Oh Comely magazine issue 17, sep/oct 2013 by oh comely magazine

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issue seventeen sep/oct 2013

tickets to the moon and back the space issue make a rocket in your kitchen journeys around Britainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seaside towns the peculiar comfort of cornish fish pie noah baumbach on directing his own worst-case scenario and what happened to the first cat in space?

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Photo: Yui Yu Hoi / d3sign.hk

this magazine will make you smile and mix a space cocktail fit for an astronaut stop to smell the wind off the sea hunt for fallen meteorites bake a fine fish pie

oh comely

keep your curiosity sacred editors liz bennett, des tan

deputy editor rosanna durham associate editor dani lurie fashion liz seabrook illustration laura callaghan film jason ward editorial maggie crow, olivia wilson music linnéa enstrom thanks anna godfrey, alice morby, lydia sheils words benjamin brill, sam bompas, beth davis, fab gorjian, harriet hall, lee hunter, frances phillips pictures francesca jane allen, carl bigmore, hannah bowen, jamie campbell, jo duck, alice ferrow, julia galdo, anthony gerace, eugene gusarov, kris hatch, kris hatch, emelie hultqvist, roger kisby, i-hsien lai, jon lau, andy lo pò, laura manfre, marina muun, sofia niazi, tess roby, tom ravenshear, christine rösch, robin scheibler, romain sellier, stelios stylianou, david swailes, beinta á torkilsheyggi, sara wilson, yui yu hoi advertising emily knowles, emily.knowles@royalacademy.org.uk feedback and lost property, info@ohcomely.co.uk submissions, words@ohcomely.co.uk or pictures@ohcomely.co.uk oh comely, issue seventeen, sep/oct 2013. 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, Armgarð Mortensen, by Beinta á Torkilsheyggi. Dress from Beyond Retro. The knitted Mars rover on the back cover is by Abbie Hutty. See page 126 for more. www.ohcomely.co.uk Contents © 2013 Adeline Media Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission from the publishers, although conscientious and beleaguered fair users can relax and have a cup of tea. The views expressed in oh comely are not necessarily those of the contributors, editors or publishers, or the authors’ mothers. ISSN 2043-9857.

Above: ‘Childhood’ by Kris Hatch.

28 38 66

122

120

c o n te n t s it’s nice to see you here

22 music of the spheres space paintings and melancholic rock are a match made in heaven

34 spacesuit designer for the stars amy ross makes armour to keep astronauts alive

24 your go-to men for giant jelly bompas & parr make food more magical

36 I set up an erotic toy boutique how I found myself surrounded by vibrating cupcakes

26 the precariousness of being 27 noah baumbach talks worst-case scenarios

art

28 animals in space illustrating the poignant pioneers 50 postcards from outer space it’s toasty on jupiter, bring a bikini 56 his magnificent desolation the third astronaut of the moon landing and his isolation on the dark side of the moon

space

58 the pope’s astronomer the vatican’s collection of meteorites and their remarkable keeper 62 crowdsourcing the supermoon once a year, everyone has a room with a view

people

and

38 seaside towns portraits of resorts when the punters have gone home 66 it’s only rocket science we tried to get to space with sugar and a pepper pot 76 my body wasn’t made for this the zero-gravity plane isn’t dubbed the vomit comet for nothing 78 special report: life-forms sighted on mercury your illustrated aliens

64 don’t tell them about the list the perils of attempting astronaut-like solitude

80 the accidental interview the day I found myself engrossed by space engineering

82 novella at band practice polaroids from the boxwell place sessions

100 the dark mirror of horror finding comfort in the most disturbing of films

92 this is a song for me and my guitar eleanor friedberger, singer in solitude

102 silence will fall interiors from a sixteenth-century house wrapped in stillness

94 framed picture-perfect clothes informed by the archive of russian dress

106 the familiar a new piece of spine-chilling short fiction

114 make mine a slice of the stargazey pie a traditional cornish delight for those who can look their dinner in the eye

122 freeze-dried everything all you need for a picnic on your weekend mini-break in space

116 pubs of kentish town, with tom a friendship measured out in manly hugs and pints of craft beer

124 down shot, prepare for lift-off recipes for space cocktails made of jelly

120 justine and jon’s wedding album photos of our competition winners’ happy day

128 animals with issues a black widow spider with a mother complex and other unhappy animals

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Hi oh comely, I hope you realise how much I love your magazine. As a poor uni student who is going home to the comforts of Mum and Dad imminently, my funds are now non-existent. Therefore I’m happy to tell you that I’m paying for issue 16 with 126 1p pieces (one begged oﬀ my housemate), 37 2p pieces and my last £2 coin. My change pot is now completely empty and looks rather sad. (I sellotaped the 1ps together in 10p batches so that the nice WHSmith’s lady won’t get too cross!). Wish me luck! Fiona Wells

what we listened to songs that made this issue and illustrations by hannah bowen

what we drank six lemons make a cordial

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some people who helped make this issue and their summer holidays from childhoods gone by beinta á torkilsheyggi, photographer Beinta photographed this issue’s cover portrait in her native Faroe Islands. Tell us about yourself and your work. I am from the Faroe Islands, a very small country in the middle of the North Atlantic. It consists of eighteen islands, with a population of 48,000 people and around 70,000 sheep. For me, the contrast between the great, hectic city of London and the small, quiet village I grew up in is a great inspiration. I prefer to use soft natural light and I like my photographs to inspire curiosity. Share a surprising fact about the Faroe Islands. There is 24-hour daylight in the summer, and no McDonald’s. What were your summer holidays like when you were a child? My summer holidays are filled with happy memories of the farm that I grew up on. Plucking berries on the green mountain sides. My mom’s homemade ice cream. Playing hide-and-seek for hours and hours around the village. The yearly chore of cutting 207 sheep’s wool off for the summer time with my cousins, and my daily job selling chicken eggs around the village.

marina muun, illustrator Marina painted Félicette, the first cat in space, page 28. Tell us a little about yourself and your work. I love being an illustrator and being able to draw cats in space and say that that’s my job! As a teenager I painted in a studio with a fine artist who was my mentor, which did a lot for my use and understanding of colour. Now I’ve transitioned to the digital medium, I can enjoy the best of both worlds. I like drawing from life and consider that my main source of inspiration. What does space represent to you? It represents a place that I doubt I’ll ever visit, but one I can always experience through both those who have been there and those whose imaginations reach into the unknown. What were your summer holidays like when you were a child? I spent my childhood’s best days, luckily, in all sorts of interesting places among nature. This is because my wonderful grandmother was a primary school teacher and took me to summer camps each year. We used to catch fireflies, stick them to our foreheads and pretend we were wizards.

Do you believe in aliens? E. T. phoned home, didn’t he?

Do you believe in aliens? That’s the only thing I believe in.

www.beinta.com

www.marinamuun.com

anthony gerace, photographer and collage artist Anthony photographed the seaside towns of Kent and Sussex, page 38. His collage work is featured on page 106. Tell us a little about yourself and your work. I grew up in Toronto, and studied graphic design at the Ontario College of Art and Design. My work comprises three elements: collage, photography, and typography, and I try to blend these as much as I can at any given time. I like people, I like travel, and I like discovering strange things that might not otherwise be seen. What does space represent to you? Space to me represents the ability to pass through it and to discover. That distances exist to be crossed is incredible. The photographer Robert Adams has a quote that goes, “If the time it takes to cross space is a way by which we define it, then to arrive at a view of space ‘in no time’ is to have denied its reality.”

harriet hall, fashion writer Harriet interviewed NASA spacesuit designer Amy Ross on page 34. Tell us about yourself and your work. I write about fashion, art, film, theatre and feminism. My work process is always a journey of self-discovery and I love it, even when I am tearing my hair out to comply with word limits due to my insatiable verbosity. The pile of magazines in my room is so large that setting them on fire would likely keep me warm for a couple of years, but I would rather freeze. Why do you think the fashion world is so inspired by space? The sheer enormity provides endless possibilities for escapism and fantasy. People can project whatever they want onto it. Also, nobody could beat André Courrèges’ 1964 Moon Girl collection—a capsule wardrobe for the fashionable woman to wear in space—so they’ve got to keep trying.

What were your summer holidays like when you were a child? Funnily, spent in a seaside town. I grew up near Lake Huron and my family had a cottage in Grand Bend, Ontario. I always wanted to stay inside playing video games, but my best memories of the place are swimming, cycling and boating.

What does space represent to you? I love the stars. To me, there is nothing more darkly romantic than the supernovae. When I was growing up, I dreamed of being an astronomer. One weekend my father and I made and hand-painted a scale model of the Solar System and hung it up on my bedroom ceiling. Staring into Saturn’s rings helped me to fall asleep.

a-gerace.com

twitter.com/Harri_Grace

pretty lovely space stuff for children who grew up but still love gazing at the stars curated by olivia wilson we have everything on the page to give away, so shoot an email to free@ohcomely.co.uk by the end of september to win knick-knacks for a grown-up space bedroom

From top right: this Little Prince-inspired pendant is hand-crafted by Lorena Martinez-Neustadt and worth £61.20. gemagenta.etsy.com Never be afraid of the dark with these moonshine wall stickers from The Glow Company. www.glow.co.uk Dress as a real deal space cowboy with these genuine astronaut’s patches from Stewart Aviation. www.stewart-aviation.co.uk Bibi Lei “picks up the sweetness in the universe” with her astrologicalthemed silk scarves. www.starsandtart.com The Americans spent millions inventing a pen that would work in space. The Russians used a pencil. These bespoke space pencils are made by Abigail Warner. www.abigailwarner.com This beautifully-illustrated constellations zine is the perfect thing to accompany a night of star-gazing. megbentley.co.uk

star material: a subscription to ‘not another bill’ Paul Smith must suffer from an avalanche of pizza fliers and minicab cards, because the fashion designer sent a thank-you note to Ned Corbett-Winder, founder of Not Another Bill, thanking him for livening up his letterbox. Ned‘s is a subscription service that says no to boring post, and yes to a beautifully-curated surprise present once a month. Oh Comely readers can get 20% off a one, three, six or twelve-month subscription before the 29th of September with the code NAB-8T. Ned, tell us the story behind Not Another Bill. It started life in early 2011 when I was working as an art director at M&C Saatchi ad agency. Being an art director I constantly had exciting things arriving on my desk, and on top of that I had a bit of an online shopping addiction. My desk was quite an eclectic and exciting place. My copywriter and good friend Martin who sat across from me always complained that he didn’t get anything cool in the post, and that is where the idea stemmed from. No one gets anything good in the post anymore, so

each month I’d send you something cool, and in the process introduce you to great designers and brands that I liked. How do you go about choosing presents? All the presents we send share a common theme, which is the quality, attention to detail, story and the maker‘s ethos. These are all factors that go into us choosing who to work with. The first few months were presents that I made myself, my favourite being a takeover-the-world kit, which contained a set of lead soldiers, old maps, gold coins and old cigarette cards of places around the world. Since then we have collaborated with a whole array of brands, from the relatively unknown to some fairly well-renowned such as Penhaligon‘s and Tatty Devine. What‘s the view from the NAB studio window? NAB HQ is nestled in the creative gasworks studios near Lots Road, Fulham. So our view from the studio window is a huge working gas tower, which is at different heights depending on the time of year. It‘s an exciting and ever-changing view! Not Another Bill / www.notanotherbill.com

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music of the spheres words linnéa enstrom

when white lies’ new album met michael kagan’s space paintings For their latest album, BIG TV, White Lies tell the story of a journey into the unknown. Fitting then that they’ve chosen Michael Kagan’s intense and mysterious painting, Pilot 2, for the cover. We spoke to drummer Jack Lawrence-Brown about what happens when you bring art and music together.

exist totally independently of each other can become entwined and linked over time in peoples’ minds. Maybe they will start transferring the stories of the album into an intergalactic setting, with Pilot 2 as the protagonist. Space feels to me like a representation of opportunity and an invitation for human courage and exploration.

What drew you to Michael’s series of space paintings? The paintings are brilliant in their depth: immediately arresting, yet full of human emotion and subtlety, like fleeting personal moments of a much bigger event. They create a memory of something that I was not even born during!

How would you describe the paintings’ affinity to BIG TV and the sound of White Lies? There’s a definite air of melancholy about the pictures that sits well with our music. The subject matter is on an epic scale, a word that has often—perhaps too often—been used when describing the music we make, while the personal element of the paintings is reflected in the narrative of BIG TV. The spacemen are embarking on a journey into the unknown, like the characters described throughout the album.

