Kate was studying in Italy when her dad called, he’d like to see her, it was high time she made the trip home to see her old man. She’d not been feeling well and when she arrived in London her dad sent her to see his doctor. He diagnosed an underactive thyroid. He also told her that her father had 6 months to live. John died soon after at the age of 52. Kate’s mother Anthea continued to wear her wedding ring. John had given it to her in 1966, made in Hatton Gardens from an old brooch of his grandmothers. 20 years later Anthea was on the train home when she looked down to see that the diamond was missing. She searched up and down the carriages. She’d promised the ring to Kate. Years before she’d given Emma, Kate’s sister, a bracelet to remember her father by. The diamond was eventually found, nestled in the bottom of Anthea’s bag. She immediately gave it to Kate who had it re-set, the new ring bears the initials of her father John Wilson.
30 Jun 2013
Suzuko was born in 1907 in Nagoya, the crucible of Japanese industrialisation. It was an affluent life but one hard earned by her father. Her mother, by contrast, was mildly decadent. She appeared to breath through an elegant long pipe, conveniently the family’s business was tobacco. Suzuko’s voracious appetite for books confused her mother. The bedroom light would be on into the early hours. Even before Suzuko was a teen, a boy’s aggressive curiosity over what she was reading proved seminal. His family couldn’t afford to educate him. Suzuko became a teacher, she bought herself a ring, a marker of her hard work and independence. Two decades later the ring was confiscated in the wake of Japan’s defeat. She was fleeing Korea, where she’d been stationed with her husband. This ring is the replacement he bought her, passed down to her grandaughter Mari, after Suzuko’s death in 2007, aged 100.
23 Jun 2013
Despina and Lambros met in their teens in Palmers Green, North London. They married in 1963, bonded by their childhoods in Cyprus and a work ethic stunted by high unemployment and civil unrest at home. They began a business making ‘Barbarella’ style clothes and ‘within a couple of years had a Merc and two houses’. In 1973 they returned to Kyrenia with their three kids. It was short-lived. Turkey invaded and hundreds of thousands of Greek Cypriots were displaced from the north of the island. The family fled to London. Aged four Mandy still spoke no English, she felt neither Cypriot nor British. At aged nine she left her small north London school for the last time, her parents were emigrating again. On her last day Mrs London, her Jamaican headmistress, gave her this doll as a farewell gift. Mandy returned to London in 1990. Of her British Cypriot identity she says the city ‘has given me the opportunity to lose both and hang onto both.’
16 Jun 2013
Kensei saw the baby bird in the road. He picked it up, rested it under a garden hedge and covered it with a leaf. He didn’t want the sad indignity of it being run over by a bus, even though he knew it was already dead. At school Kensei held the tail of a Rock python, while five of his friends took the rest of its weight. In the same class he had his arm tickled by a tarantula. At home he has two guinea pigs, White Stripes and Warhol. Kensei’s mother is from Yokohama so the guinea pigs have Japanese names too, Shimako (Stripes) and Anako (Hole). Kensei’s trips to Japan have been to see his family at Christmas so he’s missed the summer Cicada season. His grandmother, Keiko, is squeamish about insects but she sent him these Cicadas. He has requested that next she send him a Praying Mantis.
09 Jun 2013
The sting of soapy water on permanently grazed knees. The muffled crackle of orange flavoured Space Dust. The itchy pleasure of a wobbly milk tooth. There was the embarrassment, also familiar to thousands of school kids, of doing PE in your vest and knickers because your mum’s forgotten to pack your kit. It was 1979, Andrea was 4 years old and it was her first day at Fernwood Infants’ school. These exercise books are saved from that same time. They are filled with beautiful drawings of supermen called Jonathan, of the descent of a crispy looking Icarus, of post box red tractors and yellow submarines. Their titles span everything from ‘hospitals’ (two volumes) to ‘the colour red’ to ‘pets’. Andrea covered them with pages taken from a wallpaper sample book. These same patterns covered whole kitchens, bedrooms and lounges across Britain for a decade.
02 Jun 2013
Napoleon gave up the spoils of his failed Egyptian campaign to Nelson. When it set shore in England this ballast of priceless artefacts threw the country into Egypt-mania. This was the England of Herbert Ingram, founder of The Illustrated London News. Half a century later Herbert’s son Walter returned home from Somaliland to a people still in thrall to all things Egyptian. He had found the mummy of Queen Nesmin. Opening the case in the paper’s offices revealed an inscription, ‘May the person who unwraps me die rapidly’. And so he did, trampled to death by a rogue elephant. Walter’s nephew, Bruce took over as Editor of the ILN and, for 7 years, he reported in minute detail Howard Carter’s discovery and excavation of Tutankhamen’s tomb. The apparent ‘curse of the mummy’ lived on and Lord Carnarvon, patron of the expedition, died from blood poisoning. Howard Carter died of natural causes at 64, to the delight of ‘curse’ sceptics. This anubis was a given by Carter to Bruce, who bequeathed it to his nephew Michael, who, in turn, gave it to his grandson Matt. They have all lived curse-free lives, giving weight to the theory that there are as many pyramidiots as there are Egyptologists.
20 May 2013
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