Oh Comely magazine issue 1 by oh comely magazine

issue one june / july 2010 ÂŁ4

www.supremebeing.com

Mens & Womens Clothing & Footwear | Created First Amongst Equals

oh comely keep your curiosity sacred liz bennett, des tan

rosanna durham, amica lane, dani lurie words susanna bennett, natalie bouloudis, eliza faulkner, jane flett, sonia van gilder cooke, gemma lacey, connie han, felicity hughes, novak hunter, debbie lerner, miriam moser, luke ryan, kirsty smith, vicky sparrow, vicki turk photography and illustration ariadne arendt, steph baxter, george garnier, agatha nitecka, sarah nittinger, tim o’connor, rachel clare price, philip spence, diana thompson, hannah waldron, ryan van winkle, retts wood advertising steph pomphrey, steph@ohcomely.co.uk. contributors, feedback and lost property, info@ohcomely.co.uk.

oh comely, issue 1 june/july 2010. Published by Adeline Media Ltd six times a year. B101 Studio 12, 100 Clement’s Road, London, SE16 4DG. 020 8616 2464. Printed in the UK by the Magazine Printing Company Plc, www.magprint.co.uk. Contents © 2010 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.

68 on the cover We planted a garden in the heart of the city, page 84, baked some white chocolate and peanut butter cookies, page 110, found the best views of the city at night, page 42,

weaved a rosette from recycled ribbons, page 114, and photographed some pretty clothes, page 68.

art

fashion

14 emi lenox A comic artist celebrates romance and cute characters.

52 agatha nitecka A photographer shares her nostalgia for Eastern Europe.

16 owen pallett

54 last summer’s rowan berries Lovely fashion and interiors influenced by rural Russia.

18 slagsmålskubben 20 puppet soup Anna Karenina is alive, and she’s a carrot. 26 luke’s got cancer Luke Ryan carved a comedy career out of his encounter with cancer. 28 naked cinema Director, writer and actress Sally Potter talks about the intimacy of film. 32 a beautiful death Polly Morgan is a taxidermist with a difference. 34 the madness of crowds Turmoil and tulipmania in Holland’s Golden Age. 40 a silver mt. zion 42 imagine the view Three urban climbers tell us about exploring the city at night.

66 something curious The story of an antique shoe buckle. 68 come into the city Spring is on the streets. 78 edeline lee A designer talks fashion, art and Etch-aSketch. 80 edeline’s enchantment Whimsical fashion inspired by Edeline’s collection.

114 54

110 106

92 20

14 people

and

84 brighten the corners We injected life into a barren plot of land in the heart of London.

110 we love peanut butter And not just on toast and sandwiches.

92 era envy Our writers get nostalgic for an age they never knew. 94 i quit my dream job and I feel fine When the minimum wage starts to look attractive. 96 horrible fun I used to be a sex text chat operator.

114 sweet fabrications Weave something pretty and recycled with craft shop owner Barley Massey. 118 how to love a tomato Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s never too late to learn. 120 minty fresh A medic counts some other ways to clean your teeth.

98 how hard can it be? Organising a music festival is easy, right?

122 oh look, a flow chart! Your life defined by a few simple questions.

104 food for thought By the people at Old Street.

124 our artists and writers Some of the people who made this issue.

106 toys for my grandmother What happens when a child starts caring for a grandmother with dementia. 108 young love Perfecting the art of the foolproof grand gesture.

Back when this magazine was just a few ideas and a group of over-excited people, we planted a garden among some broken paving stones by a busy roundabout. It wasn’t much to look at then, just a few plants in the middle of a patch of stony soil. There were some seeds and bulbs, but they hadn’t sprouted. We watered it and wondered whether anything was going to grow. We found this note, one day, written in pen alongside the garden: “These are lovely, more please.” And it made us feel that all the planting and watering was worth it. Now here we are with the first issue of oh comely. It’s a magazine for curious people. People who can’t look at an object without wondering about the people who made it, why they made it and what their lives were like. We made this because we thought we couldn’t be the only ones who were curious about illustrators, musicians and gardens. It’s nice to see you here.

what we listened to

what we ate

what we did

International Pillow Fight Day

Billy Bailey Live at Leicester Square

The Land of Pash Vintage and Retro Style at the Biscuit Factory

Quilts 1700â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2100 at the V&A

Rowing on the Serpentine

pretty lovely we liked these things and wanted to share them free@ohcomely.co.uk

Are they stalagmites, ferns or cacti trying to make their way up? Either way, we love this beautifully blue embroidered cushion by Heather Scott. You wouldn’t want to sleep on this pillow—it’s far too pretty for that. Maybe you can delicately place it over the weird stain on the sofa. We’ve got one of these free from the lovely Heather, so write in quick and it could be yours!

Heather’s just as handy with pen and paper as she is with a needle and thread, it seems. She’s also kindly given oh comely readers this quirky “owl in a teacup” print. She says, “I’d describe my work as lighthearted and whimsical creations which don’t take themselves too seriously.” You must admit, there’s nothing better than a whimsical owl. You can browse through the rest of her cheerful art on www.folksy.com/shops/ Sparklehen. We’re rather fond of the bird sketches, too. The prints are around £7 and the pillows £8–£10.

Your tea pot will never be lonely again with this beautiful floral cosy, which has been lovingly hand-crocheted by Andrea Lesley. Not only does it look splendid, but it will ensure your tea stays hot too. We’re very excited that Andrea has sent us one of her creations to give to you. You can have a look at her range of intricately crocheted cosies on www.andrealesleycrochet.folksy.com. Look out for the red cherry on a stalk; it’s one of our favourites. Andrea can also make cosies on commission to match your teapot.

Just look at those gorgeous little faces looking up at you longingly with their beady little eyes. Robyn Wilson, a puppet and doll maker, hand-sculpts these brooches one-by-one out of papier-mâché and colours them with delicate layers of pink and ivory tissue paper. The rrp is £10, but we have two to give away, so drop a line to free@ohcomely.co.uk and give your lapel a new best friend.

This bunny is another of Robyn’s papiermâché creations, wrapped in Liberty of London’s print fabric. It’s one part rabbit, two parts papery space hopper, and cute as your nana. They retail at £5 and we have a free creature to give away to our readers. For many more ingeniously-crafted paper things, have a look at Robyn’s blog, robynlouisewilson.blogspot.com. You’ll find gangly puppets and gorgeous dolls galore. Each one is unique and handmade. Lovely.

Ever wondered whether being environmentally friendly wasn’t just a little... beige? Wrong, according to Envirosax. Despite the stuffy brand name, they’ve pioneered a fresh, quirky range of durable bags. This gorgeous foldaway is from their Origami range. It’s tough enough to hold your shopping and pretty enough to cheer up a rainy day. Best of all, it’ll fold away into a pouch small enough to slip into your handbag. These beauties are available from uk.envirosax.com in a range of designs for £6.

Oh, scarves! Is there any better accessory to keep you in warmth and style? One of Charlotte Franke’s lovely scarves has made its way into one of our fashion shoots. Spot it in the whimsical Edeline’s Enchantment on page 82. Lucky for you, we have another of her beauties up for grabs (rrp £40). They’re both from her exuberant, quirky womenswear range, Lotta Franke. We love the vibrant colours and bold patterns. Charlotte runs the label from her studio in Suffolk, and takes inspiration from her travels in Asia. You can visit her online shop at lottafranke.com lottafranke.com.

Bath time just got a lot more froggy. We imagine someone invented these hilarious shower caps to persuade a reluctant ten-year-old to wash more often. But that doesn’t mean they’re limited to people with poor personal hygiene. There’s a dizzying range of animals to choose from. The shark is a favourite, and we’re also rather fond of the cow with horns. For something a little less lively, there’s always the strawberry on a stalk. They’re available from Pod (thepodcompany.co.uk) for £4.

You can’t beat ankle boots for comfy, effortless style. These stylish couple of pairs are from Hudson’s new women’s range. Get in touch with your size to claim a pair. They’re both from the brand’s new womenswear range of vintage-inspired classics. The washed or dip-dyed leather gives the boots an old-school feel. With a look borrowed from the brand’s established men’s range, these are understated and androgynous classics.

Tweet tweet! We love these pocket mirrors by Louise Piggott, an illustrator from Cambridge. They’re perfect to slip into your bag in case of a reflection emergency. Louise has designed a whole range of feathered friends, including the dude finch with slicked back hair, the afro blue tit and the pink birdie with long tresses. Each mirror comes in its own little drawstring bag to pop into your clutch on an evening out. There are four free to give away, ready to fly through your letter box, or you can buy one for £3 at her online shop, www.folksy.com/shops/loupeajeux.

We also have two of these tea pot magnets by Louise, which would look lovely nestling amongst the magnetic poetry or promotional minicab magnets on your fridge. For more pretty handmade pieces and projects, visit Louise’s website, www.loupeajeux.co.uk. There you’ll find a wealth of prints, cards, painted egg cups and teapots (perfect for your next Sunday afternoon tea party), as well as a series of 48 very cute robot badges to collect.

Have you ever glanced down at your cuppa and felt as if there was something missing? If so, this little ceramic birdie is for you. It’ll perch wherever you leave it: cups, vases, bowls. We found this in Caravan, a treasure trove of eclectic home accessories and creative gifts, and have one to share. If you’re in London’s East End, pop in for a visit. If not, take a look at their site www.caravanstyle.com for rabbit-shaped lamps and rose tea strainers. The birds are £9.

Ah, paper chains. They remind us of childhood Christmas holidays spent gluing strips of metallic red, blue and gold and making wobbly mince pies. But these delicately-coloured vintagestyle strips are too good to keep for Christmas. They’re perfect decorations for outdoor summer parties, or to drape across a room. You can get a pack of 200 from Urban Outfitters for a tenner. They’re adhesive and ready to stick, so get licking.

emi lenox celebrates intimacy and an army of cats words dani lurie, illustrations emi lenox Your online comic diary, EmiTown, has a streamof-consciousness feel: unusual layouts, fragments of observations and even the occasional post-it note. Why this structure instead of the more conventional panel narrative? None of this was thought out ahead of time. EmiTown started as a personal diary I had where I would force myself to draw things even if I didn’t feel like it daily. So this sketchbook was a place for doodles and a stream of thoughts, ideas and feelings. It also became a place to vent! The longer I drew, the more a pattern began to emerge. I did a lot of the doodling at work at my desk, which is where the post-it notes came from. And the stream-of-consciousness structure is a natural way for me to work in. To panel my day would feel too structured for a diary comic. You use recurring motifs in your work as metaphors for more personal issues—cats, army helmets, battle trenches and superheroes. It’s hard for me to come right out and say things like “I’m scared to death of love” or “I’m weak.” Metaphors help me say it in a way where I don’t feel entirely exposed. I think everyone has their own army of cats. The part of you that’s reassuring, analytical, and always has your back no matter what dumb thing you do. I also think everyone has a hero in them. The part of you that is unstoppable and uses its power for good! How do the people in your life feel about being represented in your comic, particularly since it’s available to read online? A lot of people enjoy being represented in my comic, from what I gather. But if I want to draw about someone in my life who’s going through a serious matter, I do ask permission first before drawing about it. How do the diary comics compare to writing fiction, like your self-published comic Perfecting Loneliness? Diary comics do lack a sort of storyline. I mean, over time you can see how I am maturing (maybe?) with relationships, working on my career, and overall growing up day to day. I have some fiction stories that I’m dying to start working on. There is a lot more excitement to these sorts of stories because I’m not bound by what happened to me that day. The possibilities are endless!

out of spectrum owen pallett explains why he’s no longer alone at the pedal words dani lurie It goes like this: Owen Pallett walks onto the stage of the Koko nightclub in London, black shirt glinting with silver, and picks up his violin. The tiers are packed and silent in anticipation. He raises his bow and hits the magical loop pedal by his foot. He starts to sing. Nearing the end of his set, Pallet brings out the analogue electro single Lewis Takes Off His Shirt. Through closed eyes, he croons the line “I’m never gonna give it to you,” repeated into infinity. Then, with a smirk to the crowd, he sets a looped beat with the tap of his bow and starts to fiddle a familiar hook, which—to the amusement of the audience—turns out to be a cover of Maria Carey’s Fantasy. “Do do do do do do do do,” he chimes. By all accounts, the man seems to be having a good time. When I speak to Owen, he’s lying on his back in the tour van, eating wine gums, Pocky and “elderflower something.” It’s the afternoon after his London show and the van is heading for Birmingham, where he’s playing that night. For once, he’s not alone. After years of solo performances, Pallett is touring with Thomas Gill, guitar and percussion accompanist. Why the change? “Loneliness,” he says, “and a desire to see these songs fleshed out a little bit, because the album is pretty dense and I didn’t want to get away from looping yet, but I thought it was time to get someone else to talk to on stage.” Owen found himself getting weary of making all the decisions. “I spent a year of secondguessing myself and I came out of it really wanting to have someone else who I could bounce ideas off of.” And who did he have in mind? “Originally I wanted a girl because I love the sound of girl-boy vocals but instead I settled on a homosexual.” He laughs. “He’s sitting right next to me but he hasn’t said anything. He can’t hear me.” Until his latest album, Heartland, Pallett was known as Final Fantasy, a homage to the epic Japanese RPGs. But Owen says he isn’t sentimental about shedding the old name. What about the reaction of fans? “I really haven’t actually thought about it.” He hasn’t played the game in a long time. “I tend to like games which have more immediate stimulus, like Tetris. Or roleplaying games that are rogue-like, and text-based stuff. Stuff like that.” Heartland has fascinated critics. It’s a dense work with multi-layered compositions, brought alive by electro-pop references and orchestral symphonic hooks. Press and fans pounced on the album’s bizarre narrative: the saga of a young, violent farmer named Lewis, set in the fictional pastoral land of Spectrum. So, could he summarise the narrative? “No. And the reason is, I feel as if the narrative is the least important part of the record. Music journalists, being who they are, chose to brand this record as a concept record, and kind of approach the narrative element with either a sense of dismissiveness, because they didn’t take the time to fully delve into what it could be about, or with a kind of incredulity, that someone in this day and age might dare to create something, to make a statement with a record outside of pop singles or whatever.” Pallett admits that there’s a structure to the record, but insists that it’s one that can only be absorbed through repeated listening. “It’s not the sort of thing that’s meant to have a synopsis, like on the back of a DVD box,” he says. “With this record, I really wanted to create and have narrative elements exist only within the confines of the record, and to have no statement that might foreshadow the fact that it’s really just meant to be an album of pop hits.” Unlike his farming alter ego, Owen Pallett’s not a man who goes in for grandstanding.

fight club slagsmålsklubben are taking on electro-pop one digit of pi at a time words vicki turk, self-portrait Swedish electro-pop artists Slagsmålsklubben arrive at their hotel in a whirlwind of confusion, and apologise profusely that several of them won’t be able to make the interview owing to a synthesizer, which has been damaged in transit. Muttering curses at EasyJet, founding members Björn and Joachim head to their room with a suitcase and flop down on the bed.