You chose Pilot 2 for the album sleeve. What made this painting stand out? The spaceman in the image is staring out directly at you. There is a fearful and questioning look in his eyes and you want to know his story. We felt that Pilot 2 was the image that would best capture peoples’ imagination. I love the idea that a picture and an album of music that

BIG TV is out on August 12th. Michael Kagan / www.michaelkagan.com

pilot 2, by michael kagan

your go-to men for giant jelly words maggie crow, portrait andy lo pò

sam bompas and harry parr are the high wizards of food magic

It is appropriate that the partnership of Sam Bompas and Harry Parr began with a dinner party, that most theatrical of food occasions. When Harry served an impressive blackcurrant jelly for dessert, Sam scented a business opportunity and convinced him that the pair should apply to run a jelly stand at London’s Borough Market. The space at Borough was not to be but, undeterred, they took advantage of Harry’s background in architecture and began creating bespoke jellies of London icons, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, and in the process making a name for themselves as modern-day Willy Wonkas: hired guns who can make anything happen with sugar. With a series of high-profile collaborations, notably with Selfridges and Mercedes-Benz, the pair have pioneered a new movement in entertainment, blurring the lines between food, art and spectacle to create larger-than-life culinary installations around the world. On an unseasonably cold morning in June, I met with Sam to talk about Bompas & Parr. Energetic, warm and articulate, Sam is a natural storyteller with a flair for the dramatic. As I stood in the studio warming my hands around a cup of tea, Sam wove through the piles of ephemera that covered almost every surface, finding a jar of the world’s shiniest fruit, showing me Ouija board-printed tea towels and a perfectly accurate jelly mould of a T-Class ‘killer’ submarine. With all of these trifles, it would be easy for their work to become frivolous. But when we sat down to talk, I quickly discovered that, to Sam, playtime is a very serious subject indeed. You’ve been called food artists, jellymongers, culinary curio creators. How do you see your work? I’ve always been very interested in people standing in front of a painting for long periods of time having a strong emotional response. But not everyone stands in front of a painting and feels this kind of divinity come down upon them. Everyone has encoded in them what it takes to have an awesome food experience. Our agenda is to give people a very joyous, wonderful time. We don’t really care if it’s in an art gallery, if it’s in a factory or on the street—it doesn’t matter. The truth is that the art world is the entertainment industry; we’re competing for people’s leisure time. You can read a book, have sex, go to the theatre, see friends at the pub, go to a restaurant. So we see them all as our direct competitors—all of them! Which is very stressful, all the time! Why do you think food is such a good medium? Humans are animals and we have basic responses to food. At the beginning of a meal, when I look down at my main dish, I’m excited by it, and that’s a really powerful starting point. Everything else you can lay onto it—all the intrigue, trickery, stories, culture, service rituals, beautifully-bedecked waiters and waitresses—that’s just the added bonus. Because everyone eats three times a day, there’s no other cultural mode that people have as much experience of. Everyone has an opinion. We want to stimulate that. We’re not changing people’s lives, we’re just

trying to give them happy moments. The food is the means to an end: that you’ve gone away and you’ve had a great time. You’ve mentioned before that you’re inspired by the nineteenthcentury entertainer P. T. Barnum and the theatrical Victorian chef, Alexis Soyer. Could you talk a bit about the interplay between showmanship and how that influences our experience of food? I think one of the things that you learn quickly about food is that people can enjoy absolutely any flavour and any flavour combination. At first that might sound negative but actually it’s really positive and liberating. That’s interesting, because people have such strong ideas about their tastes. Which is dictated by context. If you present something in the right context and make it seem sophisticated, people will like anything. And at first they’ll just say that they’re liking it, but then they really will like it. There are pleasure sensors in the brain that will light up in the right ways. No one starts out liking coffee or beer. You learn to like it, and you drink it because it’s an important thing to do culturally. We also love spectacle, we love the grand scale. We love hyperbole, and that is very much along the lines of people like Barnum and Soyer. They were characters; they had a lot of swagger. They were ﬁgures who would say that they had found a mermaid and tell people to come and see it, which was believable within the scientiﬁc context of the day. If we said we found a mermaid, people would be like, “Well, no, you haven’t.” We like making claims that are real; we don’t like things that are made up. Is that why you align yourselves with engineers and scientists? Yes, quite often we take people who are working in the real world with new technology, with new ideas, with new human capabilities and say, what if you project that into an artistic or leisure context? It’s fun. For example, we met with people at the materials lab at UCL. They’re really cool. They were telling us about aluminium nitrite, which is a superconductor, used for making silicon chips or whatever. But we thought, what if you bring that to a bar? What happens if you use that to break ice? We’re not chefs. We don’t have any culinary training, and people come to our events literally expecting the meal of their life. And we think, God, we are being judged by people who go to Michelin-starred restaurants, who are used to being cooked for by coordinated, well-drilled brigades of people who cook every single day. So to compete you have to throw something at it that the chefs don’t have, which is using a different body of knowledge. That’s your only chance, otherwise you’re buggered! Do you have a favourite day out with Bompas & Parr? I really liked the big jelly rounds. We made a fifty-ton jelly round, a massive jelly, with a lot of the gang here, and a load of extra help from the community service. There was absolutely no budget for it, so it only happened because there was a lot of good will. People just wanted to do it, and it was bonkers and it was fun. Taste Sam’s jelly space cocktails on page 124. Bompas & Parr / bompasandparr.com

Left: Noah Baumbach. Right: Greta Gerwig plays Frances in Frances Ha.

Noah Baumbach is an expert in disappointment. One of cinema’s most incisive voices on the subject of diminishing expectations, almost all of the writer-director’s wayward protagonists struggle with their station in life. From Jeff Daniels’ frustrated writer in The Squid and The Whale to Ben Stiller’s bitter musician in Greenberg, his characters make excuses for why they haven’t achieved what they wanted to, expressing their discontent through deluded self-regard or sourness. “It’s probably true everywhere, but success feels like such a particularly American marker,” Noah explains. “I’ve always been fascinated by how individuals define it for themselves. I think people write stories in their head that become impossible to live up to.” Despite his own successes over the last decade—as well as his own films, Noah co-wrote two of Wes Anderson’s best pictures—his continued interest in dissatisfied characters can be partly traced back to what he calls his first career. Rejected from film school, Noah decided to go ahead and make a film anyway, writing and directing the comedy drama Kicking and Screaming. Its critical success established him as part of the great 1990s wave of American independent filmmakers, but after the underwhelming response to his sophomore effort Mr. Jealousy, the phone very suddenly stopped ringing.

The ﬁlm that Noah spent the better part of a decade trying to get made—the semi-autobiographical bildungsroman The Squid and The Whale—reignited his career and found him nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar, but he continued to be drawn to characters unable to make peace with their ambitions. Noah’s earlier struggles only added to the empathy he has for his characters’ circumstances. “When I wrote Greenberg, I was thinking about what would have happened if I hadn’t made The Squid and The Whale, if I had turned inward and become more frustrated, more rigid, less willing to live life as it was as opposed to how I wanted it to be. That ﬁlm was the worst-case scenario of my life.” At first glance, Noah’s latest offering appears to be little different. Starring co-writer Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha is about a 27-year-old dancer struggling to find work in New York, making constant changes to her life and yet never seeming to make any progress. Bright, relatively privileged and unable to find a career footing, Frances’ plight is common to an entire generation, but her chronic inability to be honest with herself will be recognisable to anyone familiar with Noah’s work. The film garners comic mileage out of Frances’ many wince-inducing tribulations, from having to dash out of a date to withdraw money from a cash machine, to enduring a mortifying dinner party with people far

the precariousness of being twenty-seven words jason ward

noah baumbach on worst-case scenarios and his new film frances ha

more settled than she is. Despite Noah’s customary clear-eyed depiction of the character, however, something is different: even as her situation becomes increasingly dire, there’s an admiration for Frances’ tenacity and spirit that soaks into every scene. The film plays out like a love letter. Noah’s real-life relationship with Greta Gerwig is certainly a factor: made in the first flourish of their time together, Frances Ha is defined by an indefatigable optimism that is the mark of early romance, and for all the character’s foibles, she’s imbued with a grace that is unmistakably Greta’s. More than that, though, the film shows how Frances’ cheerful resolve leads her to a place where she can find contentment in her changing circumstances, even if they’re different from what she hoped for. The realisation is its own sort of triumph: unencumbered by the resentments that blight Noah’s other characters, Frances is ultimately free to accept and enjoy her life rather than worrying about what she has yet to accomplish. “I was very clear early on that I wanted to give her a satisfying victory,” he says, “a victory that should feel true to the story and the character and the anthropology of the world, but a victory nonetheless.”

Far from his early work, made when he was the age of his latest title character, Noah is also comfortable with where he is. “The movies I’ve made in this ‘second career’ represent me as the filmmaker I am each time I make them. Whatever security I might feel or not feel as a filmmaker is in line with whatever security I feel as a human being. 43 feels more secure than I was at 27.” The key to his hard-won self-assurance, Noah feels, was the decade he spent struggling: “Just trying to get a movie funded was impossible, but retrospectively that time was also me figuring myself out a little bit and working out how I wanted to write and make movies.” The conclusion of Frances Ha finds its protagonist at a similar juncture, one that is hopeful yet inconclusive, right down to its title-explaining final shot. “My other films landed somewhere in the middle, but this time it felt that the right ending and the most satisfying one was actually an ending of incompleteness. It’s about an acceptance of that incompleteness,” Noah says. “At 27 you’re never going to feel complete. But that’s okay: if you did, you’d be insufferable.” Frances Ha is out now.

animals in space i n m e m o r y of s p a c e tra ve l ’s un wi tt i n g p a s s e n g er s

félicette the cat illustration marina muun

Aboard the 1963 Véronique rocket, the French space agency placed Félicette, a last-minute replacement after the first choice cat cannily escaped shortly before space flight. Unlike many an animal astronaut, Félicette survived her fifteen minutes in flight. Another unnamed cat sent up a few days later was not so lucky.

laika the muscovite mongrel illustration jon lau

Laika was a stray dog from the streets of Moscow, and the first living animal to orbit the earth. She was selected for the Soviet Sputnik 2 mission in 1957, but died only five hours into her five-month voyage when the cooling systems malfunctioned. Laika was never even intended to survive longer than ten days: her voyage was an experiment to test whether living creatures could survive weightlessness and the pressures of launch-off.

albert II the rhesus monkey illustration alice ferrow

Albert II was a Rhesus monkey who the Americans sent into space on the 1949 V2 rocket mission. He survived the flight up to 83 miles above the ground and back to Earth, but died on impact after the parachutes failed. He was preceded by Albert, and followed by Alberts III and IV, none of whom made it back to earth alive. Aliceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s illustrations compare his earthly resting place and starry legacy.

Above: the Z-1 prototype suit, which displays the most significant change to NASAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s suit design since 1992.

spacesuit designer for the stars words harriet hall

nasa engineer amy ross makes the armour that keeps astronauts alive

Amy Ross is a clothing designer to the stars. Not humdrum Hollywood, though, her clients mingle with the constellations themselves. She is the rarest garment designer in the world: a NASA spacesuit engineer creating suits to withstand temperature extremes ranging from -130 to 120°C. But Amy’s no stylist; the iconic astronaut aesthetic is the result of utilitarian decisions, even down to the thermal properties of its white exterior. Born to a mother who developed space food and an astronaut father who holds the world record of seven human space flights, Amy has been vicariously living in space her entire life, but she has yet to venture there herself. Trained in 1992 under the tutelage of one of the first spacesuit engineers, Joe Kosmo, she now leads NASA’s spacesuit team. She is currently developing the Z-2 suit, for completion in September 2014. I spoke to her about conspiracy theories, the vomit comet and how astronauts relieve themselves on a spacewalk. The suit is the last line of defence for the astronaut; it has to be able to sustain a human life. Does that add extreme pressure to your job? Yes, that’s our first job. It’s like, “We’re going to throw you into an environment that can kill you and this suit will keep you alive.” Our second job is to allow the astronauts to do the work they need to on the mission. I primarily work on the spacesuits for spacewalks. There are other scenarios where the suit is really just that back-up to cabin pressure—a crew survival suit—and we have another team that creates those. Right now, though, we’re on the path to build a suit that will go in a vacuum chamber, so the only thing standing between the human and the vacuum will be my suit. What are the biggest dangers to consider? I always say that spacesuit design is predicated on two things: where you’re going and what you’re doing. Where you’re going: space environment is hostile to human life, there’s just no two ways about it! The temperature extremes, the vacuous space, the radiation, meteorites: all that stuff will kill you. The suit can only protect a little bit against deep space radiation, so we have to depend on other things to make sure the astronauts don’t get too big a dose. How do you create a suit that works in such extremes? We have multilayered insulation and it really does a good job of protecting you from the external environment. It’s like wrapping a thermos bottle around a human: they wear this full onesie that has little tubes running through it that take cool water from your life support system and pop it through the tubes to cool you off. We have a lot of conditions that we use to simulate the effects of space. We have a neutral buoyancy laboratory—a six million gallon water

