playing individually, we might be mediocre at best. Except Chris who is an exceptional drummer and I tell him that all the time. With any other combination of people, I don’t know if we would have been able to achieve this. We can all play our instruments well, but together over twelve years, I think we’ve become very strong.

I guess not having a lead singer also means that there is no obvious frontman to the band. There’s a feeling of you just collaborating.

Mark: What will be the big climax that ends it all?

Mark: That’s part of the reason why it can take us a long time to make music. There’s not one guy saying how the song is going to be. We all

Munaf: Hopefully it doesn’t end. We’ll just keep going and playing. And if the lights went out, well, it would be thanks for the music.

some songs feel like butter, some songs sound like cake low’s frontman talks about childbirth, songwriting and small town america words rosanna durham portrait trent mcminn

I’m not quite sure how this happened, but near the end of my conversation with Alan Sparhawk things have become very personal. “Once you have a child, you realise more about birth and death,” he says. “My wife nearly died while giving birth—you’re faced with all these things. You’re looking at the person you love the most and you realise that they’re both the most dead and alive that you’ve ever seen anyone before.”

butter. Some songs sound like cake.” Food and music fold together like a baking mix.

It sounds terrifying, I say, a little sheepishly. He carries on, “You’re being split open. It’s not so much that it’s bad, but you’re just aware that birth and death are right on the edge of happening, right now. It’s very intense.” These are the kind of details that make me never want to give birth.

Seeing his own father, a keen amateur musician, writing lyrics at home in a functional, no-nonsense way was an example to him when he was starting out in music. “I saw that real people wrote things.” Nonetheless, he needs a week to work himself into it before things begin to flow. “If I do manage to finish something, it has been laboured over.”

It was an unusual turn to the conversation, but perhaps not a surprising one. Music has always been very personal for the lead singer of Low. Sparhawk founded the band with his wife, Mimi Spencer, in 1993 and they’ve been accompanied by Steve Garrington on bass guitar since 2008. Alan and Mimi have known each other since they were nine, he tells me. The couple started dating in their early twenties when they were living in Duluth, a town in middle America. They still live in the city. “The landscape is weird,” Sparhawk says. “It’s cold. You can see Lake Superior on the horizon and it looks like an ocean.” Duluth has the charm and incestuous intensity of a small town. Going on tour keeps Sparhawk sane. “I imagine for someone who doesn’t escape it can be a bit like being in high school and seeing the same old people.”

As for the heady rush of performing, it has its own pitfalls. “I’ve become very addicted to playing live,” says Sparhawk. “And sadly a lot my selfesteem and understanding of who I am is wrapped up in the actions of everything, from driving to the show, to setting up and playing the show.” He is still a little surprised that people turn up to gigs. “It sounds cheesy and fake, but sometimes when I’m about to do a show I walk out on stage and think, ‘Wow, there are people here!’ It just seems so surreal. All I see are the shortcomings and the fact that there are so many other people who are doing stuff that’s more interesting, I guess.”

Perhaps it was the stable base of their home and family life that led Mimi and Alan to take what must have been one of the most stressful decisions of their careers: taking their two young children on tour. “When we were young and dating, Mimi and I always dreamed of doing something together,” says Sparhawk. “I guess once we had kids, it just felt natural. People had kids when they were crossing the Great Plains.” For the pair of them, he admits, it added an extra layer of stress to an already stressful life. “But it’s the parents that usually need to adjust,” he adds. “Kids will thrive anywhere you put them. It’s the parents that find it more difficult.” Alan Sparhawk doesn’t see the need for divisions between love and work, children and touring. Domestic life spills into music-making, as a song on their recent album, C’mon, suggests: “Some songs feel like

That’s not to say that writing or performing are straightforward for Sparhawk. Putting words on paper is a difficult process. “There are millions of mind games that can happen. It’s humiliating. It’s horrible. Like running a marathon. I can only take it in phases.”

For Low’s latest album, Sparhawk chose an old church in Duluth as a recording studio. The band helped to convert the building into a community centre and studio several years back. It seems a gentle gesture, to create a recording space and to want to share it with the public, and one which says much about Low’s preoccupation with their local neighborhood. During the recording, they used several of the toy instruments that Sparhawk’s children were playing with. He happily includes these toy drums in the band’s percussion catalogue. There’s more to his praise of the toy drum than it just being an original sound effect. Parenthood has changed the band, says Sparhawk. “Music was always important to me. But there was something about having kids that made it more about life and death.” As well as new inspiration, Sparhawk discovered a new audience for his music when he had children, and one that makes him take his work a little more seriously. “I’m a little more determined to make what I do count. You realise it’s going to be listened to.”

purple t-shirt: element eden / yellow leopard print cardigan: topshop / leather shorts: stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own / shoes, socks and ukulele: mistyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own

Misty’s colourful self-portrait.

music for the moment misty miller didn’t choose the ukulele, the ukulele chose her interview hannah jane riley, portrait kevin morosky

Misty Miller is a sixteen-year-old singer whose dulcet tones and ukulele-strumming have caught the attention of everyone from the Guardian to Burberry: so far, so precocious. However, when we meet at Hurwundeki in Bethnal Green, I find a girl who can talk as seriously about producing a marble effect with nail polish as her blossoming musical career, and whose ambition is refreshingly driven by a desire to try things out rather than prove a point.

anything. I try not to keep track of it too much. It’s really nice to be noticed, but I don’t put pressure on myself to meet these expectations. I think if I did worry about that sort of thing I’d go mad!

How long have you been making music for? I started writing songs with my brother when I was eight or nine, and it was ever since I got the ukulele that I started making something out of it.

Everything seems so fluid with you, experimenting rather than fixating. I definitely feel that I have my own sound now. The first album had songs on it that I’d written when I was thirteen. I just wanted to get them out there after playing them for so long. I want to think of the album that I’ll be releasing early next year as my debut album. I’ve needed that year of performing to inspire what I write. Having a greater knowledge has changed the way I view songwriting.

What made you choose the ukulele? I’d never planned to. A lot of people play it because they want to have it as a fashion item, but I just got given it. I accidentally started playing it, and then I became addicted. It just worked as a tool for me to write my songs with.

How was your tour? It was really good. I learned a lot about performing. It confirmed to me that I’m doing the right thing. I suppose it’s a difficult thing to do as you’re still in the process of growing up, but the good and the bad experiences are all worth it. I can use them all.

In terms of your own music, where do the stories within your songs come from? The first album is heavily autobiographical. It’s very much me writing songs about how I’m feeling. But now I’m more into songwriting as a craft, working from an idea and using lyrics differently. I always took songwriting seriously, but now it’s taken a step up. I’m thinking about more when I’m writing.

Do you feel like coming from London has affected your songwriting? It’s given me a lot of opportunities to experience things that maybe I wouldn’t have if I’d grown up in a small town. It also meant that I had the chance to play a lot of gigs. I was never one of those people who posted videos of themselves online. For me, it was more about playing in front of people, learning if this was definitely something that I wanted to do.

Were your family supportive of your decision to leave full-time education? My dad’s actually a musician and my brother’s musical, so it’s very much part of our lives. My parents have never been pushy. I was always singing when I was younger, and wanted to get out there, but they helped me to wait. You’re on quite a lot of ‘ones to watch’ lists at the moment. Does the expectation make you nervous? I think it’s exciting more than

Once I’d started playing, it all happened quite quickly, really. I met my manager about a year after I started writing. It’s only now that everything is a lot slower: first you have to record, then you have to promote. I didn’t realise how long it takes to produce something. You create a set of songs and by the time they’re out there you’re working on something else. But I’m happy about what I’m doing right now, and I feel confident that I’ll be happy to be doing it in a year’s time.

play misty for me an afternoon with singer misty miller photos kevin morosky, styling adelaide turnbull

blue denim dress: asos / garbo studded belt: be & d / quilt on table: a. p .c. / shoes and jewellery: mistyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own

velvet and tulle dress: beyond retro / scorpion necklace: philippa holland / other jewellery: mistyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own

tobius t-shirt: element eden / velvet shorts: zara / red macramĂŠ belt: h&m / ivy leaf earring: philippa holland / other jewellery: mistyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own

cream cotton and lace dress: urban outfitters

can I sleep on your sofa? exploring the world, one living room at a time words victoria watts portrait steve kennedy Salma eats fish for breakfast, Denny drinks whisky and Lorna sits in prayer. I eat cereal, and cake on Mondays. We all like biscuits. They say C2s buy bourbons and live in flats, and C1s earn £30,000+ and eat out twice a week. Averages frustrate me; we’re all exceptions. People have always intrigued me. I wanted to know everyone at school, out of school, the exchange students, anyone that entered my world. I once had ten pen friends. It started with books, and then I looked up and saw a living library around me: endless characters to meet and stories to share in. I wondered what I was searching for, until I realised I wasn’t searching at all, I was exploring. Some people explore forests, history, the sky. I like to explore people: how they live, how they’re happy, what they see. Sometimes the way life goes means you have to stay put. Finding quality moments with friends is an elusive enough endeavour, let alone finding space for new people. There are stories all around us, and friends who become favourites, but I still crave the exotic. I want to meet an anarchist from Sweden, a girl who grew up on a mountain and a man who dances in secret every day at 6 pm. In couchsurfing, I found a shortcut to meaningful time with strangers. In the library of the world, couchsurfing isn’t just the travel section. Every time I read a couchsurfer’s profile, I get excited. It’s a way to bring traveling home. It gives you an alternative map of the city and its people, pointing you directly to those who’ll share. You find secrets that it’s much harder to as a tourist. I remember meeting an inventor of miniature robots, returning to live with a group of animators and spending time in Antoine’s beautiful flat with a swing overlooking Gràcia. On one trip to Paris, my boyfriend and I stayed in a different place each night. We joined a house party of artists celebrating the final night of their degree and visited a couple of photographers from Brighton setting up home in the city. We spent a final night with Katerina, a jaded but joyous Belarusian designer who dressed just like a droog. She and her undertaker flatmate taught us the anatomy of the horse and befuddled us with their contradictions. At 3 am, I was sure bedtime was nigh, but they ushered us onto the street with the promise of a hidden secret. We were soon in the deserted grounds of the Sacré-Cœur. We climbed, giggling with the beauty of it, onto the carousel and sat entranced by the city beneath. That night and every time I meet someone new, I learn a little bit more about the world and in turn I learn more about myself. People often say that traveling makes you more open-minded, but I think it’s the people you meet that do that, no matter where you are. If you only spend time with people inside your own everyday life, interests and culture, then averages can start to make sense. The world is full of intricacies, individuals, similarities and difference. The more you meet, the more exceptions you’ll see.

do you remember that scene? illustrators and their favourite movie moments

I could’ve drawn a scene from a trendy cult movie so that I looked all knowledgeable about that kind of thing. But I chose E.T., and not the classic flying bicycle, silhouetted against the moon. No, the actual chase is the stuff of legend. Elliott and his brother’s gang are trying to evade capture by the authorities. Swooping down over dusty terraces of the unfinished estate, with E.T. wrapped in a blanket, they suddenly come face to face with a line of cop cars barring their way. It’s that moment when you hear a disembodied voice shouting at the TV, and then realise it’s your own, willing their escape, “You dumb cops! Don’t you know he’s only trying to get home!” I was on the edge of my seat then, as a kid, and I’m on the edge of my seat now, many viewings later.

e.t. the extra-terrestrial illustration jes hunt

I love Some Like It Hot. The film is a series of increasingly unlikely events and coincidences, starting with prohibition and mobs in 1920s America, and progressing to men in drag, gangsters coming out of cakes and some of the best final words of a film ever. I could have chosen nearly any scene from the film—the funeral home speakeasy, Tony Curtis’ turn as Junior of Shell Oil on the beach, or in the bath fully dressed and furious—but in the end I decided to go for the iconic train station scene. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon hurry to catch a train and escape from the mob, dressed in twenties drag and looking strangely convincing as women, aside from Jack Lemmon’s legs. Cue the entrance of Sugar, Marilyn Monroe with a ukulele, sashaying down the platform. Lemmon remarks that she looks “like jell-o on springs” and manages to make it sound like a compliment, as she wiggles off towards the train.

some like it hot illustration katie harnett

Thanks to Peter Pan, I spent a lot of my childhood wearing green leggings and jumping from furniture while wielding a tin foil dagger. Other times, I was wearing an eye patch and hobbling around with my finger curled into a hook shape. I was living on an island in the tropics at the time, which probably made my obsession worse. Needless to say, one of my favourite movies to borrow from the video rental shack was Steven Spielberg’s Hook. Since recently rediscovering this movie, I’ve realised that it’s packed with cringy, goopy, nineties sentiments. Despite this, there are moments in Hook that are still special to me. I can watch over and over again the scene when Peter catapults his empty spoon at Rufio, but actual gloop hits Rufio in the face, all sickly pink and blue. As Peter stares wide-eyed at his spoon, he remembers how to use his imagination and the table becomes swamped in mountains of never-food. Then a Lost Boy yells, “Food Fight!” and the whole place erupts into a brightly-coloured mess. This scene looks just as fun now as it did when I was four. Maybe that’s because I so badly want the things I imagine to be able to come real, or maybe because I desperately want to go back to Neverland, or maybe I’m just hungry.

hook illustration nicholas stevenson

the only comedian in the village isy suttie’s comedy may not go down well with your egg and chips words jason ward portrait christoph ferstad

Isy’s self-portrait. She told us she was good at optimism but bad at cooking.

