Gratuitous cat picture

Maurice guards a vast porcini harvest from this summer. Is that a handle-bar moustache?

I'm liking Ireland

It kind of makes you ask what went wrong with Scotland (where I was brought up). Or even England, except I can’t speak for the rest of the country from my willing encarceration in the theme-park of the Lake District.
In small-town Ireland there are highstreets full of independent shops - though this one in Clifden does have the oddest strawberries I have ever seen (the Body Shop is relegated to a small stand in a local pharmacy). Even very small towns like Ennis in County Clare, where the conference we’re at is, seem to still support bookshops of three varieties (charity, cheap and cheerful, and academic); diverse eateries serving everything from smoothies to Irish stew; real toy shops (I mean, I haven’t seen one of those since the 1970’s - I don’t count motorway-side Toys R Us) and numerous small butchers (enticingly called victuallers here). Ireland seems to be full of people of all nationalities living, working and studying, and not just in the cities.

Yes there are pubs and tat-shops aimed at tourists, too much Enya-esque flowing 'n fringed clothing on sale, and so much Celtic font-use in the signage you can at times feel like you have entered a Tolkien theme-park. But somehow the feeling of towns inhabited by and run for the benefit of busy locals remains. A bit like provincial France maybe, the visitor is welcomed but not pandered to.

Ireland has so many pale people like me that the clothes boutiques accomodate this by stocking flattering colours for the milky-skinned. The ubiquitous white trash fake tan of most of the UK isn’t present here except in Dublin – as in Japan where I was earlier this year – being pale doesn’t imply a shameful lack of disposable income. Speaking of disposable income I’ve been particularly struck by the massive new homes that line the busy roads connecting Ireland’s towns. At first these Gracelands-like gin palaces horrified me with their bald, curtain-less splendour, windows gleaming out onto freshly-laid roadside lawns the size of football pitches. Stone and stucco detailing, triple garages and porticos combine in infinite variations but – interestingly - always excluding any reference to modernism. However after a few days of awe I’m starting to find them rather cool – especially as they even extend into areas of true wilderness, with rock, gorse and sky reflected in their double height UPC windows.

Oh, (and I'm sure I can hear howls of derision from RSPCA affilated readers), and I rather liked that Ireland still has stray cats, not loads (a la Greque) but just a few picturesque and very healthy-looking ones. The bordering on the bizarre fanaticism of UK cat charities for neutering has eliminated these even in the countryside in England ...

Random acts of kindness

We have just returned from three weeks shooting our latest film,'Living with the Tudors' in rural Suffolk. It's been an epic experience, and though the shoot is over I will for some time remain in the peculiar aftermath of intense documentary filming - a state of heightened sensibility to, and awe of - human experience and survival. Despite the almost complete exhaustion of my emotional resources, as I watch people at the train station or eating lunch, I am scrutinising them for the tiniest perceptible scars of their life stories - perhaps an awkward gait, a shrill laugh or a hesitant look.
Reminding me of the day after I lost my virginity, I expect everyone else to detect this seismic shift in my sensibilities in my external appearance. Of course, they don't. In the supermarket, people examine the produce as usual, perhaps seeing me in their peripheral vision as just another tired-looking shopper.
One particular encounter reminds me of what can happen in this state of mind:
On the way home from shooting our first film Bata-ville I remained in the retro travel hostess uniform I wore throughout the film as I had no time to change. Arriving very late at Oxenholme Lake District train station, it was dark, windswept and raining heavily. I had practically slipped into a coma en route I had been so tired, and now I had to drive the next hour home myself. I was feeling unsociable and introspective. Then, I saw a young black woman with a large suitcase looking hesitantly at the empty taxi rank, and I felt utterly compelled to ask her if I could help. She seemed unphased by my appearance or my cluttered car and I offered her a lift to the nearby town Windermere, where she had a job in a care home. It was only as we reached the town's main road she admitted she did not have the address written down, or any idea where the building was. Once more, going utterly against what would have been my habitually irritable response to this spiral of chaos, I felt simply sorry for this woman and we continued to drive through deserted streets for another hour until the vast Victorian pile loomed into view. On offloading her case, my passenger reached into her handbag and asked how much she owed me for the lift. I explained that really I had been going her way anyway.
Today, rushing to buy some food at the supermarket, I impatiently freed up my trolley with a pound coin and noticed in the corner of my eye a very stooped old lady in the next row of trolleys. She was being very discreet, but she was clearly utterly baffled by how the coin system worked. I watched her struggling patiently and proudly for a little while, as other shoppers wrenched away neighbouring trolleys. Then - of course - I went and helped her.