tank—that we practice doing spacewalks in. Astronauts spend about thirty hours learning how to use the suit in the tank alone. And then we have a reduced gravity aircraft, the ‘vomit comet’. Also, I get to put on my spacesuits, which is my favourite part. Is that just for fun, or as part of the testing? The only way to be an effective spacesuit engineer is to put on a spacesuit. Put on every spacesuit you can get in! It’s a unique experience because it’s like being inside a bug’s skeleton. It’s not like wearing clothes, more like having a shell round you. You have to learn how to move this thing that’s on you. Tell me about the parts of the suits. How many layers are there? The most important layers are what we call the bladder and the restraint. The bladder’s the closest to the human body other than the cooling and ventilation garment. The bladder—is that what it sounds like? No. (She laughs.) We actually use a diaper for that. That can’t be very pleasant. Well, you’re outside for about six to eight hours at a time so if it were me, I’d try to maybe not drink a cup of coﬀee that morning. But I have used a diaper; we were doing a thermal chamber test and it lasted for seven hours and when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. It’s actually really hard to use a diaper if you’re potty-trained. Do you ever consider the aesthetic of the suit, or is it all about performance? Truthfully, we don’t get to do that. When we design a suit, it looks that way because that’s the way it needs to look in order to work. When I was working with my mentor, I always knew that when I asked a question like, “Why is that thing there?” there was a reason. I get a lot of heck from the press about how big and bulky the suit is, but we can’t help it! Is there an instance in which this might change? Probably with commercial space. If you’re paying $200,000 to fly on Virgin Galactic, you’re going to want to look cool while you’re doing it, so a little bit of fashion design and styling will come into that. So you’re not a space fashion designer? Actually, I’m getting to play that game a little bit with the new Z-2 suit. I’m going to make it cool looking! We don’t usually get to apply fashion design to what we do so this is probably the only time in my career that I’m going to build a cover layer for no other reason than to make it look good. What inspires you about space? The military is where a lot of fantastic inventions and technology come from, but it’s all directed at something I don’t want to ever have to do, which is to fight a war. At NASA, as humankind we come together to build something that we can all use to help improve our world, and push technology without it being to kill people.

I set up an erotic toy boutique words frances phillips, photo francesca jane allen

there’s no stigma in buying a vibrator or a nice set of knickers, but selling them is a different matter

Launching any small business is an emotional roller coaster, but an erotic one comes with its own unique twists. Frances Phillips shares the lessons of launching her fledgling sex toy shop for women. Have a great business idea. “Why is it,” I wondered during a fateful idle moment last year, “that when I want to buy a handbag, or some shoes, or any other accessory, I walk into stores and see stylish, sexy, beautifully-composed, feminine images that make me want to buy something, and yet when I decide to buy a vibrator I walk into a high street sex toy shop and I see images of sub-Page Three models staring blankly into the camera?” I decided that there was no shop in the entire world selling sex toys for women that I felt comfortable shopping in and that setting one up was a Great Business Idea. My erotic boutique would be all those things that I experienced in other stores that didn’t sell erotic toys: it would be aesthetically pleasing, it would be feminine, it would be seductive but not in a sleazy way. Above all it would not make me look around and go, “What the hell am I doing in here? Oh, yeah, I’m buying a vibrator and that’s what buying a vibrator looks like.” Choose your stock. Warning: stocking a sex toy store is not for the squeamish or the faint of heart. There are products out there in Sex Toy Land that you do not want to even think about let alone consider at length. There are others that will have you scratching your head and going, “It does what?” and, “It goes where?” “Are we having a collective nervous breakdown?” was the question most frequently asked as myself and my husband sat back to back in our workroom reading about travel-friendly vibrators and cotton-lined corsets, whilst surrounded by vibrating cupcakes. Get a bank account. We didn’t want somewhere to lend us money. We just wanted somewhere to put the money we were going to spend and hopefully the money we were going to make. “Sorry, we don’t support companies like yours,” said Mr Generic New Business Manager of every single generic bank on the high street we went to. I became increasingly embarrassed as I made each call, like I was a vendor of dirty mags or dodgy herbal supplements. “May I ask why?” I would enquire. “We care about our reputation.” Eventually we lucked out with a brand new bank who clearly did not care about their reputation and just wanted access to our funds. Write hundreds of product descriptions without going insane. Try and fit the words ‘erotic’, ‘corsets’, ‘toys’ and ‘stimulating’ into every single description without sounding repetitive and without weeping. It’s an emotional as well as a linguistic challenge. Launch, quietly. Launching an online business is a quiet, subtle moment. There’s no in-store party. Nobody drops in out of curiosity. And you must try keeping the entire enterprise secret from your family, children, friends and work colleagues because even though everybody knows these things exist—and the majority of women own a vibrator and at least one set of nice knickers—to actually be involved in selling them is still not quite respectable somehow. Frances Phillips started Eve Made A Wish with her husband in 2012. www.evemadeawish.co.uk.

Margate

seaside towns photos anthony gerace interview rosanna durham

a p o r tra i t of re s or t s i n ke n t a nd s u s s ex o u t of s e a s o n

What happens to British seaside towns when the Punch and Judy cart has been rolled away, and the rusting roller coasters on the pier are closed for the end of the season? Canadian photographer Anthony Gerace has embarked on a study of seaside towns in Britain. Here he begins at the south-eastern edge of the country, on the blustery fringes of Kent and Sussex. When did your interest in British seaside towns begin? It‘s the seaside town experience generally: I find them very strange, hermetic worlds. The entire industry of seaside towns—fishing, tourism and celebration—occurs solely within the place. So there‘s an insane amount of inertia in the places, and it breeds a tension that can be felt in the decay and disusedness of the objects and landscapes, one that‘s at odds with what the places presume to be. I love it. I love seeing the friendliness butted up against the boredom, and the inherent sadness

being fought with a dwindling tourism industry. There‘s a sense in all of the towns I visited that their era has passed. I‘m really interested in seeing and documenting that. Also, the cloistered nature of the places makes them incredible typological subjects. As I photographed them I became progressively more interested, because in each town I‘d find repeated elements: a pier, boats, docks, amusements, arcades, worn-out cars, extremes of wealth and poverty, fish shops, clapboard houses, cliffs and the ocean. Seeing the small differences between towns was exciting and inspiring. The project isn‘t done, and likely won‘t be for at least another year or two. I want to see how Blackpool differs from Margate, or how St Ives differs from Eastbourne. And eventually I‘d like to see how the seaside town experience is felt throughout the world, because I think they‘re an important and ultimately telling part of Western society.

Margate

Share a surreal or revealing moment from your travels. Two, both from Margate. While still on the train, I saw a sign as it pulled in that read DREAMLAND WELCOMES YOU. It seemed like such an odd thing, especially once I got off the train and saw how derelict the place was. Later, as I was photographing the high street, someone started following me, and began getting closer and closer as I went down smaller and smaller streets. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;m not sure if they were planning anything, but it definitely rattled me.

Ramsgate

Brighton

Are there any forgotten seaside retreats in Canada that you know? Part of the reason that I was so interested in seaside towns in the UK was because I spent a large part of my childhood in a Canadian seaside town called Grand Bend. This was on Lake Huron, so it was essentially like living on the ocean. And as I got older, the sad qualities of the place became more evident: things that had been magical in my childhood became trashy and tarnished, and things I hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;t seen revealed themselves, like the drunken college party town qualities.

Eastbourne

Hastings

Littlehampton

anthony gerace / www.a-gerace.com

“Meteorites are evidence that outer space is not so distant, that space itself can come and touch us, and we can touch it.” —Guy Consolmagno, page 58

victoria kuzmenko by eugene gusarov

postcards from outer space th e we a t h er â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s n i c e o u t , a t o a s t y t wo t h o u s a nd d e g re e s

illustrations fab gorjian

Top: The existence of HD 188753 AB is as yet unconfirmed. Bottom: Saturn is 891 million miles from the sun. Its diameter is nearly ten times that of Earth, 74,898 miles. Planet information is from The Illustrated Atlas of the Universe, published by Fog City Press.

Top: Sedna is roughly 84 billion miles from the sun, one of the most distant known objects in the Solar System apart from comets. Its equatorial diameter is only 1,000 miles, an eighth that of earth. The weather is a freezing -240째C. Bottom: A day on Jupiter lasts 9.92 hours, making it the fastest-rotating body in the Solar System. The temperature varies from -145째C on the surface to 35,000째C in the centre.

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his magnificent desolation words jason ward, photo des tan

the third astronaut of the moon landings spent 21 hours alone in his spaceship, circling the dark side of the moon

We’re so accustomed to hyperbole that it can be difficult to recognise the truth in grand statements. When Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the surface of the moon in the July of 1969, he described it as being a giant leap for mankind. He wasn’t exaggerating: of all of the things that took place during the terrible, wondrous, noisy twentieth century, humanity’s audacious first stride into the universe is the one most likely to be remembered a thousand years from now. Yet as significant as the first moon landing was, its importance can be equally illuminated by remembering an event that was happening at the exact same moment. During the 21 hours that Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent on the Sea of Tranquillity, Apollo 11’s third crew member Michael Collins remained in the Command Module, Columbia, as it orbited the moon awaiting their return. Left behind whilst his colleagues made history, Collins checked his instruments, spoke to NASA every now and then, and stared out at a place where he himself would never set foot. Every 47 minutes his orbit would take him around the moon’s dark side, a quarter of a million miles from his home, and completely out of contact with anyone at all. Upon Columbia’s first return from radio silence, Mission Control observed, “Not since Adam has any human known such solitude.“ In interviews, Collins is ambivalent on his feelings while in isolation, but during one of those stretches on the dark side of the moon he wrote in his diary: “I am alone, now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it.” The idea of Collins’ long, long wait resonates because it reinforces our feelings about exploration, and explains a little about why we romanticise it. Man has always venerated explorers, not only because they take risks to further human knowledge, but also because we live vicariously through them. For the explorers, the prize for their boldness isn’t just in the objects or knowledge that they bring back, nor any rewards or celebration for their trials, but rather the opportunity to see something that no one has ever seen before. The notion is an enchanting one, and is amongst

the reasons why people have climbed mountains, crossed oceans and boarded rocket ships. Exploration is a collective triumph, of course. While Armstrong and Aldrin were bouncing around on the moon and Collins was pensively orbiting it, hundreds of scientists and engineers were assisting them back home. But the crew of Apollo 11 were the ones who put themselves in danger. Like anything difficult or traumatic, the further we get away from it, the harder the risks are to appreciate: Apollo 1 didn’t even leave the ground, its crewmen burning alive in their spacesuits, and it was rumoured for years that cosmonauts had been sent to space and died in the period before Yuri Gagarin’s first spaceflight. Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins left Earth in the knowledge that there was a speech already drafted for the President to read in the event of their deaths, and yet they went anyway. Even if they were merely part of the machine of scientific discovery, they were still the frail humans who took that step into the unknown. Armstrong differentiated between his small step as a man and mankind’s giant leap, but it’s through the former that we experience the latter. Discovery is a shared human endeavour, yes, but individuals become the focal point because that’s how we understand the world. The explorers themselves exist as a symbol in which we invest our hope and pride, which is why the thought of Collins’ lonesome 21 hours speaks to us. Like Armstrong and Aldrin, Collins travelled to somewhere never before reached by man, but wasn’t able to experience it; he climbed a mountain and was unable to look out at the summit. More so than his crewmates, he embodies the loneliness of discovery. Without a tangible moment of achievement, he allows us to appreciate the personal sacrifices that exploration demands of its pursuers. Reaching a new shore or ascending a new peak is just one moment: what comes before is frequently hardship, boredom and life-threatening danger. To reach somewhere new is to be alone, and there’s something both inspiring and heart-rending about that. While it’s true that no human had known such solitude as Michael Collins, his solitude is in itself its own kind of discovery.

the popeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s astronomer words rosanna durham

guy consolmagno is a planetary scientist at the vaticanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s observatory, and the keeper of its extraordinary meteorite collection

Guy in front of the Vatican’s meteorite collection.