“That was Frej.” Frej had his own band at the time, and visited SMK with the intention of collaborating on one song. “He came over and he didn’t even bring his cell phone charger because he thought he’d be going home soon, but he ended up staying for a year, and lived in the rehearsal room.” After about ten years of playing together, the boys have all moved into a big house in Stockholm, which is great for their musical inspiration, but tough on their pockets. “It’s costing us, like, a million Swedish Krona per month. We’re all in debt nowadays,” moans Björn, “We’re one of the biggest bands in Scandinavia so we make quite a lot of money, but now this stupid house eats up everything.”

Björn unzips the case, which contains little more than a collection of wine, champagne and gin, and starts trying to open a bottle of red without a corkscrew. After destroying a drawer, pulling down a curtain, slicing open his thumb and staining the white hotel towels, he obtains a dribble of wine and is ready to talk.

Almost all of the band members are also involved in side projects, varying from techno to disco, but SMK view this as a positive thing for their main group. “Only the best material goes to the band, rather than the not so good... I mean... Rather than stuff that is too jazzy, or too poppy, or too minimal,” Björn corrects himself. As for their own sound, they are veering increasingly to what they describe as hobo techno, which I’m told is “really dirty and chaotic” and involves saxophones home-made out of pipes and a heavier focus on percussion rather than synthesizer beats.

“We had another band, a really shitty band,” Björn tells me of the birth of Slagsmålsklubben (or SMK to those who find it a bit of a mouthful) in 2000, “and one day the guy who sang in that band didn’t show up, so we improvised.” Joachim continues, “We made about two songs and they were so much better than the shitty songs, so we made a new band out of them.”

For those who don’t speak Swedish, Slagsmålsklubben means Fight Club, and was adopted by the band simply because their eyes fell on a DVD of the film when they were choosing a name. Some of the meaning is lost in translation, though. “It’s really corny,” the guys explain, “Fight Club sounds really hard and violent, but Slagsmålsklubben... It’s just really corny.”

At first the group consisted of just Björn, Joachim and Joni, but Hannes was welcomed shortly after, bringing with him better instruments, and they were soon practicing in Kim’s rehearsal room every day. “And we mean every day,” Joachim explains, “we skipped work, we skipped school, and we recorded until five in the morning, every day, for two years.”

This geeky nuance is much more befitting to the band, who confess to spending their free time playing Xbox and watching the Discovery Channel. “I always play about three video games at the same time,” admits Joachim, “but that’s just how I relax.” Björn’s nerdy passion is physics. “Physics is great, man,” he says, before adding, “I’m really good at pi as well,” and reeling off sixty-something figures. “One hundred and eleven is my record.” SMK are the antithesis of stereotypical rock stars, and have a modesty to match. “We’re not actually very good, you know,” Björn confides, “we just got here by chance.”

Frej’s initiation into the group was less conventional. “We were at a festival and I met this guy who was setting up fake boxing matches with drunk people and was a bookmaker for them,” Joachim recalls.

puppet soup anna karenina is alive, and she’s a carrot words rosanna durham, photo ariadne arendt

On a frosty night not too long ago, a suitcase full of vegetables were getting ready for their first show. Borscht: the Russian Vegetable Theatre makes an entrance. But not to an audience of puppet enthusiasts. We’re in a crowded nightclub and a question is in the air. Will our suitcase-sized theatrics entertain a gaggle of London clubbers? “Happy vegetables are all alike; every unhappy vegetable is unhappy in its own way.” So it begins. We’re performing Anna Karrotenina to a hubbub of Russian folk music, as Leo Tolstoy’s 900-page classic comes to life in a flurry of arms, scripts, tiny tablecloths and battered vegetables. I’m first to make an entrance with Dolly the beetroot. Then comes Anna, an organic-looking carrot in a feathery hat. As show speeds on, our cast of winter veggies bounce across the stage and in and out of love. There’s heartbreak for Kitty the lettuce and seduction by Vronsky, a handsome leek. Anna Karenina is alive, it seems, and she’s a carrot.

Presenting: Leo Tolstoy’s

Anna Karrotenina by

Theatre Borscht

Oh, Anna, I think my husband is cheating on me—with the governess!

Dear Dolly! And I think I have fallen in love—with Count Vronsky!

Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg, Anna had given birth to her love child: baby Annie

No! We love each other. I am leaving you and your funny ears.

Anna, I have heard of your affair with Vronsky. You must leave him at once!

Puppet shows are best when giving a mocking portrait of life itself, not just enacting what’s on your dinner plate. Think of Britain’s longloved puppet show, Punch and Judy. Still terrifying five-year-olds at seaside resorts from Blackpool to Brighton, Punch’s cranky and childish aggressions have long entertained children and adults: PUNCH: Hullo, my girl. JUDY: What do you want? PUNCH: I want a little dance. (They dance. She hits him.) JUDY: So you want to dance. I’ll find you something better to do than wasting your time up here. I’ll get you the baby to nurse.

For a coin or two, anyone could come and goggle at the show. The appeal of these early shows came from their stock characters. Villains were always swarthy and prosperous and their victims poor and struggling. Just like the pompous Punch, they were sketchy stereotypes. And perhaps that’s the point. With instantly recognisable characters, it takes only a paper hat or a wisp of a black moustache to bring objects to life. So the high-minded realism of theatre is all but abandoned. Out too go the plush curtains, overpriced ice-cream and complex sets. In its place: something spontaneous, accessible and completely mobile. You can bundle puppets away in a suitcase and they won’t complain. Even better, they’re always in character and ready to hop on stage. But try and bundle a troupe of actors in a suitcase? Imagine the arguments:

PUNCH: All right. Get downstairs. (Judy exits and returns with Baby.) (Romeo and Juliet are travelling in a suitcase to their next show.) JUDY: Here he is, and mind you look after him. (Both pull the Baby, exclaiming “Give him to me!” Punch finally gets the baby and hits Judy with it. Judy exits.)

ROMEO: Juliet, your blonde locks are suffocating me! JULIET: Romeo, you kicked me in the ear!

PUNCH: All right, I’ll look after him. Get downstairs. (Takes baby, who is crying. He dances about with it.) PUNCH: Stop it. I won’t have it. Oh dear, oh dear. (Hits baby on side of the proscenium.) Take that! And that! And that! (Throws baby out of the window.) The Punch and Judy Show spins a tale of the mundane gone mad. But perhaps the wackiest story of all is that puppets and their stories can make us laugh. After all, they’re pretty basic items of paper, paint and fabric. The flashiest are more like children’s toys than actors. For something pretty unsophisticated, they’ve been around for a while. Puppetry is as old as the streets it’s performed on. Among the expanding maze of Victorian buildings and streets, puppet theatres did a roaring trade. Travelling bands of puppeteers roamed Europe in the 19th century. These early puppet shows turned up on the doorstep, in the local drinking-house, on the street corner.

ROMEO: Gosh, this is uncomfortable my love. We might never survive the journey! JULIET: Oh Romeo, this suitcase is squishing me so. Should we take that poison now and not later? Forget Romeo and Juliet in their suitcase. Puppets are made to move with their maestros; you’d never catch Dolly or Anna Karrotenina complaining like that. Back to the Borscht spectacle. The audience was in stitches. But were they laughing at the puppet vegetables or at us? Either way, the performers had the upper hand. With a suitcase full of juicy beetroot, a couple of carrots and a leek what better way to end the evening than by cooking up some Russian borscht? You can find the latest performance by Borscht at theatreborscht.wordpress.com.

At the Moscow dacha:

Dear Kitty, I do love you so! Please, be my wife? I will!

At the wedding, everyone got a little drunk.

luke’s got cancer out of the chemo, on with the comedy words luke ryan In April last year, I performed in a rather descriptively-titled show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival called Luke’s Got Cancer. It was funnier than it sounds. You see, back in November 2007, at the age of 22, a seven-centimetre tumour was discovered growing into the space between my right shoulder and lung. A generally unpleasant proposition made worse by the fact that this wasn’t even my first turn through the cancer grist mill. (See? It’s getting funnier already!) Ten years previous, a sarcoma had been found behind my left knee, leading to a year of chemotherapy, reconstructive surgery and proper LOLs. Actually, no, wait. There were no LOLs. Just vomit. So very, very much vomit. It probably goes without saying that an almost unheard of decade-late tumour recurrence was not entirely how I saw my 2008 panning out. And while I was obviously concerned about the health ramifications of being bathed for six months in a heady cocktail of radiation and cytotoxic chemicals, I was in some ways more worried about the potential social awkwardness that often accompanies one’s announcement that his body is effectively trying to kill him. After all, it’s never really the answer people expect when they say, “Hey Luke, how are you? What’s with the baldness?” I decided that a policy of absolute disclosure would be the best thing for all involved; surely if I was cool with the whole process there would be no unlit social crevices into which people could wedge their discomfort. So, I started a Facebook page (The Luke’s Tumour Appreciation Society), a blog (Playing the Cancer Card) and entered the Raw Comedy Competition, an event where I walked onto stage—a bald 22-year old—and threw down five minutes worth of jokes about having cancer, which actually worked surprisingly well. Cancer: it’s an angle. By the time I had finished treatment and returned to my adopted home of Melbourne in mid2008, the idea of writing and performing Luke’s Got Cancer at the Comedy Festival had firmly taken hold. But I noticed that being in a not-quite-triumphal state of not-quite-remission, the mechanics underlying this brand of comedy had started to change a bit too. No longer was the material simply a prop that I could use to bludgeon people with the general absurdities of having cancer; now it had become a little more personal, a medium through which to understand a not-fully-resolved brush with cancer. Of course, none of this actually addresses a fundamental question, which is: why comedy? This certainly wasn’t a project designed to help me talk through and deal with my illness; the whole ‘survivor’ narrative strikes me as both patronising and alienating, good only at rendering abstract what is a real part of so many people’s lives. Instead I think it comes from the fact that I’ve always found humour to be one of the great privileges of being human: a Swiss army knife of emotion that provides the only feasible reaction to the myriad afflictions and joys of being alive. As such, comedy allowed me to assert a certain amount of control in a situation where one can often feel quite powerless. It became my way of reclaiming the definitional potency of the word ‘illness’. It was mine now, to shape as I would. And when I found myself standing there alone, shone with lights, basking in the laughter of the audience, I rejoiced in transforming the adulation into a pure, cleansing rage. Screaming a giant, defiant ‘fuck you’ at the absolute ridiculousness of being 22 and having to confront the conditions of my own mortality. But then again, the show did include an extended sequence about me having to wank into a cup so that they could freeze my sperm, so who knows what it was about really.

naked cinema sally potter seeks a more intimate medium words rosanna durham, self-portraits The strange idea, I say to Sally Potter, is that I know her through her films, which is perhaps a very intimate way of knowing a director. We’re sitting in her East London studio, at the round table that featured in the Tango Lesson. Prop drawers, film posters and set pieces are everywhere, and the table is covered in her self-portraits. I’m curious about the point when film became alive for her, and when she discovered it was a medium that she could play with. “The first moment was when I was fourteen, after I’d been given the opportunity to play with a Super 8 camera. The feeling of looking through the lens and filming my uncle and his girlfriend as quasi actors was so intense and so complete in its own way that it felt like the beginning of something else. It was just a great feeling of certainty.” Potter has been playing with film ever since. After Yes, a political romance in iambic pentameter, she released Rage late last year.

The plot is familiar, even clichéd: a murder mystery on the catwalk of a Manhattan fashion show. But, in the words of one disgruntled YouTube commenter, there are “no scene changes, no set, no special effects, no character interaction.” Its star cast—Judi Dench, Jude Law, Eddie Izzard—speak to camera, backed by nothing but a green screen. She’s wanted to make this film for years. The idea even featured in the Tango Lesson, her 1997 release. Sally herself plays a screenwriter suffering from writer’s block, who shelves the script of her murder mystery set in the fashion world. But the script was waiting for a whole new medium: the Internet. “I discovered I had written a film I didn’t really want to make, but it didn’t leave me alone entirely,” she explains. “It was only with the Internet many years later: the intimacy of what you can do with a mobile phone and a website and having people from eighty different countries leave messages and do little poems… I thought okay, there’s a completely different way of telling this story, much more intimate, as if through the eyes of a child.” This child is Michelangelo. He’s an imaginary schoolchild blogging about the fashion show for a web project, and filming a series of interviews on his videophone. True to Michelango’s format, Rage premiered onto mobiles and through the Internet. You can still watch it on Babelgum, with no need for Rapidshare.