My fledglings have left the nest

I recently left academia after a decade in part-time fine art lecturing. Like many life-long art lecturers slash artists who use their teaching to pay the bills, I had thought at best I'd last seven and was surprised to make it past this itch.

In fact I changed jobs after seven years, and left UCE Birmingham to work closer to home at St Martin's College (SMC) in Lancaster. The move was a wrench - I had made great friends at UCE, had - in some ways - grown up there. But in the last few years, a number of colleagues had died prematurely, after long illnesses, and in some ways the time felt right to move on. My new job promised a new course, built to the specifications that myself and another newly appointed colleague then spent several years crafting. There were many good times earlier on, and I learnt - at first anyway - to work a comfortable 8 hour day instead of UCE's unusual 11 hour one.

On my interview day, I toured the archaic and empty Apple Mac Suite and viewed the grimey Uglow-esque paintings in the Art studios with a band of fellow interviewees (one of whom described the job as a 'poisoned chalice' I recall). I wondered if there were any young people even on the course, it all seemed to careful and polite. But I really liked the staff I met, and I was excited about moving away from the safe haven of UCE and its largely middle-class intake. I remember now how long I took to accept the post when I was offered it - something in me knew I was in for a steep uphill climb. To cut a very long and arduous story short, the institution - very sadly - proved to be as backward as it had first appeared. Tens of thousands of pounds were wasted by the college fulfilling half our list of IT prerequisites, which would not function without the other half. The one half languished inoperative in cupboards and my angry and unreplied to emails built up.

Our course was finally aborted at a very late stage, with very little warning and no debriefing from management. I was disgusted, and no matter how fond I was of my colleagues by then, and how much good I felt sure I was doing the students, I could not remain working for management I had so little respect for. It's a very ordinary tale in academia....



Fast-forward then, till Friday night, when a small, diverse group of my favourite ex-students (I can say that now I'm not their lecturer any more!) hold a show 'The 9lb project' in the College gallery which I had helped design as part of my job at SMC. They had had the gumption to turnaround their usually lacklustre work placement module and organise the first real gallery show SMC had had outside of degree show every June. As I drove there, I had the usual mixed expectations of a student show. And I still was feeling considerable guilt for leaving them - as I saw it - at the mercy of a largely unsympathetic (or maybe uncomprehending) course team. I knew I had probably been the only lecturer who had really pushed their buttons, and that I had left them now. This probably sounds like I'm taking it all to seriously, but hey - this is how it goes in the post-partum mind.

These students were an almost crazily diverse group, but they'd put on - with our very committed technician Stephen Bentley as their institutional support - an incredibly fresh exhibition of energetic, articulate work. I loved it. It wasn't the best-installed show on earth, but I was just thrilled to see a decent turnout of young gallery-goers, some fine skate-boarding, some Paul McCarthy-seque gutsy performance (see image) and no politeness on the walls. It was as if finally some young artists had entered the building. Predictably there were no senior SMC staff in attendance (in some way just as well seeing as how hazardous the pissed skateboarding was getting) but I'm certain the exhibitors didn't give a shit. They all seemed elated, and I remembered how exciting shows are when you start out. I even remember Nina throwing up regularly before them - that's how exciting they were.

As I was getting ready to leave some of my former students began to lament my departure. One of the exhibitors challenged me "You said in drawing class you'd be really impressed if someone did a full-length self portrait - I did! You said you'd be impressed if someone did a bit of performance - tonight I did! What's you're next challenge !? - Bring it on!!!"
I sped home on the M6, the route suffused by warm early summer light and skipping through my iPod. I realised that for the first time in a long time I felt good about what I had left, and certain that they'd all be absolutely fine without me.