“I am not sure I will be what you’re expecting: I am pretty much a runof-the-mill ‘Western scientist’ albeit with a taste for science fiction. My most well-known work is a book on how to use a small telescope. Even my last name is deceptive; it’s Italian, but I am not (Detroit).” So replied Brother Guy Consolmagno when I asked to interview him. A Jesuit brother and practising astronomer, he’s an unlikely combination. But there is only one curator of the Vatican’s meteorite collection and that’s Brother Guy’s job. His days incorporate prayer, lab-based research, a siesta, and several Italian coffees. The Vatican’s meteorite collection includes some 1,100 samples of extraterrestrial material, sourced from around 500 meteorite falls. And in case you’re wondering why the Pope has a small contingent of astronomers based in an observatory at his summer palace, their presence recalls a time when the study of the night sky was an accepted component of spiritual life. Astronomers, Brother Guy informs me, have had a place there since the sixteenth century. Scientific and religious pursuits, he argues, are well-matched, since they share a deep questioning as to the origins of the universe and living matter. Unassuming and with an ear for a good story, Brother Guy argued their parallels to me over a satellite-enabled Skype connection. What are meteorites like as objects? I’ve never seen one in real life. They are small, irregular and rather nondescript types of rock. They

have a black fusion crust because they have been hurtling though the atmosphere boiling and boiling. This keeps the inside cool, so under the black crust they are grey, like concrete. And how do meteorites form? This turns out to be a challenging question because all the things that we know about rocks on Earth don’t apply to meteorites. Sandstone is put together by water and heat and pressure. But these guys come from the asteroid belt where there is neither water, heat nor pressure. So why are they rocks and not just a pile of dust? When I was a student they told us that meteorites came from a cloud of gas and dust. Fifteen years ago we started getting images of clouds of gas and dust, like they told me about when I was a student. So they were right, I thought! 4.5 billion years ago, dust is slowly gathering together and eventually these dust bits are going to slowly run into each other. If the collisions are slow enough they will start to compress: too slow, and you get dust buddies, too fast, they break apart and you wind up with dust. So it’s got to be a very certain range of speed where they fall together at just the right rate. Is this what really happened? I don’t know. It’s one of the great mysteries of how the Earth formed. What do you think about space travel? For centuries outer space was abstract and unknown. Did man walking on the moon change that; was it a loss of innocence? Meteorites are evidence that outer space is not so distant, that space itself can come and touch us and we can touch it. I see space missions as the fulfillment of a dream, and the

Above: a thin section of a chondrite meteorite called Knyahinya. Chondrite meteorites are stony and contain small mineral granules. Right: Guy holding a small cube of rock cut from a sample returned from the moon by the Apollo astronauts.

promise that other dreams can also be fulfilled. Some things—being a scientist, entering religious life, or maybe getting married—you go through them with dreams and expectations. If it works out right, you find out that it was even more wonderful than you could ever have imagined. I hope space travel will have that same effect on humanity. Did your scientific work prepare you—or not—for life as a Jesuit brother? Is there a relationship between the two? My first introduction to any kind of mediation was actually though an old girlfriend who was into yoga and stuff. The Jesuit spirituality is not just being with God, but also using your imagination, letting your imagination place you in specific places and specific times. That I had done with science before. My very first research project was a detailed computer model on how the interiors of the moons of Jupiter would change over time. I remember this movie going though my head: alright, this moon is occurring, heat is coming out of the rocky beds, so it’s going to melt the water. Where is the water going to go? Where is the rock going to go? In my spiritual exercises, I’m doing the same sort of visualisation. What was the Jerusalem of 2,000 years ago like? The crowd, sights and smells. What would it be like to place myself there? To hear these words? How would they affect me? It was very much the same act. It’s interesting how religion and science both ask big questions about the universe and our beginnings, while combining that with the physical experience of, say, studying meteorites or meditating. Is there any tension between this intellectual and experiential work? You need both things. You need the intellectual knowledge, but then you need the experience. My first work in meteoritics was theoretical, using all the numbers that someone else had measured. Great work, loved it. But to actually have a rock in my hand, that took all of the number work and added a new dimension to it. And a different sense of understanding.

How about prayer, is it right to describe that as physical work? Yes, very much. To keep quiet for an hour in prayer is a physical discipline, if only to stop jumping at the first idea and to let other ideas come to mind. The first thought that pops into your mind generally isn’t good enough, but it’s very easy to run off with that. Sometimes when working on my science or prayer, going for a walk is the best thing. I read that you spent time in the Peace Corps as a humanitarian volunteer. Can you talk a little about the experience? I joined the Peace Corps because I didn’t understand why I was doing science. It wasn’t feeding people. The science I was doing, astronomy, was totally useless in that respect. When I went to Kenya in the 80s, I discovered that the Kenyans hadn’t had the same education that I’d had, but they did have the same desire to know. And I think that is a key part of being a human being: it’s what makes us more than just smart cats. To deny someone the chance to pursue that in some way denies their humanity. One of the big issues that I saw was a lack of confidence, the lack of the sentiment of, “I’m as good as anybody else, I can do this too.” There’s always the sense that all the cool things are happening in California, all the cool things are happening in London. Londoners would say cool things happen but they’re not part of them! Right, but they’ll think that cool things are happening in the next neighborhood over! It’s the human condition. We all share the desire for knowledge, and that is a key moment in understanding why we do science. And I think that’s how my religion fits into my science. It’s not that the Bible gives me answers to my scientific questions, but it gives me the confidence to ask those questions. It’s the underpinning that gives me the sense of why I want to know. And why I believe that there are answers that I can understand, even if they are never complete answers. Visit vaticanobservatory.org for more information on the Vatican’s meteorite collection. Follow Brother Guy on Twitter @specolations.

crowdsourcing the supermoon your photos of the largest full moon of 2013 Photos by (in rows left to right): Anna McFaul in Winchester, Carys Thomas in Sheffield, Jessica Aherne in Rugby, Francesca Turauskis in Kingston, Marta Dziok in Greece, Frances Baker in London, Isobel Rutherford in Brighton, Miki Tillett in Sheffield, Sue Fairburn in Auchmithi, Beth McLoughlin in Ivybridge, Dawn Evans in Bath, Caroline Hancox in Heapham.

A computer-generated average of our crowdsourced supermoons. Just kidding, image by NASA.

don’t tell them about ‘the list’ words anna godfrey, photo julia galdo

civilian des tan on the perils of astronaut-like solitude

Although floating through the infinity of the universe, an astronaut is spatially confined, whether this be within his suit or on-board his rocket. We couldn’t replicate a blast-off, nor could we pretend that zero gravity would threaten our airways with rogue crumbs. But we could attempt to reproduce the Overview Effect experienced by astronauts in space, a shift in awareness gained by seeing the Earth as a pale blue dot. So we did. We shut Des away in a room for four days, accompanied only by some pictures of earth as seen from space. Living in isolation, Des was left with nothing but the nascent Ashes series, a gargantuan pile of DVDs, and the somewhat optimistic resolution to cultivate a beard. Here’s what he learned about the perils and pleasures of being alone. Try to stay normal. It would’ve been easy to abandon societal constraints, to throw caution, cutlery and clothes to the wind, but instead I decided to keep myself disciplined, sometimes too much so (see below). Despite spending four days dislocated from society, I kept up routines. I brushed my teeth and ate three meals a day. Enjoy your obsessions. In isolation, we begin to indulge our less socially acceptable habits. For me, that meant obsessive counting. I found myself with a list documenting my supplies: thirteen cups of tea, four cups of coffee, 450g of sugar, 47g of toothpaste, one broken spirit. Oh, and five toothpicks. Watch out for deep thoughts. Being by yourself can provoke some pretty pretentious thoughts, but to give in is to open the floodgates to the type of logorrhea that is only profound if tumbling out of the mouth of a sixteen-yearold politics student smoking their first spliff. “Why is the electorate just so... stupid?” is not a becoming question for a twenty-something man living alone in a dark apartment. Focus instead on weighing toothpaste. Re-entering society. Stepping outside of your coffee-counting cave can be daunting. Upon first telling people why you’ve been unreachable for four days, you may receive looks of confusion and fear. Do not perpetuate their stares by telling them about the list. The list—in the words of a fellow hermit—is your Precious. Stick to small talk.

One of the many insigh O verview ts gained w Effect: hile experie ncing the calmness w the probability of an hile in spac O e, calculated verview-like feeling of using Baye s’ theorem .

it â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s onl y rocket science illustration christine rĂśsch

th e p o c ket g u i d e t o yo u r ow n m i n i a t u re s p a c e m i s s i o n

“

The rocket-makers say, ‘Space is awesome. Unleash your inner astronaut!’

” Chapter 1. Make a rocket in your kitchen

Like a volcano. Bad.

Launching a sugar-powered rocket has fewer stages than baking a cupcake and is more likely to impress small children. For this experiment, you will need a kitchen you’re not precious about, a few household ingredients, a six-yearold, and a predilection for big gouts of flame. Step 1. Gather your materials. We purchased some sugar, a xylitol sugarsubstitute from Holland & Barrett and some potassium nitrate from the fertiliser section of Amazon. And then the terrible mistake: pots to make rocket bodies out of—Sainsburys’ Basics pepper and Tesco Value mixed herbs. Step 2. Be geeky. You’ll need to start using words like ‘thrust’ and ‘impulse’ without a trace of humour. Getting excited about sugar-potassium nitrate percentages is all part of the fun. Look up graphs on the internet; draw some graphs of your own. Then grind, mix and bake your fuel in its Basics pepper pot rocket body. Keep any excited small children away from the chemicals.

Sideways plume. Still bad.

Step 3. Make fire. Yes, this is primal stuff: things that burn, go fast and explode. Before you send up your rocket, you need to test the fuel. Up-end your rocket so that the fuel burns upwards, placing it on a scales to measure the thrust. Stand back and watch your eyebrows. The fuel’s force is a good indication of whether your rocket will be a streak of flame or a damp squib.

Fact box: xylitol Xylitol is a fruit sugar. We used it because it burns more slowly than sugar and so is safer. However, this probably contributed to the ultimate failure of the rocket. Lesson learned: less safety is more fun.

Oh, never mind.

Safety tip: Making and setting off rockets is bloody dangerous (well, duh). It’s also illegal in the UK in built-up areas, public spaces or less than five miles from a airport. You’ve been warned, class.

Figure 1. What a fuel and casing test should not look like.

Figure 2. Casing and fuel experiments, and their results.

“

The rocket-makers say, “If you like sparklers, fireworks or forest fires, you’ll love rocket-building!”

”

Chapter 2. Set off your rocket Now’s your chance to make it into space. Or, spiralling onto the neighbours’ roof. Or nowhere. Step 1: Pluck your rocket out of the mouldy basement where it’s been stored overnight. Not lift-off.

Step 2: Find a secluded grove in Richmond Park. Dodge the elderly couples, families having picnics and other people taking advantage of secluded groves. Step 3: Watch in bemused horror as your rocket fails to reach lift-off but produces rocket-worthy clouds of smoke. Once the smoke disperses, sigh with relief that no one called the park wardens or the fire brigade, and with disappointment that it’s back to the drawing board for Rocket 1.0. Step 4: Blame the person who left it in a mouldy basement.

Further study questions: - Would a Waitrose mixed herb pot (quality rocket bodies, honestly priced) have worked better than a Tesco one? Or should we have opted for the superior insulation of a cardboard tube?

Not lift-off.

- Was it the mouldy basement that did it? Or was the preparation of the ingredients not fine enough? - Why are the rockets of the internet better than ours? Many hours of further research on YouTube is encouraged for this question.

No, not lift-off either.

So you actually want to do this thing? See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_candy or www.nakka-rocketry.net/sucrose.html for full instructions.

Figure 3. Your first rocket launch or three.

Figure 4. Rocket bodies after ignition.

Eventually, after watching a lot of this ...

... you will get to see this.

Chapter 3. Case study: East Anglia Rocketry Society A field trip to a launch in the heart of Cambridgeshire