“We put it out in the same way,” Sally says, “to make the final form absolutely mirror the final form of the piece itself. And also refuse to show: absolutely don’t show the fashion world; don’t show a catwalk; don’t show a murder; don’t show anything, in fact, except faces.” What then happens to the experience of cinema? And the idea that we go into a dark room and sit back and the film comes out at us? “My preferred viewings of Rage have been the ones in cinemas, with these huge faces, like great big posters; like murals. But it feels very good to really push the technological possibilities as far as they can go. The more I went into that, the more people expressed their doubts about whether cinema was viable at postage-stamp size.” Piracy means, of course, that directors can no longer control how someone watches a film. Laptop screens and poor recording quality have already violated the cinematic experience. But to simply throw something out there certainly seems like an unusual answer. “It’s exciting to tackle that head-on and not be protective and overreverent about the big screen as a perfect experience, but to make it more rough and tough and ready and see what happens to it. To see if it can survive it.” It’s a strange thought, though, that a film could not only survive online, but gain an intimacy it could not have through cinema alone. The Internet, I say, is a bit of a dumping ground. “It’s garbage!” Garbage? “Well. A lot of it is! And I don’t think it inherently has to be. It’s like there’s too much of everything; a multiplicity of everything, discrimination of nothing. It’s a lot of hamburgers, isn’t it?” Despite the fast food analogies, Potter remains convinced of the Internet’s power to throw up something valuable. “It’s such early days,” she says. “I think people will gradually get pissed off with the rapidness of imagery. You know, the Facebook-style of arm-length photography with your mouth open type of thing. It’s just so boringly repetitive. People will start to seek out something that has a little more density to it.” With Rage, Potter has done more than just create a small dense spot in the Internet. It’s a series of portraits. How were the actors with the pure green screen? “They had no contact with each other. They never met each other at all. But it was so intimate. It was just me holding the camera and the sound person to one side in a screened-off area. That is a very rare, a very rarely focussed shooting environment. “Usually there is so much going on with so many people, and so much potential for distraction and in a way the actor and the performance comes last on the list. I think it was quite frightening for the actors because they were so exposed. Frightening in a good way.” Potter should know. She has, of course, been in front of the camera herself. She’s been a performer, a writer and a musician, as well as a director. I want to know what it means for her, whether it gives a different perspective on directing. “Yes. A performer experiences certain things and if you haven’t experienced them as a director then you’re limited in what you can ask people to do; what you can understand of their experience of total exposure.” She also debunks the notion that the actor’s job is creatively less of a challenge than directing. “Being fully present whilst being looked at is tough stuff and takes enormous discipline and puts one in a very vulnerable position. A lot of directors don’t understand the performing process, even are afraid of actors and get into all kinds of posturing situations to compensate for that.”

Sally’s most famous performance is in the Tango Lesson. Potter plays the central character, a film-maker called Sally, although she denies the film is a straight self-portrait. The experience of filming herself has translated into an intense care when filming other actors. She says, “I couldn’t look at myself on set with the care that I would normally look at an actor. In fact, I couldn’t look at myself at all except in the monitor afterwards and then in the cutting room. So in the end the person who appeared on the screen wasn’t someone I really recognised that much, and throughout the cutting process I referred to this person as ‘she’ as opposed to ‘me’ in order to get a distance on it too.” She’s become increasingly aware of the effect the director’s gaze has on an actor. “Each time that I’ve made a film now, I think I get more careful and intense in the way that I look at somebody’s face; I’ve become more respectful really of what I’m looking at and more and more careful about how I look at that person because it has an incredible effect, what an actor sees in your eyes.” Sally Potter’s empathy with the performer extends to a profound analysis of her own gaze. “How are you looking at them?” she asks, “Are you looking at their flesh? Are you looking at their imperfections? Are you looking are their expressions? Or are you looking at what they want to be? Or even some lost part of the self that needs to come back? There are so many different ways that you can look.” Even the process of looking at the actors, let alone the finished film, is a form of portraiture, she says, as the director tries to “help to bring to the surface this elusive self.” What is it about that gaze with the viewer through the camera? “I think it’s something about intimacy. I have always experienced film as a very intimate medium, as a very intimate experience. You watch it and you get lost into it or it loses itself into you.”

a beautiful death polly morgan talks art and taxidermy words natalie bouloudis, self-portrait

I did grow up with millions of animals. We had llamas for a while, which my dad used to try and make me ride for the entertainment of his friends. We had dogs, cats, hamsters, fish and baby goats sleeping in the dog baskets. It’s funny because I think about that now and the idea of being around all those animals is a dream for me. Not so I can go around strangling them, but just because it’s so lovely. What first sparked your interest in taxidermy?

Polly Morgan’s studio is full of dead, decorative things. There’s a decaying coffin beside me with quail chicks silently cheeping from cracks in the crumbling wood. And behind me is a line of limp chicks each suspended by a brightly-coloured balloon. This is taxidermy. But there are no jolly, life-like tableaux of animals. The stuffed bodies have a very dead look, and the settings are unusual and unnatural. In contrast to the dead birds, Polly is bright and inviting. We sit down with a cup of tea, sharing a table with a stuffed chimp. Did your fascination with animals begin when you were younger?

The first thing I remember seeing was at one of my school-friend’s houses. Her dad had this case full of boxing toads, they all had boxing gloves on and they were in a boxing ring. There was a cheering audience surrounding them and an umpire. I thought it was hilarious. I used to manage a bar on Hoxton Square and briefly, with the job, I got the flat above. It was the first time I actually thought creatively about my living environment. So I went on eBay and ended up buying this really terrible rat head. You could see the stitching where it had been sown up around the mouth. Then someone just said, “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

Typically taxidermy results in the animals looking like they have been caught in a moment when they were still alive. In your works, the animals look like they have just died or are in the early stages of perishing. That is certainly how I started out. I suppose essentially traditional taxidermy is like a trick, a beautiful con that is trying to convince you even fleetingly that this animal is alive. What I love about taxidermy is that it is like magic. I find it more moving when it looks like you’ve just found something looking dead, rather than something perched on a stand about to take flight. All the animals you use have died natural or unpreventable deaths. Where do you find your animals? They are pretty much all donated from people who have cats or people who have just had birds fly into the window. I recently went to Stafford to this bird show; they call it the biggest event in the avian calendar. I literally took a deep breath and went from stand to stand saying that I do taxidermy and if any of your birds ever die can you please give me a call.

Since 2007, nearly all your works include birds. Is that your favourite animal to work with? It’s that and maybe it is slightly a confidence thing. I’m good at doing birds. I do find them very evocative and they are obviously symbolic. Also, the fact that they can fly, as well as stand, as well as lie; there is more you can do with them. They never cease to amaze me. At the moment, I want to get hold of hornbills, herrings and things with big beaks. What’s next? I’ve just finished a piece that appears to be a bouquet of flowers in a vase under a bell-jar, but the flowers are in fact bird heads on stems arranged and set in the vase. I am also a third of the way into a series that I’m doing for Other Criteria, which is a company owned by Damien Hirst. I have a solo show at Haunch and Venison coming up, with a book which will cover my work to date.

the madness of crowds

anne goldgar unfolds a dangerous obsession with tall tales words sonia van gilder cooke

A wealthy Dutch merchant, who prided himself not a little on his rare tulips, received upon one occasion a very valuable consignment of merchandise from the Levant. Intelligence of its arrival was brought him by a sailor, who presented himself for that purpose at the counting-house. The merchant, to reward him for his news, munificently made him a present of a fine red herring for his breakfast. The sailor had, it appears, a great partiality for onions, and seeing a bulb very like an onion lying upon the counter of this liberal trader, and thinking it, no doubt, very much out of its place among silks and velvets, he slily seized an opportunity and slipped it into his pocket, as a relish for his herring. He got clear off with his prize, and proceeded to the quay to eat his breakfast. Hardly was his back turned when the merchant missed his valuable Semper Augustus, worth three thousand florins. The whole establishment was instantly in an uproar; search was every where made for the precious root, but it was not to be found. Great was the merchant’s distress of mind. The search was renewed, but again without success. At last someone thought of the sailor. The unhappy merchant sprang into the street at the bare suggestion. His alarmed household followed him. The sailor, simple soul! had not thought of concealment. He was found quietly sitting on a coil of ropes, masticating the last morsel of his ‘onion’. Little did he dream that he had been eating a breakfast whose cost might have regaled a whole ship’s crew for a twelvemonth; or, as the plundered merchant himself expressed it, “might have sumptuously feasted the Prince of Orange and the whole court of the Stadtholder.”

So narrates Charles Mackay in his 1852 tome Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, a polemic against the folly of mass greed and crazy financial speculation. Before subprimes or financial derivatives, you see, was the Semper Augustus. In 17thcentury Holland the price of tulip bulbs soared to unprecedented levels, changing hands for vast sums of money. At the height of the mania, Mackay records that one trader paid four fat oxen, eight fat swine, twelve oxheads of wine, four tuns of beer, a suit of clothes and a silver drinking cup for a single Viceroy bulb. The summer of 1636 was one of frenzied trading in the taverns, gardens, and streets. Every Dutchman from the most common chimney sweep to the wealthiest merchant hoped to make a fortune trading in rare and exotic varieties. When the market crashed in February of 1637, traders woke to find their bulbs were worth just a tenth of the price they had paid. Many despairing floristen, or tulip traders, drowned themselves in the canals of Amsterdam. It’s a chilling reminder of the humanity’s persistent belief that this time, just this time, the speculation will pay off. The fate of the floristen seems to prefigure the suicide of bankrupt brokers in the wake of last year’s market crashes. Mackay concludes: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” It’s a prescient conclusion to draw from Europe’s first recorded speculative bubble.

A shame, really, that’s it’s largely a myth. “The thing about the fat oxen, that’s not actually true. It’s a piece of propaganda that somebody wrote up to sound dramatic. It’s not a transaction that ever took place,” says Anne Goldgar, the author of Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age and reader in early modern history at King’s College London. The same goes for the chimney sweeps, the suicides and the sailor’s onion. Tulips are poisonous, for a start, and don’t even taste of onion. The tulip madness of 17th-century Holland is one of the most famous events in financial history. It is also one of the least understood. Goldgar says that most accounts have exaggerated both the scale and the financial repercussions of the bubble. Far from attracting everyone from nobles to old clotheswomen, the bulk of the trade in tulips was confined to a well-off group of merchants, craftsmen, professionals, and painters who didn’t invest nearly as much money as is commonly thought. One bulb was sold for 5,000 guilders, the price of a fancy mansion. But that, says Goldgar, is an anomaly: “There were only 37 people who paid more than 400 guilders for a bulb.” There’s no suggestion in the historical records of people losing their fortunes or flinging themselves into canals either. “I found evidence of people who had traded tulips involved in bankruptcy sales, but they were involved because they were buying up the houses of bankrupt people, not because they themselves were bankrupt. I think most of the people could easily take the loss that they incurred.”

Yet tulipmania has had a persistent grip on the imagination. As early as 1670s, writers were using the tulip bubble as a lesson. “Our Descendants should consider this as a Mirror, and as a warning” wrote Abraham Munting in a 1671 botanical manual, cautioning that Holland must not “descend again into such improper trade.“ Later Dutch historians labelled the trade as ridiculous, foolish and crazy, and repeated the myths of its devastating effects on countless lives and businesses. In 1936, historian J. C. H. de Pater termed tulipmania the “dark side” of Holland’s Golden Age. Recent decades have also seen their share of comparisons with tulipmania. In A Random Walk down Wall Street, Princeton economist Burton Malkiel made comparisons with the tulip bubble based on the mythology surrounding the episode. Interest in the tulip trade was rife after the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, particularly in the popular media. “The Economist called me up in 1999, asking whether the fact that Mike Dash, Anna Pavord, and I all had contracts to write books on tulipmania was to do with the dot-com bubble,” recounts Goldgar. “I said I didn’t think it had anything to do with that! I was doing it because I was a cultural historian of the Netherlands, and of course the Economist didn’t like that very much.” Even the eminent economist and Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith used tulipmania as a cautionary tale in A Short History of Financial Euphoria, published in 1990 after the stock market plunged a few years earlier. “There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance,” he wrote.

So why all the disinformation? Until recently, says Goldgar, historians have lacked either the inclination or the language skills to examine the archives housed in cities like Haarlem. Another reason? For contemporary writers, fiction often pays better than fact. A novel about tulipmania released at the height of the dot-com boom, Tulip Fever, became a best-seller and was at one point set to be made into a film starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law. It tells the story of the young wife of an old rich man, who plots with her penniless lover to escape her marriage by selling tulips—a modern fantasy clothed in 17th-century garb. Perhaps more fundamentally, tulipmania is a good story, a parable that appeals to moralists and audiences alike. “I think this and other crashes in the past, like the South Sea bubble, have fulfilled very well the need to warn people not to be crazy in their financial speculation,” says Goldgar. The allure of tulipmania’s moral narrative has been exacerbated by the current financial crisis. “People asked me to write things last year about Madoff, thinking that this was relevant,” says Goldgar. “You just keep seeing it come up whenever there’s some kind of a craze going on, because it just makes such a nice object lesson. People like the myth. It’s useful.” It seems that extraordinary popular delusions come in all shapes and sizes. Like tulip bulbs themselves, something with a grip on the imagination has the power to run and run, gaining currency until someone stops to ask what it’s actually worth.

the fellowship of efrim menuck silver mount zion’s singer explains why he’s at home on the edge of culture

of the most fertile music collectives in the world, a Montreal-based group famous for its anti-corporate, anti-globalist ethos. And Efrim himself is a prolific collaborator. So, if anything, his comments seem to spring from disappointment.

words liz bennett, illustrations tim o’connor

He’s almost at the point, he says, that he has to meet someone before he commits to liking their music. “I’ve been heartbroken so many times at this point,” he explains. “So I find myself more and more listening to just, like, really old music, which ... sometimes I feel like that’s a retreat in a negative way, like that’s not a healthy thing to do, but I do it anyways.”

For Efrim Menuck of Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra, it seems that music and the people who make it can’t be separated.

Efrim speaks steadily, like a man who isn’t easily ruffled. He goes on, “I mean, on a local level, in Montreal, we feel really engaged with a pile of bands in Montreal that we love, that are friends of ours. There’s a very strong community of musicians that we feel a kinship to at home, and that’s a different thing entirely.”