Paid to smile

I just enjoyed a pre-Easter minibreak in North Yorkshire, mainly to relieve the inevitable pressure valve of impending Easter in the Lake District, which is an endurance test of tourists driving, picnicking in your garden and allowing their dogs to chase your cats. I used my favourite guidebook to choose ur destination: Alistair Sawday, which Nina and I somehow discovered a few years ago when R & D-ing our Almanac project. It provided us with a series of characterful B & B's owned by characterful people who didn't - like us, but unlike the Tourist Board - overrate ensuite bathroom, central heating, or proximity to local attractions.
Alistair S once again led us to an appealling eccentric venue, in a little fishing village 'much beloved by artists' (I did like it, it's true) weirdly close to Middlesborough (no postcards available of that sadly) - a restaurant with rooms, famed for seafood. The room was nice - ensuite bath not shower (I approve) with rather odd but compelling view of sheer cliff face with gulls /wallflowers, and a cupboard full of DVDs to compensate for the crap TV reception. The energetic cook and co- owner sprinted up the stairs ahead of us, just the right side of warm and informal - a very hard thing to get right in the 'hospitality trade'. Then, downstairs he introduced us to his partner, who was pouring another guest a lovely looking Kir Royale.
She looked up fleetingly, and flashed a momentary and utterly superficial grin before returning to her evening of service. Now, as a 'directors wife' I recognise the ennui of the bored hostess more easily than most - it happens to us all at one time or another that you find yourself bored to death by somebody important to your partners work. Luckily Grizedale Arts generally delivers a gripping guest - Ken Russell for example - so this is rare. Nevertheless, this woman was clearly suffering from the syndrome badly. At dinner, she made sure to book us in to a strict 15 minute breakfast slot that rather belied the image of a 'relaxed getaway'.
Later that evening Mrs Happy described to some 'regulars' - well within earshot of us - her and her chef / host husband's recent 2 week break in California. "Hmmm, nice, but it was the first holiday we'd had since we started this place in 2003...". The regulars sympathised quietly, not quite sure what she was trying to say.
I felt sorry for her, but then I remembered we were paying them 200 quid. She was paid to smile and had somehow forgotten how to make this at least look sincere.
(Music reference in title for pop-pickers: The Lemonheads)

Looks familiar

I have recently left academia after a decade (the reasoning perhaps being a subject of a future blog entry...), and taken a freelance job leading Grizedale Arts 'Creative Egremont' programme - a year long public art project in the largely-unknown West Cumbrian town of Egremont, which sits cheek-by-jowl with Sellafield Nuclear Power Station.
My drive to the town takes me out of the condensed hyper-landscape of the Lake District across a spectacular stretch of moorland near Broughton (pictured). I'm told that at certain times of the day this empty road is filled with boy-racers escaping from their shifts at Sellafield, though I haven't yet experienced this.
What struck me when I first took this route was its familiarity. At first I put this down to its resemblance to my homeland Scotland, and also to the post-academic euphoria of the open road. Now, however, I have become convinced that this sinewy road and its 360 degree panorama is in fact the backdrop for the countless car commercials that bombard us from billboards (ok, not here in the National Park where such hordings are absolutely verboten...), sunday supplements and TV.
Is there no escaping the iconic landscape in this part of the world?

I love America and America loves me

(For non-art readers please Google ‘Beuys, Joseph’ right now)
I don’t think I saw so much as a plain old hound dog let alone a cayote on my recent trip to the ‘alternative’ bit of Texas – Austin - to screen our film ‘Bata-ville’ for the first time on US shores.
The Austin creatures I encountered in the ubercool SXSW Festival were altogether more exotic and strange to my eyes: Grown women screaming ‘Neat shoes!’ at me without alcohol or irony; a bronzed expat Johnny-Lydon-esque cockney guitarist jamming in a thrift store; people so large and immobile that when stationary they could be mistaken for one of those inflatable armchairs.
Film festivals: Tedious though it is to have to summarise one’s film to 75 different people a night, this is pleasingly facilitated by being whisked smoothly through 3 margarita-filled parties a night by friendly, interested and interesting strangers. I don’t get to party much up my mountain, so I like to take big bites of this kind of thing when I can.
During SXSW (music, film & interactive) the city becomes an international but compact circuit for bands, film-makers and geeks – ideal for the time-starved and jet-lagged, the programmes are stimulating but not epic so long as you know what you like. The atmosphere is like a much cooler (but warmer if you know what I mean) Edinburgh Festival for the young(ish) and hip – laidback, a little flirty, and (speaking about the films anyway) eccentric.....