I was still miles away when I saw the first signs of the East Anglia Rocket Society: a trail of smoke rising with a roar out of the flat, featureless Cambridgeshire countryside, and a pair of parachutes that appeared out of the sun and drifted down in the hot still air. I had just witnessed the highest launch of the day, as I was told later, reaching over half a mile into the sky. Some way further up the concrete track, a couple of men, anxious and sweating in shorts, came the other way and asked if I’d seen a pair of parachutes come down. At the East Anglia Rocketry Society’s (EARS) monthly launch, you’ll find a line of twenty or so parked cars surrounded by fields of crops and situated a careful mile from the nearest village. The rocket-makers who sit by the cars in camping chairs or cluster around the launch site mostly come from two unsurprising tribes: men in their thirties to sixties and small boys with rocket-shaped birthday presents, though I do encounter one female rocket-maker. Then there are a few wives, some eager dads and some less-eager mums. One mother gestured at her husband in surprise, “I can never normally get him to arrange anything. This time he even made the packed lunches.” Each launch is announced with a loud hailer—name of rocket, type of rocket, name of builder—from the 30cm tubes launched by ten-yearolds to twelve-foot beauties. The rocket rises with a roar or a whoosh and everyone tracks it through the sky as it merges blindingly with the sun at its zenith, squinting for a parachute or two to float down so the owner can retrieve the rocket body, hopefully intact. After a couple of hours watching rockets in the blazing heat, I retreat to the shade with Russ Strand, the membership secretary. Russ was a large man with an “I swear to drunk, I’m not God” t-shirt, a St George’s flag-patterned camping chair and a day job he doesn’t want to talk about (“I work for ... an engineering company”). He is thoroughly friendly, and comes across as a sincerely nice guy. Name the oddest hobby you like, and you’ll find that it’s bigger on the inside. The chances are that thousands of people in the country do it, and at least fifty of them meet up round the corner from your workplace once a month. I soon discover that this is not so with amateur rocketry. Russ tells me that there are around 150 rocket builders in the whole country, and the EARS event is the largest regular launch. Like everyone official I’ve met all day, Russ is very keen to communicate just how safe this is. EARS picked the rocketry site so that it’s far enough away that even if a rocket went off at—”God forbid”—an angle of 45 degrees, it wouldn’t reach the village. The rocket equipment seller on site today, Malcolm Jennings, is pretty

much the only vendor in the country, meaning that the UK Rocketry Association (UKRA) can keep a careful eye out for anyone purchasing large motors, and encourage them to pass a series of qualifications before graduating to high levels of rocket-power. In fact, everyone I speak to is so relentlessly guarded that I begin to wonder why. The only person with a funny rocket-disaster story is an enthusiastic thirteen-year-old who relates a tall tale about a rocket that up-ended itself on the launch pad and tunnelled “six feet into the ground.” The truth is that amateur rocketry faces a conundrum in the face of publicity. Once the interview is over, Russ mutters words to the effect that you only need one idiot to send a rocket through a car window and the eyes of the world will fall on this obscure hobby, and not in a friendly way. No one notices at present that a few dozen men and at least one woman with powerful motors are engaging in an activity that would make most people scratch their heads somewhat on hearing that it was legal. The day’s launching ends on a downbeat note. A rocket twice the height of its owner fails on the launch pad, voiding the single-use motor that would have cost hundreds of pounds (the smallest amateur rockets will give you change from a fiver, but costs increase dramatically with size). The torn cardboard body of the rocket is brought back to the line of cars, where the most knowledgeable members of EARS stand around it like a cross between a funeral procession and a post-mortem committee. Its maker, Malcolm the rocket-seller, appears wryly philosophical, but his son rebukes him angrily for sticking one of his spare motors in the rocket. “That was a very bizarre failure. I’ve not seen that before,” Russ tells me. “We’re going to send a report off to the manufacturer.” Ironically, it’s this failure that communicates best the spirit of amateur rocketry: people who sometimes spend hundreds of hours building a cardboard tube to launch thousands of feet into the air, with an uncertain success rate that hasn’t been mirrored by the professional space industry for many years. I ask Russ what his aim is with his craft. “This is a bit of a pipe dream, but one day I would like to put a rocket into space. My first go would just be to say I’ve been up to space—take a photograph or a video of the curvature of the earth. And then, if I can get that far, go into orbit. But that’s a whole other level of magnitude.” Join the rocket-makers at EARS / www.ears.org.uk

my body wasn’t made for this words lee hunter, photo i-hsien lai

lee hunter discovers why the flight of your life comes with sick bags provided

The training ground of astronauts and roller coaster of billionaires, the zero gravity plane is the closest thing in earth’s atmosphere to the sensation of space travel. The plane flies in a series of parabolas, providing thirty-second bursts of weightlessness. In 2012, Lee Hunter found himself with a place on the plane. He’d co-ordinated the YouTube Space Lab programme, a global competition for teenagers to design experiments to be conducted on the International Space Station. The teenagers’ experiments were launched up to the Space Station, and the winners themselves flown through the bewildering curves of the zero-gravity plane. Lee soon found that the most expensive ride of his life was not to be the most glamorous. Nothing prepares you for vomit floating towards you in zero gravity. To be fair, they warned me it might happen. A parabolic flight that simulates weightlessness isn’t called the vomit comet for nothing, but the bigger problem is that you lack any ability to get out of the vomit’s way. You see, zero gravity is unlike anything you have ever experienced and your brain doesn’t quite know how to cope. With the spew incoming, and in a panicked state, your body’s closest analogy to weightlessness is swimming. Problem being, kicking your feet and flailing your arms against thin air doesn’t propel you anywhere: you just look like an idiot. You’re also warned against it: all those uncoordinated limbs cause too many black eyes. I kicked my legs out in terror, of course. Luckily I didn’t hit anyone, but I also didn’t go anywhere. All I could do was squirm as the globules of gut-mush travelled towards me. One of my recurring nightmares is a bullet travelling towards me in slow motion. With absolute dream-logic certainty, I know it’s going to kill me, yet I can’t get out of its way. My body remains immobile, and all I can do is passively watch as it gets closer and closer. Nightmares made real are totally the worst. The vomit eventually hits me. Not all of it, but enough. Let’s be honest, a millilitre of sick is plenty. Then the call comes over the speakers that the plane is about to pull up from its dive. Shit. Once the plane begins to ascend, we’ll all be returned to the floor in a hurry. Me, and the rest of the vomit. As a combo. Covered in chunks, lying on the floor as we pull 1.8 Gs, I focus intently on a single point on the plane’s ceiling, trying desperately to keep it together. The entire experience is tough on the inner ear and I do not want to add my own vomit to that amassed all over my flight suit. Plus, I’m not going to be the guy adding more floating retch for the rest of my fellow passengers to worry about. I was raised with manners. Yet each time the plane began to dive, and the feeling of weightlessness began, I forgot all about the nice young man’s leavings on my shoulder. I was consumed instead by a feeling of complete freedom. That sounds trite. It’s a little like the Grand Canyon: tough to do it any justice by explaining it, and you sound like a dick when you try. Perhaps it’s enough to say that I’d happily be covered in vomit to experience it once more.

special report: life-forms sighted on mercury words rosanna durham

once upon a time in the year 3017, we challenged you to illustrate an alien

The year was 3017, and we’d lost an astronaut in action on the planet Mercury. All we had was a fragmentary final recording that seemed to indicate he had encountered life: “Hi, Mission Control! Alfred the astronaut calling. I first saw this alien on Mercury and when he spotted me his four toopers creased into what looked like a lovely smile. He was oval-shaped, I would say, with a thin shadow and two large tephods. He carried with him a beautiful funigutts and ran very quickly on his—” The rest was inaudible. It was over to you, intrepid investigators, doodlers and designers, to reconstruct exactly what Alfred saw before he lost contact. Clockwise from top left (yellow alien): Hannah Williams, Claire Burns, David Stong, Katharine Morgan, Kotoha Katsuda, Cas Andersen, Amy Grain, Lucy Auge, Alexandra Bickerdike, Sonya Hallett, Imogen Rockley.

the accidental interview words liz ann bennett, portrait carl bigmore

how a conversation with space mechanisms engineer josh lurie became an engrossing glimpse into the industry

Josh Lurie is my friend Dani’s triplet, a quiet guy with a mischievous smile and an all-round affable person. We’ve met many times, but I’d never really asked him about his work, not properly, not more than how-was-your-week. Then there he was on my sofa, describing how you test space equipment.

actually we use older stuff that we know works. We’re very risk averse. Some customers will only buy products that have been flying already for a number of years.” This reserve is what makes space travel safe and predictable these days, and is the reason your Sky TV subscription is borderline affordable.

First you vibrate it, in all three directions, very fast. Then you stick it in a vacuum, and heat it up to 150°C and down to -100°C over and over again for a couple of weeks. If even a single screw loosens, it’s back to the drawing board. “The vibration test only takes about five minutes,” he said, “But it can be five minutes of nail-biting and praying.” This wasn’t even meant to be an interview, but I was engrossed.

Josh talks about his work with untarnished delight. I wondered if ESA was difficult to handle, with its complex member state relationships and Byzantine bureaucratic methods. The answer was, of course: yeah, kinda. But the topic turned quickly into a conversation about how much he loves his job. “To get to my office I walk past spacecraft that I can see through my window every day. How can you not love it?” He wasn’t avoiding the question: it was just one of those leaps in conversation that happen when someone is in love.

Josh works for Astrium, the largest builder of spacecraft in Europe. He’s an engineer who designs moving parts: solar panels that rotate to catch the sun or the mechanisms of the Mars rover. Most of Astrium’s work involves making telecomms satellites so that Europe can watch TV. But they also do work for the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA’s less glamorous but equally sizeable sibling. After you’ve spent a short time peering into the world of space travel, you become aware that its anecdotes unfold like village dramas. It’s a small place, and if you squint, it can look remarkably like The Archers with spacesuits and floating M&Ms. Josh’s description of ESA was no diﬀerent. It’s a curious bureaucracy, for a start: every pound that the UK puts into ESA must come back in contracts for UK-based companies. Ever since the UK decided to sponsor an astronaut, contracts have been rolling in to Astrium. The old rivalries of the Space Race linger but with less rancour. The Russian space agency is the only one that has figured out how to make airlocks. “Even though the US and Europe both dock at the International Space Station, we all need to use that technology from the Russians, because we haven’t quite got it right yet,” said Josh. Surprisingly, the space village is a cautious and conservative one. People doing something as inherently risky as putting objects into space are careful to control every other risk to a minute degree. This means that the computers on spacecraft can use technology that is ten or fifteen years old, hailing from the heyday of Napster and the Nokia 3310. “It’s something you imagine would be, ha ha, space age, but

The beautiful part of space technology is its use for pure science and exploration, but this is also the problematic bit. What can be the defence of its use of public money when it has no practical application? To Josh, this is a no-brainer. “I’m of the opinion that to get out of the rat race, the human race has to develop; we have to learn about the universe around us. Why do we go to the moon? Because we’re explorers by nature, because we want to understand our universe. I would be heartbroken if people didn’t feel that way. It’s what we’re programmed to do, to go out and be curious.” Of course, I did not have the balls to admit I was one of those heartbreakers, someone who doesn’t understand why others risk their lives journeying to out-of-my-world places like outer space. So how could Josh’s work fascinate someone as Earth-bound as me? Because the stories about space reveal the nature of the humans who burn to explore it. I understood a little more why explorers were willing to die at the South Pole, and that some people really do go to work on difficult problems every day with a spring in their step. Interesting people lurk all around you. It may seem obvious, but for an antisocial introvert like myself, this is a hard-won piece of knowledge, gained slowly and painfully over the past ten years. So here’s my challenge to you, reader: interview an acquaintance. Allow the people at the fringes of your life to surprise you.

suki wears top: bench / dungarees: somedays lovin sophy wears jumper: 47 brand / skirt: illustrated people hollie wears shirt: minkpink / shorts: fred perry / ring: tatty devine

novella at band practice photographs liz seabrook styling sara wilson models hollie warren | guitar and vocals sophy hollington | guitar suki sou | bass

sophy wears dress: illustrated people / cardigan: wesc

sophy wears polo and shorts: fred perry suki wears top and skirt: fred perry / shoes: underground hollie wears shirt: maison scotch / shorts: topshop

suki wears shorts and top: cos / jacket: fred perry

sophy plays black squier telecaster custom

hollie wears shirt: minkpink / shorts: fred perry / ring: tatty devine hollie plays black gretsch electromatic duo jet

suki wears dress: illustrated people / necklace: tatty devine / ring: bill skinner suki plays hofner hct 5002 club bass, sunburst

this is a song for me and my guitar

my Walkman with my headphones on, instantly in my own bubble. It gives a kid a whole universe. And then I remember when we first got a CD player and I was able to buy my own CDs. You get to forge your identity that way.

words olivia wilson, portrait roger kisby

It’s possible to have a self-defining relationship with music. Definitely. I think most people do. Although it is so different now, it’s hard to understand how people feel, what their relationship is compared to when I was most intensely listening to music. I would buy LPs, usually secondhand and I would listen to them, the whole thing, and I would be looking at the record cover and just singing along.

eleanor friedberger learned her craft alone in a room

There’s a lean confidence to Eleanor Friedberger. It takes a certain self-reliance to write an album full of songs you could sing to just a guitar, if need be. Previously one half of sibling duo The Fiery Furnaces, Eleanor Friedberger went it alone in 2011 and has just released her second solo album. We spoke to her about forming a musical identity in solitude. You say that your new album, Personal Record, is about a love of music. After I finished making my first solo record, Last Summer, there was a gap of, say, eight months. That time was one of the most invigorating times of my life. It had been years since I had been that intensely focussed on music, and I started listening to a lot of music that was old but that I hadn’t heard before, singer-songwriter music from the sixties and seventies mainly. Sometimes discovering new old music is more exciting than discovering new new music because it seems more hidden, like buried treasure. Have you always been searching for buried treasure musically? Yes. I wasn’t a solitary kid, but I did very much use music as an escape. I enjoyed having this other private world. I remember getting my first Walkman and being able to listen to cassette tapes with headphones. I distinctly remember being in a car with my family but listening to