Someone is heckling Isy Suttie from inside her head. She’s found herself imagining the worst ahead of performing her new stand-up show at the Edinburgh Festival. Politely but firmly, she responds, “I’m talking as Isy now: stop it please. Stop eating chips in my show.” This isn’t to say that a lot of chip-eating happens in Isy’s shows. “No,” she admits, “It doesn’t. But for some reason this morning I was imagining being heckled. I don’t know why I have to think it through in my head with every show.”

nosy neighbours and the heroin addicts who come round to borrow rolls of tin foil. She has always been a compulsive letter-writer, but Isy looks forward to her letters with more than just a daughterly interest. “I’m definitely always looking for comedy in her letters. I read them thinking, ‘I don’t care about Aunty Barbara, give me the funny!’” To Isy’s relief, her mother doesn’t mind, “She does it too. She’ll tell me a story about the vicar or something and then she’ll say ‘Do you think you can use that?’ It’s quite sweet. It’s like I’ve got a free writer.”

It seems unlikely that anyone would want to heckle Isy Suttie, unless that heckle was to ask her out on a date. Isy melted hearts with her goofy smile and unapologetic quirk when she joined Peep Show as Dobby, IT geek and only chance for happiness for sad sack Mark, played by David Mitchell. Unlike a lot of comics, who feel overwhelmed by their best-known on-screen persona, Dobby is a comfortable fit with Isy’s stand-up. “She isn’t that far from what I’m like in real life, so hopefully people who like the show would like what I do live.” Isy radiates a warmth that carries through to her stand-up shows, and their disarming mix of musical numbers and bittersweet character comedy.

Isy’s comedy is all about the little things that make people happy or unhappy. She wants to move the audience, she says, not make them laugh at knob gags. “There’s a lot of comedy in people’s complexity and flaws. If you can tap into something that everyone identifies with, like you’re feeling unconfident on your first day of work or you’re hurt because a neighbour has said something about your rockery, you can make the whole audience feel that too.” She’s aware that big television stand-up isn’t always prepared for her softer, more subtle comedy. “If it’s Saturday night and people are in eating their eggs and chips, they don’t necessarily want to be thinking ‘The neighbour said something about the rockery, oh yeah, I’m really moved!’“

When she is finished rebutting the hecklers, Isy’s new show will see her playing Pearl and Dave, a couple who connect online and then discover that real life is far more awkward. Isy plays both parts, singing songs to dramatise their emails and webcam conversations, while narrating the story as herself. Her portrayals of the ill-fated pair are silly yet sad, touching on the regret that comes from a lifetime of diminished expectations. The show sounds typical of Isy’s comedy, which is defined by a clear-eyed but humane positivity. The characters she creates on stage are often wilfully deluded but the portrayals are fundamentally sensitive and without malice. There’s a difference this time, though. Isy’s mother isn’t making so much of an appearance. “I feel like maybe I ought to start writing my own material rather than using my mother,” she says. That, one can’t help thinking, would be a shame. Along with swathes of her own diaries, a mainstay of Isy’s comedy is the portrayal of her hometown of Matlock. Her mother’s letters bring to life the town’s dodgy dealing,

While other comedians are ambitiously chasing exposure on television, she seems in no hurry. “I feel like if I did more stand-up on telly or a big tour, I could do bigger venues and then it might move to something else, but I don’t mind really. I’ve never been someone who rings my agent and says, ‘Why am I not on that?’ I’d rather get my head down and work and wait, and if stuff comes to me I’ll feel more ready to do it.” Her more relaxed approach comes with its own rewards. The freedom from single-minded ambition has given her the chance to explore different things. She played a serial killer in the musical Gutted and she’s now learning Welsh—“I could hold a conversation with a 7-yearold, especially a 7-year-old farmer, because I know a lot of animals and numbers.” Isy is content to do what she loves. “I feel really happy. I was working at Oddbins until the beginning of 2008, and when I left it felt like a real leap of faith. I got Peep Show straight away, so I still can’t believe I’m not dealing with people’s wine that hasn’t got there.”

every ironing pile needs a hero

stories inspired by photographs of home photos from the series â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;domestic driftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by clare gallagher

words ellie phillips It is a truth universally acknowledged that if, in the first three weeks of moving into your home, you do not unpack the cardboard box full of shoes, then you will become a person who keeps their shoes in a cardboard box. The ability to adapt has ensured the survival of the human race, but it can also get you into some fairly lunatic living patterns. My partner and I bought a tiny tabletop ironing board when we moved into a large loft-style apartment with very high ceilings. We never found a table for the ironing board to go on top of and so for four years we knelt in a corner of the cavernous room to do the ironing on the floor. It was like a religious ritual. Kneeling in a corner once a day gave us creaseless clothes, but it gradually drove us nuts. “Normal people do not live like this!” my partner would shout several times a week, usually while crouched in an almost fetal position putting a crease down the arm of his shirt. One day I bought a normal ironing board, and we wondered why we hadn’t done so before. A ritual we have moved from our last flat into our new house is inexplicable to the uninitiated: every morning my son throws his socks down the staircase. We had a mezzanine level in our old flat and he used to love watching them falling over the balcony into the lounge. Now we don’t have a mezzanine, but still he throws his socks down the stairs. If anyone asked me why he did that, things would get complicated. Think of your own household rituals. Do any of them actually make any sense? Do you avoid a certain stair because that’s where the cat threw up five years ago? Do you have to stand on tip-toe to look in the mirror, but would never dream of moving it down an inch? Do you sing in the toilet and wedge the bin against the door rather than put a lock on it?

For me, home is all about these patterns and routines that are not necessarily timesaving, sensible or aesthetic, but which we often carry throughout our lives. The Piles of Crap are a feature of our home-life and always will be. A Pile of Crap is the place where you put your keys, your glasses, old batteries, hair elastics, dental appointment cards. Sometimes they spawn, and before you know it another Pile of Crap has appeared on another surface. In our new house, the day I crossed the threshold and put my keys down on the side in the kitchen next to the landlord’s business card and a one pence piece, I had unwittingly planted the flag for our new Pile of Crap. One pattern which we did successfully manage to stamp out and leave behind us was the Cupboard of Doom, but this was only after it nearly killed somebody. The Cupboard of Doom was above head height and contained all the medicines out of the reach of small children. However, it was so high that you had to stand on a stool in order to access its contents. No one could be bothered to fetch a stool and so we spent many years just lobbing things in and hoping for the best. One day my mother-in-law opened the Cupboard of Doom and a large bottle of Medised fell out and hit her on the head before shattering on the floor and splattering her with sticky paracetamol and tiny pieces of glass. Handily, the first aid kit fell out too so we were able to tend her wounds without getting the stool out.

words victoria watts I remember drawing the house in primary school: a square with four windows, a roof and a blue door. A line of blue for the sky and green for the grass and a yellow circle scrawled in the corner. Number 18. I drew four figures outside: me, my mum, my dad, and our cat Rupert. That was home. The house and I are the only things that remain from that picture and last year we parted ways. Mr Blackburn moved in. I didn’t meet him, but I know he’s disabled. I was

pleased to sell it to someone who could use the ramp and appreciate the garden like Mum did. The day I said goodbye, I stood in the living room and remembered a party I had aged eight. There was a long table, party hats, cake. That was the room where I’d sit in front of the fire on a weekday night, playing solitaire while Mum and Dad watched TV. It’s where I hid a pancake in a drawer after greedy eyes got the better of me, and where Dad would fall asleep after too much beer. I hated the sofa, but wept when they took it away. The house was full of firsts: first step, first fall, first joint. I sat in my old room and stared at the wall that, aged 16, I’d pasted with cuttings, secured eternally with PVA glue. The wall was alive with memories encrypted into a code only I could understand. I wonder what Mr Blackburn made of it. Unsure how to leave, I traced old redundant paths: taking Mum a cup of tea, watering plants in the garden, running downstairs late for school. I finally rested in Mum’s room. Sitting there, I could have drowned, swept away with what was and could have been. The past can consume or make you. I had to move onwards. Now I have a new home. My boyfriend and I bought it last year. I imagine one day we’ll leave it. We’ll walk around and think about the day we first stepped inside, the parties we had, the people we had to stay. Our lives are layered with the things we’ve done, the people we’ve known and the feelings we’ve felt. Senses, situations and symbols will trigger them but nothing can erase what’s been. When I walked away from number 18, I didn’t leave the memories, but I learned not to try and live in them. Someone once said, “You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.”

words jason ward When do you become an adult? Legally it’s 18, of course, but it used to be 21, so that takes some of the fun out of it. If it’s already changed once, then what’s to stop it changing again in the future? I remember turning 18 and not feeling any different at all. It’s hard not to see how arbitrary it is. Instead, we turn to milestones in our lives. The first time you vote, or have sex, or get drunk, or get drunk and then have sex. I remember all of these moments in my life, how they happened and how they felt. I remember what they meant to me then and know what they mean to me now. And on reflection I’m not sure if any of them made me feel the way I did when I bought my first toaster. I was 16 and living alone in a bedsit in Carlisle. I knew no one else in the city and my nearest parent was miles away. The reasons for this are as hazy and complicated now as they were then, but it meant one thing: I was free. Living by yourself when you’re 16 is a glorious and bizarre experience. You’re young enough to appreciate the transgressive joy of parental absence, while being old enough to actually do something with it. Mostly I just sat around and read, or worked on my abysmal writing. I tried to go for a walk every time it rained, and would venture outside just after the sun rose and before people started heading to work. The world was lonely and mine. Retrospectively, it was all pretty grim. I was on a minuscule allowance and was resolutely unemployable, so I had no money and lots of time on my hands. There was no internet connection so I would have to copy internet pages onto a floppy disk at college and read them later at home. I once spent four days eating only nutella, unable to afford anything else. I became afraid of people. My bedsit was above the communal kitchen, and I would lie on my floor trying to listen for signs of life, only going down

when I could be sure that I wouldn’t see a neighbour, even if it meant burning the dinner I’d left cooking in the oven. It’s difficult to describe those days without them sounding depressing, but at the time it felt anything but. There was a feeling I could do anything I wanted to. I learnt how to be alone, and how to enjoy it. One evening I went by myself to the cinema, then came out and sauntered to a different one to see a second film. It was one of my favourite ever nights. I discovered how to live independently, even though it meant combing my hair with a fork. Everything I did that year I did terribly, but I was free to do it. All of this leads to that wonderful day in my life, the one where I woke up and fancied some toast. Because the bedsit didn’t have its own toaster, I decided to go and get my own. I chose the one I wanted from the catalogue, headed down to the shopping centre, paid for it and headed back home. I had learnt that I was in control of my own life, and that I was responsible with finding the things that would make me happy. In time that would be a satisfying job, creative fulfilment, friendship and love, but for then it was just a nicely-buttered bit of toast. I ate about ten slices that day, and each one was divine. I was an adult.

words elizabeth heather Portrayals of calm domesticity are hard for me to look at, because they make me think of their opposite: partings. My mother was talking to her Brazilian neighbour the other week, whose sister was leaving to go back to Brazil. “I can’t go to the airport with her,” the neighbour said, “I will melt like butter!” ‘Melt like butter’ is a literal translation of a Brazilian-Portuguese phrase. It’s a phrase for those times when you are so overcome with emotion that you break down. Melt like butter is a potent expression, and airports are prime places for melting like butter.