Like many Britons I am ambivalent about America and Americans, though until last week I had never ventured further than New York City (which sees itself as a fashionable suburb of a farflung European city). It takes around 2 days to acclimatise to the relentless friendliness and (we’re more alike than we think) inability to give a straight answer. (I lost count of the times I heard ‘Well ma’am, I cannot give you a precise answer to your query at this time, however....’ instead of “I don’t know”).
And it’s hard to trust a nation whose addiction to fast food compromises almost every waking experience – even arthouse cinemas are filled with a rustling, snacking mob.
And yet there is so much to delight in – at least in Austin: sequins and neon gleefully adorn most stores as if a 7 year old girl has been given the shopfitting contract; potplant cacti growing as rampant and wild on wasteground as foxgloves do here; the literally countless re-interpretations (read ‘refoldings’) of the burrito; the dusk pet-shop cacophony of the vast flocks of grackle birds (spelling?!) roosting in the trees and competing with the live bands everywhere,

Ethno/erotophile

Courtesy of my younger brother’s merciful replenishment of my iPod I have belatedly discovered the Scottish band Arab Strap. They’d previously only been known to me via occasional John Peel mentions and when at a film-making masterclass recently the director Richard Jobson said he’d made a music video for them. (Lucky sod, I say).
I don’t know anything about the band but I’m loving the tracks from The Last Romance album. Come Round and Love Me had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, which is beyond rare for a cynic like me. The plain instrumentation and mundane eroticism of the lyric intertwine – like a lot of good music - to remind me of a past I don’t know I was nostalgic for: lie-ins in student flats, hangovers and aimless lust.
I am a Scot who has been an expat for 15 years, and perhaps most startling for me is the (re?) discovery of the eroticism of the Scottish male voice in Arab Strap. It’s well over a decade since I had anything erotic to do with a Scotsman, and I’m pretty sure that over that decade I wasn’t conscious of the accent’s specific allure. But something weirdly bubbles up in my subconscious when I listen to this album: I’m sure a psychoanalyst would have a field day on where this is coming from – dad, brothers, my first boyfriend, teacher/s – all vying for space in my ever more crowded psyche.
I’ll eagerly await the invitation to make Arab Strap’ next video and get some of this out....

Radical horticulture

Notable by its absence to date from this blog is my fanatical obsession with gardening, given full reign since my move to the middle of nowhere four years ago from Peckham, where I endured a tiny patch dominated by overzealous plum trees and the neighbour's rottweillers.
To be fair, my garden has its own website, that's how big it is - at www.lawsonpark.org.uk - which I try to maintain in the same relaxed way as the garden itself (a duff link = a dandelion in a corner in this analogy).
Anyway, back to the point - I am truly saddened by the death recently of Christopher Lloyd, arguably Britain's most influential gardener of the 20th century. He lived a privileged bachelor life in his folks' place, Great Dixter in Sussex, and dedicated himself and his resources to his colourful, inspired, exprimental garden there. I was lucky enough to visit last summer, and though many of his gleeful planting experiments can't be replicated up my cold mountain, it was an inspiring day, despite the crowds.



I was particularly struck by his 'still lifes' of potted, clashing plants of both refined and mongrel origins, dotted about (see top image) - and reminded of the work of the noted and IMHO much under-rated (move over Grayson, please) ceramicist Richard Slee. Both men share a mischievious and knowing disregard and manipulation of taste and cliche in their oeuvre. From Richard's fabulous website at www.richardslee.com I have borrowed these pics to hopefully prove my point.

With very different artistic vocabularies, both cock a snook at the bourgois sensibilities of the art or garden-lover, who at first glance sees a covetable 'ornament' and (hopefully) at second glance, a complex codefied challenge.