That was how I would spend hours of my time up until I was eighteen years old, pretending to play my mum’s classical guitar; holding the sleeve and singing as precisely as I could along to the record. After I was eighteen, my brother bought me a guitar and I started playing for real. That’s quite late compared to some. Did you always see yourself as a musician? I spent time pretending to be other people in my mind as I was listening to music but I never really put myself in there. Then I went to college in Austin, Texas, and you’d see bands—not famous bands, local bands—and you’d think, “I could do that. I could do that as well as them. I could do that better than them.” You say that you wrote the songs on Personal Record with an intimate setting in mind. I was interested to hear about your experience of playing them in front of lots of people. When I said an intimate setting, I also meant being able to get them across really simply: just me and a guitar. But in terms of intimacy and venues, if you are playing an acoustic guitar to twenty people that can feel fine, but if you play that way to 500 people, that can feel even more intimate because you are doing so little, making such a small sound. But I’m kidding myself: there is never a time when I would like to be playing for fewer people. Personal Record is out now.

framed s t yl i n g i n f o r m e d by t h e a rc h i ve of r u s s i a n d re s s

photography romain sellier styling emelie hultqvist & stelios stylianou | un-categorized model sophie yall | IMG make up daniela koller hair sarah jo palmer using aveda

dress: beyond retro

hairpiece: mich dulce / cardigan: beyond retro / polo: cos / skirt: shao yen

coat: eudon choi / hat: piers atkinson

dress: annika heikinheimo

look: shao yen

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the dark mirror of horror words jason ward, portrait tess roby

film programmer and writer kier-la janisse explains her personal connection with the discomfort and intelligence of extreme horror movies

Kier-La Janisse had a plan. A Medieval Studies PhD student living in Vancouver, she hoped to spend her life translating Latin texts. Then an acquaintance decided to create a neighbourhood zine and invited the members of her close-knit community to participate. “I really didn’t want to get involved,” Kier-La explains. “But by the next Thursday when we were supposed to hand in our work, I was the only person that actually came with something. After two issues I thought, ‘If I’m going to be the only one who cares about this, then I’m going to just make it about what I like. Forget all this neighbourhood poetry. Let’s make it about horror movies.’” In the sixteen years that have passed since she changed the zine’s name to Cannibal Culture (later CineMuerte), Kier-La has become a leading author on the genre and a prolific film programmer, curating film festivals across North America. Horror films were her gateway to a broader interest in cinema, but she has retained her love for ‘trash‘ films, an inclusive genre encompassing countercultural cinema, exploitation films, and the kind of cult movies can only be seen on old, pink prints. “Their damage is part of the charm,” she notes. Like her initial foray into publishing, many of the steps on Kier-La’s journey were unintended: a one-off horror movie workshop grew into a non-profit, community-based film curriculum that continues to this day, while her first festival arose out of a booking misunderstanding with a local cinema. “They thought I was running a horror film festival, so I decided, why not create one?”

Often ghettoised for their violent content and dark excesses, Kier-La argues that horror and exploitation films are self-reflexive in a way that’s ignored by the wider critical community. “Academics don’t give horror fans the credit for knowing as much as they do or being as critical as they are,” she says. “You see these books of academic criticism come out, and we’ve already been putting these ideas together for years. I think it’s funny when academics say, ‘Oh, I’ve discovered this self-reflexivity in horror!’ It’s always been there, but whatever.” Her most recent book, House of Psychotic Women, is a good example of her approach. Examining cinema’s persistent fascination with women driven to madness by obsession, paranoia and hysteria, Kier-La discusses respectable films like Black Swan and Antichrist alongside more left-field examples, from barely-released exploitation curios to gory rape revenge films. Exploring the surprisingly pervasive trope of cinematic female neurosis through anecdotal and personal writing, Kier-La contrasts the experiences of the films’ characters with herself and the other women in her life. Intimately and often painfully, she details how her own complicated upbringing led to a strange sort of affinity with the tortured female protagonists of her favourite films.

Meeting Kier-La, it’s easy to see how festivals, magazines and organisations keep forming around her. Aside from her steely resolve, her zeal for films that most people dismiss is infectious. She doesn’t just talk about movies, she evangelises about them. You come away from her presence with a burning desire to find the nearest film retailer, and a shopping list to get you started.

In Kier-La’s estimation, writing about film in an autobiographical way allows her to explain horror’s appeal to those outside the community, especially considering its delicate relationship with gender issues. “I think the fact that I’m able to explain why I respond to these movies helps answer a lot of questions for people who might not understand what a woman would get out of horror films. Lots of people think of horror films as these single-faceted, misogynistic genre exercises. But even the ones that are that way—the one that are totally shallow and misogynistic—I tend to enjoy them too, just on another level. When I watch a film, I almost always look for discomfort.”

Alongside championing the orphans of cult cinema, Kier-La’s work allows her to study the genre from a different critical perspective.

House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films is published by FAB Press.

our favourite horror heroines from janisse’s book, house of psychotic women Don’t Deliver Us From Evil, France 1970. Based on the true story of 1950s teenage murderers, Anne and Lore are inseparable friends who feign good behaviour in front of their parents. Out of their sight, of course, it’s another story. Soon “the two girls determine that they can never be apart, and make a drastic decision that will keep them together in hell for eternity.” The Attic, USA 1980. Louise is a nervous 35-year-old with a bullying father. “She’s set up as the typical disturbed woman: an alcoholic librarian abandoned at the altar almost twenty years earlier, re-

watching old 16mm films of happier days with slit wrists dripping blood all over her stuffed animals.” Scissors, USA 1991. An erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone who plays Angie Anderson, “a repressed 20-something virgin who can’t stand to be touched and spends her time ﬁxing broken antique dolls.” The Washing Machine, Italy/France/Hungary 1993. Featuring sex scenes that are notable for the “cheesy eroticism of a bad 80s music video,” the ﬁlm follows the petty rivalries of three sisters. Their washing machine becomes the focus of a protracted murder investigation.

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silence will fall photos david swailes

a sixteenth-century house as seen through a lens of stillness

The air in The Old House of Higham Ferrers is heavy, and the view given by David Swailes’ photographs is not so much through the eyes of a fly on the wall, as the perspective of a mote of dust. Objects we know to be ephemeral take on an eerie permanence: plants, piles of books and stone pillars are imbued with the same immutable status. David explains how the series unfolded in this extract from his statement. What first drew me to the building was curiosity of what may be behind the stone walls and dark windows. Aside from its interesting sixteenthcentury features, family history made shooting here more relevant. My grandmother used to care for the previous elderly occupier and my grandfather, a local bricklayer, helped restore and rebuild the walls surrounding the building. Now open to the public as a bed and breakfast, my photographs of the building aim to examine the difference between the rooms, and more importantly the divide—if there is any—between the house as a home and a guest house. My intention was to show minute details and textures that not only embody the essence of the historic building, but also give a sense of habitation. I also chose to restrict myself from photographing the exterior of the building. From the outside, it has quite a haunted look to it, so I wanted to try and change this assumption. Trying to portray habitation with me being the only person in the room didn’t seem easy at first, especially as I was working in complete silence, but the silence actually helped me with the process of taking the pictures as it gave me time to almost embrace the new surroundings. David Swailes / www.davidswailes.com

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the familiar words fab gorjian collage anthony gerace

short fiction by fab gorjian

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Is there anything worse than cold tea? Yes, of course there is. But just now, as I lie in bed, my feet stretched out as far as they can go, my body wanting nothing more than to be soothed by some warmth, I cannot think of anything worse. God, how I hate cold tea. I am proud to say, though, that my temper is roused only by this and a few other minor annoyances like it, those moments when the universe wants nothing more than to pinch you on the arm and run away laughing. No. I am a calm soul, and I always have been. And the unhelpful temperature of my tea can only be my own fault; I have been lying, half sitting, on my side of the bed for almost forty-five minutes without taking a single sip. I haven’t moved at all, now I come to think of it, for all that time. For forty-four minutes. Forty-five now. I remember this mug when it was still hot. I was grasping it tightly. I still am, actually, despite its unfriendly chill. I’d like to put it down on my bedside table but, in all honesty, the prospect of doing so fills me with terror. Now, I’ve said that kind of thing often enough to those who know me to guess your reply. Don’t be so dramatic, don’t be so lazy, don’t be so stubborn, fearful, stupid; the list goes on. It always does, doesn’t it? Ah, but here he is, at last done with his nightly ablutions and ready for sleep. Closing our bathroom door, he takes his usual shuffling steps to the other side of the bed and clambers aboard, groaning and making those wonderful, old man noises. After a moment of rocking the bed, during which I remember how to move, he settles. And then comes that moment, as it does every night; that small effort I wait for every day, where he lays out his open hand in that gap between our matching pyjamas. I look down at it, pretending to be pleasantly surprised by the gesture, when in truth I am just relieved. I place my hand in his and, slowly, like a zip closing, our fingers enmesh. I wait. I concentrate and wait. I turn and look into his eyes, but do so without actually looking into them. I look at nothing because my gaze is turned inwards. I am looking, listening, feeling for something I have missed so dearly for so long. Every night, at this moment, I do this. And every night I am disappointed. I then do what I always do, as a last, bottom-of-the-pot attempt; I squeeze his hand as hard as my own old, wrinkled paw will allow. He smiles pleasantly, but it’s still not right. After all these years, it’s still not right.

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We were a happy two, he and me. There was something around us, and it was so tangible sometimes that I could have called it a thing, and given it a name, and fed it cherries. If you’ve ever seen a pair of cats chumming around, then you’ll know what I mean. When one of those cats decides it’s going to sleep with its hind legs over the face of the other; that’s what we had. It was all unspoken. It was all okay. Nothing ever offended. Nothing ever disgusted. He said to me once the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. “Nothing human can disgust me, unless it’s unkind.” Before I had gone too far in praising him, he revealed that it was a line from a play. Still, I hugged him, and asked him to read me the play, which he did some days later. And I listened by firelight as he spoke those words again when it was their turn to reappear in my life. At times it seemed that he laboured to make those words come alive in his everyday life with me, and I so loved the valour with which he’d go about it. There was this thing he used to do: whenever I would complain about some or other bit of my body, a part I didn’t care for and would gladly trade in, he would lift my jumper (it was usually my stomach or breasts or arms) or lift my skirts (it was also often my legs or bottom) and kiss that part I had complained about. He would kiss it until I was either laughing or begrudgingly admitting that there was nothing wrong with me, and I was beautiful indeed. Now I attempt it, I realise it is near impossible to describe this understanding. This contract we had. What an ugly word, contract. But it rings true, somehow. There were vague but binding rules to us, and they were wonderful; and when a rule was broken, the one who had broken it simply knew they had done so. But the way in which our contract differed from a real one was this: the breaking of one of our rules didn’t bring a punishment. It only caused sadness. And neither of us could ever bear to cause the other sadness. One rule in my part of it all was to always remember him when we were out; when we were with friends; when our small world was invaded by fingers and voices. It was only normal that my eyes and hands be drawn elsewhere when others were around, but I always kept him in view. I always kept his face in my eyes, and his arm in my hands, even when I was on the other side of the room I managed it somehow, and I knew he could feel that. I knew that if I did not, he would swim out and be lost, that the noise and lights and handshakes would drown him. I knew I had to do it, and so I loved to. Many years passed like this.

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I didn’t expect it to last forever, because I was never silly. But I think it was fair of me to be shocked, irrevocably shocked by the way in which it did end. It all centres on one night. Every blank stare into emptiness centres, and was caused by, that one night. But you would look at us now, as we lie, old and joined by the hands, and wonder, “What’s so wrong with this picture? Why must she be so dramatic, fearful, stubborn,” and so on. I know you would, and you would be right to. I can offer you no tangible explanations for what I am about to describe, and I would accept any chants of ‘lunatic’ outside my window without a fight. All I can say is that the awfulness of it all was felt, and is still felt, in the same parts of me that used to feel the play and battles of our contract. Those parts, in other words, that just knew. The event itself was so bizarre that I ought to give you an example of something that happened to me once that was similar, yet perhaps more relatable. When I was a little girl, I had a room that used to be an attic, and so I sat, perched like a bird, at the top of the house. I loved hearing everyone else downstairs, going about their business. After some time, every member of my family had etched their own sounds into my mind. I never knew that they had done so, until I had to know it. One night, a night on which it was ordinary for my mother to be the only other person in the house, I heard her pottering about in the kitchen, then the hall, and finally the kitchen again, before stepping out to the garden, no doubt to close the doors of our shed. The house was silent for a moment, but I did not sit there on my bed waiting for her to return, because I knew she would. She always did. I instead continued to read my book. And at some point, I think in the very middle of a sentence, my concentration began to slip, and I found myself reading the same line over and over again. I heard my mother pottering around again downstairs, so I continued to read, but again my concentration was failing me. I heard plates and pans, I heard a chair being drawn out and replaced. I heard sweeping. But I couldn’t ignore her as I always had done. Now, against my own sense, I found myself listening intently to her every move. The realisation came to me slowly that there was no real logic to the sequence of things she was doing, that they seemed arbitrary, unreal. Copied. It hit me then; whoever it was downstairs, it was not my mother. It was someone trying their very best to sound like her.