I am not a frequent flyer and I was a little surprised that most of what happens in arrivals lounges is routine. Most people aren’t met by anyone at all. Most of the others are taxi companies with signs saying “Mr Ebersbacher” or “Grupo Manzanares”. The ones that are fun to watch are friends and relatives, of course. The children are the best: “It’s Daddy! Daddy’s come home!” It always makes me smile. I didn’t really notice other people last time I was at arrivals. The flight I was waiting for was from Montreal and I was looking out for signs that passengers from it had started to emerge: people who looked like they might be Canadian, or have been to Canada on holiday. (Maple leaf souvenirs? Snow jackets? Neither of these stereotypes seemed to be true that day.) But my heart wasn’t in the meeting-andgreeting voyeurism. I was acutely tense. I tried to pick people out in the distance through the swing doors before they reached them. I was looking out for a person with a rucksack. I wasn’t afraid of anything in particular, but I wasn’t sure how I could stand the next half an hour or hour of waiting. I felt as if I would implode. Knowing that your longing is insignificant in the scheme of things does not make it lose its bite. Here is what I long for: discussions about how far to leave the window open at night, conversations about a new set-up for the stereo, weeks consisting of nothing more exciting than the fitting of a cheap, new sink rack. I want to have the same arguments about dirty cups and leaving the sponge in the sink over and over again. I still don’t agree with the Chinese proverb that an interesting life is a cursed one, but I’m beginning to concede that it has a point. After I’d been waiting for about 35 minutes, he with the rucksack arrived. He saw me first, actually. I think I may have been distracted by trying to work out if the family who were standing next to me had Canadian accents, and I wasn’t expecting a vibrantly purple t-shirt. I had that strange feeling when you see someone again after an absence who had become as familiar to you as yourself. It’s as if they are suddenly a separate being. You notice what they look like again. I melted like butter, of course. I told him I would never let him leave again. Now he has left again, and I avoid pictures of beautiful, homely, stillness.

by the riverside

photography gabriella de martino

styling adelaide turnbull model jessica rae de core | m&p models assistant luciano cismondi

dent de lion oversized shirt: american apparel

mint julep shirt: american apparel

umi cupro cocoon dress: whyred / ballet pumps: pretty ballerinas

chartreuse t-shirt: anthropologie / pins and needles paperbag skirt: urban outfitters

knot short dress: vero moda very

sandy dress: vero moda very / rosario ballet pumps: pretty ballerinas

vermillion shirt and balloon red shorts: american apparel

flowers to feed your skin to make a moisturiser, add love and memories words agatha a nitecka Let's be honest, I am certainly not a beauty expert. If you look in my cosmetic bag you would immediately know what I mean—there's practically nothing in it. However, there is a story in my family that perhaps explains why it makes perfect sense for me to write about how to care for your face. My great-grandfather was a pharmacist, and a good one. He made a special moisturiser for his wife, my great-grandmother. The secret recipe was then passed onto my grandfather, a chemist, who continued with the family tradition and made the moisturiser on a regular basis for my grandmother. It certainly worked wonders, as till this day her skin is glowing. I was told this story from an early age, and since then moisturisers have been important, symbolic even. I assumed that they express love and care, either for someone else or simply for yourself. It does feel pretty nice to look after yourself and treat yourself on a daily basis with some nourishing stuff. So I see moisturisers in an utterly romantic way. Am I alone? It's only recently that I've noticed I use the most natural products possible, and most often they are flower-based. Here are some ideas and easy recipes.

rose petals and honey I love this rejuvenating homemade facemask. You’ll need a handful of rose petals. Mix the petals with a few drops of honey and lime juice and grind to a fine paste. Apply the paste to the face and wash it off after twenty minutes. In the morning, it’s sometimes nice to wake your skin up with some rose water. It tones the skin nicely and the idea of rose petals caressing my skin makes me happy for the rest of the day. There are many cosmetic brands that sell rose water, or you can try to make your own by adapting the recipe for lavender water below. My all-time favourite product is the wild rose beauty balm by Neal’s Yard Remedies. Its fragrance and consistency is heavenly. You can use it as a cleanser, an exfoliant or a nourishing balm. It is quite thick and feels slightly oily in a nice way, but I still like to use it every night. Just make sure you apply a very thin layer.

lavender water Lavender water calms the skin and senses, and it’s very easy to make. You will need 600g fresh dry lavender heads. Boil a litre of water and allow to cool for a minute or two before pouring it into a jar with the lavender. Give the jar a good shake and leave for two days. Using some coffee filter paper, filter the lavender water to strain out the lavender heads. For a stronger lavender smell, filter the same water through a fresh set of flowers.

Agatha’s great-grandfather and his son.

marigold and nut oils You can make a nourishing mask for all skin types from marigold flowers. The flowers here can be fresh or dried. You will need: chamomile flowers marigold flowers 1 carrot 1 tbsp lecithin granules almond oil One. Boil some water and pour it over the chamomile and marigold flowers. Cover the pot and set it aside. Two. Pulp the carrot and add it, and the lecithin granules, to the mixture. Blend the mixture very finely, then add some almond oil, depending on the consistency you want. Three. Wash your face with warm water and apply the facemask evenly. Leave it on for ten minutes and wash off with cold water. My best friend has a recipe that she swears by for a great night oil. Take a handful of marigold flowers and put them in a cup of walnut oil. Leave it in the fridge for a week, then strain out the flowers, retaining the oil. Squeeze the flowers against a gauze to extract the last of the oil. Throw the flowers away. The oil should be kept in the fridge.

chamomile, milk and cream Chamomile can make a lovely cleansing milk for sensitive, dry or irritated skin. Heat a quarter of a cup of cream, a quarter of a cup of milk and 2 tbsp of chamomile flowers (fresh or dried) together in a pan for about half an hour. Do not allow it to boil. Turn off the heat and let the mixture sit for about two hours. Stir the cleansing milk, pour into a bottle and refrigerate. It will keep for two weeks. For a soothing facemask, blend a handful of chamomile flowers with a spoon of olive oil, and some good quality natural yoghurt. I like using goat’s milk yogurt, as I find it richer. Leave it on your face for fifteen minutes, then rinse it off gently. It’s fantastic for the summer months, especially if you’ve been in the sun for a little too long. We have an interview with Neal’s Yard formulator Fran Johnson on page 22 and some tubs of wild rose beauty balm to give away.

courtney in make up photography agatha a nitecka

make up veronica perez diaz

model courtney johansson | oxygen models

Veronica Perez Diaz is a make up artist who loves working with the light reflecting off the skin, using make up to enhance a natural glow. Here Veronica describes how she created five subtle effects with Courtney Johansson. You can see more of her work at www.veropd.com. None of the products she uses are tested on animals.

Here the aim was to keep the freshness of Courtneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s complexion, and echo the reflection of the water on her face. 1. Cleanse and moisturise the skin using the vino source quenching sorbet cream. 2. Apply strobe cream, which boosts the effect of light on the skin. 3. Use a light-textured under-eye concealer to match the skin tone. 4. Dab a touch of luna cream colour base on the inner corners of the eyes. 5. Follow the natural shape of the brows using the brow pencil, focussing on the inner corners. 6. Softly dab the blusher to give a hint of colour. 7. Apply lip balm. 8. Beauty elixir refreshes and sets the make-up.

vino source quenching sorbet creme: caudalie / strobe cream: mac / lip balm: caudalie creme / brilliance gloss: mac / concealer: bobbi brown / just a pinch of gel blush: mac / cremeblend blush tea petal: mac / luna cream colour base: mac / velvetone brow pencil: mac / beauty elixir: caudalie

This look has subtle elements of the beautiful nature around us, with matte earthy colours. 1. A base of quarry eye shadow, blended over the eyelid and eye socket. 2. Blackberry eye shadow blended under the bottom of the lashes. 3. Add depth to the eyes with kohl pencil. 4. Blend the blusher, focussing on the centre of the cheekbones. 5. A dash of satin myth lipstick. 6. Waterproof mascara. 7. Beauty elixir as before.

quarry eye shadow: mac / blackberry eye shadow: mac / smudgy charcoal kohl pencil: mac / myth lipstick: mac / cremeblend blush tea petal: mac / waterproof mascara: bobbi brown

Here the colour is more vibrant and metallic. 1. Smudge the eye shadow all over the eyelid and up to the brow bone. 2. Apply a thin layer of gloss over-eye to illuminate the eyes. 3. An extra layer of blush. 4. A dab of lipstick with a lustre finish. 5. Beauty elixir as before.

amber eye shadow: mac / cremeblend blush tea petal: mac / viva glam v lustre: mac / gloss creme brilliance over-eye shadow: mac

The eyes are the main focus here. 1. Emphasise the eyes by applying the shadow with a synthetic flat brush. Press the colour over the eyelid up to the socket, paying particular attention to the root of the lashes. 2. Apply a soft opal pink highlighter to the cheekbones and brow bones. 3. Mute the lips with myth lipstick. 4. Apply a clear brow set to keep the eyebrows in place. 5. Beauty elixir.

steel long-wear cream shadow: bobbi brown / opal highlighter pen: bobbi brown / myth lipstick: mac / clear brow set: mac

This look enhances all of Courtneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s features more emphatically. 1. Blend the base of SPF15, matched to the skin tone. 2. Apply shadow over the eyelid and blend towards the outer corners of the eyes, creating a perfect smoky eye. The black pearl shade mimics the shade of the water. 3. Stain the lips with lipstick. 4. Apply a hint of the same lipstick to the cheeks. 5. Finish with beauty elixir as the first look.

natural finish long lasting SPF15 in porcelain: bobbi brown / black pearl long-wear cream shadow: bobbi brown rose petal lipstick: bobbi brown

the games that everyone else forgot aunt sally is alive a n d w e l l , a n d s h e â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s down the pub words michael bennett help from hannah jane riley portraits max knight

Peter Greene of the Hampstead Lawn Billiard and Skittle Club, the last remaining club playing London Skittles, holding the cheese made of lignum vitae.

london skittles was saved by a flooded cellar It’s Tuesday night at the world’s last London Skittles club. In the flooded cellar of a Hampstead gastropub, the players get started by bailing out the water. Upstairs, there are tiger prawns on the menu and a moneyed clientèle. The skittles game below could hardly be more out of place.

skittles in the Freemasons Arms when he was first allowed to drink. “I started going down to the Freemasons to drink and play pool. One night when I was there, a friend said that I should come down to the cellar and play skittles. I’ve played weekly since then.”

Every week, tens of thousands of people across England gather to play games that almost no one but the players themselves have even heard of. Aunt Sally, Bat and Trap, Devil Amongst the Tailors, Ringing the Bull, Dwile Flonking: the world of English pub games is an esoteric one. It’s easy to fall in love with its strange rules and prescriptive customs. Most of all, though, it’s exciting that people still spend their evenings playing games that are anachronistic but stubbornly alive.

The River Fleet runs below the pub, and regularly floods the cellar in rainy weather. But what appears to be the skittle alley’s greatest disadvantage has actually been its salvation. “The thing is,” Peter explained, “the Freemasons isn’t really the right kind of pub for the game anymore. It used to be a proper boozer, but now when people have brought their partner out for a meal they can’t really nip down into the cellar for a quick game of skittles. It’s the cellar that’s saved us.”

The organiser of the skittles club, formally known as the Hampstead Lawn Billiard and Skittle Club, is Peter Greene. He started playing

A century ago, London Skittles was played in 200 pubs. Until a couple of years ago, there was a second pub where people played the game,

four different skittles There are probably as many variants on skittle shapes as there are clubs, but here are a few prominent varieties. Glamorgan. The smallest of the pins at six to eight inches high, thin with a bobble on top. Gloucester. A barrel-shaped pin about ten inches high. Bristol. A bulge in the middle, about the same height as the Gloucester variety. Sometimes with a kingpin. Devon. Very large pins with a bulge in the middle. Twelve inches high with a kingpin that can be up to fifteen inches high.

but now the Freemasons Arms is the only one left. The unique problems of the site have given the game a way to escape the irresistible forces of change. “A lot of clubs had their alleys removed because they were in the main bar and landlords needed space to put bums on seats,” Peter explained. “There’s nothing else that you can put in our damp cellar, so we’ve been able to stay.” A key difference between London Skittles and bowling is that the players throw a ‘cheese’, a wooden discus, down onto a diamond arrangement of skittles, rather than bowling it along. Peter compared the game to bowling in 3D. The cheese is symptomatic of another thing that makes pub games so lovable and fragile. All of the games need pieces of specialist handmade equipment, often quite beautiful in themselves. London Skittles has a particularly difficult time of it. The cheeses are made from lignum vitae, the hardest known wood and a

rare rainforest tree that is now illegal to import. One of the players confided that he had a whole log of it stashed away that he had managed to buy on ebay. Such ruses aside, the cheeses are all but irreplaceable, Greene said. When we went for a game of London Skittles, the welcome from the players was warm. It soon felt more cosy downstairs sitting on discarded booth furniture than it did upstairs. The players were friendly; friendly, banterous, that is, but also fiercely protective and competitive. There was outcry at the suggestion that the newcomers play a game. The members had been waiting all week for this, they said, and they didn’t want beginners taking up valuable game time. It was a fair point. The club is not kept going by inquisitive spectators. Their outreach events draw in crowds, but the holy grail is curious visitors who turn into regulars.

play your own northamptonshire skittles One. Find a big table with a lot of space around it, preferably outside. Cover it with some matting if you’re worried it might get damaged. Two. Get some cardboard boxes full of something heavy and arrange them on the table top, forming a square with one side open. Three. Arrange nine skittles in a diamond formation on the table top. Plastic bottles with a bit of water in the bottom are an easy substitute. Four. Find yourself a ‘cheese’. In theory, this is a wooden discus, but there are plenty of ready substitutes. Five. Throw your cheese at the skittles!

the rules Each player has three throws per turn, and if all the skittles are knocked over at any point, they’re set upright again. Players get one point for every skittle knocked over, so the maximum score for each round is 27. Bouncing the cheese off the boxes is allowed—it’s positively encouraged. Scoring in a standard two-person game uses an ‘on and off’ scoring system. Both players start with five lives, and whoever gets the lowest score in each round loses a life. If a round is tied, the following round determines the scores for both rounds. The first shot determines one life, and the overall score determines the second life.