“The one thing about being a musician, and a touring musician at that, is that you have the misfortune of meeting other musicians, which can really taint your perception of what it is that they do. The sad fact is that most musicians are just the worst people in the world, you know?” This sounds like the man who sings the refrain, “musicians are cowards.” But any impression of hostility to other artists is disingenuous. Silver Mount Zion, as the band is known, is at the heart of one

Silver Mount Zion’s haunting and poignant orchestral music emerged eleven years ago from post-rock group Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a band composed of almost identical core members. The group started playing together simply as an attempt to help Efrim learn to score music. The attempt was soon abandoned, but Silver Mount Zion kept playing. Since then, their line-up, and their name, has changed almost annually. They’ve been a quintet for almost two years. “We’re much noisier

now than we were when we were a seven piece,” says Efrim, “but yeah, definitely having less people leads to a different sort of noise.” Their latest album, Kollaps Tradixionales, echoes the band’s profound sense of collectivism. “We self-consciously tried to write songs that could be considered as traditionals,” Efrim says, “So you know, operating within the vast and deep history of people making music together.” Kollaps, inspired by the economic collapse that happened last year, blends incendiary instrumentals with vehement lyricism. A special release on vinyl demonstrates SMZ’s eagerness to locate themselves within this history. “We always write keeping the album in mind and we’re really dedicated to long-playing records,” Efrim says, “so everything we do, we see in terms of that. We really see things on vinyl, which is a somewhat passé idea in the year 2010 but it’s still what we believe in.” The band’s blog, by contrast, is equal parts personal, cryptic and stream of consciousness. Efrim claims it helps the reader in their understanding of the band: “We think a lot about context. And because we sort of exist on the periphery of culture, it’s up to us to create our own context for people and it’s something that we take seriously.” And he seems to revel in the challenge. “One of the beautiful things about popular music is that the context that its presented in has such a huge impact on the way that it’s perceived, which is a really lovely and interesting thing.”

imagine the view three urban climbers, three reasons for getting high interviews liz bennett

It’s strange to sit on a bus at six in the morning, alert and sober. There’s no place quite as sleepy. It’s before the rush hour and just getting light. At this time, the passengers are low-paid workers, not commuters in suits. They’re cleaners, train station assistants, rubbish collectors. Everyone is drowsing or slumped over the paper. If you’re thoroughly awake, it feels like you’re in a different world. This is what happens after a night of urban climbing. Urban explorers work their way into the hidden bits of cities: abandoned buildings, construction sites and rooftops. It’s a hobby that goes against the law, predictable sleeping patterns and received advice. But, for some, there’s more to it than the thrill of dodging the security.

I heard a story about Le Panthéon, a great old building in Paris. It has a bell tower and in the 60’s, the city stopped paying maintenance on the clock because they decided it was just too expensive, so it completely rusted up. In 2005, when it hadn’t worked for years, a group of radical preservationists decided to break in and mend the clock. They did it all very carefully, got fake keys and everything, and they lived in the bell tower for a year. They could move around in the day, but at night they had to make sure they were locked in with it. And after a year they rang the bell, which had been broken for about forty years. So that sounded amazing, and I figured there must be somewhere in Nottingham where I was living at the time to do something similar. That’s when I started exploring buildings. It was that and just plain curiosity about big empty things: big warehouses, empty churches and empty community centres. Caves as well. A large part of it is the whole overwhelming sense of watching urban civilisation collapsing in front of your eyes on a small scale. You feel that this is what it would look like if everyone just died, and there was no one left and everything started to fall apart. When you’re on your own, that feeling is much stronger. You’re there with some broken ceiling— the ceiling’s collapsed—and light shining down onto a puddle or something and birds flying in and out and it’s all very peaceful and beautiful. I love the feeling of the history and the feeling of decay. I get the same feeling of the history if I go to a museum and see something that’s extraordinarily old and very important. Near me where I grew up is a barn that was made out of the Mayflower, the pilgrim boat. It’s just a barn, but one of the beams has Mayflower written on it. And that’s a pretty powerful place to stand because you’re standing in a piece of world history. But on top of that, with exploration there’s a sense of decay. It’s like you’re attending your own funeral, but not only yours but the funeral of the entire human race. You can talk about how the human condition is all about conquering nature and improving life and stuff but if you completely failed at that, that is what you’d have, everything falling apart and decaying. And it is just fascinating to watch. A powerful sensation.

I wish I could say I started climbing spontaneously, out of an appreciation for buildings. It actually had far more to do with someone I fancied. The influence of someone who makes things sound like an adventure can do strange things to you. So I somehow found myself one night in the process of committing a crime with no clear idea how it happened. There I was, trespassing on the roof of a museum in the middle of the night, a well-behaved person who had always handed in my homework. It was awesome, in the old-fashioned sense. I was rather surprised to be there. It’s an easy place to be close to someone, a rooftop. You’re floating far above the city in the dark. The streets below are glittering and very silent. The stress and adrenaline of the climb, and the strange place you’re in, remove the awkwardness. You’re sharing something beautiful: the endless cunning of the city, and the richness of streets at night. But climbing, of course, had an impact of its own. I hope I’ll never forget the way it felt: a revelation that a lot more things were attainable than anyone would have you believe. I’ve always been too cautious, and suddenly more things began to feel possible. Streets had a hidden life of their own. Gates, fences and ‘keep out’ signs no longer had an invincible sway. It was a strange new pleasure to walk along streets in full sunlight, looking like a tourist, gazing and planning what to climb next. Most of all, it renewed my urge to draw. My sketchbook still has teeth-marks on it after a hasty exit from a well-known London landmark. (Climbing up a ladder quickly is tricky while holding an A3 pad in your hand.) I’ve sketched the folds of buildings that you can never even see from the ground: angles of rooftops, hidden doors, vast drainage cavities. The view is breathtaking and unique. But it’s not just that. It’s the feeling you get that you’re on top of something magnificent. Some giant monument of brick and stone and steel. Even an office block is ingenious.

I climb out of a love for cities. I was born in a city, then moved to a bigger one, and so spent my entire life around cities. And so I love them, and every city has its own character. America is the most boring place in the world to climb. All American cities are essentially these big grids, these exercises in efficient city planning. So in America the challenge is just to climb as high as possible, because you don’t have that much history of the cities, and the different suburbs don’t have their own character the way European cities do. So I mean Chicago, Madison, all these places in central America, they’re all just flat girds, and Chicago is one of the flattest cities on earth. And it’s just a grid. Which is awesome in its own way, sometimes. It’s monolithic. Actually, Seattle is really fun to climb except it rains so damn much. It is gridlike, but you have the hills and the sea. The contours of the landscape are nice, I guess. It’s the same exercise in advanced city planning, except that it’s been sculpted around what’s fundamentally a very beautiful landscape. It integrates really nicely and it has a very nice skyline. London is one of the most fascinating places to climb because it’s so ancient and when you get up there you realise that even just visually the different districts have completely different characters. From the top of the Southwark Towers, now demolished but once overlooking London Bridge station, each of the areas you see has a completely visual different character. And it’s immediately obvious from any building that’s more that 300 or 400 feet tall. As soon as you get up there, you see this visual history. Canary Wharf is just glass and steel and very shiny, and Camden is winding and all the lights are at a certain height. Hyde Park is a black hole, and then there’s Battersea power station, which is this towering ghost haunting the Thames, the skeleton of this great industrial thing. Why does the height matter? It just allows you to experience it anew, I guess. There’s the physical aspect, the fact that you’re hovering above the city allows you to take in the entire city. Whenever you first take people climbing, after the exhilaration of the climb you need about thirty minutes to settle down to really enjoy the experience. At the start of it you always feel a bit jittery, like anyone could look up and spot you at any moment. You always feel on edge. And it takes thirty minutes to come to the realisation that no one’s actually going to look up—they’re all completely oblivious to you. And, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, you feel like you’re part of the skyline. You have this vantage point, you’re isolated, and there’s no one else up there but you. And so that’s why I climb, a love of cities. Because it really is a completely different view. This sounds really indulgent, because it’s turning into “I like it because it’s different.” But when you’re up there, you’re physically lifted above the rest of the life as well. No one realises you’re there. And because generally at this time of day, it’s two or three in the morning and it’s a whole other side of life. So you’re also operating at a different time, you have a different view. That’s certainly part of the allure: the thrill of doing something different, the sport of it, the illicit nature of the activity, all that contributes to it. When you’re along on a building you lose yourself. You make it to the top, and you settle down a bit and feel like you’re a part of the skyline. If you’re with other people you’re forced to interact with them and so it’s a reminder of your own existence. You have to talk to other people, have to explain yourself to them. You have to set up your own boundaries between you and them. You’re aware of you and them, whereas when you’re on your own, you climb, and you’re up there, and there’s you and the city. Then, after a while, there’s just the city.

agatha nitecka and sculpting with light Agatha Nitecka is a Polish photographer based in London. She incorporates both poetry and film into her photographic projects and is a sometime collector of love letters. Find her at www.lettresalou.com. When did you first start taking photographs? I began working with photography in Poland when I was 15. When you are young you express things very strongly in terms of your emotional life. People often prefer my early photographs. They are very strong images. Your photographs seem to tell a story through emotions and environment. Yes, I set up something and I give you a clue; the viewer chooses what to add to it. I don’t want to have it very polished and finished, as if I was only presenting the story and that was it. My work is playful and interactive. When people see these images they have to narrate the story as if it’s their own. You first moved to London to study sculpture. What influence did this have on your later photography? I trained as a sculptor in London at Chelsea College. But I was never a true sculptor; I was cheating all the time! When I was sculpting I was making props and objects to then be photographed. I always thought about sculpture in photographic terms. You pose in many of your own photographs. What’s it like being both the photographer and the subject of one image? I often use myself in the photographs because I know exactly what pose to take. You need to know your body quite well because you only have 10 seconds with the self-exposure. Imagine that I need to run and get the position and kind of look relaxed. It’s staged rather than spontaneous. Is it more challenging to work with models other than yourself? It was difficult at the beginning, especially with fashion models because they pose and look into the camera. I have to ask them not to do that. With my fashion work the direction of the model is important. I sculpt the model’s body as much as I photograph it. I will tell models what sort of curve I want; where I want their shoulders and so on. I move them around a lot. What is it that interests you about fashion photography? For me it’s not simply about, for example, the clothes; it’s more about the story that you can evoke with the clothes. When I photograph, it’s as if I’m writing a short story or a poem. Your oh comely shoot is about all things Russian. Why Russia? My fashion shoots always reflect something that goes on in my own creative world. They are very personal in this way. I have this immense fascination with Russia, and I’m now translating my feelings of nostalgia that I have towards Poland in this Russian context.

l a s t s u m m e r â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s row a n b e r r i e s

by agatha a nitecka

model katarina filipovic, elite london hair stylist sergio renis make up artist yuka hirata stylist debbie lerner set designer tanya bancroft

cape worn as dress: beyond retro

beige brocade playsuits: beyond retro / cream top: lina osterman at machine-a / white embroidered jacket: beyond retro

nude body suit: wolford / embroidered skirt: beyond retro / black ankle boots: ann demeulemeester / white rabbit fur: stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own

white lace dress: beyond retro / red skirt: secondo vintage / black ankle boots: ann demeulemeester

brown skirt: beyond retro / floral apron: beyond retro cream long-sleeved top with ripped sleeves: lina osterman at machine-a / beige lace-up ankle boots: secondo vintage

gold sequin and beaded dress: tarvydas

something curious an antique shoe buckle from my aunt words phoebe english This is an old shoe-buckle that my aunt Rose gave me on my 21st birthday. It’s covered in shapes of glass, all cut to look like diamonds. I really like it because it’s so big and, if you can imagine it on a shoe, it would probably cover all of your toes and you would just have this big buckle. Rose was given it by her grandmother, Margaret. She had a shed in the corner of the garden where she lived in Herefordshire, which was full of trinkets that she kept to entertain her grandchildren. They were all neatly ordered with string and things. Whenever Rose would go with her sisters it would always be a great treat to be taken into the shed and be allowed to explore and to be able to sit on the grass on the garden and go through these trinkets that were filling the shed, just lots of little strange things. This was in a tin of old shoe buckles and it was the only one without a pair. So Margaret gave it to her. Rose used to wear it in the sixties on a ribbon around her neck as a choker. And she gave it to me with a note that says, “Darling Phoebe, this is an antique shoe buckle but maybe it would make a great bracelet or belt.” At the end she says “Shine bright!” which is a sweet thing to say because I used to want to be an actress. Rose was a performance artist and she encouraged me in that. This garden is Rose’s memory, which is now which is part of my memory of Rose. I’ve inherited this wonderful memory of this garden and the shed with magic trinkets and treats inside it. I don’t know anything about the history of it. It was probably made during the 19th Century. It’s an heirloom, but it’s not an heirloom in a way because it’s not of financial worth. It’s just a thing, a token, a little trace of this shed. I don’t know that much about Margaret. It’s just an anonymous object that’s come from an accumulation of possessions. If you put it on your foot like this… Can you imagine! It’s absolutely huge. It’s the whole width of a foot! It’s completely camp. I’m still looking for some velvet ribbon to tie it to, and I’ll wear it as a bracelet one day.

come into the city

photo retts wood styling gemma lacey make-up holly bellm hair takeshi katoh model olivka, premier

page 68 / hat: topshop / dress: opening ceremony socks: H&M / shoes: office page 70 / cream Blazer: belle and bunty / floral Jumpsuit: liberty socks: h&m / pink clog sandals: asos page 71 / mac: asos / floral playsuit: urban outfitters floral lace tights: topshop / pink clog sandals: asos page 73 / quilted waistcoat: topshop / necklace: florence b page 74 / liberty print dress: a.p.c. / navy cardigan: uniqlo boots: hudson / bracelet: freedom, topshop page 75 / floral babydoll top: asos / bloomers: belle and bunty boots: hudson page 76 / floral trapeze dress: asos / ruffle bolero: twenty 8 twelve ring: florence b page 77 / floral shirt: see by chloe / shorts: asos

edeline lee writes her own rules words eliza faulkner, self-portrait Edeline Lee is a London-based fashion designer. She was born and raised in Canada before moving to London, where she graduated from Central St. Martin’s College of Art with a BA in womenswear in 2006. She has worked for Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Zac Posen, and as the head designer for Rodnik. The following fashion shoot draws inspiration from Edeline’s whimsical designs. My parents were really against me being in fashion. I think that was really influential, actually. It made me really determined and focussed to do it even more. I did a liberal arts degree at McGill where I made costumes for the theatre. After that I got a place to go to law school at the University of Pennsylvania, but I went to St. Martin’s School of Art instead. I think my aesthetic is a little bit old fashioned. I like balance and a sense of composition in my work. I tend to be a maximalist in a way. I like when there are layers or a past or history or a story to something. I like juxtapositions like big statements but with tiny details. My favourite toy when I was growing up was Etch-a-Sketch. I used to draw on it all the time. I like the fact that it has a format and that you have a box that you have to work inside. There are all these rules. I think I work well with rules. I like having a structure around my work. If you timed the Etch-a-Sketch perfectly you could make a diagonal line! It takes so much skill.