A highlight of any Dixter visit is the house tour, a not because of the artefacts within the impressive and ancient building (as I understand, transported there bit by bit by Christopher's father). Ours was led by the most entertaining guide never to work for a publicly-funded organisation. A Joyce-Grenfell-a-like, willowy, and oddly ageless lady lead the way with the most hilarious and laconic monologue throughout, interspersed with the kind of almost supernatural authority and understatement that English spinsters were once famed and feared for. Whilst facing the opposite way and commentating on a medieval window, her speech would fluidly transform into a brief but severe reprimant to the a naughty 9 yr old who at that very point was leaning on a rare and valuable antique chair behind her. When faced with explaining some particularly wacky contemporary furniture in CL's office, a deep - and deeply disapproving yet oddly warm sigh preceded her "Christopher Lloyd has been shopping AGAIN..."

LLoyd's prolific writing is justly esteemed too, and I particularly enjoyed it when I was writing for a shortlived garden magazine ' The Northern Garden' a few years ago. Pithy and erudite yet always amusing, I particularly enjoyed reading of his ambivalence to the 'paying public' in his garden. Apparently, when on all fours weeding on an open day (his was a high-maintenance garden, low-maintenance according to him being for the 'uninterested') inevitably a visitor would ask the name of a particular plant. Without turning round or looking up his response would be to ask if the enquirer had a pen and paper ready. "But I'll remember it!' the poor visitor would persist "No, you won't, so it's simply a waste of both of our time me telling you!"
My kind of guy.

Would the Cumbrian film-makers at the back please stand up

Happy New Year to you. I have a good feeling about 2006, my first venture way from home since festive hibernation having been surprisingly good:

Pulling up at the venue for the Cumbrian Film-maker's Network inaugeral 2006 screening, my heart sank somewhat. The bar, a dim 'aluminium-chairs-blond-wood' type of place, had stopped doing food at 6pm due to lack of customers, and we were forced back into Kendal's hellish one-way system to find fish and chips.
However, on returning later with my DVD of my short film 'Welcome To' there was a pretty good crowd, though I was surprised to see mainly the over-50s, many blokes, and very few of what you might guess were filmmakers wanting to network....Jo Hutton, the organiser, is an enterprising young woman who hosts the event too.
Debate was modest but the atmosphere warm, and I squeezed in the trailer for 'Bata-ville' and plugged its next screening at the local-ish Keswick Film Festival (Feb. 19th FYI).
Along with my film there were a number of others procured on the whole through the local screen agency North West Vision. They were kind of slick but not my thing at all. Most of my attention was spent noting the funders logos at the end for future reference.

The highlight was Edward Acland, a local ex-councilor, 'creative soul' (his words) and eco-zealot who had done an exhibition at the Brewery Arts Centre in 2004. The show ("It was an enormous project, it took over a week!" he said. i didn't want to tell him how long most of my projects take...) included a short autobiographical film which was both elegiac and a call to arms against the impending global envornmental crisis. A guy from the world of corporate video had produced the film, which was technically very competent but formally very pedestrian. What made the film so compelling was the charisma and succinctness of Acland's narration, as he told how he had abandoned his dayjob at the Council and now acknowledged the impossibility of radical green politics ever reaching 'the establishment'. Miraculously un-bitter anyway, he spoke passionately about his concerns for the planet's future, in a seductive language which was tinged with the more predictable hippy-dom but which also was energised with an impatience to find new ways to influence people's behavior and awareness of green issues.

Many of my friends would be surprised to hear that I have been a member of Greenpeace since I was 15. I don't wear that side of myself on my sleeve despite my passion for horticulture and early consumption of organic foods (seeking them out when at art college, you had to buy a bag of what was mostly mud from a dingy shop staffed by some very strange people). Naturally, since moving to the middle of nowhere, the dynamic of nature has gradually taken on more significance for me, as I connect again to my childhood weekends and holidays romping on the Arran hillsides until dusk. In many ways I find the culture of the Lake District largely stagnant / static, and so my theory is that this makes you finely attuned to the very dynamic natural world, and by extension more committed to its sustainance. (Note, I don't say 'protection' a la Lake District National Park Authority).
And so I am always delighted and suprised to find people here like Edward, who manage to actually apply what many would deem hopeless idealism to his life and work - maybe this in turn produces culture?