aunt sally is a game with a sinister history Aunt Sally is a simple game in which two teams attempt to throw sticks at a peg, a little like coconut shies. The season runs from April to September, and the rules state that not a single game can be called off. Andy Beal, the secretary of the Oxford and District League, explained: “Every game has to be played, and we’ll stand there with umbrellas if we have to. You can’t draw, either. If no one wins or loses, you play an extra three throws, then another one, and it keeps going until someone wins. Some nights can go on forever.” The sticks aren’t complicated bits of kit, but they have powerful significance. “Everyone’s sticks are individual,” Andy said. “There’s an official length, but the weight can be anything, so people all have their own. Some people even like to rough it up—they’ll be there rubbing it with sandpaper every night.” Around 1,500 people every year take part in the Oxford and District Aunt Sally League. But despite its rather healthy numbers it is, like Lon-

don Skittles, almost invisible. The game is only played in Oxfordshire, and I’d even lived in Oxford and never heard the name. Aunt Sally has a murky past for something so innocently reminiscent of a fairground game. Clues about its history begin in the 17th century. “One theory about the game is that it came from Royalist soldiers in Oxford during the Civil War,” Andy told me. “Another is that it developed out of a game where you had a cockerel on a rope and people threw sticks at it until it died, then the person who killed it got to take it home.” Thankfully, the chicken was swapped for a piece of wood, or rather, a doll. Many of these dolls survive, and they’re strange sights. Dressed up as an old woman—Aunt Sally—and often with a black face, the thought of men throwing sticks at it has uncomfortable misogynistic

Andy Beal, secretary of the Oxford and District Aunt Sally Association. Players often sand down their sticks before use to achieve the right grip.

and racist overtones. They too were long ago swapped for simple wooden pegs, and now only the name remains to hint at the game’s origins. Wondering about the wider history of pub games, I spoke to James Masters, the proprietor of Masters Traditional Games, an online equipment store for pub games as well as an abundance of little-known board games. The way games adapt and mutate can be quite a beautiful thing in itself. Masters shared a pet theory about the history of pinball machines. The development of pinball from the Victorian table-top game of bagatelle is widely accepted, but he also proposed a distant ancestor in the form of lawn boules. The full family tree of bagatelle links perhaps thirty games in a complex and absorbing web. Pub games are the forgotten second cousins in these stories, carrying their own clues about how the family fits together.

With so much history at stake, I had expected players to be attached to the idea of keeping an ancient tradition alive. I asked Andy if people played Aunt Sally for these reasons. He paused. Not so much, seemed to be the answer. For most players, a good night out with your mates is the main motivation. “It is a team game, and a really good night,” he said. “You’re out in the pub garden. It’s very much tied to pubs, there’s a drinking culture to it.” It’s not hard to see that these games were literally designed for playing while drinking—they’re usually one-handed, for a start. And herein lies a problem: not enough pubs left to go around. Andy Beal told me, “If you look back to the 70s, our records show we had about 240 teams, with about 2,500 players. Now, we’ve got around 120 teams and 1,500 players. Of course, we’re quite happy with that. But once a pub has shut, it never starts again.”

Kieran Murray, chairman of the Sevenoaks and District Bat and Trap League.

bat and trap has plans for the future Against the backdrop of closing pubs and dwindling players, Bat and Trap is one of the success stories: almost extinct at the start of the twentieth century, but now thriving. It is a Kentish game played a little like cricket. Crucial differences are the paddle-shaped bat and the mechanical trap that bowls the ball. Kieran Murray of the Sevenoaks and District Bat and Trap League described to me how deeply rooted the game is in pub culture. “People who have played for many years are proud of it as a local tradition,” he said. “Some of our players take it very seriously. They’re solid as a rock behind their pub.” The local rivalry is fierce and serious. “There’ll always be pubs that are very close to one another,” he said, “so you get local derbys, like Tottenham versus Arsenal—or not quite!”

Bat and Trap provides plenty of food for speculation about the nature of cricket itself: is there really any reason why cricket uses a flat heavy bat? Why not use the bat shape of Bat and Trap, or the round bat of rounders? It’s a little hard to imagine Bat and Trap dominating as the international game of empire instead of cricket, but there’s something undeniably appealing about the way alternative versions of worldwide games are being kept alive in the face of global juggernauts. If the revival of a game like Bat and Trap is the exception to the rule, so is London Skittles at the other end of the spectrum, dwindling to a single venue and a core of just eight players. Many pub games still have a healthy core of a thousand players or so, and some very many more. It’s hardly a surprise that the numbers playing most games have seen a rapid decline, given it’s hard to think of anything more at odds with many pubs’ profit-making mantra of “vertical high-volume drinking.” The

our favourite pub game names, and how they’re played Dwile Flonking, from Beccles, Suffolk Hit others and avoid being hit with a beer-soaked towel. Devil Amongst the Tailors, from Haymarket, London Table-top skittles with a wrecking ball. Aunt Sally, from Oxfordshire Coconut shy with big sticks. Nipsy, from Yorkshire Hit a ball as far as you can. Ringing the Bull, from Nottingham Swing a ring tied to the wall onto a hook. Toad in the Hole, from Lewes, Sussex Throw pennies into a box. Shut the Box, from Channel Islands A dice game played with a counting box. Rolly Polly, Belgium Twelve-pin skittles with a huge ball.

By their very nature, the games take space and effort that don’t pay off financially. James Masters contrasted pub games with their modern alternatives. “The trouble with quiz machines and fruit machines is that they take up less floor space,” he said. “They’re easy to put in, and once they’re there, it’s money for nothing as far as the landlords are concerned.”

Pubs close at a rate of about 25 a week, but the rate has slowed in recent years, and no one sensible is predicting that pubs will go extinct. And as long as there are pubs around, there’ll be people playing games in them. I was a little disappointed at first that many players aren’t in touch with the history and fragility of the games they play. But on reflection, it’s one of the most cheering things about the culture of pub games. There’s something more honest about playing a game for fun. There’s nothing political about it. There’s no nostalgia for Olde England. Pub games are unselfconscious and that makes them genuine.

Quiz machines are equivalents to traditional games, and they bring together a group of drinkers in a similar way. But I can’t help but agree that they aren’t as good. No one would ever come to a pub for the purpose of playing them. A quiz machine is a pub game-lite, and they don’t nurture the sense of community found in pub game leagues.

There’s something astonishing about the survival of such tiny and idiosyncratic games in the modern age. It shows that our world really isn’t as standardised and commercial as we think. Here’s to people up and down the country, quietly getting on with ancient games that no one outside their county has ever heard of.

night-time high street is utterly opposed to leisurely games, where the industry aims to have customers drink standing up, and move on.

tread carefully dave hawkins went hunting for the oil beetle and we came along words victoria watts, illustration marisa seguin portrait steve kennedy

I was in a field thirty minutes from Peckham, looking for a beetle. Not just any beetle, but a charismatic oil beetle, said to be “big and bold with a lustre that would put any oil droplet to shame.” It wasn’t a normal Sunday outing for me, but for my fellow hunter Dave Hawkins, searching the UK landscape for nature’s tiniest critters was a typical weekend’s entertainment. Dave’s enthusiasm for creepy crawlies is infectious. When he first broached the subject of the oil beetle hunt one night in Dalston, my immediate reaction was, “Why?” But within half an hour I was sold, and two weeks later the hunt began. The oil beetle is under threat, with four of the eight UK species thought to be extinct and the other four experiencing drastic declines. Dave briefed us on the oil beetle’s looks and the enormity of the task hit me. We were in a 200-acre nature reserve looking for a rare creature no bigger than 3 cm long. On the up side, they have an intimate relationship with burrowing bees so these are a good indicator that one might be near. Eagerly, I think I spot one. “I’m afraid that’s a hoverfly,” says Dave. Are you always searching for something on these walks? I’m often looking for a particular creature or flower. There are pros and cons to it because if you’ve got a particular object to your outing, you’re preoccupied until you find it. I’ve been lucky: the small blue, which I found last week, the lady orchids in Kent—they were exquisite. Is that one of the things that drives you, seeing something new? Yes. I also fight against that, because I see two sides to it, the desire to see something new. There’s the curiosity and the joy of the new. But

on the flip side is the collecting instinct. You know the cliché: the egg collector, or the Victorian entomologist gathering insects and pinning them into a drawer. I definitely have a bit of that instinct, I think a lot of people do. It’s hard to avoid it, but I want to try and quash that instinct, enabling me to enjoy each individual thing in itself. When did you first start coming to fields like this? My dad and I used to go on walks. We’d collect interesting things: it could be an oak apple or a gall, a nut or a flower, a lot of mushrooms. We’d be forever cutting open oak apples to look inside and you could see the burrow where the maggot had lived. That’s why I started to come to these chalky banks. It was the interest in butterflies at first. They’re an easy thing to get into because they’re so splendid. I learnt all the butterflies when I was about seven or eight. I was completely obsessed by them. Them and dinosaurs. Did you go through a stage of not being interested in small creatures? I lost interest in my teenage years like some people do. You know: girls, drugs, beer, punk rock. It was a return to the jungle that marked a decisive moment. I remember the guide leading us through the forest with a machete and wading through the rivers in Guatemala. So there was a brief period of quietness but then I returned. (Goes off to look at a beetle.) It has a tiny little horn. It’s like a rhino beetle. Quite tenacious on my fingers. I wasn’t that fussed about nature as a child. I think parents have a lot of influence. It definitely helps. I became completely obsessed with moths and it was definitely the collecting instinct. It’s a cliché for boys: finding items, sorting and ordering them.

Dave’s self-portrait. Dave is also a musician and one of his songs is inspired by the migration of birds.

Where did your dad get his love from? His dad was a complete city cockney, a butcher. So I’m not entirely sure. I think he discovered it himself. I know he learnt to fish for lobsters by watching an elderly Polish woman in Wales. I probably get more frantically obsessed than he does because I use the internet and so it’s much easier to identify things. For example, there’s an absolutely amazing website for moths, called UK moths. He just doesn’t use it. He still uses the book. Within one species of moth there is unbelievable variation, so one species of moth can look like a hundred. It’s bloody difficult and the internet can help you to narrow it down a bit. Even a country as tiny as Britain can have so much stuff that you can never possibly know it all, particularly if you start getting into insects. Butterflies are easy as there are only about 52 to 56 species. There are about 2000 moths and when you add the micro moths there are bloody loads. Beetles, there’re masses, flies, there’re masses. I’m not that into flies yet. Yet. I expect I’ll get into them. What I find really exciting is that every time I go on one of these walks, I see stuff I’ve never seen before. Every time. I wonder: why is it exciting seeing a new thing? It’s a novelty, it’s fun, but it’s also the broadening of the pattern, because each creature is like a pixel as you zoom into the picture. It’s only when you have the depth of colour and the richness of colour that is created by having so many different tiny individual colours, each dot—only then is the picture satisfactory. That’s why biodiversity is my favourite thing. You get closer and closer to a monochrome, single pantone grey, every time you lose something. The depth of colour is slightly reduced.