I like working with structures and rules. I make all kinds of rules for myself when I’m designing that don’t really make sense to anyone but myself. It’s kind of like a game for every collection. I guess it’s a way of controlling the creative process. I definitely play a game with myself. The game is to see how inspired I can get within that space. For my last collection I used photographs of distorted images by André Kertész. I try to think of it through the photographs and not through fashion and then transpose that rule on to, say, a white shirt and then play with it in different ways. I don’t think fashion is art. I think the process of making it is really creative and quite similar. But I think it’s so important for it to be real and to be worn. I think about what my friends want to wear. What really makes a dress that stays in your closet? That aspect of fashion is integral. It is a product. When it comes down to it, it’s about the human body, the person moving, it’s about life. It’s much more visceral than art in a way. You have to touch it, you have to feel it. I find my friends really inspiring, and people that I love. Who they are, what they wear, how they move. It’s so nice to see their whole personality, their being, seeing their clothes fit their character. In terms of design, I love old things. Cristobal Balenciaga, Schiapparelli, Coco Chanel and Vionnet. I really admire those female designers at the turn of the century. There was a huge breakthrough then. That generation of amazing women—they were real individuals. There was something awesome about their work that you don’t see now. Fashion is kind of my life. I’m constantly thinking about it. It’s fun. it’s not really work. If I’m at an exhibition or walking down the street, I’m thinking about what I can use. If I see something I don’t like I think about what I could do to it to make it better. It’s part of how I think.

e d e l i n e â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s e n c h a n t m e n t

dress: edeline lee

photo george garnier styling eliza faulkner assistant caroline moore hair and make-up jesse lim model ekaterina, leniâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s model management

top : fam irvoll / belt : vintage, from beyond retro

dress: stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own / shirt: mih Jeans / scarf: lotta franke

dress: fam irvoll

brighten the corners

we planted a garden in a concrete courtyard words liz bennett, illustration rachel clare price

1st March. An idea is born. The idea behind guerilla gardening is simple and lovely: find an un-cared for plot and sow some seeds. Leave them, water them, and come back to find a tiny garden. No kidding though, guerilla gardening is a pretentious name. It began in New York in the 70s, when an artist called Liz Christy gathered some friends together to rejuvenate an abandoned lot on the corner of Bowery and Houston. They cleared the rubbish, fertilised the soil and planted flowers and trees. The Bowery Garden, as they called it, is still there today. Since then, radical gardening has spread across the globe. The gardeners come in all shapes and sizes, from political types determined to take back public spaces to people who simply want a little more colour on their street. It began to catch on in the UK after Richard Reynolds started blogging about gardening in London in 2004. His solo efforts ballooned into a community mission, and you can catch up with it on www.guerillagardening.org. It sounded fun, so in a moment of folly, we decided to plant our own.

8th March. We find the perfect plot. London has all sorts of barren, plant-less areas. The problem is that these plant-less areas are almost always covered in concrete or pavement. There’s acres and acres of the stuff. A pneumatic drill would probably do a lot of good, but it’s a little beyond our budget. But at last we’ve come across a small square by Old Street station. It’s in the middle of the bleakest courtyard you can imagine, just off the huge roundabout. Office blocks surround it on two sides, and it’s tucked away behind a strange, cylinder-shaped building. It looks oddly sinister, that cylinder. It’s two stories high, has no windows and we can’t work out what it’s doing there. But anyway, it shields the plot partially from view, which makes it perfect for covert gardening.

11th March. Our plans go awry. We had seeds, bulbs, a container of water and a bag of compost. We were worried about frost, vandals, the Council, drunk people, busybodies wondering what we were doing in the middle of a courtyard at night. What scuppered us was much more intractable: sand. So much sand. Lots and lots of sand, going down far deeper than we could feasibly dig through. And below some of the sand was a patchy, splintery layer of concrete. The spot must once have been paved, like the rest of the courtyard. We tipped in our pathetic bag of compost, and stood around the patch of sand drinking beer, feeling stupid, and wondering whether to give up.

21st March. We plant some plants, and feel hopeful. Soil is heavy. Enough soil to out-soil that amount of sand is very heavy. So we returned with not-really-enough soil and filled in some of the hole. We planted some bulbs, and some poppy seeds. Poppies are tough. They can grow in cracks in walls. They can take a 50/50 sand-tosoil ratio. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not sure the bulbs were such a great idea. We also planted some flowering things around the outside: narcissus, some tulips, a lovely purple-flowered spreading plant and a leafy shrub. These are to make the plot look pretty and discourage people from trashing the middle, where the seeds are secretly starting to grow. We hope.

5th April. Someone writes us a note, and we discover an ever-flowing stream of plant fertiliser. There’s note in pen on one of the adjoining paving stones: “These are lovely, more please.” There’s also a downside to the garden being shielded by the sinister cylindrical building. It’s now got a faint but unmistakeable smell of urine. But this may not be such a bad thing. Unlike cat urine, human urine isn’t toxic for plants. The nitrogen is actually a rather good fertiliser. And, given the quality of our ‘soil’, we need all the fertiliser we can get.

12th April. The garden is neglected. The garden has grown a little, all by itself. There are bulb shoots, and a few poppy seedlings. But we are not good gardeners. We’ve neglected it, and the flowering things around the edge are not happy. The tulips were uprooted by someone and have died. The narcissus have finished flowering. There’s a scattering of ground glass from the sand that’s worked its way to the surface, a bit like a high tide mark. The shards of glass are green and tiny and they look deceptively like shoots. Sadly, they aren’t.

25th April. A lot of people mistake us for “the Guerilla Gardeners.” We bribe a friend with a car. We drive to Homebase. We say, “We need a lot of plants, and we need them to be hardy and cheap.” The man sells us about fifty pot-bound pansies, some saxifrage, some seeds and 240 litres of compost. So much for guerilla gardening as an anti-consumerist statement. Never mind. It costs less than fifteen pounds. We drop off the compost. We begin serious soil enrichment and pansy-planting. Then something strange happens. We begin to get mistaken for “the Guerilla Gardeners”. It’s something to do with the time of day, I think. It’s about 6:30 on a Sunday afternoon. Pleasant weather, a waning bit of sunlight on the garden. The first people to approach are a man and a little girl. “Ah, you’re the guerilla gardeners! I’ve heard of you. Good work.”

He has a faint foreign accent from somewhere in Europe. Then a couple approach. They’re probably English, because they don’t say anything. Another couple, Dutch I think, ask us about guerilla gardening, as if it has an HQ and a centralised database of illegal gardens. They also admire the garden, now dotted with rather straggly cut-price pansies. Then four men in their thirties. They bound up to us, and say, “We’re not about to perform citizen’s arrest, but what are you guys doing?” They have multicoloured guitars in their rucksacks. They’re wildly enthusiastic, although the pupils of their eyes are very dilated, so it may have something to do with that. They take photos. They invite us to join them in Wetherspoons. They tell us we should go on their friend’s radio show. So much appreciation, even if it is from radio stations and their intoxicated friends, is enough to make all the nighttime gardening worthwhile. The garden looks lovely, and the bulbs are shooting up. I just hope pansies are good with urine.

Grow your own: Choose a patch of public land. Other people’s front gardens are not fair game. Who knows? Maybe they like broken bikes and dandelions. Choose somewhere convenient. Seedlings need water and so do all newly-planted plants, unless you go for something really hardy. You’ll have to water them every couple of days to begin with, if it doesn’t rain, and perhaps more in high summer. Choose the right plants. Think about how much sun your spot gets and the soil type. Pick plants that can survive without too much care. Colourful ground cover plants are good for covering the area, and will form a carpet of flowers. Seeds like poppies, woodland and wild flower mixes are a good bet. So are hardy annuals like geraniums, pansies and marigolds. They’re not sophisticated, but they’ll look cheerful. Thistles, euphorbia, epilobium, anemone sylvestris and buttercups are also low maintenance types.

era envy our writers get nostalgic for an age they never knew words luke ryan and vicky sparrow, photo alex simms

Truth be told, I long for the era of the Romantic poets. A time when men were men, women were women, and midgets were included in the food pyramid. As far as I can tell, this period had two symbiotically enmeshed things going for it: Romantic poetry and the consumption. Of course, one can probably imagine a number of disadvantages to living in this age as well. I, for one, would struggle with the generally low standards of personal hygiene, as well as the lack of Internet.

Last time I picked up a girl I think I spent most of the night giving her crap for the way she said the word ‘venue’. It worked, but, well, it’s not quite the same. But currently finding myself in the process of courting a lady, I’m being reminded anew how impoverished our vocabulary has become when it comes to expressing the scale of our desires. In the modern age, echoing sentiment has been replaced with stumbling triteness and variants of the word ‘fuck’. And this isn’t because of any paucity in the language itself. We have many, many more words at our disposal than Keats ever did. But I just feel that were you to express yourself in a Keatsy sort of fashion in the year 2010, then rather than basking in the fruits of romantic success you would almost assuredly be relegated to the ranks of those self-involved, self-unaware pseudo-poets who spend their spare time begging for sex.

But let’s consider for a moment one of Romantic poetry’s pre-eminent figures, John Keats. When Keats wasn’t composing astoundingly beautiful odes to his one true but unobtainable love, Fanny Brawne (now there’s a name with generations of hard-working peasant stock behind it), he could be found coughing blood into a hanky as the consumption eroded the very fabric of his lungs. Consuming love, consuming virus: you could not invent source material that good. And as a result Keats could get away with writing such lines as:

But perhaps Keats wasn’t actually so different. Perhaps he could only afford to effuse like that because his romance, like his life, was so definitely finite in scope. Not for him the prospect of marrying, bearing children, crafting a family and growing old together with Fanny, bickering about whether it was cold enough out to justify an overcoat. No, instead he died of ‘the consumption’ at the age of 25, a weak, broken figure, breathing his last in the arms of his best friend, with the words of Bright Star, that singular testament of his love for Fanny, finally inscribed in a book beside him. And you have to admit—profound cynicism about love or no—that is a pretty potent way to go.

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

The intensely mortal nature of Keats’ love in the end guaranteed its immortality. The terminal brevity of his affair meant that his poetry

came to stand as a purified expression of human desire, unburdened by the mundane realities of actually welding a life together with another person. In short, for Keats, getting tuberculosis was like getting the cheat codes to romantic sentiment. Which of course doesn’t help the rest of us who have to make do in our relationships without the prospect of imminent death. But hey, at least we get to wake up alongside the one that we love, so I guess that’s something.

I tend to think of history as a collection of images and important dates. And the visuals, I admit, are generally borrowed from high society fashion through the ages. History’s like an enormous Vogue, patchily spanning the centuries and probably quite chronologically inaccurate. Pre-revolution Paris is one of my favourite pages. It’s got mime-white faces, pink heart-painted lips and rouged cheekbones with full stops of black paint. A devilishly delightful parade of wellbred ladies glinting and gliding their way into a baroque ballroom in three-foot high powdered white wigs, swishing lace fans, corseted dresses and hoop skirts so wide they can fit through doorways only sideways. Ah, 18th-century Paris! But I could get fornicatingly-good dresses in any era with the right money, power and birth. Isn’t high society always the same? Besides, I’m not keen on corset-induced fainting fits. No, what I really want is a time with principle, passion and protests: a period of purpose. Something simple to fight for and believe in. I not only want the good life, but I want to feel good about having it. I want it to be thought-through and thought-out: morally, ethically, gynaecologically. I want feminism before it becomes so complicated that you

need a doctorate to understand the newest strain. That’s it: I want to be a Suffragette. I want overt gender injustice to fight against. The current feminist maxim “the personal is political” just wouldn’t look as natty acid-etched into a rolling fairway as that 1913 clanger “No Votes No Golf!” I would don my straw hat, my sash and my Deeds Not Words banner and parade around London, lobbing bricks through the windows of anti-suffrage politicians. That’ll learn them. Take that, David Lloyd-George! I’d join the solemn marches, surrounded by nervous buttoned-up policemen sporting chin straps and thick black moustaches. It must have been so easy, then, to allow oneself to be swept away in the fight for freedom. It was such a clear fight. The sweep of floor-length skirts and the certainty of the cause; in those Votes For Women marches, the excitement and belief and passion must have been palpable. Ah, but fighting for suffrage was, in actuality, darn dangerous. Being force-fed in prison is not super high on my list of things to try out, neither is dying in protest beneath the hoofs of the king’s horse. And before too long, the Great War transformed the Suffragettes into household rationers, widows and yellow-skinned munitions workers. Maybe I’m too realistic for all this nostalgia. But the fact remains: I have the deepest respect for those women who stood up against the authority of the status quo. They were right and they were not afraid of freedom. And even if I don’t really wish myself there, I envy their clarity and courage.

i quit my dream job and i feel fine sometimes the best job is one you don’t care about words jane flett, photo ryan van winkle “So what do you do?” It’s the classic conversation opener, it’s appropriate. It’s not going to cause stilted silences like, “Who did you vote for in the election?” or “So, what’s your favourite position?” So what do I do? Well, I work in a bar. I pour pints of Guinness for curmudgeonly regulars and I stack glasses in a dishwasher. On Mondays we polish the whisky bottles and wipe down the gantry. This is what I do in that this is how I trade my time for money, and that is what people mean when they ask me what I do. If I were to respond that I play synth-punk cello and taxidermy vintage minks and write erotic fiction about Japanese women who have sex with octopi, I’d get some funny looks. Believe me, I’ve tried. So, I work in a bar. I haven’t always held such a lowly position. For a year I set up and ran a music venue called the Bowery with my friend Ruth. We registered with Companies House and became, officially, directors, which is the kind of title that makes you feel all kinds of important. When people asked me, “What do you do?” I got to answer, “I run a venue,” which garnered a whole lot of respect. And the assumption was always that it must be so much fun. Because, you know, it’s fun to go to venues and it’s fun to listen to bands and so running that must be even more fun! Imagine what you do being something that you love!