These sounds made their way awkwardly closer, and soon, as my heart began to beat madly, this person, this stranger’s feet were at the foot of the stairs leading to my attic room. As he—and I was now sure it was a man—took his first step onto my wooden stairs, I knew, I knew more certainly than I had ever known anything in my young life, that I was in danger. Quickly, I jumped out of bed, battling my instincts to stay frozen still, opened my large slanted window and climbed out, making my way, after a jump from the low roof, into the garden where I found my mother, who was lying unconscious in the grass. I looked back up to my room, to my window, to the light of my reading lamp that was now broken by some large, unfamiliar shape. Well, I won’t go any further. Suffice it to say that mother and I, in the end, were unharmed.

----Never doubt your instincts. Never question those quiet feelings and impressions that just won’t go away. I never do. And that is why I find myself in bed now, still holding my cold cup of tea in one hand, and that sweet, but odd, hand of his in the other. I ought to just say it. But I don’t know if it would be better to blurt it out, or rather make my situation known to you by asking a simple, but perhaps unanswerable, question. Well, here goes nothing. Do you think it’s possible to watch the one you love walk into the bathroom one night, hear them brushing their teeth, and then watch as they come out from that bathroom a complete stranger? No, I should think not. I should think not. I should think it impossible to watch him disappear behind that door, just a moment after catching my adoring eye and smiling to me, and impossible to sit on my bed for almost an hour, the most disturbing hour of my life, waiting and waiting, and all the while listening to that constant, utterly unbroken sound of teeth being brushed; it should be impossible, too, to look over to the clock and see its second hand hardly move at all, and yet to know, to just know, that an hour had almost passed since I saw him last; to feel my stomach tighten in this vacuum of time, to feel my very real heart beating so quickly again, and yet to be told by the universe that not even two minutes had gone by. To almost faint with relief as the bathroom door—at last!—opened again, only to then feel my new

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smile fade slowly as I gaze at this man, this unfamiliar man who looks exactly like my husband, who sounds like him and walks like him over to the other side of the bed. I should think it all impossible. And I did, at the time. I fought my instincts, perhaps out of sheer desperation. I looked deeply into his eyes, and later, in the then halfdarkness of our bedroom, I told myself that I had simply experienced a moment of madness. We even spoke, and I could see that he had sensed my unease—it brought me such relief to know that he had sensed it. But it was my last moment of peace, because in his attempt to comfort me, he revealed that my instincts were right. At my worst moment, when I thought I might scream, I reached out my hand to him, and let it hover in that same place I had let it hover a million times before. And he took it. But he took it just a fraction too late, a fraction of a second too late to convince me that he was my husband, and for that tiny moment in which my hand lay unheld in the air I felt a kind of loneliness and desolation that I could never describe. I knew, then, that he was gone.

----I was left with an impostor. Worse still, I was left with no way to mourn the loss of my dear, since no other soul on earth knew that there was something to mourn. As far as everyone was concerned, there we both were, as usual, together, safe, alive. None of our friends showed any signs of any suspicion towards this man. In fact, they began, remarkably, to direct their narrow eyes at me! But I was never a fool, as I have said, so I quickly taught myself to hide it all; and soon those doubtful looks of theirs were a thing of the past. I think, over the years, I must have gone through every possible reaction one person can have towards another. I grew to hate the charlatan, to think nasty things of him, to try and force him into situations that made him uncomfortable. And he kept it up so well, this mocking imitation of my poor husband. He showed me nothing but patience. He never wavered, and sometimes it was all I could do but cry with guilt over my treatment of him. So, after some years, I made a decision. I said to myself that this man might not be my husband, but he is still kind enough to deserve better than the suspicion and scorn I had so far, I think understandably, thrown at him. I tried, and still try to this day, to make my peace with the death of the one I loved so well, and, sometimes— sometimes, my God, it is a colossal effort.

But soon I began to fidget again. I began to wonder if this unending kindness and patience of his were not in aid of some great goal, one whose nature I could never guess at. And so I went through another period of suspicion and hatred, but it was masked this time, masked and only to be found bubbling beneath the skin. But this became the most exhausting and draining, saddening and frustrating period of my life. I simply lost the energy for it, and let it all fall off me like the throwing of a monstrously heavy rucksack from the shoulders. I passed through that dark tunnel some years ago, and found myself here, where I lie tonight, with my cold tea.

----So. How should I describe my feelings towards him, as they are now, in my old age? Simply that he is there, and I am neither sad nor happy that he is there. That might sound unkind to you, and I’m sorry for it. I’m mostly sorry for him, whoever he is. He is a good soul. We have sunk into our own ways, which bring us both comfort and peace of sorts. My routine with this new man is so similar to my first and cherished routine that I sometimes feel my mind slipping into the past, and when that happens I look at the stranger and I see my husband, my darling friend in life; I see him as a quiet and distant phantom shown to me by some flickering projector whose power always seems to be near its end. Sometimes, when I hold his hand, as I do now, I think I can feel that true and right thing that belonged to me once, and was taken away so inexplicably. I feel it now, almost, almost. I squeeze and squeeze, hoping to find it in his hand. I squeeze so hard that it feels like my fingers will pass through him and press into my own palm, revealing there to be nothing in between. He looks at me, the stranger in my bed, and his soft eyes are now round, they are wide with fear or pain, so I turn my gaze inwards again, and in my mind I remember my love, as he was in that moment before he went into the bathroom so long ago, before he closed the door and left me forever. I remember it perfectly. He caught me staring, and then he smiled, then went into the bathroom and closed the door. He caught me staring, and he smiled, then went into the bathroom and closed the door. He caught me, smiled, and closed the door. He smiled, then closed the door. I know he did. I remember it perfectly. In a moment, I will take a sip of my tea. I will drink it until the mug is empty.

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“They’re the best kind of friendships, the ones where real life never interferes, and for a few hours every couple of months it feels like nothing in the world matters except for what book you’ve just finished, and what drink you want next.” —Benjamin Brill, page 116

cherry beach, by jamie campbell, from the collection â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;this will never lastâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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make mine a slice of the stargazey pie words beth davis, illustration laura manfre

the peculiar delights of fish heads and pastry

“Mawther used to get a herring, clean ‘un, and put same stuffin’ as what yow do have in mabiers; sew ‘un up with niddle and cotton and put ‘en in some daugh made of suet and flour.” So read the instructions for stargazey pie in Edith Martin’s book, Cornish Recipes, Ancient and Modern. This curious Cornish fish pie takes its name from the way the fishes’ heads are left outside of the pastry to gaze up at the sky, dreaming of riverbeds and frightening small children. It originated in Mousehole, Cornwall, where the story goes that a fisherman called Tom Bawcock went out into a storm that saw all the other fishing boats trapped in the harbour and the village threatened with starvation. He returned with enough fish to feed them all, which they promptly cooked up into the first stargazey pie and which may explain a few things, delirious with hunger as they were. The village still celebrates the event on the 23rd of December every year by eating the dish on the harbour under a display of Christmas lights. As amusing as they look, there’s a practical reason for the perpendicular pilchards, as it means their delicious fish oils drain back into the pie keeping the fillings moist. The recipe below calls for pilchards, sardines or herrings, but as with most recipes rooted in the past there are many variations floating around, most strangely a rabbit and crayfish variation, which is every bit as terrifying-looking as you would expect it to be. I used sardines, and forwent the bacon to keep my pescatarian dinner guests happy, but the result was a deliciously comforting dish that was tricky to serve but surprisingly quick to knock up, and easily the most instagrammed dish I’ve made in ages. This serves four.

You will need: 375g shortcrust pastry (I used a pack of pre-made to great effect) 4 pilchards, sardines or small herrings ½ large onion, finely chopped 3tbsp fresh parsley, chopped 3 hard-boiled eggs 3 rashers of streaky bacon a beaten egg to glaze cider (optional) One. Roll out your pastry on a floured worktop to fit a fairly shallow pie dish. Cover the dish, brush the rim with water and roll out another piece for the lid and set this aside. Two. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Clean and bone the fish (I can’t recommend the benefits of befriending your fishmonger enough here), leaving their heads in place. Season inside with salt and pepper and stuff with the onion and parsley. Fold the fish back into shape. Three. Arrange the fish inside the dish like the spokes of a wheel, with their heads on the rim so that they can gaze towards the sky. Fill the gaps in between with chopped bacon and hard-boiled eggs, plus a splash of cider if you fancy it. Four. Gently lay the pastry lid in place, pressing down between the fish heads so that it meets the pastry of the lower rim. Brush with beaten egg and bake for thirty minutes. If the fish are on the large side, they may need an extra fifteen minutes with the heat turned down to 180°C. Five. Serve hot with potatoes, cold cider and a toast to Tom Bawcock!

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pubs of kentish town, with tom words benjamin brill, photo robin scheibler

dissecting a friendship between manly hugs and pints of craft beer When I was little I always used to want to be cultured, so I’d get to wear polo necks and know about wine and use long words in intelligent conversations about stuff like the human condition and the theatre and the impossibility of the perfect cigarette. I always thought it sounded like proper fun. I finally started being cultured in my third year at university. It didn’t do me any favours with my studies, but it was a good time. The best bits were when I’d get to go round Denis and Tom and Rob’s and listen to them while they drank Harveys Bristol Cream and talked into the night about beatific envy and the politics of the duffle coat. I’d sit scratching my neck and trying to look existential, and praying that no one would realise that everything I knew about morality and obligation I owed to James Healy’s collection of Philosophy Football t-shirts1. Or that I’d got my polo neck from Gap. Denis and Rob were pretty good at being cultured, but Tom was always the best. He was a real natural. Over the years, he’s taught me loads of important knowledge about being cultured, like how quiche exists outside supermarkets and buffets, and how watching Sky Sports in an empty pub with an empty stomach on a Saturday afternoon in February isn’t depressing, just melancholy. We still see each other every now and again for a drink round Kentish Town after work. In between talking about football, smoking Tom’s cigarettes and not eating any dinner, we’ll have some serious conversations about the arts and that. Sometimes Tom will give me a long sombre look and silently hand me a long sombre book about loss for me to lose2. At the end of the night, we’ll do the sort of hug that drunk men who don’t see enough of each other do, and agree that we should meet up more often. They’re the best kind of friendships, I reckon. The ones where real life—where you have to pretend that you know what project management is—never interferes, and for a few hours every couple of months it feels like nothing in the world matters except for what book you’ve just finished, and what drink you want next. This time, we meet up in Kentish Town one evening after work, in a pub that used to be rough, but these days sells expensive fried chicken to people who have those little dogs that you have to carry round with you. We haven’t seen each other for months, and we drink our craft beer slowly, batting news back and forth gently, just sitting around, waiting for a conversation about ennui to begin. It’s just like any other evening. But then Tom gives me a long sombre look, and instead of silently handing me a long sombre book to read, he says something a bit unexpected. “I’m going to be a dad, Ben. Alex is pregnant.’ I can’t remember exactly what I say back, only that it’s punctuated by high-pitched dog yaps and more pints of craft beer. I hope it’s all that stuff you’re supposed to say at times like this, like how Tom’s going to be a great father, and how this is an exciting new chapter for them both and all that. But as well as thinking all that, I’m also thinking how, in a few months, Tom’s hopes and fears and dreams won’t just be his own anymore, that he’ll have a little melancholy miniature Tom to worry about as well. And I’m realising that friendships where real life never interferes are all well and good, but that they probably can’t stay that way forever. And I’m wondering whether, as well as being the start of something wonderful, this might be the end of something wonderful too—a reminder that we can’t just carry on mucking about using long words that don’t mean anything now we’re hitting our thirties, and it’s time to be grown-ups. But sooner than you’d think, it becomes just another evening out in Kentish Town after work. We drink more (I think I propose a toast at some point), we go twos on a packet of fags (to celebrate) and we talk about bands and books and the enduring enigma of Ian Bell3 as though they’re the only things in the world that really matter. And at the end of the night, we do the sort of hug that drunk men who don’t see enough of each other do, and agree that we should meet up more often. “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,“ as we used to say, when our necks were rolled, and our lives were simple.

1. They used to sell Philosophy Football shirts in the back of When Saturday Comes magazine. James Healy had one with a quote from Pelé on it, so people knew that his heart beat to the rhythm of the samba drum. He became an accountant. 2. Tom got me The Rings of Saturn for my birthday last year. It’s about this German professor who’s gone looking for loss in Suffolk. You’ve as much chance finding it there as anywhere, I guess. 3. Since I met with Tom, Ian Bell has ceased to be an enigma. accidentallywritingaboutfood.tumblr.com

what ’s th e best way to br ing h ome the ba co n?

send us your super mar ket selfies for issue eighteen

Next issue will be a bacon sandwich: a juicy cultural exploration of the iconic breakfast, lunch and dinner food. We will rummage around in pig farming, vegetarian theory, bacon-curing competitions, and many more delicious scratchings of bacon and fakon to tempt the noses of baconlovers and pork-avoiders alike. Here’s our challenge to you: we’d like you to play with the phrase ‘bring home the bacon’. Literally. Find the most unusual way of taking home your shopping (whether or not this contains actual bacon is up to you): a wheelbarrow, baby carrier, head basket. Oh, and take a picture. Send your supermarket antics to breadbaconbread@ohcomely.co.uk by September 13th.

home from home places to go, people to see

the knitting and stitching show

audrey grace

www.theknittingandstitchingshow.com

www.audreygraceshop.com

What’s for sale? The Knitting and Stitching Show is the craft and textiles exhibition of the year, with over 400 companies exhibiting, nearly 200 workshops, plus galleries from leading artists. What’s your motto? A passion for crafts. Recommend us something special. The Upcycling Academy is a chance to learn new crafty ideas with an ethical message. Cut down on waste and customise old clothing.