That’s a sad image. Yes. But, on the plus side, if you think about evolution in the sense of, “What will happen next?” it’s quite exciting. The species are all interacting with each other. People are discovering new species all the time, even in Britain. I bet people often find species and don’t realise it. It’s funny how everything kind of looks the same when your eyes aren’t attuned to it. People say to me they can’t tell butterflies apart and they’re the easiest. It’s a simple thing of looking and looking and you can tell things apart, more and more. (Spots a butterfly.) It’s a grizzled skipper. These are quite unusual. There’s nothing in the slightest bit special in what I’m doing at all. I was at a party last year and all these moths came into the kitchen. Because it was a habitat I wasn’t familiar with, I’d never seen any of these moths. I went absolutely mental. Most people were like, “Oh you’re still looking at those moths.” But my friend’s boyfriend got excited. He said, “I’ve never really looked at these things before and all their incredible patterns.” It’s just amazing what was there. Why search for the oil beetle? Is it partly the absurdity of it? There is something joyously absurd about looking for a beetle. It’s so utterly pointless that it’s liberating and the oil beetle is a good example. It’s a very interesting strange creature. Why do things have to have a point? Looking for stuff is nice—within that you find a purpose. There’s no point. We’re not making a point. We’re just having a look. We didn’t find the oil beetle that day but we’ll continue to look, and when we do it’ll be magnificent.

press three to complain raging against the machine and flat pack furniture words theo brainin photo dona yamazaki As a teenager, I went with my father every week for dinner at Sandra’s house. Sandra is a little outrageous and at all times in the grips of some controversy or other, so sitting around the table with her kids on a Wednesday night, we would listen to the latest. Typically her stories involved members of junior officialdom, who likely regretted turning up for work that day, because Sandra is relentless when wronged by anyone in a position of authority. The more remote the prospects of redress, the greater her resolve. We once arrived to find bollards blocking her driveway—not on the road, but brazenly erected between the pavement and her house, entrapping her little Volkswagen. This was the latest gambit by the council in a manifestly escalating dispute over planning permission to drop her curb. Three years followed of what can only be termed a Mexican stand-off, involving everybody from local journalists to Lynne Featherstone MP. Sandra vs Haringey Borough Council, to the death. Haringey must have blinked, because she now has a driveway, a dropped curb, and a VW free to roam. Well, she would do, but it was hit by a truck last week, and she’s presently dealing with her insurance company. My dad is the same in his own way. He’s fond of minor acts of civil disobedience, examples of which I shouldn’t give. Suffice to say, in some places you can’t get a parking ticket if the meter is broken. He also has an Olympian ability to hold a grudge. He feuds with retailers like the Montagues feuded with the Capulets. He has, for example, refused to take anyone to Ikea for almost twenty years, because they once left some furniture outside our house and it was warped by the rain. They even took it back, soggy and twisted, but it was too late, they were blacklisted. I find the ability to summon this uncompromising ‘screw-you’ attitude fascinating. We look at our baby boomer parents, and we sometimes think them mortifying in their principled stands against customer service agents and traffic policemen. The protest generation grew up, bought flat-pack furniture, and when it didn’t work out they protested that too. It’s not that I’d never kick up a fuss myself, more that, on the sliding scale of standing up to the Man, from returning pizza to storming the Bastille, I can’t run the whole gamut. Stick an automated helpline in front of me and watch my eyes glaze over. In adult life, I was first confronted with my selective apathy at the airport. I had the audacity to question procedure upon being singled out for the second removal and inspection of my shoes in the space of an hour, and was told to publicly apologise at the gate or have my passport confiscated. I caved, quite rationally, but as I stowed my luggage, I could imagine my father being forcibly ejected from the plane. That was beginning of a long series of craven capitulations, which explains why I was surprised to find myself engaged in furious dispute with a certain yellow-fronted photo store last month. I’ve recently got myself into a desperate cycle of buying and selling used camera equipment—as bad habits go it’s less expensive than drug addiction but appreciably less economical than biting one’s toenails. My latest ill-advised purchase was an old Pentax, the kind with a mechanical lever to advance the film. I shot two rolls and dropped them off, only for the lab to use the wrong chemicals and erase all the pictures. They insisted it was defective film, but I had the docket and the receipt, and those indicated otherwise.

Suddenly, it was David vs Gaudy Yellow Goliath. I found myself writing letters in legalese, with long bullet-pointed lists. Ridiculous plans formed. What would happen if I stood outside distributing leaflets? Could I be arrested? Is it legal to send fake lawyer’s letters? Probably not. Scratch that. I need demands! What are my demands? Two weeks later, having wasted enough of the manager’s time, I received a cheque in the post. Ecstasy! Never would I set foot in a Snappy Snaps again! They would rue the day! Then the realisation that I had become my father put a dampener on things. I’ve been back to Snappy Snaps since then. A different branch, which I think is good enough. Reassuringly, I reverted to type last week and abjectly surrendered to ebay customer support, which I am now 70% sure is staffed by robots. I’m going put snarky answers on their feedback survey, though. That’ll show them.

come ride with me on my dirigible there’s nothing as beautiful as inspired failures words jason ward, illustrations jacob stead

There was once a time when the bicycle’s success didn’t seem inevitable, and it looked as if we could end up with something wholly different. In the 1800s, human-powered vehicles—velocipedes—came in a bewildering array of shapes and sizes. There was the Penny Farthing with its massive front wheel and a tendency to kill the rider in ‘headers’. There were Boneshakers, constructed from wrought-iron and about as comfortable as they sound. There were steam velocipedes, because they were Victorians and they had to get steam involved somehow. There were velocipedes with three wheels, or with six, or with space to carry your goodly wife. For sixty years, fad after fad took the vehicles in hugely popular new directions, becoming the must-have items for the early adopter.

Then it all stopped. The safety bicycle was created in 1885, and its sensibly-sized-and-numbered wheels prevailed. It had achieved perfection, and bicycles have been largely the same for a century. The demise of the Penny Farthing and the Boneshaker seems inevitable in retrospect. Of course the wheels should be the same size. Of course the tyres shouldn’t be made out of iron. Of course the rider’s feet shouldn’t be several feet off the ground. But who knows what velocipedes would look like now if people had continued to develop them? The history of transport is littered with vehicles that came close to being dominant but faded away, supplanted by something faster, safer, or cheaper. You can see it with the steam car,

or the electric car, or even the Amphicar, the part-car, part-boat vehicle that became a fad in 1960s America despite being created by an exNazi war criminal inspired by the SS’s Schwimmwagen. To look at them now is to look at an alternate history. They were vehicles that people saved up to buy, hoping to be part of something new. The life’s work of talented designers and engineers, they were created in the spirit of invention. Now they sit in museums, robbed of the noble purpose of their creation: to take people to where they want to go. What’s sad isn’t that the vehicles didn’t survive, but that what led to their creation was so quickly forgotten: the inspiration, the hard work, the hope. They are failures, undoubtedly, but they are beautiful failures.

necropolis train The Victorians believed that science could accomplish anything, and their hubris was coupled with a rigid sense of duty. It was this publicspiritedness, along with cholera outbreaks and increasing space issues, that led Sir Richard Broun in 1849 towards one grand objective: a place to store all of London’s dead, forever. On Broun’s insisting, Parliament set up the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company. They built the largest cemetery in the world in Brookwood, Surrey, and a special line, the London Necropolis Railway, to carry funeral trains there from Waterloo.

The occasional carriage filled with drunk mourners aside, there was a dignity to the Necropolis train. A final train journey has the sombreness and pomp that a good funeral needs, and it’s quite beautiful, in its way.

The Necropolis train held up to 48 coffins and their funeral parties, and was split into two sections, one for Anglicans and another for non-conformists. The train was divided into first, second and third class travel, with conditions extending from the mourners to the storage of the coffins. The groups each had their own platform and part of the cemetery (the Anglicans got the sunny bit).

The number of trains run fell and fell over the ensuing century until, one night during the Blitz, the London station and the train itself were destroyed in a bombing raid, forcing the closure of the line. After the war ended no one saw the value in rebuilding it: the Victorian idealism of the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company was dead, unmourned.

In the end, the Necropolis train was a victim of the very progress that had once made it necessary. The invention of the automobile made a funeral train unwieldy and inefficient in comparison, while the 32 cemeteries that opened in London during the line’s first twenty years removed the need for a sprawling necropolis away in the country.

dymaxion car Buckminster Fuller has a resumé full of things that would be the life’s work of someone else. He invented the geodesic dome. He developed a cheap, energy-efficient house that could be constructed from kits. He created a new type of world map that was less distorted. He experimented with a sleep cycle where he would sleep for two hours a day. Bucky, as he called himself, was not just ahead of his time, he seemed to operate on another plane entirely. The downside of being on your own plane of thinking is that often your work will be too different to be accepted. One of Fuller’s more notable failures in this regard was his Dymaxion Car. Designed in 1933, the Dymaxion was a fast, efficient three-wheeled car that held eleven passengers and was twenty feet long. With its teardrop shape, two front wheels and a single rear one working like a rudder, the car was meant to mimic the movements of fish. Fuller had

anticipated that one day the car would also be able to fly, once the appropriate alloys and engines had been invented. Deeply concerned about the earth’s finite resources, Bucky was one of the first environmentalists, dedicated to inexpensive, efficient housing and transport. What Fuller most wanted was for the world to be sustainable and to do more with less. He called it emphemeralisation, and was a model of it. He had hoped the car design and other inventions under the Dymaxion umbrella would be the first phase of a social revolution. It wasn’t to be. Like so many of his conceptions, the Dymaxion Car never reached fruition: the prototype crashed on its way to the Chicago World’s Fair, killing the driver and two passengers. The press blamed the car’s steering, Fuller blamed another vehicle, and the investors fled. Eventually Bucky moved on too: there would be other ideas.

dirigible The life of the dirigible has been eclipsed by its death. While there were worse disasters before it, and most countries had already given up on airships as a viable method of transportation, the crashing of the Hindenburg has become one of the key images of the twentieth century. To watch the newsreel footage along with the sound of radio announcer Herbert Morrison breaking down in tears is still a surprisingly emotional experience, with a power that surpasses the whimsy and adventure with which the dirigible was first conceived. The hot air balloon became a craze in the summer of 1783, and the skies of European cities were dotted with craft. Its development was dominated by the French and British: the French were engineers and scientists, while the British were lone adventurers seeking fame and fortune. More comfortable and less turbulent than contemporary aeroplanes, by the 1930s dirigibles looked like they might become the primary form of air travel. The British planned for a vast air network

throughout the empire, Count Von Zeppelin’s eponymous craft was popular and widespread, and the Empire State Building was built with a dirigible mast optimistically attached. It couldn’t last. The reason that the dirigible failed is simple: for all its glamour and advantages, the aeroplane was more efficient, economical and safe. It’s sad that the dirigible has been overshadowed by its demise, because it was the most romantic of vehicles. Henri Giffard invented the steam-powered version, and wrote in his journal during his first trip, “How marvellous to be free of all that which makes you cling to the ground!” He and his peers believed flying would allow them to have thoughts that no-one had thought. They hoped it would make them better people. Long before the infamous crashes, its use in wars or the rise of the Nazi-sponsored Zeppelins, there was the concept that you could step onto some rickety craft and be carried up into the clouds, floating.

bathysphere It was May 27th, 1930, and the former British naval ship, the Ready, sat off Nonsuch Island, Bermuda, awaiting the maiden voyage of the Bathysphere. Its two-man crew were also its creators: the naturalist William Beebe and the engineer Otis Barton. They climbed into the cold, dark sphere, and a 400-pound door was bolted behind them. A curator at the Bronx Zoo, acclaimed ecological author and friend of Theodore Roosevelt, Beebe was a household name, his stormy relationships with ichthyologists gaining similar attention as his theories on pheasant evolution. Frustrated by the inadequacy of dredging, he hoped to explore the ocean in an advanced diving bell. He was accosted by Otis Barton, a wealthy young engineer with dreams of deepsea exploration and plans for a spherical craft. Beebe let Barton pay for the bathysphereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s construction, and a few years later they were sitting in their invention, from which they could not escape, as it was lowered into the black Atlantic.

Four summers and around thirty journeys passed. The pair fought seasickness and a leaking craft to dive half a mile down, further than anyone had before. They saw strange new species, and the natural habitats of fish that had only ever been found dead in nets. Beebe would boast that only dead men had sunk deeper. It was deep enough that they were the first people to observe the disappearing frequencies of sunlight, in an ocean that turned violet before their eyes. After four years and with the Great Depression rendering further use difficult, Beebe moved back to the safer and cheaper helmet diving and the Bathysphere went into storage. Other people used the technology they pioneered, but none quite captured the imagination in the same way. Something was lost: the idea of being alone, deep beneath the sea, risking death in the name of discovery. It would be almost forty years before another group of explorers made people feel the same way. They would have crew cuts, and one of them was called Neil.

the birds, the bees and the petri dish the day my parents’ jokes got the better of them words dani lurie photo leah bernhardt We were in the car when our parents told us that we were made in a petri dish. I’m not sure why they chose that particular moment, waiting outside my grandparents’ house on our way to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Maybe it seemed as good a time as any. I recently asked my brother and sister if they could remember the finer details of the time we found out we were IVF babies. We agreed that the year was 1995, which puts us at nine or ten years old. Emma said that we were actually on our way to a pan-Asian vegetarian buffet. What we all remember is that none of us believed a word of it. You see, our parents are liars. They’ve always been liars—in the nicest and most loving way possible. They’re fond of jokes and pranks and teases. As children, we heard the phrase, “I’m only pulling your leg,” so often that had our legs actually been physically pulled every time it was said, we might not be as short in stature as we are today (and we really are all quite short). On birthdays, there would always be some sort of decoy: an elaborately-wrapped box would be revealed to be empty, only to find the real gift placed neatly onto a bed when our heads were turned. Masters of misdirection, our mum and dad. Not that I’m complaining—those were some of the best times. We had a lot of fun. We spent our childhood shocked and grinning. The thing is, after years of staging those benevolent deceptions, our parents were never going to be the most trustworthy of sources. We were more than a little wary when they revealed that we did not arrive on this earth in the traditional manner. The whole birds and bees business had already been carefully explained in books like Where Did I Come From?, with its arsenal of euphemisms and cheery illustrations of cartoon genitalia. To then add that we were actually created in a laboratory instead— that they took some of this and some of that, mixed it around and put it back in— seemed incredulous. Nice try, Mum and Dad! I think it took them all night to convince us. We canvassed testimonies from family members and other adults. We needed confirmation. Had the internet been available then, I suppose we would have jumped on to Wikipedia or searched for “the Great Test Tube Hoax”. It wouldn’t have been in any encyclopedia that we could get our hands on back then. We were in the first wave of test tube babies, only seven years after the first, and IVF wasn’t talked about as it is today. These days, I have a friend who has gone through IVF treatment herself. She too has friends who’ve created their children through all sorts of methods: a legacy of eggsharers, surrogates and biological donors. The reproductive game is a funny old thing. My friend has started telling her daughter the story about how she came to be and I take on a kind of mascot role. “You and I are the same,” I tell her. “A lot of children are made with one mummy and one daddy, but our parents wanted to love us so much that they made us in a very special way.” In the end, it really doesn’t matter how you get here.