Except it doesn’t always work like that. The cook isn’t getting to sit at the table and munch on his pea and parmesan risotto and the artist running the venue isn’t getting to stand up on stage and bask in the glory. No, they’re filling in the ten-page PAYE return downloadable from the HRMC website and they’re explaining to the Edinburgh LSO that of course they’ll employ a SIA-licensed doorman if they’re open past 11pm. They are suddenly and inexplicably surrounded by acronyms and they are waking up from thick dreams where they missed the SDS delivery and there’s no loo roll left for the desperate customers. Or I was, at least. And it’s tough, because you can’t quit your dream job to go work in a pub, you can’t go from manager to serf. It’ll look terrible on your CV, and you won’t ever get asked to DJ any more. The shame! However, I did it. The spur was winning a writing award and feeling the money would be better spent in New York where I would finally have some glorious time to sit around tinkering with words. The kicker was the endless nagging feeling that all I ever did, all I thought about, was work. In the pub we talked in hushed tones of how wonderful it would be if we could just shut up about it. We never could. So I quit, and now I pour pints of Guinness for minimum wage. It’s great. I’m not the only one to take voluntary demotion this year. Ericka quit her job on the board of a charity and took a job in a coffee shop (and makes cardboard cut-out Mills and Boon dioramas, poems and 3D music videos). Chris finished his PhD in neuroscience and shunned a career in academia in favour of throwing Frisbees, hiring sevencolour lasers and flipping pancakes. When we sit around and talk about what we do now, these are the things we get excited about. When I’m walking through the Old Town my head is full of ideas for stories and Gameboy loops, and I’m not thinking about the Business at all. Or even, for that matter, about how to pour a pint.

horrible fun memories of a one-time sex text chat operator words novak hunter photo dani lurie You know those ads you see in the back of magazines like Nuts and Loaded offering numbers you can text to get in touch with hot, single women for only 50p per message? Although I’ve been a man all my life, I used to be one of those women. It was mid-2006 when I went for a job interview at a small TV station in South London. They asked me a bunch of questions like “You find yourself on the moon with no idea how you got there. As you look back at the Earth, what are you feeling?” By the time it was over I’d somehow been signed up as an SMS sex chat operator. It was exactly as random as it sounds. Guys would text the company and the message would come up on our computers, where we sat two at a time. We were split about 50/50 male and female, gay and straight. Apparently even the possibility of reaching a woman, any woman, didn’t just keep us within the boundaries of moral shadiness, but within legal requirements too. Customers would text one of a series of advertised phone numbers. Depending on their choice, we’d receive the message along with a short biography of the woman we were supposed to be. This was meant to ensure a level of consistency for guys who wanted long-term SMS girlfriends. Such people do exist. Some would text for years without realising the woman they claimed to love was actually a shift worker who changed every eight hours. Our time was divided between casual chat, gently avoiding requests to send photos or share real phone numbers, and straight-up helping dudes blow their loads. I sometimes feel a bit odd when I think about the number of guys I helped smash one out, but the weirdest was when they said they loved us. The first text I ever received while training said only “I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU,” which was a pretty brutal induction to the questionable ethics behind the whole thing. I could plead a bunch of weak excuses, but in the end it came down to a quick buck and a good story to tell at parties. Any guy who texted more than a couple of times was either naive or stupid. We were paid bonuses depending on the number of responses we got, so we focussed on quantity, not quality. We really didn’t try hard to sound interested or feminine at all. Most of the time you could write like a man, and so long as you added “baby” to the end of every sentence, they were happy. It was a massive earner for the company. At any time we could have up to eighty messages in the queue, but the company was run by the kind that would cut corners everywhere and fire people almost fortnightly. And, sure enough, I was fired after about five months, for being a couple of minutes late a few times a week. It all seems much more immoral now than it did at the time. We were just sitting around writing smut, laughing and having a great time, totally removed from the people on the other end of the service. I decided a while ago that any attempt to pass it off as helping lonely guys inject some meaning and colour into their lives would be a platitude, so I’ll be direct. I helped take advantage of people. It was horrible. It was brilliant fun.

100

101

102

103

100

101

102

how hard can it be ... to organise a music festival? i t â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s n o t a l l f r e e b e e r and parties words dani lurie

103

100

101

102

103

It’s summer. You’re stretched out on the grass of a field surrounded by sozzled hipsters and families in wellies. There’s a friend—let’s call her Poppy—sprawled next to you in oversized glasses and a hat that just wouldn’t fly anywhere else. It’s been a great couple of days. You’ve eaten well, drank half your weight in local lagers and seen some amazing tunes played. A thought occurs. You nudge her with a dirtflecked boot. “We could do this.” “Do what?” “This. The festival. We could do it.” “What are you talking about?” “A music festival. We could totally put on a music festival.” “What?” “Yeah. Just imagine it. We could have all of our favourite musicians. Your sister’s band could play too, I guess. We’d only serve Trappist beers and organic gin in the bars, and gluten-free, vegan food in the stalls—although maybe we could have just one guy selling chocolate-chip and bacon cookies. I love those things. Oh! And we could hire a gigantic bouncy castle. Or maybe have a petting zoo. We could build a tree house out of wooden planks pasted with old love letters, and make it the world’s smallest after-hours disco hut. All of our friends could come. It’d last a week and we’d spend that whole time dancing. It would be amazing.” “Uh, I guess…” Poppy is unconvinced. “It sounds great and all, but I don’t think you realize how much time and money goes into these. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be able to make it happen.” “Sure we would,” you say. “How hard can it be?”

100

101

102

Pretty hard, it seems. “The worst was one year where I thought that I could run the festival, stage-manage the main stage and several other job descriptions all at the ssame ame time. I don’t think I slept for more than an hour eevery very night for four days, and that practically killed me.” Fred Fellowes is the Head Gardener of the Secret Garden Party. One part music festival and three parts gardenparty-gone-mad, SGP has blossomed into the ultimate escapist weekend. Fellowes and some friends started the event in 2003, on the shores of an idyllic lake in Cambridgeshire. The idea was born when Fellowes noticed that his friends loved outdoor parties and raves, but more for the vibe than the music. “And it just seems sad that you couldn’t have events that had the same vibe and style, but had a slightly more inclusive music policy.” At the time, he had no background in the area. “I did a bit of DJing,” he says. “I was just working out what to do with an incredibly useful BA in Fine Arts.” As well as a more eclectic music mix, SGP champions a sponsorship-free, hands-on vibe. Last year’s event divided costumed revellers into Eden and Babylon and culminated in a marriage between the sides. The centrepiece was a giant floating tower in the centre of the lake, which was ceremonially burnt at the close of the festivities. “Being a spectator is not the most fun you can have in the world,” says Fellowes. “If you helped create it and owned it, then it’s that much more fun.” But what was it like to actually create and own the event? “The first one was great fun because we had no idea what we were doing; we were venturing into the unknown. Everything was novel and shiny.” Running the festival got tougher as it went along. “I think the hardest years were, sort of, the second or third when the money and the realities sort of crunch on you and it stops just being a big adventure.” Rather like the fine arts degree, Fellowes found that people didn’t tend to take his job too seriously to begin with. “The hardest part for me in the beginning was people asking me what I did and the pausing and looking at me and going, ‘Yeah, and so what do you do as a real job?’” No one’s saying that any more. The festival’s since won the Best Small Festival prize at the UK Festival Awards twice. But for Fellowes, the focus remains on the revellers. His own high point, he says, was an email they received after the 2005 party. “It was from a girl in a wheelchair who sent us an email saying that it had convinced her that she could still have fun and life still had stuff to offer her. I feel almost guilty citing that because it was such a wonderfully personal thing to be told and something that did leave you crying by the end of that email.” The Secret Garden Party 2010 comes to Cambridgeshire 22th to 25th July.

103

100

101

102

103

Unlike the Secret Garden Party, you probably haven’t heard of LeeFest. With a capacity of 2,000 this year, it’s hardly a rival to the summer’s m er’s bigger festivals. But LeeFest’s story is a tribute to how far you can go with a bit of guts and some creative interpretation of the law. The festival was the brainchild of a group of bored seventeen-year-olds, facing a long summer without the cash to afford festival tickets. Lee hosted the first festival in his parents’ back garden. “My parents had gone on holiday,” he explains, “and said we weren’t allowed any house parties. But we thought we could get away with a festival.” LeeFest’s first year took just a week to organise, and squeezed in as many acts as it could until the police turned up. “It was really noisy, and I live in a very residential area. My friend Steve was quite drunk and tried to charge the police to get in, which didn’t go down well. We had to hide the illegal bar really quickly.” Since then, the festival has ballooned in size and professionalism. “There was a monumental moment in the second year when we got our first portaloo,” says Lee. The team have kept track of the festival’s progress using the loo-count ever since. The following year saw a larger venue (six loos) and last year bumped up the capacity to 1,500 (14 loos). This year, says Lee, “we’re introducing camping, and a line-up that’s about ten times as good as last year.” Acts include the Darkness and the Loose Cannons. The organisational headache has grown proportionally. “At first it was just a bit of laugh,” says Lee. “No pressure, it was great. It would be great to be back in the days of no one asking anything.” But the festival remains firmly committed to its local focus. “We want half our acts to be unsigned, and locally and regionally sourced. It’s a big thing for us because we started just by putting on local bands.” The festival also aims to work the local bands into the programme properly. A lot of festivals host competitions where unsigned bands can win an opening slot on a stage, but these are always early and the bands don’t tend to get involved with better-known artists backstage. Lee attributes LeeFest’s success to its small start-up. He says, “The festivals that seems to do the best take it slow. You do it, make some mistakes, read loads of stuff, and just get it on.” No longer in Lee’s backyard, LeeFest gets going on 14th August this year.

What’s the best advice, then, for someone starting out? Jon Dunn is the music programmer for Latitude. He started promoting gigs when, he says, “I realised that I was pretty crap at ssinging inging and playing guitar.” He’s been curating the festival’s music m usic stages since its inception five years ago. The idea behind Latitude, he says, was to create an event “almost like picking up your Sunday newspaper. You flick through the music, you then go to the film and then into dance and into poetry.” It’s an event where you can drift from a band to some poetry, wander through the woods and be back in time for the last five minutes of the gig. “It’s funny,” he says, “the best advice I ever had was nothing to do with festivals but to do with putting on gigs, and actually doing things. I was in bands and I wanted to put on gigs and I thought it was almost like a big world that you had to have qualifications for, and I travelled to London because I had an

100

101

interview with a promoter and I got very excited. And I had broken my leg, actually, and I came up in the snow. Actually there wasn’t any snow. But I came up and I met the promoter and I thought he was going to offer me a job. He said, “What do you want to do?” I said, “I want to get involved putting on gigs. I want to make something happen. I’ve got these really great ideas, to do this and do that.” And he said to me, “Why don’t you just do it?” I left thinking, “Great. That was worth coming up for, wasn’t it?” when in actual fact it was probably the best advice I ever had, because there were lots of things to learn and you can come unstuck, but the best way to actually learn anything is to do it. That’s the best advice I’d ever give.” Latitude is running 15th to 18th July this year.

102

103

104

Lindsey, scrambled eggs on toast. My housemate doesn’t ever clean up after himself. Lucy, fruit ‘n fibre for breakfast. I had an long debate about choice, selflessness and selfishness.

Amy, porridge and honey for breakfast. I argued that it’s always acceptable to wear hot pants, even in winter.

Emma, a hobnob for breakfast. I think it’s wrong to watch pornography.

105

food for thought the people on old street tell us about the last argument they won interviews susanna bennett

Neil, plain double cheeseburger from McDonaldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s for breakfast. I convinced my friend that he had to clean up after himself, days after he got sick and threw up outside the window.

Liva, french sardines and red peppers. I said to a friend that the flesh on her body was too large.

Henrik, coffee, brown bread, salad and ham sandwich, juice and yoghurt for breakfast. My girlfriend was supposed to have booked tickets to Sweden.

Ciara, pineapple for breakfast. My flatmateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new-found lesbianism.

106

107

toys for my grandmother ruth harley talks about winnie the pooh and dementia interview liz bennett

My granny looked after me a lot when I was growing up because, after my mum and dad got divorced, my mum was on her own. My granny used to have both of us to stay. It really was an idyllic childhood, all rolling hills and playing with horses and all that sort of thing. I remember she always used to have particular cuddly toy animals and books that I used to look forward to when I was there. She used to read me a lot: every night when I got into bed and during the day as well. She used to read to all her grandchildren, but I saw her more than the others so I got more than my fair share, I think. And that carried on very much the same until the Christmas I was thirteen—so nearly ten years now—when she very suddenly and unexpectedly had a stroke. And, when she had that stroke, she developed vascular dementia and I, along with my mum, took over caring for her. As well as the day-to-day boring stuff, like doing her shopping and making sure she was taking the right sort of medication and all that, I would just go round, make her a cup of tea and chat. Then, as she got worse, she got much more childlike. I’d taken to reading to her already because, although she could read, she didn’t enjoy it very much. She preferred being read to. As she got less able to follow the plot of the adult books I was reading, I started reading her children’s books, and naturally I picked up the ones that were in her house, which were all the ones she read to me when I was little. So I would read them to her, and I still do, and it’s really nice. Because it’s something that we’ve shared for my whole life and she still really enjoys it. She’s very confused now, very muddled about almost everything, but she still laughs at the funny bits and likes it when I do silly voices. She’s now very keen on soft toy animals. So a lot of the animals that she used to let me play with when I was little, I’ve now given back to her. She carries them round and really likes them... And it’s really good, that part of it’s really good. Obviously it’s been really difficult in lots of other ways but it’s really nice that we still have that same kind of relationship we’ve always had, even if it is a bit reversed. It was a huge shock when she got dementia, because she is the great matriarch of the family and always looked after everyone for as long as I can remember, and particularly me and my mum. Very, very suddenly it went from her looking after me, to me looking after her, without any kind of gap in the middle. It just went straight from one

to the other which was very hard to deal with. It is very hard to deal. Because the thing with dementia is that you lose the person that you know and love a long, long time before they actually die. She hasn’t really been the same person for at least the last seven or eight years. But there’s still bits of her in there and sometimes she makes a joke or something or comes out with some kind of turn of phrase or some facial expression that just really reminds me of how she used to be. She is still in there somewhere, just increasingly hard to see. She was a very intellectual person in her reading. Almost all of the authors that are now my favourites I was introduced to by her, when I was probably a bit too young. She read a lot of Iris Murdoch and Margaret Atwood. So, obviously, her reading interests aren’t really related, but her sense of humour is still the same. She finds the same things funny. She still laughs in the same bits of things like Winnie the Pooh and Paddington that I can remember her laughing at when she was reading them to me. And I used to laugh at and still do laugh at. So it’s really nice that we still have that shared appreciation of it. You can see bits there that are still the same but they’re a bit few and far between. She used to tell me the most fantastic stories about family history, stories about her cousins. She’s got 21 cousins; a lot of stories. It’s really great that she’s told me all that because I can tell it back to her now. She can’t remember it, but I thinks she realises it’s something to do with her. On days when she’s having a bad day and doesn’t really respond to anything else, she’ll still sometimes smile a bit when I tell her old stories about when she was a little girl. There’s loads of stories. Like the time when she was at the beach in Cornwall and someone got into difficulties in the water. It just so happened that the champion swimmer of Cornwall was on the beach, and he plunged in and saved them. My enterprising granny, probably about nine at this stage, immediately asked her aunty for tuppence and ran down to the local phone box on the corner. She phoned the local paper and sold them the story for two shillings. Although I don’t think she really remembers doing that, when I say, “Oh wasn’t that the time when you were on the beach, and somebody got into difficulty” and I tell her the story, she laughs or she smiles. I’ll say something like, “And weren’t you clever and enterprising.” She’ll say, “Oh yes, I was.” So she understands it’s about her and she enjoys me being proud of her, in a way.