What’s your story? Audrey Grace, inspired by Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, is an online boutique specialising in up-and-coming designers and unique vintage. We embody feminine, girly charm through fashion. What’s your mission? Being inspired by timeless, classic style. Recommend us something special. A sparkly vintage gold playsuit, or the pink ballerina dress made by Hayley Grundmann.

brighton art fair

eclectic eccentricity

www.brightonartfair.co.uk / 19th-22nd september

www.eclecticeccentricity.co.uk

What’s for sale? Over 100 fabulous contemporary artists across all media showcasing and selling their work. What’s your mission? We present the public with the very best in contemporary art in a relaxed and informal setting. Recommend us something special. It’s our 10th anniversary, so there will be lots of extras like special commissions, collectible one-offs and super-duper canapés!

What’s for sale? Inspired by trinkets with a history, there’s a range of charming pieces created using vintage components. What’s your mission? To create enchanting pieces for the inquisitive of heart. Recommend us something special. Our Cosmos Collection is inspired by all things out of this world: space shuttles, planets, mystical nebulae with vintage opals, real meteorites, twinkling stars.

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justine and jon’s wedding album photos tom ravenshear

we held a competition to win wedding photography by tom ravenshear; these are the winners and moments from their day

Tom Ravenshear has a knack for creating happy photographs of very happy couples. We think he’s one of the best wedding photographers out there. So you can imagine our excitement when, back in November 2012, he offered one lucky oh comely reader the chance to win his wedding photography for free. Justine and Jon were the winners and their big day took place in June at a thirteenth-century château in south-west France. These were two of our favourite pictures from Tom’s reel. Tom Ravenshear / tomravenshear.com. Above: Justine picking wild flowers for her bouquet. Right: the wedding ceremony viewed from above.

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Space food sticks. These were designed as an all-inclusive emergency food for early space missions. Tasters said: “It tastes like it’s trying to taste of chocolate, and I don’t like that.” “Slightly meaty weird taste.” “It’s too shiny.”

Neapolitan ice cream. This crunchy, warm ice cream flew once only, on the 1968 Apollo 7 mission and it’s been sold in gift shops ever since. Our tasters said: “It’s like eating chalk. And I’ve eaten chalk.” “Absolutely revolting, like milk gone bad.”

Freeze-dried peach and apple pieces. These are a bargain space spin-off, at £9 for two packs. On the other hand, they are really just freeze-dried fruit. Tasters said: “All of these are sticking to my teeth. I’ve got a little picnic going on at the back.” “The bar isn’t very high, but this is my favourite so far.”

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freeze-dried everything words liz ann bennett

going on a space picnic next weekend? here’s what to pack

Fancy a jaunt to space? Follow our handy guide on how to pack your provisions. No one cooks on a space holiday. You can‘t even boil pasta in space— the bubbles don‘t rise—, let alone toss up a stir fry. Instead, dehydrate your meals and seal them in plastic packets. Once in space, pierce the plastic, syringe in some hot water and, hey, it‘s dinner time. Crumbs are a no-no. They‘ll float around and get stuck in your lungs and the air conditioning. Make your sandwiches from tortillas instead. In your space station salt-shaker you’ll find saline solution and the pepper comes suspended in oil. Watch out for small pieces. Shuttle astronaut Bill Thornton once opened a packet of M&Ms for a bedtime snack. In the half-darkness, some of the sweets floated away from him, and returned to ping him in the face as he dropped off to sleep. No smelly food on the space bus. Bad smells in space don‘t dissipate; they go round and round in the air con. (The fate of a fart doesn‘t bear thinking about.) Any leftovers will also keep you company til you get back to Earth, so only pack foods you‘ll finish. Don‘t forget you‘re back on Earth. After Joe Kerwin came back from a 28-day flight on board the Americans‘ Skylab mission in 1973, a food technologist on the ground handed him a biscuit. Joe took a bite, let go, and watched the biscuit smash on the ground. He commented, “I guess I’ll have to get used to gravity again.“ Many of these tales are taken from The Astronaut‘s Cookbook, a book that is part recipe book, part memoir of a former NASA food technologist of thirty years. A fascinating and affectionate insight into the small world of space travel, it feels like a village cookbook, should the village consist of astronauts and ground staff. If we knew any spacemad kids, we‘d buy it for them in a flash.

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down shot, prepare for lift-off words sam bompas, photos from the series ‘jelly galaxies’ by jo duck

sam bompas invents jelly cocktails to toast the earth from space Astronomers scanning our galaxy with powerful radio waves have discovered vast clouds of interstellar alcohol. Ethanol, methanol and vinyl ethanol have been found in the Milky Way in formations such as Sagittarius B2N and W3(OH) measuring billions of kilometres across. Frustratingly for astronauts, space travel is a teetotal business much of the time, and it‘s going to be tough to get close to these vast clouds of booze as the nearest is 26,000 light years away. The nearest NASA came to inebriated space flight was in the 1970s, when it spent about half a million dollars studying which wines would be best suited to go to space. They commissioned Californian oenologists to recommend the ultimate orbital wine. Their suggestion? A medium sherry. The high alcohol content means that it stands up to the violence of blast off and travels well. It‘s a recommendation that mirrors sherry’s earlier history as a wine popularised by sixteenthcentury adventurer Francis Drake and appreciated by the British for centuries due to its robustness in travel. Sherry was even trialled in parabolic flight, where weightless conditions are simulated by an aircraft’s elliptic flight relative. The fortified wine passed the test, but NASA’s booze-in-space programme was dropped in the end due to worries that US temperance groups would be incited to press for major budget cuts. Russian cosmonauts have had more luck than their American counterparts, and have been permitted to bring small amounts of gelled vodka in toothpaste tubes. In 2008, Yuri Malenchenko toasted the

new year on board the International Space Station (ISS) during a rather wonderful live broadcast on Ukrainian television. You can see him jiggle out a large measure that floats in the cabin, lingering in front of his face in mid-air. Then Yuri shoots the spirit with finesse, expertly mastering the weightless shot in a single gulp. But a new epoch of space travel is beginning. As Richard Branson launches Virgin Galactic, journeys into space will no longer be limited to scientific research missions, but pleasure cruises. No one has yet come up with the world’s first accredited space cocktail but future space tourists will surely want to celebrate. Odran Achard de Leluardiere, the business-development manager of Pommery Champagne, claims that alcohol in space is a technology worth pursuing, but problems associated with Champagne in space include the explosive pressure inside a glass bottle packed full of 250 million bubbles of carbon dioxide. The low gravity also means that gases are not drawn to the bottom of the stomach and celebrating space tourists would be likely to produce wet burps. How can this be overcome? The answer is jelly. The gel matrix can lock in the fizz of carbonation, allowing it to sparkle on your tongue without the embarrassment of wet burps. At Bompas & Parr, we are helping Professor Peter Barham, a physicist at Bristol University, develop the optimum gel for a celebration in space. Read the interview with Sam Bompas about his spectacular food art company, Bompas & Parr, on page 24.

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The series Jelly Galaxies was a collaboration between Bompas & Parr and photographer Jo Duck.

champagne, elderflower and violet space jelly Here’s a champagne-based recipe you can try at home. It serves four. You will need: 5 leaves (or 4tsp) gelatine 100ml Tanqueray gin 75ml elderflower cordial 75ml violet liqueur

250ml Champagne juice of half a lemon food dye of your choice

One. Mix all the liquid in a large mixing jug. Cut the leaf gelatine into a heatproof bowl with a pair of scissors. Add enough mixture to cover (about 100ml). Leave the gelatine to soften for five minutes. Two. Bring a pan of water to the boil and place the bowl of softened gelatine on top of the pan of boiling water. Once the gelatine has totally melted, add another 100ml of the mixture. Three. Combine the melted gelatine mix with the rest of the liquid by pouring it back into the mixing jug through a sieve, removing any unmelted lumps. Four. Add food colouring til desired hue is achieved, and pour the mixture into your mould. Leave in the fridge until set. Wrap the jelly for space travel. Five. Release the jelly from the mould by blasting it with a hair dryer— the traditional method of submerging in hot water could be disastrous in zero gravity. Marvel at the hypnotic wobble in a weightless environment.

gelled moonshot Here’s a recipe with heritage: an updated version of the Moonshot 1969 cocktail produced to commemorate the Apollo 11 flight. The mighty Nicola Twilley rediscovered it recently and detailed it on her website, ediblegeography.com. To date the gelled moonshot has only been enjoyed on earth, but this updated version is designed for zerogravity boozing. Methylcellulose is a fun ingredient that acts like gelatine in reverse: set when hot, liquid when cold. You can buy it from msk-ingredients.com, and other modernist cookery vendors. You will need: 3 parts dry white wine 3 parts orange juice 2 parts Cognac empty steel paint tubes methylcellulose One. Mix the wine, juice and Cognac. Incrementally add the methylcellulose powder until you get a satisfactory toothpaste-like consistency. Two. Fill your paint tubes. Now you have a space-ready delivery system and a potent drink to celebrate escaping the earth’s gravitational field with. Strap yourself in and feel the Gs. Cocktail recipes are adapted from Cocktails with Bompas & Parr, published by Anova.

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space debris words liz ann bennett

here lie some cosmic odds and ends we discovered while making the issue

snap!

item one: giant tongs

item two: old turd

item three: black and white photos of galaxies

How do you get hold of useless, wonderful wedding present tat without actually tying the knot? Go into space! Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut and first man to journey into outer space, was gifted on his return with hundreds of official presents, including a sombrero from the President of Mexico... and a giant pair of salad tongs. Despite being feted as a hero, Gagarin had no more control over the flight than the Russian agency’s previous nonhuman cargo. As he commented, “I’m not sure if I was the first man in space or the last dog.”

“Get me a napkin quick. There’s a turd floating through the air.” “It ain’t one of mine.” “Mine was a little more sticky than that. Throw that away.” This priceless bit of script lay buried for quite some time in NASA’s declassified transcripts from the 1969 Apollo 10 mission, until the folks at Reddit (who else?) went through and searched for references to turds. Suffice to say that waste management on board spacecraft has improved since then. Take home lesson: next time someone tries to blame you for an offensive poo, claim yours was stickier.

Those beautiful colour photos of outer space galaxies? Space PR at its finest. They were originally taken in black and white, along with every other photo by a space camera you’ve ever seen; the colours are reconstructed. The explanation is simple enough: taking a colour photo requires you to filter out part of the light, so that the red sensor only sees red light, whereas to catch the light of distant galaxies you need all the wavelengths you can get. The background behind our pieces of space junk is NASA’s photo of the Carina Gas Cloud.

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item four: old pub

item five: old playground

item six: knitted rover

There’s a quiet Wiltshire pub that gets busy in the summer months. It’s the Barge Inn, and every year tourists descend in droves to visit that season’s crop of, well, crop circles. Factions of circle followers are fiercely divided into those that make circles for fun and those who believe the pranksters are obscuring an alien phenomenon. The gentle decline of crop circles in recent years has been attributed by some to the fact that you can make rather decent money these days stamping one out for, say, a Channel 4 advert.

Did you spot an ad in this issue that looked curiously out of place? One that might have wandered in from the wrong decade? On page 2, we slipped in a 1968 advert for Miracle Equipment Company’s Astro City, a space-themed playground that cashed in on American Space Race fever and the slack health and safety restrictions of the 60s (check out the angle at the top of that red slide). Astro City playgrounds are slowly vanishing from the US, but Miracle is still going to this day, based in Missouri.

The knitted rover on the back cover is Brenda. She’s inspired by the robot being developed by Astrium, Europe’s largest space engineering company, to explore the surface of Mars in 2018. Spacecraft structures engineer Abbie Hutty knitted Brenda, and she works by day on Astrium’s less cuddly prototypes. We interviewed Abbie’s colleague, Josh Lurie, on page 80. Follow Brenda’s adventures at twitter.com/BrendaRover.

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illustration by sofia niazi of oomk zine / oomk.net

Make Something Beautiful Be inspired by our collections on a hands-on practical workshop.

Paper chicken by Andy Singleton

Paper Sculpture Vintage Style Food Photography Linocut Books Dance Photography

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