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what’s your favourite biscuit? we took a lomography camera onto the streets of london photos kevin morosky

Amy: “Bourbon.”

Anna: “Shortbread.”

Remi: “Custard Cream.”

Toby: “HobNobs.”

Bliss: “Fox’s Chocolate Viennese.”

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Sam: “Malted milk.”

Jessica: “Bourbon.”

Sebastian: “Maryland Cookie.”

Laura: “Speculaas.”

Natasja: “My mum’s cookies.”

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taking sweets from strangers trying out everything we w e r e nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; t a l l o w e d to do as children

photo dona yamazaki

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forbidden feasts food was one of those things where we’d think, “why are my parents so weird about it?” it never made sense.

Playing with fire and taking sweets from strangers are the classic forbidden two. Victoria Watts decided the latter was the safer one to try. The way it was: I’ve already disastrously tried my hand at fire poi so I plumped for the sweet option instead. The way it is: I hadn’t taken into account my own shyness. I tried to smile at a man tucking into skittles on the train, but I think he thought I was flirting. Then the sweet-eaters disappeared. For a week, I didn’t see a single person eating sweets. Then I spotted a young woman waiting for the train, with a packet of Starmix. I said, “Excuse me, please may I have one of those?” She gave me a long look, as if considering whether it was dangerous to give as well as take sweets from strangers, and the next thing I knew, I had a jelly bear in my hand. I learned two lessons: firstly, I’m not cut out for the audacity of demanding sweets, and secondly, vegetarians shouldn’t ask strangers for Starmix.

Jamie Emmott used to fantasise about drinking milk from a chocolate cup. He concluded his dream could come true with the aid of a chocolate Easter egg. The way it was: There used to be an advert on television for Cadbury’s drinking chocolate, which featured two glasses of slow-motion milk being poured into the giant chocolate chunk. That combination of two of my favourite things made me dream of drinking milk from a chocolate cup. I concluded it could be done simply by biting round the top of one of my Easter eggs and filling it with cold milk from the fridge. Sadly, my parents forbade it. The way it is: Although drinking cold milk out of anything but a glass is a little unusual, chocolate and milk always go well together: the purity of the latter cutting through the sweetness of the former. It saves on the washing up. Just don’t try putting it down.

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Jemma Foster was a mud pie novice, so she sought some expert help and had a go. The way it was: I don’t recall ever having been told explicitly not to make mud pies, but I just had the foresight to know that it wouldn’t have gone down well. The way it is: I enlisted four-year-old Eva, expert purveyor of mud pies and other wormy treats, to show me the ropes and within half an hour we had produced an array of cakes, muffins and pastries!

The humble PBJ sandwich was banned by Liz Bennett’s parents, and she still hadn’t tried it. The way it was: My parents would never let me eat peanut butter and jam in the same sandwich. My mother’s family were quite badly off when she was growing up and she wasn’t allowed peanut butter and butter in the same sandwich when she was a child. So two proper fillings together was totally outrageous by contrast. They took the same line on cheese and ham. The way it is: Alright, although a friend told me I used the wrong sort of jam. I’d do it again for the hedonism.

Kevin Morosky once had the folly to try and lick out a bowl of cake mix with his mother around. The way it was: When I was younger, I was never allowed to lick the bowl. I tried to do it once and the noise that erupted from my mother has to this day stopped me from ever licking the bowl. The way it is: I just can’t do it. I’ll probably do the same with my kids. My grandma never allowed my mum to do it either, so I feel like I’m keeping a tradition alive.

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positively educational these things aren’t dangerous, they won’t give you early-onset diabetes or make you miss your bedtime. they’re actually educational. we still weren’t allowed.

Rebecca Bedding always longed for a state-ofthe-art ant farm from Argos, but it seemed like a bad idea after the sad death of her worm colony. The way it was: I dreamed of owning an ant farm, and pictured myself providing a paradise for my bugs. My mother’s reluctance was understandable. I’m still consumed by guilt about what happened with the worm farm. I remember coming home from a two-week holiday to find a graveyard of worms. Unable to escape from the waterless prison I had placed them in, my mother was left to comfort a distraught child who had found the dried corpses of her beloved pets. The way it is: Two ants were triumphantly placed in a heaven of grass, soil and, of course, some water. It has been three days since I fulfilled a childhood ambition, but I have realised there has been a grave oversight. As the two small ants freely roam the mini jungle, they are superbly camouflaged, two specks travelling unseen through the soil.

For a child immersed in Malory Towers, her parents’ decision to not send Frances Ambler to boarding school, but enrol her in the local high-performing state school instead, seemed unfathomable. The way it was: I consoled myself by creating a prospectus for my own fictional boarding school, complete with detailed floor plans and designs for its uniform. The way it is: It’s tricky to look round a boarding school if you don’t have a child. Some schools require you to fill out an in-depth form about your child. Others promise open days with pupils showing you around, and the prospect of lying to children made me feel far too guilty. I nearly sneaked into an elite public school via a charity cricket match, but it was rained off. My only trophy was one glossy prospectus received in the post. It would have been clutched to my heart twenty years ago, but this time it went straight into the recycling.

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Anna Peters’ mother never told her not to learn to surf, but she stopped her from trying it all the same. The way it was: My mother never really explicitly stopped me from doing anything. But now I can see how her own fears and neuroses were absorbed by my younger self. This never held me back from anything vital, but it did stop me from learning to surf. Every single year we’d go for a family holiday to Cornwall and I would sit on the beach, desperately wanting to be one of the girls with unkempt hair and piercings. But I was shy of them, and shy of trying to surf. What if I wasn’t strong enough? What if I fell off the board the wrong way? The way it is: I’m slowly becoming one of those girls, but I’m still learning to separate my mother’s concerns. I had an email conversation with her just before I cycled from London to Paris and she said, “Anna, remember that you are a girl and that you are not invincible.” But as I fell off the surfboard for the tenth time yesterday, I felt pretty invincible.

Jason Ward’s handwriting has always been the bane of his life, but the worst time was when it stopped him from joining in with violin lessons. The way it was: A few mornings a week, my class would have handwriting practice, until the day it was explained that a violin teacher would be coming in to give special lessons. As we were the furthest ahead generally, his group would be composed of everyone who sat at my table. Well, almost. It would be composed of everyone except for me, and my inferior handwriting. Consequently, I found myself alone once a week as my friends would leave for a clandestine world of octaves and music stands and resin, whilst I worked at a problem that couldn‘t be fixed. Naomi Antony wanted to be tap dance like Shirley Temple, but she was packed off to Irish dancing instead. The way it was: I absolutely hated Irish dancing lessons. The dancing shoes didn’t make any noise. Not fun. The way it is: Thirteen years later, I’d indulged myself in lots of ‘tap dancing’ on the kitchen tiles. I was running on a treadmill, thoroughly miserable, when it hit me: I hate gyms. I said goodbye and headed to Danceworks for my first lesson. Trying to keep up with the routines was exhausting, but it was a joyful experience. Noisy, exhilarating, and a little bit bonkers. I’ve bought my first pair of tap shoes, and am heading to B&Q this weekend to find some tap-worthy plywood to practice on at home. Life’s too short—I’m never going to the gym again.

The way it is: My housemate Eva has agreed to give me the lesson that the Welsh education system never permitted. My first class is to be a simple one. I hold violin and bow like a gropey drunk. Encouraging and patient, she winces only a little as I make her violin scream. I try again, and again, and once more. Then it happens: a perfect C note, sustained and strong. It’s wonderful, and my head inflates with the possibility of it all. I can really do this. Maybe I‘ve had it in me all along. Maybe I should join the Corrs. With a sadness, I realise this isn’t going to happen. My diary is like a lifeboat on the Titanic: to take on something new would mean letting something else drown.

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the mad and bad but our parents did manage to save us from the vices of gambling, underage drinking and running with scissors.

Ruth Harley grew up in a down-at-heel seaside town, and gazed longingly at the impossibly glamorous amusement arcades, particularly the grabbers. The way it was: In my family, they were firmly in the category of Things We Don’t Do. My mother would patiently explain that they were a waste of money, and we could buy a teddy bear for much less than it would take to win one. That wasn’t the point: I knew I didn’t really want a tacky stuffed toy, what I wanted was the thrill of the game itself. The way it is: Once I got to my local arcade, I just felt a bit silly. I was a grown woman, carrying my Sainsbury’s Bag for Life, trying to catch a tacky toy I didn’t even want. I had been planning to have just one go, but before I knew it I was bargaining with myself that it was fine to use up the change in my purse, as long as I didn’t break into the notes. Twenty minutes later and £2.70 poorer, I emerged clutching a hideous, blue-eared elephant. It had taken me nine attempts to catch it, and I’d attracted some very odd looks from the group of twelve-year-old boys hanging around the fruit machines. The strangest thing? I was really, really tempted to have a tenth go. Perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t try this as a child.

Office chairs with wheels always held a fascination for Lucy Doolan and she had a strange urge to take one outside and whizz down the hill to the bottom of her street. The way it was. As a seven-year-old, it was completely out of the question. The way it is. I had a go as a 22-year-old with minimal dignity. I got some bemused looks from my neighbours and a grazed knee, but I was almost wetting myself with laughter as me and a friend squealed our way rather slowly down the paving stones. The bruises and humiliation were worth it, but next time I’m wearing a helmet.

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Jane Read’s teachers always told her not to run with scissors, and she began to wonder what all the fuss was about. The way it was: I wondered if some amazing sensation accompanied such a decadent and deliberate act. I couldn’t wait to be old enough to have a try. The way it is: I was reminded of this the other day when I heard a teacher at my son’s school say, “Don’t run with scissors,” so I hurried home and I picked myself up a pair and off I went. You know what? It wasn’t that great.

At the age of thirteen, Alyce Gorch had a very cool friend who invited her to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but she had to turn her down. The way it was: Humiliating. The way it is: Since then, I’d never actually managed to see the film. I wasn’t even really sure what it was about beyond crowd participation. I went to the Rocky Horror Picture Show Friday still with very little insight about what goes on. They called all the Rocky Horror ‘virgins’ to the front, and we were asked to fake an orgasm into the microphone. Then they rated us. I was booed! It was all in good fun. I didn’t know about the props, though, so I wasn’t ready for the onslaught of rice, water, chocolate and toilet paper thrown at us. It wasn’t quite as entertaining as I had fantasised it would be. I’m going to have to side with my parents on this one!

Like everyone else, Dani Lurie wasn’t allowed a fake ID. But unlike most people, she wasn’t even able to try it. The way it was: I’m 25 years old now and people pin me at 17. Can you imagine how I looked when I was actually 17? The way it is: As a teenager, most of my friends with fake IDs were actually using real, expired driver’s licenses that they acquired from over-18s who looked vaguely like them, so I borrowed a friend’s driver’s license the next time I went out to a bar. My heart started to beat as we made our approach to the entrance. I pretty much always get asked to verify my age and I figured tonight would be no exception, but the bouncer just waved us in without checking anything. I was slightly disappointed but mostly relieved. I probably experienced the same terrifying dread that underage kids do when they have that fake ID burning a hole in their pocket, although for me it wasn’t because I was scared that I wouldn’t get admitted to some terrible nightclub—I was afraid of being found guilty of identity fraud and tried as an adult.

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water balloons, camera, action! real life bomberman in the park photos cynthia chen barbachano words dani lurie

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For those of you who didn’t spend your formative years glued to a computer screen or 8-bit console, Bomberman is a video game. Like the name suggests, the general aim of the game is to navigate your cheerfully cute cartoon buddy through a maze while leaving behind equally cute cartoon bombs for your enemies. The game has spawned a variety of digital incarnations and spin-offs since its original release in 1983, but never before has it made it off the screen—until now.