108

109

young love. so sweet. so pure. so psychotic. how to win back your ex in nine easy steps words amica lane Step one. The grand gesture. So you want your ex back. In popular culture, such as eighties movies and tales from your Nana, these things can sometimes work out well. Enter the grand gesture, a supposedly foolproof way of saying “I’m sorry.” What the movies don’t tell you is that grand gestures can often be mistaken for acts of desperation performed by the mentally ill. Step two. Dutch courage. So, you’re nervous. Solution: down a whole bottle of Jack. Neat. Note to self: Alcohol is the ally of fun, but the enemy of dignity. Step three. A night that involves karaoke. You may write ‘NO MATTER WHAT, DON’T SING’ on the back of your hand, but alcohol impairs vision and sense. Also at karaoke nights, there is always some sadistic bastard who bullies you into participating when you show even the slightest wisp of hesitation. Step four. The duet. Well if you’re going up there, drag the ex up there too! Nothing awkward about two ex-lovers singing Just Like Heaven to each other whilst completely out of tune and unable to make eye contact. In front of all his friends, and none of yours. Step five. The confession. All that caterwauling and lack-of-eyecontact has driven you to do something terribly romantic (says Jack Daniels) and since you’ve already made a total fool of yourself, you

might as well drive this train home. When the words “go out with a bang” flash across your mind, shit’s about to get real. Confess into microphone something classy, something meaningful, something dignified. “I weally weally thiwnk tha we thould, err, weunite. Thexually.” Step six. Compensation. So he hasn’t so much said no, just a stiff shake of the head and a slow retreat backwards, much like in those videos on the Discovery Channel about how to act if a grizzly bear attacks. Even drunk, you’ll probably sense that this isn’t going to plan. So if you can’t get your boyfriend back, might as well take a memento that you can hug. Perhaps a taxidermied animal from behind the bar? Note to self: stealing property from establishments is illegal, and they may or may not call the police. Step seven. The escape. The police are coming. You have a stuffed fox under your arm and everybody is looking at you like you’ve just screamed “Jihad!” and pulled out a detonator. You’ve also gotten a bit stoned somewhere in the middle, and paranoia kicks in. You do the only logical thing you can. Scream, “The fox is mine. You’ll never take me alive!” then run like the devil. Running stoned and drunk up a flight of stairs with a dead fox is far trickier than you might think. Step eight. The sacrifice. So you’ve fallen down a flight of stairs. The beverage in your hand is okay, but the fox has a broken tail. He’s a fallen comrade, and this is no time to be a hero. Drop the fox, tackle stairs again. On hands and knees for extra balance. Step nine. The text. Later that night, after evading jail and sectioning with such skill you should really be awarded a damn medal, you get a text from the ex. “Dear Amica, I understand you are having mental health issues, but I’m actually to busy to deal with this right now.” And then it all hits home. Ultimately you’ve been wasting your great creative efforts on a douchebag. As my gran used to say, “Why would you get back with an ex? You wouldn’t eat something you threw up.”

110

111

112

113

110

111

112

we love peanut butter so we found three ways to use it recipe kirsty smith, illustrations dani lurie and hannah waldron

These are cookies for the child in everyone: masses of white chocolate make them sweet and yummy and the peanut butter gives them a slightly salty edge. The oats give them slightly soft and melt-in-themouth centres. This recipe makes 25 large cookies. This is a lot to make in one go, so I like to divide the mixture in half after step 7 and stick half of it in the freezer. It will keep for a couple of months quite happily. When you need it, whip it out, defrost the dough thoroughly and, hey presto, freshly baked cookies in minutes. You can even defrost the dough on a very low microwave setting to speed up the process.

One. Grease a couple of baking trays and preheat the oven to 170°C / gas mark 4.

Ingredients

Six. Chop the white chocolate roughly into small chunks and add to the dough, mixing through evenly.

Eleven. Transfer to a wire rack and allow them to cool completely. Alternatively, eat them: they taste fantastic warm with the chocolate still melted.

Seven. The dough should all come together into a slightly sticky ball in the bowl. If you want to save half the mixture, divide it now.

Twelve. Once they’re fully cooled, keep the cookies in an airtight container and they’ll last you a good week.

230g / 8oz unsalted butter 400g / 14oz caster sugar 2 medium eggs 2 or 3 drops of vanilla essence 380g / 13oz plain flour 1 tsp baking powder 100g / 4oz rolled oats 450g / 16oz white chocolate 2 dessert spoons of crunchy peanut butter

Two. Beat the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until smooth and fluffy. Three. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat into the mixture. Four. Stir the flour, baking powder and oats together and then add to the other ingredients, mixing well to form a dough. Five. Combine the peanut butter into the dough.

Eight. Use your hands to roll the dough into balls, each about the size of a clementine. Place the balls on the baking trays, flatten-

ing them slightly with the palm of your hand. Leave plenty of space between the cookies. They’ll spread out as they cook so only about six will fit on a standard tray. Nine. Bake in the oven at 170°C for 16–17 minutes—a good time to wash up and make a cuppa. Take them out when they are just starting to turn golden brown. Ten. Leave to cool on the trays for 5 minutes. Don’t worry if they seem squishy; the cookies keep cooking on the tray and will gradually firm up but stay soft and chewy.

113

110

111

112

113

A great way to use up your left-over peanut butter, if it hasn’t gone on sandwiches, is in this tofu stir-fry with peanut satay sauce. This is a beautifully nutty and well-seasoned dish made of stuff that you’ll probably already have—and then peanut butter’s not your average stir-fry ingredient. Serve with rice, rather than noodles, and you’ll find it complements the toasted tones of the nuts. For the veg, asparagus and broccoli also work well. The chilli flakes included here will give it quite a kick, so cut back a bit if you don’t like your food too spicy. Serves four.

For the sauce

For the stir-fry

1 tbsp groundnut oil 1 shallot, finely chopped 2 cloves of garlic, crushed 1 tsp fresh ginger, chopped 1 tbps chopped nuts (optional) 2 tbps peanut butter 3 tbps soy sauce 4 tbsp coconut milk 4 tbsp water squeeze of lemon 1 tsp paprika 1 tsp tumeric 1 tbps chilli flakes

250g / 9oz firm tofu, cubed 1 clove of garlic, chopped 1 spring onion, finely chopped 2 bell peppers, sliced 4 heads of baby pak choi groundnut oil soy sauce sugar

One. First, make the sauce. Heat the groundnut oil in a frying pan or wok, then sauté the shallot for a minute. Two. Add the ginger and the garlic. Also add a tablespoon of chopped nuts, if your peanut butter isn’t particularly crunchy. Three. Fry until the garlic is lightly golden, then add the remaining ingredients except for the chilli flakes. Four. Simmer and stir until smooth, then add chilli flakes to taste. Five. Let the sauce cool slightly, then transfer to a food processor and blend. If you don’t have a food processor, don’t worry, you just won’t get the same smooth consistency. Six. Now start the stir-fry. In the same pan, fry the tofu in the groundnut oil until the cubes are golden brown. As the tofu firms up, stir gently so it absorbs the flavour of the sauce, then set aside. Seven. In a different pan, fry the garlic and the spring onion bulb until golden. Eight. Add the pak choi stems (but not the leaves) and fry for 20 seconds. Then add the peppers and a pinch of sugar, then the pak choi leaves and a drizzle of soy sauce. Nine. Add the tofu and the peanut satay sauce to the stir-fry, and garnish with the spring onion tops. Serve with rice.

110

It’s always satisfying when you realise you can use a totally ordinary food item to de-stain your sofa, clean your mirrors or protect your basement from flooding. But peanut butter’s an unlikely candidate. It’s claggy, brown and stodgy. It looks as if its talents stop at “tasting good.” Wrong, apparently. There are all kinds of dubious peanut butter solutions out there, perhaps sponsored by Sunpat. You can use it as a facemask or to clean leather, we hear. Coat your dog’s pills in it to persuade him to eat them. A little peanut butter heated in a frying pan will stop your house smelling of fish. And start smelling of peanut butter, presumably. But we found one old peanut butter remedy that actually works. This is to remove chewing gum blobs when they get stuck in your hair, your carpet or your clothes. To get gum out of carpet, for instance, scrape up what you can, using an ice cube to stiffen it if necessary. Then rub a small glob of peanut butter into the fibres, and wipe up the whole mess with a cloth. The oil in the peanut butter will dissolve the chewing gum, so don’t use the crunchy variety which contains less oil. To get rid of any left-behind peanut butter, just dab it up with a damp cloth with a little washing up liquid on it. Peanut butter makes a good bait for mouse traps (humane or otherwise). The cheese classic is effective with very sensitive traps, but rats are often clever enough to snatch the cheese and run off to eat it in safety. Peanut butter’s a lot less portable, making the trap a lot more likely to spring.

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

114

sweet fabrications barley massey shows us round her craft shop full of recycled treasures words litty hughes, illus. philip spence, photo diana thompson

Under Barley Massey’s fingers, the most ordinary pieces of rubbish take on new life. Her shop in Hackney, Fabrications, is packed with colourful cushions, rugs and pouffes weaved from discarded clothes and old bike tyres. Barley has showed us how to weave a rosette out of recycled ribbons, so turn over for four of her methods. You can use these to make a lovely rosette out of almost anything. All you’ll need for methods 1, 2 and 3 is a long scrap of fabric or ribbon and a needle and thread, plus anything you want to decorate the rosette with: buttons, lace, sequins and more. You’ll also need a safety pin if you want to attach the rosette. Barley usually use old clothes for the scrap of fabric. For method 4, you’ll also need a rosette loom. You’ll also need a large-eyed needle and some fancy yarn or ribbon to secure the centre. Thanks to Twilleys of Samford. What are you most proud of? I’m really proud of the Forget Me Not service. People bring in clothes and items with sentimental value and I transform them into different items. It’s about remembering lost loved ones. I’ve made cushions

115

116

and quilts. It’s been very therapeutic for people who’ve used the service. How did it start? When I was using anonymous clothing, a lady called Lucy Heath saw my cushions in a magazine and really liked them. So she asked if I would consider using her husband’s clothes. I was really flattered, and it’s gone from there. I always incorporate the sleeves on the back of the cushion. I want people to hold onto them, and keep them close. What I observed with Lucy when she brought the clothes was that she kept the clothes very close, because they embodied her husband. How did you get involved with recycled materials? For thrifty reasons when I started, just because it was readily available and free. I could be quite experimental without worrying about spending lots of money. What was the inspiration for the shop? I was living in Hackney and discovered Broadway Market through the Hidden Art open studios project. The market was very run down, and at that time no-one came down here. That’s how I discovered it, and I thought it was amazing. Even though it was run down, there was something very special about it. I’ve been here a while now, I’m celebrating ten years. In the early days the rent was very cheap, and I managed to buy the shop in 2003. The timing has been good, I’ve always worked with recycled materials and people didn’t necessarily see the worth in that. Recently people are more conscious of recycled products.

117

114

115

116

117

Method one

Method two

1. Cut a circle of fabric using a circular object as a guide.

1. Cut about a metre of ribbon. The width of the ribbon will determine the size of the rosette, and the length the number of ruffles you get.

2. Thread up a needle and knot the thread at the bottom, leaving a 2-inch tail. 3. Sew even stitches in a smaller circle in the middle of the fabric, as illustrated. 4. Un-thread the needle and gently pull the two thread ends. This will gather the fabric circle. Knot the two ends together to keep the shape. 5. Sew the gathered circle onto ribbon or fabric strands and decorate with buttons, sequins or lace. Then sew a safety pin onto the back.

2. Sew even stitches along one edge of the ribbon. Only stitch the middle third of the ribbon, leaving an unstitched third on each end. 3. Un-thread the needle and pull the two thread ends to gather the centre. 4. Knot the threads and stitch rosette strands into place and decorate as before.

114

115

116

Method four For this method you’ll need a loom, which is a circular piece of plastic with pegs to hook the ribbon onto. With a loom, you can make a fancier rosette with far more loops. You can get these from fabric and craft shops, including Fabrications. This one has 16 pegs, so get creative and wind different combinations of fabric strips, ribbon, lace and wool around each peg. When you’re done, decorate the centre with fancy yarn, buttons, sequins. 1. Leave about a six inch tail through the back. Then, wind the ribbon around the first peg and then around the opposite peg to form a figure of 8. 2. Wind around the next peg in the same way until you have gone around the whole loom. You can work clockwise or anti-clockwise. 3. Depending on the thickness of fabric or ribbon, work one, two or three layers around the loom. On the second layer, where to put the next loop can get confusing, so use your thumb as a guide. 4. When you’re finished, push about six inches of ribbon through to the back for the other tail. 5. Before you remove the loom, you need to secure the middle of the rosette. For this, use a fancy yarn or ribbon and a large-eyed needle.

