Scary Spice

I quite liked working at the Bricklayer's Arms pub in Shoreditch, back when Shoreditch was a nice place. One quiet week day afternoon Patrick, who was a recording engineer at the Strongroom Studios round the corner down the road, arrived with some girls who, he said, were destined to be famous.

The one who approached the bar refused to sign a beer mat but gave me a kiss on the cheek instead. I found out months later that Scary Spice had kissed me. I’m still not sure which one is which. They did that song ‘Spice Up Your Life,’ didn’t they? I like that song and sometimes I sing it to my cat, although I have to make up some the words.

The Noise Of Public Spaces

Twice in my life I've been exposed to the recorded noise of a public space for hours on end.

I worked throughout 2003 as a technician at the commercial art gallery 'The Lisson,' where Lisa held a good job and where I should not have been at all, me being such a philistine when it comes to conceptual art.

At one time I was overseeing a video installation by Francis Alys and watched over, every day for three weeks, a single shot film of the Zocola square in Mexico City, filmed in real time, from the vantage point of a high building overlooking it. So every day I'd see the shadow of the huge flag pole in the centre of the square slowly draw its arc, and the people enjoying the shade that it offered shifting along with it. Ten hours a day for a month. The soundtrack of people shouting, the noise of the traffic, the kazoo-like instrument that would be played every now and then, drove me a bit loopy. I could hear it in my head for months afterwards.

In the summer of 2009 I became addicted to Anthony Gormley's 'One And Another' piece. I'd watch it streaming on my second monitor day and night. Different ordinary people doing their thing for an hour each on top of Trafalgar Square's empty plinth, day and night for months, the ambiance of Trafalgar Square constantly in my head. I just couldn't stop having it playing.

One day in late August, the day after her birthday actually, Consuelo and I went to visit the fourth plinth. In those days I was a complete recluse, rarely leaving the house, let alone my neighbourhood, so I surprised myself when I went along to the Tate modern and then to Trafalgar Square. I'd explain why I became so reluctant to leave the house at some point but it's a boring story that's quite involved so I shall leave it for some other time. Unfortunately it's only now that Consuelo has gone that I am starting to go out more and more. We could have had such a nice time! She was always trying to persuade me to go out but I just couldn't face it and now it's all I want to do!

We'd also ventured out the day before the visit to the gallery and the plinth, on her birthday to collect an amazing cake, and I think she thought it was the beginning of something new. But it wasn't. And it was all, my reclusiveness, because of that terrible awful pill that the doctor gave me!


Anyway, although the woman on top of the plinth was boring. Just giggling and taking photographs, it was lovely to be there. I just replayed it on their archive and we can be seen for a few seconds looking up at the boring lady.

Now I have to visit the Zocola Square in Mexico City. That would be something.

My Dad's Odd Coincidence

The oddest thing happened to Brian, my father, in the mid thousands when he was viewing a house in Spain. He'd decided already that it was in too remote a location but the price struck him as being very reasonable so he kept his appointment to be shown around the place all the same. The walls had been decorated by the Dutch man who owned the place with old photos that had been bought in junk shops. And there, at the top of the stairs, was a school photograph. He was, at the age of twelve, standing in the second row. From a local junk shop antique photographs had been bought with which to decorate the house, and among them was a school photograph of the assembled pupils from a certain Birmingham Grammar school in 1951.

Sellotape

Mat and I had a great idea in October 2002, well, it was Mat's actually, he's full of ideas. I took photographs of him after wrapping his head in sellotape.

One Of The Saddest Sights I've Ever Seen

I was driving from my boring home town of Huntingdon to the village of Brampton. The distance between these places is two or three miles and I was about half way between them when the procession of cars came to a near standstill. In time I saw that the delay was caused by a man in a power wheelchair, pottering along at a couple of miles an hour, right in he middle of the road. Miles from anywhere you couldn't help but think that he was going through some sort of crisis, and I evidently wasn't the only one who reached this conclusion, every fourth or fifth driver would slow as they overtook, lean over to wind down the window and, I suppose, ask him if everything was all right, although he didn't seem to be responding.

When my turn eventually came to overtake him I saw, to my horror, that he stared fixedly ahead, teeth clenched, his free hand clasped into a fist and with tears streaming down his face. It was a truly sad sight.

A Telephone Ringing

One day when I was seventeen years old, shortly after Howard and I had started going out to pubs and parties together, the beginning of what was to be a strong friendship, we were walking home through the streets of a nearby village, Godmanchester, from some party or other as dawn was breaking. At the end of the empty street was an empty telephone box whose telephone began to ring.

I answered it and it was a friend who had dialled a wrong number. Sadly, today, neither Howard nor I can remember exactly who it was although I do remember that it was a girl who was romantically involved with one or other of us.

Incredible Coincidence

Matthew/Simon has had many different musical projects, he’s very talented. One was, and I’m not so good at categorising music, a club/electro/pop thing which he had Lisa sing on. To be honest, it wasn’t my favourite of all of his creations. He had written a couple of songs, ‘Body Heat’ being the title of one, and wanted to shoot some promotional pictures. I can't remember who the photographer was.

He had found a great location for the shoot with Limehouse Town Hall. It was semi derelict, being used as studio space for artists, and had an amazing sense of faded austerity. The whole building was deserted except for us and Rory, with whom Matt/Simon had made the arrangements in order to use the place and who, today, is a successful conceptual artist. We stood chatting for a while in a huge central hall surrounded by manikins that were in the process of becoming someone’s installation before Simon/Matt and Lisa got to work. I looked on as the band were tied up with rope, back to back, sitting on wooden chairs, at the foot of a sweeping staircase, complete with masking tape over their mouths perhaps (or this might be my imagination at work) to evoke a story line of kidnap.

The following year the band that I played guitar in, and do mostly all of the organisation for, The Projects, had to find a space in which to record our first LP. Amanda from the band Saloon had a portable mixing desk and her and Adam were to do the production once we had found a location. I thought of Limehouse Town Hall, I got Rory’s telephone number from Matthew/Simon and ended up leaving a message on an answerphone. He got back to me a week later, saying that it wouldn’t be appropriate.

In the end we used a rehearsal studio in New Cross that had once been a public library. The building was beautiful, sun streaming into the main room, making the wood panelling and wood inlay that adorned the place glow. The recording took a week, and throughout that week there was a heat wave and it was incredibly hot in the rehearsal rooms. We would have fans running constantly, switch them off for a take and then all be waiting for the recording to be complete in order to switch them back on again as quickly as possible. Just sitting in there forced you to drip with sweat.

It sounded great though I think, Amanda and Adam did a great job and we had the record mixed by Matthew/Simon.

In Spring 2004, the year following our recording and two years after Matt/Simon and Lisa’s photoshoot, I was walking home, crossing Aldgate triangle. A girl stopped me and gave me a flyer, it looked interesting, it was for an online art project, so I took it home. Months and months later I stumbled across it in my coat pocket, I was sitting at my computer so I entered the address written on the paper and was taken to a page with hundreds of tiny, clickable numbers on it, arranged in a square. It took me a few seconds to work out what was going on when I clicked on one of those numbers. From the speakers came, after the sound of an answer phone beep, my own voice saying ‘Hi Rory,’ explaining that I played in a band, that we needed a space to record in and that the town hall would be ideal. Goodness! Of all of the numbers, of all the messages I could have clicked on..