A group of graphic design students from London’s Central Saint Martins college set out to make the virtual into a reality. Armed with homemade helmets and water balloons, they staged a Bomberman Water Fiesta. The team turned their real-life game into a series of short films, complete with blip-bloop sound effects and bit-pop soundtrack. See the films at: mwoodgames.tumblr.com/tagged/bomberman

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no ghosts, no junk mail I moved into fifty-eight cemetery lodge words ellie phillips illustration josie portillo I live in a cemetery. My back yard is full of graves. My neighbours are called “John Coulston departed this life,” “Raphael Isaacs path of peace” and Janet “Keeper of this ground.” The former inhabitant of my house never left. She lies just beside the low wall where I have my garden table and chairs, perpetually keeping an eye on my comings and goings. In every domestic moment, I am overlooked by the departed. When I iron “Hannah Jacobs dearly loved” tells me to starch and when I wash up “the virgin Esther” makes sure that I rinse the suds. It is an odd thing to find yourself Freeview for the dead. You could, of course just imagine that they are a group of stones, but they aren’t. They are John and Raphael and Herman and Hannah and there’s 373 of them out there facing me, although like some useless teacher I’m only really familiar with the front row. Reactions from friends are predictable. Sameish. Jokey. “Wow. I’ll bet your neighbours are real quiet.” “Don’t suppose you get much trouble from that crowd.” “Ground’s pretty fertile round your way.” “I’ll let my dog have a run about in there. He loves a bone.” Humour is a long-recognised defence against something darker and this place is full of dead people after all. Friends laugh, and then are repelled or fascinated. Everybody wants to come take a look around. The weekend we moved in, there was practically a queue outside the door. The kids were up front: “It must be creepy.” “Have you seen any ghosts?” “Oh my God— it’s freaky. Your back garden is way coooooool.” They scootled around, drawn in by the numbers, eagerly reading the dates, interested in finding the youngest and the oldest. Amongst the adults, the clairvoyants suddenly declared themselves: “I don’t usually tell people this, but I do see things.” “The Sixth Sense is my idea of a documentary.” “Remember the Shining? That kid is me.” I could only handle those people if they told me that the house had a good vibe. Mostly they did. And the ones that didn’t were polite enough to say nothing at all. “Of course it exacerbates my existentialist crisis,” says my partner, “I mean you go to work every day and you come home and stare out the back of the house and you think that’s all everything amounts to, those graves.” The strip where the cemetery sits is busy, full of cafes and restaurants, but when you step into the house and out the back into the graveyard, peace and quiet descends. It’s a deceptive calm and stillness, for while human life rests eternally in the soil, other forces go about their daily business. Wood pigeons nest in the fir, squirrels run from stone to stone and foxes tunnel down deep beneath the stones that sit like elaborate name cards at some grand reception. I do like it here. Perhaps I’ll buy my plot and have done.

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in our kitchen after the war pat albeck’s tea towels made everything lovely again words frances ambler

In the 50s, felt tip pens came in two colours: a red and a blue, and maybe a brown. Pat Albeck still remembers the day someone told her a new colour had come out. “Somebody rang me up and said ‘Someone’s made a grey felt tip.’ It was like pennies from heaven.” If you don’t know Albeck by name, you’d almost certainly recognise her designs. She was one of the most highly-regarded pattern designers of the fifties and sixties. Her most successful pattern was the Daisy Chain, which topped the John Lewis sales list for fifteen years with its orange and yellow petals on a mustard-brown backdrop. My first introduction to Albeck’s work was a daring lobster-print dress. She had designed it for Horrockses Fashions, a stalwart of the 50s clothing industry. “You don’t get dresses like that anymore,” I said to her, “What a pity.” Nonsense, Albeck told me. “There are all these marvellous exciting young designers. You see people with much nicer clothes on. I get terribly excited about what my granddaughters are wearing. The word design now means something: it means exciting living, being young.” She went on, “When I was younger, it was very formal. If you were going to a wedding or a funeral, you dressed correctly for the occasion.” It was a response typical of her unabashed enthusiasm for life, as well as unerring ability to derail the train of the conversation. I’d been trying to talk to Pat about some of her best-loved works: her tea towels. The ones from her heyday are bold and beautiful things:

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This photo of Pat Albeck in the sixties was a publicity photo for an exhibition of young designers at the Cotton Board in Manchester. Her hair here is by Vidal Sassoon. Opposite: self-portrait.

there are colourful orange hens, large cut-paper fish and illustrated vegetables galore. Her first decorative tea towel was an early freelance commission after she stopped working at Horrockses. Like felt tips, tea towels came in basic varieties, and she hardly knew where to begin. The best quality ones were very plain and woven, with a stripe down the middle. The only decorative example she could find was a print of a painting by Frans Hals, and it wasn’t much of an inspiration. “It was absolutely horrible. It was a photographic reproduction of the Laughing Cavalier, and it covered it,” she said. Tea towels, as Albeck explained, need some white space in the design. Eventually, she came up with the Mixed Vegetables pattern, but there was just one problem. “I thought, ‘Oh dear, I’ve done every vegetable in the world: asparagus, peppers, artichokes. I’m never going to be able to use a vegetable on a tea towel again.’ But now it’s three hundred later.” She added, “That’s three hundred tea towels, not three hundred years! I’m not that old!” The fifties were an inspiring time to be a textile designer. “It was absolutely amazing,” Albeck said. “I remember the decorations at the Dorchester for the Festival of Britain. London was covered in decorations. People were on a sort of crusade to make life more lovely—more comely! That’s what they were doing, they were making

life more comely.” After the grey of the war years, everyone wanted a pattern on everything. “There were all sorts of new things being done like printed bed linens, which had never happened as far as I know. Nothing happened, anyway, during the war. People started decorating everything when money became easier.” Pat hasn’t stopped since. Last year, she produced a range of tea towels to celebrate her 80th birthday, sold through her daughter-in-law, Emma Bridgewater. There’s something about the tea towel’s humble form that gives it an enduring life. “You’ll always have room for a tea towel,” said Albeck. “Even in a minimalist white kitchen, there’s one thing hanging over the Aga. When I go round to friends for dinner, instead of taking flowers or a bottle of wine, I always take a tea towel. People give tea towels as presents and they don’t really look at them, they put them in a drawer. Thirty years later somebody’s grandmother goes into an old people’s home and that’s how the Pat Albeck tea towels get passed onto the grandchild!” There is a refreshing diffidence to Pat Albeck. “You get so megalomaniac when you get to talk about yourself for an hour and twenty minutes!” she exclaimed as we finished. Nothing could have seemed further from the truth. “It’s such a wonderful day,” she said, “I’m going to pick myself a lettuce leaf and sit out in the garden.” See one of Pat Albeck’s favourite tea towel designs on the next page.

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something curious these are a few of our favourite tea towels Canterbury. A well-loved old favourite. Twt. The words on this tea towel are taken from a Welsh folk song and mean “I have a neat little house.” From www.notonthehighstreet.com. Knots. Have you ever wondered what a bowline on the bight is? Do you know how to tie a fisherman’s bend? Find out on this classic towel from Ulster Weavers. www.ulsterweavers.com. Storm. There may be a storm in my tea cup, but at least the kitchen surfaces are being kept nice and dry. Made by To Dry For, www.todryfor.com.

Chickens. This is Pat Albeck’s favourite tea towel from a series designed for John Lewis in the sixties using cut-paper techniques. Instruments. This cheerful tea towel is from Rose and Grey, www.roseandgrey.co.uk. We like the idea of a hedgehog on a violin. Babycham. A Babycham tea towel with an unashamedly kitsch sense of style. Dieting. Drying up is more fun when your tea towel takes the mickey. This is another one is from the Ulster Weavers, who’ve been making textiles for over a hundred years.

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Blue stripes. Blue and white stripes lovingly embroidered with initials. Royal Exchange. Another old favourite. Sunny East Anglia. No kitchen is complete without a souvenir from a Great British holiday. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sunny in spirit, if not in the weather. Wedding. When Lucia and Christopher planned their wedding, they designed a tea towel invitation and posted that instead. School. We couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ignore the kitchen drawer classic. Green bottles. A linen tea towel from designer Charlotte Macey, embroidered with ten green bottles, www.charlottemacey.co.uk.

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red lolly, yellow lolly you’ll have to write your own joke on the stick words beth davis pattern alyssa nassner Is there any nicer way to cool down on a summer’s day than with an ice lolly? Or for that matter, anything easier: pour juice into a mould, freeze juice, let juice run down chin in blissful, refreshing happiness. The possibilities are endless: fruity ones, creamy ones, unusual ones (gravy?). At the end of the day, all you need are lolly moulds or sticks and a bit of imagination. On a vaguely sunny summer’s afternoon, I gathered the ingredients for a range of icy treats and got to work. After much stirring, melting and sieving (I wouldn’t recommend making all three flavours at once!) and a great deal of concentration while I made sure not to put Pimm’s in the yoghurt, the three delicious varieties were in the freezer. The next day, after a bit of last-minute preparation, I dressed my taste-tester friends in four-jumpers apiece to raise their body temperature. We sat down on the front step and enjoyed the lollies al fresco.

marbled marvels This recipe makes six lollies. It calls for puree, but I found fruit smooshed through a sieve worked fine. Ingredients 250ml blackberry puree 250ml raspberry puree 250ml thick Greek yoghurt 9 tbsp icing sugar One. Place the blackberry puree, raspberry puree and yoghurt in separate bowls, and add 3 tbsp of icing sugar to each. Stir well. Two. Layer each of the three mixes alternately into lolly moulds until three-quarters full. Pop a stick in each one and freeze for 6-8 hours.

pimm’s lollies

do-it-yourself fabs

A whole bottle of Pimm’s makes far more lollies that anyone could reasonably eat. We advise adjusting the quantities based on the size of your freezer, or alternatively you can just drink any Pimm’s mix that doesn’t fit.

Retro-tastic treats. This recipe makes around six.

Ingredients a bottle of Pimm’s a bottle of lemonade some fresh strawberries, one for every two lollies sprigs of fresh mint One. Mix one part Pimm’s with three parts lemonade. Yes, you can make it stronger, but it won’t set—and let that be a lesson to you. Two. Skewer a strawberry, halved lengthways, onto each lolly stick, and press a sprig of mint into the top to look like leaves. It sounds a bit of a faff, and it is, but it looks very pretty when frozen. Three. Pour the Pimm’s mixture into the moulds until they are threequarters full. Put the sticks into the mould, and place the lollies in the freezer until solid.

Ingredients 300g fresh or frozen raspberries juice of a lemon 75g caster sugar, to taste 200g milk chocolate 75g hundreds and thousands One. Place the raspberries, lemon juice and sugar in a pan with 450ml water and boil slowly. Remove from the heat, leave to cool, and then strain the liquid through a sieve, discarding the raspberry pulp. Two. Fill six lolly moulds three-quarters full with the raspberry liquid, then insert your lolly sticks and place into the freezer to set. Three. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Four. Removing a lolly at a time from the freezer, dip each one halfway in chocolate, then dip the top quarter into the hundreds and thousands. Return to the freezer until ready to serve.

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pretty things with paper wings fasten your seat belt and get folding words dani lurie, craft beth davis photos anna hatzakis, mariana pacho lópez

my granny, the tea bag rocket scientist When it comes to building rockets, my gran is the world’s greatest. She’s even better at it than my brother and he spent five years studying astronautic engineering. You see, there’s a story she used to tell us back when we were small. “There were some scientists who wanted to build a new kind of rocket ship,” she’d begin. Her supplies were already laid out before her: a string tea bag, a small plate and a box of matches. We’d crowd around, peeking above the counter top, with breath bated for the spectacle we’d seen so many times before. “They decided to build the new rocket out of something light because they thought it would be better for staying up in the air.” She’d hold up the tea bag. “But when they tried to launch it, it was too heavy to leave the ground. The scientists went back and thought about it for some time, and decided that the rocket didn’t need wings.” She softly pulled the string and tag off the tea bag. “But it was still too heavy.” “Then they decided the rocket didn’t need all the pieces of metal to hold it together.” She’d unbutton the staple from the tea bag and place

it neatly on the plate. “But it was still too heavy. The scientists went back and thought about it even more, and decided that to make the rocket as light as possible, the best thing to do was to take out all the fuel.” With that, she’d open the bottom and let all the tea empty out, a flow of little brown flecks clinking against the plate. She’d open up the tea bag, now just a husk, and sit it upright on the plate like a delicate pillar. “What’s more,” she said, “they decided to launch it upside-down.” Sheer madness! “The day arrived when they were going to launch the rocket,” she’d announce. A match was struck and held in waiting, poised to light the top end of the papery obelisk. We’d grin, eyes glossy with anticipation as we began the countdown. “Ten ... Nine ... Eight ... Seven ... Six ... Five ... Four ... Three ... Two ... One ... Lift off!” Our tea bag rocket drifted up into the air as it was consumed by fire, crumpling in on itself as it turned to cinders. The flight was over in about six seconds. If you looked away at the wrong moment, you would have missed its glorious ascent. The smell of burnt paper would linger there through the night.

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make a simple kite Nothing looks nicer against a blue sky than a cluster of brightlycoloured kites. This is a basic design that you can fly as much as your imagination allows. You will need lightweight string 2 long, thin sticks large sheets of newspaper long brightly-coloured strips of paper or plastic bag clear tape scissors One. Make a cross with the two sticks, placing the horizontal stick slightly above the centre of the vertical one. Firmly tie the sticks together in the middle. Two. Use the string to make a diamond shape frame around the sticks. Start at the top of the cross and work your way clockwise, looping the string twice around the top stick, then the one to the right, and so on,

until you’ve made your way back round to the top. Three. Place the newspaper over the sticks to check the size. If the paper is smaller than the frame tape two sheets together. Then, using the frame as a template, fold each corner of the newspaper in to create a diamond shape the same size as your kite. Four. Tape the newspaper to the sticks. Use tape at each end of the cross as well as the middle of the cross to fully secure it. Five. Now for the most important part! Make a beautiful tail for your kite out of the strips of paper or plastic and attach it to the bottom of the kite. Six. Cut a piece of string slightly longer than the size of the kite’s sticks and tie it at each of the horizontal corners, then attach the long string by which you’ll fly your kite to the centre of this loop. Seven. You’re done! Make your way to the top of the nearest hill and wait for the breeze.