Method three 1. Cut about one metre of ribbon or strip of fabric. Make it longer if you want more ruffles. 2. Sew even stitches from one end to the point where you want the tail to start (usually six inches or so). 3. Follow the instructions from step three in method two. Once gathered, curl the fabric in on itself to create a rose design.

6. Start by pushing the needle through a gap between the loops. Then push the needle through the opposite gap. Repeat this, following the same pattern as you did when looping the ribbon around the pegs, until you’ve sewn through all the loops. Pull the yarn tightly as you go, to create a star design in the middle. 7. Now, get decorating. Sew buttons and sequins through the top layer. 8. Remove the rosette from the loom carefully, lifting each loop off the pegs with the big needle. 9. Secure the back, trim the tails and add a safety pin. Wear your creation with pride.

117

118

how to love a tomato it’s not too late to learn words miriam moser, illustration dani lurie I hated tomatoes when I was a kid. Colorless and odorless, they seemed like the poison from some dated mystery novel, except that they came in a red sphere instead of a powder. And that sphere had a weird, slippery texture. If hell existed, I was sure its folk were dining on tomatoes. All of that changed the summer my mom started a garden. The tomatoes that came out of her garden had flavour! And colour! No more of this ominous tension between existence and non-existence. These were tomatoes with no identity crisis or need for psychotherapy. I started piling them on everything I could—sandwiches, omelettes, breakfast cereal. Still warm from the sun, I’d slice them onto bread with fresh mozzarella and throw them into a pan until it was one wonderful bit of melty, juicy mess. I moved on to hating more grown-up things. Sweet vermouth. Does that noun make you gag? Does it make you think of the mass-pro-

duced vileness that populates most cocktail spreads? Well, perhaps you missed the vermouth renaissance. I was at a bar in Boston that goes by the pithy, imperative of Drink, when my boyfriend asked the bartender about sweet vermouth. It used to be known as Italian vermouth, apparently, and if it was dry it was called French. And artisans are once again turning their attention to this long-neglected accessory. Mr. Bartender whipped out five different kinds and led us on a journey out of the oregano-laden spittle of Martini & Rossi, to the heights of Carpano Antica. I would willingly drink that straight up. Imagine that—I was knocking back sweet vermouth, although I avoid dessert wine like it’s the second coming of Nickelback. Besides, perhaps I just need an epiphany when it comes to Nickelback. All these things that are widespread and awful seem have their roots in something quite fabulous. Perhaps it’s just time to look for the template that started it all. Life’s too short for watery tomato sandwiches and oregano-laced Manhattans. What next? Lard-based soap? Potatoes au gratin? For the record, I don’t think Nickelback has roots in anything good. They’re as rootless as a rotten loose tooth. But did we abandon these things because we have new and improved items or because we hated the cheap, half-assed copies of the originals? I think it’s time to roll up my sleeves and find out.

119

Oh comely, issue two ... will be out on the 29th of July. We’re excited about this one. We talked about it over tea and a fashion shoot with Emmy the Great and we’ve taken some lovely pictures of her in her home. Here’s a preview of some of the photographs.

120

minty fresh a medic braves dental decay, sour powder and a mouthful of leaves words connie han Free to give away: five tubes of toothpaste, slightly squeezed. Email free@ohcomely.co.uk with the subject ‘toothpaste’ for half a year’s supply.

121

Colgate Oxygen £2.12/100ml. Colgate Oxygen—like a breath of fresh air!—is inoffensive, and not too strong-tasting. It’s a pleasant blue colour, just like air is. Or isn’t. Tang factor: Tangy without being overwhelming.

Milk Teeth £2.38/100ml. You wouldn’t credit how long I deliberated over whether to buy Milk Teeth (0–3) or Little Teeth (4–6). In the end I decided that if you’re going to regress, do it properly.

Smells of toothpaste.

Tang factor: Nothing beats the sweet taste of nostalgia, except the sensation of actually having clean teeth.

Awkwardness: 0/10

Smells of youth and innocence.

Conclusion: Not quite a breath of fresh air, but it cleans your teeth.

Awkwardness: 2/10. Only awkward if you don’t usually purchase children’s products. Conclusion: Pleasantly mild and gentle, but only genuinely useful if you’re still on breast milk.

MacCleans 88p/100ml. I always like something that does what it says on the, well, tube, and MacCleans’ name gives it away, really. It’s also the cheapest of the lot at only 88p for 100ml. Tang factor: Leaves you with a lovely long-lasting clean feeling. No aftertaste. Tang-tastic, but not like Haribo. Smells of toothpaste. Awkwardness: 0/10 Conclusion: Cheap as chips, and at least twice as good for your teeth.

Green tea 96p/100g. Chairman Mao, apparently, used to clean his teeth with green tea, decrying toothpaste as western decadence of the worst type. Is there anything more petit bourgeois than having a clean mouth? Chew on that one. Tang factor: Zero tang, but soothing heat. I didn’t feel like I’d really cleaned my mouth, though, more had a refreshing cuppa. Smells of Confucius.

Enamel Care £3.12/100ml. This has Liquid Calcium and Dental Grade Baking Soda, and comes with a picture of an arm wielding a hammer with undeniable menace. If cavities were the corruption endemic in CIA-backed puppet dictatorships, Enamel Care would be Guevara on a bike. Clean me, you political analogy!

Awkwardness: 0/10, until your teeth begin to rot and you still haven’t become dictator of China, at which point it’s more like 2000000000/10. Conclusion: Don’t pitch this to your dentist.

Tang factor: A blue and white paste promises tang, but delivers a curious sourness. Good minty aftertaste. Smells of, yup, still toothpaste. Awkwardness: 0/10 Conclusion: More boring than its packaging suggests.

AloeDent £3.49/100ml. This toothpaste contains aloe vera, CO-Q10, tea tree oil, chitosan, silica, horse chestnut (really? the whole tree?), peppermint, menthol, and also world peace in a tube.

Herbs £1.70/100g. ‘The secret to a clean mouth lies in your garden’—Confucius*. I stopped short of chewing a small twig (suggested by a kind soul on the internet) but parsley, coriander, or mint sounded more palatable. I couldn’t decide, so I bought all three. Tang factor: Surprisingly un tang-a-licious, and leaves tiny mushed-up green bits all over your teeth. I’m probably another victim of social conditioning, but I can’t help wondering how cleansing this actually is.

Tang factor: No tang, but that is because tang is for people who aren’t dedicated to wearing hemp and weaving their own houses.

Baking powder 37p/100g. Actually the done thing is bicarb, with a rough textured cloth, but in the spirit of scientific enquiry I settled for baking powder, which has more ingredients and therefore must be better.

Smells of worthiness.

Tang factor: Sour, sour anti-tang.

Awkwardness: 4/10. Less if you wear tie-dye.

Smells of sour, sour anti-clean.

Awkwardness: 15/10. For such a basic concept, herbs are rife with awkwardness. How much to use? How long to chew? And most importantly: spit or swallow?

Awkwardness: 6/10. ‘Oh, are you baking something?’ ‘No, I’m just going to clean my teeth.’ Long, long pause.

Conclusion: Interesting, but only really useful if you are a lamb tagine, or other delightful Turkish dish.

Conclusion: ‘Toothpaste?’ There’s a reason it’s next to the castor sugar.

*Not really, but it sounds just like the kind of thing he would say.

Conclusion: If it sways you either way, the people who like David Icke’s message board—“exposing the dreamworld we believe to be real”—think this kind of thing is great.

Smells of warm vegetation.

122

To get to the other side. Why did the chicken cross the road?

Oh look, a flow chart! Already dying inside.

psychic You have a great affinity with the concept of “crossing over” and “the other side,” but a lesser affinity with science. You also enjoy having all the answers, especially if they’re uber-glib.

ek ing Constantly se e me. lik , n io at innov

Goody!

yo u, Cu r s e r y r l i te a n . nsio p re t e

Just remember, though, that death is the ultimate punchline.

I say mole, you say:

... undercover agent.

The unbearable lightness of being?

channel 4 docu

... unit of measurement.

... tiny mammal.

Curse you, gravity.

Not enough adjectives, adverbs, or descriptions of food.

mentary mak er The real world just isn’t excitin g enough for you. You think of yourself as a very serious type, though un fortunately du e to your shor t attention span you are unable to determine exac tly what it is you’re very se rious about. Th job will allow yo is u to finally unco ver the huge conspiracy that ’s currently keep ing you in your under-achievin g position at yo ur desk . Just mak e sure to in clude some sc enes in sepia.

Wearing a tiny hat, breeches, and a tweed waistcoat?

How droll and delightful!

Slightly repulsed.

astronaut You have a child-like sense of wonder about the universe, a droll sense of humour, and you do not know fear when confronted with a flowchar t.* You yearn for a job which will take you far beyond the confines of your desk, your dreams, and the ionosphere. Just don’t forget to breathe. *Possibly—either that or you know what a mole is. Either way, GCSE chemistr y salutes you.

words connie han, illustration steph baxter

childre

n’s auth or You hav e a child-l wo n d e r ike se a equally bout the unive nse of child-lik rse, and e grasp a style, an of litera n d basic ture, standard You fee s of l th place th e world is a to taste. o -harsh at need up with s some c to be pepped heery d tiny furr rawin y ma or at lea mmals in twe gs of e outfit st three s of jelly and fou different k ind , s r differe ice crea n t m. k in to indu This job will all ds of lge you ow yo u r fa receivin n g ex tern tasies while a Live the l validation. dream!

zookeeper You are a pragmatic, sensible and caring sort, a sort of Supernanny to the wee beasties. Cultivate a broad Scotch accent and keep worms in your pockets—you will soon become irresistible to small children. Like the astronaut, you yearn for an unconfined life. Unlike the astronaut, you have your feet firmly on the ground, with the slugs and the centipedes.

Now you can buy all your favourite Young & Lost Club releases directly from the online shop and keep up with all the latest news and events at www.youngandlostclub.com *Don't forget to check out the new Y&L Digital Club feature and download your free exclusive or hard to find mp3 track from a Y&L band every fortnight*

Planet Earth Falling Into Love

Lunar Youth Misfits

Swanton Bombs Doom

Sunderbans We Only Can Because We Care

ltd edition 7” single - out now

Other releases still available

ltd edition 7” single - out now Lord Auch To The Shithouse EP Ou Est Le Swimming Pool Dance The Way I Feel Alan Pownall Clara Magic Wands Magic, Love and Dreams EP Oh Minnows Might EP

ltd edition 7” single - out now

Cheatahs Warrior Lord Auch The Dig Inn Semifinalists Odd Situation Loverman Human Nurture Noah and the Whale 2 Bodies 1 Heart

The Virgins One Week of Danger Johnny Flynn Ode To A Mare Trod Ditch Friends Of The Bride Buckle Up, Sunshine! Johnny Flynn The Epic Tale of Tom & Sue Bombay Bicycle Club Morning / Evening

Fear Of Flying Three’s a Crowd Lets Bitter Cinema Take This Act Down Fear Of Flying Routmaster New Moscow C’mon Up Cazals Comfortable Silence

124

Rachel Clare Price is an illustrator and designer from the north east of England. When she isn’t drawing, scribbling, painting or printing, she can often be found listening to music, drinking tea, looking at beautiful books or frolicking in the countryside. Rachel’s illustration work reflects the ethereal and the organic. Dividing her time between art and design, her work often is inspired by fashion, music, photography, nature and folklore—creating images of energy, colour and escapism. Rachel’s illustrated the oh comely website and some of our features with her lovely drawings. You can see more of her work at www.itslikeart.net.

Dani Lurie lives in London, having moved there from Perth, Western Australia, in the summer of 2006. She doesn’t like the cold but enjoys EastEnders. She is one third of a set of triplets—her sister is a doctor and her brother is a rocket scientist. Seriously. She has been writing and drawing since the day she could hold a pen. With an English degree already under her belt, she now studies graphic design at an art school that was once referenced in a Pulp song. She is infatuated with storytelling, illustration, design, film, comics, photography and music, and is currently attempting to teach herself basic quantum theory (slowly). Dani lives in a ramshackle house in East London with five house mates and a hamster named Professor Apocalypse. More about her at www.danilurie.com.

Amica Lane is an art editor, a feminist critic, freelance relationship advisor (ha!) and semi-professional gogo dancer. Her career began with an unfortunate stint in finance that lead to a witch trial and her running away to the Moulin Rouge for a short time. Then, after tearing a knee ligament while launching herself onto a beanbag at an unfortunate angle, she decided she wanted to pursue writing full time. She has recently won a playwriting residency for young writers at the Royal Court Theatre. She has also worked with the Curzon, PYMCA and as the arts editor for Amelia’s Magazine. She is mostly driven by revenge. On the patriarchal system and ex-boyfriends everywhere. She also idolises Emmy the Great in ways that no mortal can understand. You can visit her at amicalane.com.

125

Jane Flett is forever flitting between Edinburgh and New York City, trying to trick the universe into letting her get away with it. When she’s not writing or dancing really, really well, Jane runs an underground music venue in Edinburgh. She has read to acclaim and whooping in Berlin, Cambridge, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and Shakespeare and Co. and was recently awarded the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Once described as a “seamstress of many fetching stories,” Jane is currently working on a collection of urban fairytales that exist somewhere between the glitter and the gutter. Her writing has been published in Neon Magazine and in Shortprint by Forest Publications. She’s a philosopher and a cellist and also works in a pub. Read her writing at wordsthatloiter.blogspot.com.

Rosanna Durham lives in London where she cycles the mean streets on an old bike. She’s hoping for her own allotment but has been on the local waiting list for the past four years and counting. A longterm fan of the baked potato, Rosanna recently discovered a new passion for performance and vegetables when she joined Borscht: The Russian Vegetable Theatre. Forever on the hunt for fellow Scrabble players, she loves anything even a little bit arty. She’s an occasional artist and a trained art historian with a part-time obsession with small museums in large cities. Psychoanalysis is her pursuit and you’ll easily catch her reading Jung. Given half a chance, she’d escape the city to live beside the sea, going for long walks wearing Dr. Martens and impractical velvet capes.

126

127