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spinning windmills

chinese flying lanterns

The sort you find in twinkling, hypnotic clusters on a breezy seafront.

These are traditional Chinese flying lanterns for wishing on once the sun goes down. They work just like a hot air balloon. The safety part: be very careful when near an open flame, and never fly a sky lantern in windy conditions.

You will need A4 piece of brightly-coloured card hole punch map pin piece of wooden dowelling or garden cane One. Mark the square template above onto your sheet of card. Cut the pattern out and then cut along the diagonal lines. Use the hole punch to punch through the circles at each corner. Two. Working in a clockwise direction, fold over each corner to the middle of the card. Carefully thread the map pin through the four holes by pushing the pin through the marked point in the centre of the card. Three. Holding the windmill tight, push the pin firmly into the dowelling or cane until secure, remembering to leave some allowance for movement. You may need to tap the pin with a hammer.

The bamboo you need for this is not a bamboo cane, but the long bendy strips of bamboo that you can find in craft supply shops. You will need 4 sheets each of blue and white tissue paper, or any other colours flame retardant spray brown craft paper pencil scissors white glue 50 inch-long strip of bamboo floristsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; wire surgical spirit cotton balls

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One. First, fireproof the sheets of blue paper. Peg the paper on an outdoor clothes line or similar and spray with the flame retardant spray until saturated. Avoid the pegged corners as that area will not be used in the lantern and if they get wet the paper will tear. Allow to dry. Two. Make a leaf-shaped pattern for the lantern on brown craft paper, following the diagram above. The pattern should be 40 inches long and 12 inches wide at the base. About two thirds up the panel it should flare to 22 inches at its widest point, before tapering to a point. Cut out the pattern. Three. Glue each sheet of blue tissue paper to a sheet of white tissue paper along one edge. Allow to dry. Four. Cut a lantern panel from each of the glued tissue paper panels using the brown paper pattern you made from craft paper, remembering to place the flat bottom of the pattern on the blue portion of the glued tissue paper panels. Five. Glue the four panels together at the sides to form a large bag,

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making sure the top is sealed where the pointed ends come together and the bottom is left open. Allow to dry. Six. Make the bamboo hoop for the bottom opening by bending the bamboo strip into a circle and securing. Make sure it is the same circumference as the opening formed by the tissue paper. Fasten the ends of the hoop together. Seven. Next, you need to make an x-shaped wire frame across the middle of the hoop. This will support the flaming cotton ball that will send the lantern into the sky. Cut two lengths of wire slightly longer than the diameter of the hoop and twist them tightly around to form an X. Glue the bamboo hoop onto the bottom of the tissue paper bag and let it dry. Eight. Your lantern is ready! To send it towards the skies, pull a cotton ball apart to lengthen it slightly, then soak it in surgical spirit, and drape it over the wire in the centre of the lantern. When you light itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;carefully please!â&#x20AC;&#x201D;the heat will cause the lantern to float gently upwards taking your wishes, and quite a lot of hard work, with it.

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the red door gallery Edinburgh’s most distinctive boutique gallery, dedicated to presenting original, inspirational artwork and design led products.

The Red Door Gallery 42 Victoria Street, Edinburgh • Shop · www.edinburghart.com Blog · www.reddoorgallery.blogspot.com

Visit us on Edinburgh’s beautiful Victoria Street! Monday-Friday · 10:30-5:30 Saturday · 10:00-6:00 Sunday · 12:00-5:00

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The melodious musicians from the Crookes, taking a break in the pages of our next issue.

I spy with my little eye find our cats and win a subscription We should come clean about something. In our first six issues, we included one photo of a cat in each issue. Some of them were easy to spot, and some were a little more hidden. Illustrations of cats didn’t count. Here’s a challenge for our wonderful readers: find out where the cat in each issue was, and write in to free@ohcomely.co.uk before the end of October. Quietly ask your friends if you can borrow (but not steal) their copies if you’re missing an issue. Four people who get it right will win a free subscription for a year.

We’re planning to do something similar with our next six issues. See if you can guess what it’s going to be. You can buy a year’s subscription at www.ohcomely.co.uk/subscribe. It’s £20 and you’ll get six shiny issues, one every two months. Alternatively, you can post us a cheque made out to Adeline Media to Third Floor, 116 High Holborn, WC1V 6RD. For next issue, we spent a lovely afternoon with the boys from the Crookes, an up-and-coming band we’re rather excited about. Agatha talked about their shoe sizes and their favourite socks and took this beautiful photograph of them relaxing.

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the great mouse hunt try out our very own board game words michael bennett illustrations chris knight What could be more enticing to a mouse than a cup of tea? And what could be more enticing to a cat than a mouse? In our custom-made board game, you get to be a cat stalking the kitchen for prey, or a mouse, desperate to be the first to make a cuppa tea for yourself and your mouse-spouse. The Great Mouse Hunt depicts the hidden struggle taking place in the kitchen while your back is turned. While its claims to realism may be disputed, this is a game of strategy, cunning and, we hope, laughter.

the aim of the game

how to play as a cat

how to play as a mouse

The Great Mouse Hunt is a game for three to five players (although see below for a twoplayer version). One of you plays the cunning kitty, and the rest of you are messy mice.

The cat, taking a while to rouse itself from slumber, always goes last. You start peacefully curled up on your owner’s bed. Roll the dice and move that many spaces. If you prefer, you can move less spaces than the number your rolled.

A mouse wins the game by making two cups of tea. To make each cup, you need to collect one milk, one tea and one sugar.

The cat’s objective in life is to bring squirmy mice to its owner’s pillow, even though the owner shows a strange lack of gratitude. To win the game as the cat, you need to deposit a mouse on the pillow three times. Having decided that life is too short, especially with that cat around, the mice have thrown caution to the wind and always seek out a milky sweet cup of tea, teeth be damned. To win the game as a mouse, you need to be the first mouse to collect the ingredients for two cups of tea: two servings of tea, milk and sugar. The mice scamper round the kitchen, leaving small reminders of their presence, hoping for an open bottle of milk or a bowl of sugar that’s been left uncovered. See ‘how to play as a mouse’ to find out to claim the ingredients. To print out the illustrated playing pieces and some optional bonus cards, you can go to www.ohcomely.co.uk/mousehunt. The spaces with question marks are for use with the bonus cards. (See the column on the right for more.) If you’re not using bonus cards, these are played as normal spaces.

The cat wins by taking three mice to the owner’s pillow. Catch a mouse by landing on top of it. Your turn will end here, although you don’t need to roll the exact number of spaces to land there. Next, take the mouse with you and put it on your owner’s pillow so she’s got a nice treat to come home to. There’s only room in your jaws to carry one mouse at a time. Be careful: the mouse can still escape while you’re carrying it, if it rolls a six on its turn. The juicy mouse only counts as a catch when you reach the pillow.

You start the game in your mousehole. The mousehole is a safe space where you can hide from the cat. The mice move just like the cat: roll the dice and move that number of spaces or less. To collect an ingredient, you need to stake your claim on the circle where it can be found. Move to the circle and leave some mousedroppings there to claim your territory. Your turn will end here, although you don’t need to roll the exact number of spaces to land there. If you land on an ingredient someone else has claimed, you brush off their ‘territorial marker’ and replace it with one of your own. Until someone else disturbs your droppings, that space stays yours. The humans come into the kitchen at the end of each round and carelessly leave things open, which is when the mice can grab their ingredients. To be in for a chance, you need to have your droppings on the right space. Roll the dice after the cat’s go to find out which jars are open. If it’s a 1 or 2 then the tea jar has been left open and a lucky mouse or two can grab a helping of tea. If it’s a 3 or 4 then milk is available; if it’s 5 or 6, then sugar.

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Whoever has their droppings on one of those circles can collect the ingredient. Here’s an example. Say you’ve claimed one of the tea circles and another mouse has claimed the other one. At the end of the round, the dice roll is a 1. That’s the roll for tea, so you both get a serving. If one mouse has droppings on both tea circles, it claims two helpings of tea. Mice can move past each other, but can’t land on the same space. They can also trade ingredients with each other, good diplomatic relations permitting. If you’re caught by the cat, you can still escape. The cat has already had dinner, so it’s not actually going to eat the mice. If you’re a captured mouse, you roll a dice on your turn to see if the owner comes along to rescue you and tell the cat off. If it’s a six, you get to escape. You go back to your mousehole, ready to start there again next turn. If you’ve been stuck on the pillow for three turns you automatically escape on your fourth go. (The owner likes to have a nap now and again, and will find you there sooner or later.) While you’re captured, you can’t collect any ingredients, but the position of your mousedroppings is unaffected. There are four different mice to choose from: Assam (orange), Chai (yellow), Samovar (blue) and Earl Grey (grey).

clarifications and strategy tips You can move in any direction on the board you like. The cat gets grossed out by mouse poop so it doesn’t touch the droppings. If a mouse escapes before it’s taken to the pillow the cat can’t count it as a successful capture towards winning the game. As soon as it gets to the pillow, the cat has scored, even though that mice will eventually escape later. The cat doesn’t have to catch three different mice, just any three in a row. What if you’re a mouse and you really need a particular ingredient, or you want to stop someone else getting it? You can choose to stay sitting on an ingredient without moving away. As long as you’re there, other mice can’t land on the same spot, so they can’t claim it. Keep track of who’s getting close to winning, because you may want to try and ally yourselves against them.

variations The game works best if you have three or more players, but if there’s only two of you, try this: the cat now rolls two dice each turn instead of one, and the mouse player gets to control two mice who work in a team.

bonus cards You can download optional bonus cards, as well as the playing pieces. They are available at www.ohcomely.co.uk/mousehunt. If you’re using the bonus cards, and land on one of the spaces marked with a question mark, pick up a bonus card. There are special treats for cats and mice hiding in the cards. You can only take one per turn. You don’t need to claim these like ingredients circles, you just have to land on them. The cat and the mice have different decks of cards that they use. The cards will tell you what they do. Some of them you have to use immediately, while some of them can be used whenever. These can be traded with other players, too.

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It’s eight o’ clock on a Saturday night. Do you want to play a board game?

Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.

You have won second prize in a beauty contest.

Oh I see. You’d rather play a parlour game. Charades?

Splendid. The Hungry Hungry Hippos are:

I’m not a Victorian.

Not going to find happiness in eating.

At risk of indigestion.

One word: Is it a film?

You’d be pretty old.

Also I’m not into taxidermy.

Complete the following sentence: Siam is…

I did just build a suspension bridge, though.

…invaluable if you want to protect Australasia in Risk.

…an incredibly outdated way to describe Thailand.

It’s no.

The word is no.

How many syllables?

Please stop.

What pawn do you choose in Monopoly?

The racecar.

Pie.

What do you call the pie ces you win in Trivial Pursui t?

The dog, placed inside the hat.

Cheese.

Mouse Trap is:

Why?

It’s a palindrome. Someone else chose the dog. You’re Cluedo. You smell like a Bakelite telephone and if you had a moustache you most certainly would wax it. Social status means little: you pal around with colonels and servile chefs, but you distrust them all equally. The downside of this is your vivid sense of paranoia. Danger follows you around so you never let anyone in. Ultimately you know there’s little keeping people from making a bad decision in a Study. Or in a Ballroom. Or in a Kitchen.

An inefficient way to trap a mouse.

You’re the Game of Life.

You’re Monopoly. You like to travel around London, buying property, dressed as an iron. At your disposal are exceptional negotiating skills that have helped you buy Old Kent Road for £50, which is less than my shoes. You also go on for absolutely ages, presumably because you come from a time when people didn’t have anything else to do but play Monopoly forever and ever until their eyes bled.

words jason ward, illustration steph baxter

You’ve accepted that life is random and that you really have no control over things; all you can do is spin the wheel and hope it works out. Maybe you’ll end up with a car filled with children. Maybe you’ll inherit a skunk farm. It doesn’t really matter, one way or the other. As such, you worry less and enjoy life more. Also, you think that a racehorse is worth roughly the same as an oil well.

Inferior now that they ’ve simplified the board.

You’re Scrabble. You appreciate the smell of a rainy day, the crinkle of a good rug between your toes and a lazy afternoon with nothing to do but think about words, where your biggest concern is whether to hold on to that Z or not. You understand that boredom isn’t really boredom, it’s Heaven. Your best friend is the Oxford English Dictionary, and your nemesis is the 21st Century. Good luck to you, friend.

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