‘Gentry rather than aristocracy’ is how Ginny’s mother described their family, a nuanced distinction perhaps. Theirs was a life of colonial privilege lived out in Gujarat, their status already confirmed by Ginny’s debutante season in England. This had felt faintly anachronistic in the shifting social climate of 1960s London. A life directed by early marriage to a man of good stock was not for the searingly intelligent Ginny. She went on to work as a book editor living just off the swinging hub of London’s King’s Road. Her intellectual curiosity never faded and in her early 30s she took a correspondence course in English literature. In the summer of 1977 the Open University ran a week long summer school giving students an opportunity to meet each other and their professors. It was here that Ginny met Christopher. He was her tutor and Ginny, as a ‘mature student’ was six months his senior. This diary marks their first date in the week that they met. Five years later to the day their daughter Alison was born.
14 Oct 2012
The old studios were more like a village, a series of rooms running off a very long corridor. Alan walked towards the music. In the very last room a woman was singing. He stood in the door frame, watching her until the music ended and he left. At the time Alan was teaching, his weeks divided between the Royal College of Art and his studio, on teaching days he’d stay at the Chelsea Arts Club. This particular night was very busy, the bar was four people deep, a woman craned her neck in front of him. ‘Aren’t you the woman who was singing last week?’. ‘Aren’t you the man who was staring?’, she replied. After dinner and several glasses of wine he walked her home. They passed her car, Alan noticed a ‘Vote Arts’ sticker on it’s window, in a gentle attempt to impress he said he admired the work of the design company responsible. Celia indignantly told him it was her design. When they reached her flat, she informed him that he would not be coming in. He later learnt that this was simply because she was too embarrassed by the messy state of her place. When, three years later, they moved in together their new house was in a less salubrious area. Her car was broken into, Alan rescued the ‘Vote Arts’ sticker, shards of the broken window still clinging to it. This lies safely in a drawer somewhere – so safely that, for now, Alan can’t find it. This is the poster designed by his love Celia who died two years ago.
07 Oct 2012
Mr Bingo bought a set of postcards for £5 from a car boot sale, hundreds of them slotted into an old shoe box. It was the collection that began his collection. He is still buying them from charity shops and flea markets. The postcards track the British on holiday from the unlikely blue waters of Loch Lomand to the umbrella-patchworked beaches of Malta, the empty dancefloors of Orlando’s discotheques and the surfer-crowded waves of Waikiki. There are familiar clichés about the weather, ‘it’s a bit hot for Arthur’ and evidence of a steady descent in the quality of handwriting from postcards sent in the late 1800s to those from the mid 1980s. Now emails and texts have largely replaced mailing postcards. Our post is made up of bills and flyers from supermarkets. Mr Bingo, however, is still sending out postcards. Recipients are delighted to get some post but possibly less delighted by the contents. He’s sent out hundreds as part of his project Hate Mail.
30 Sep 2012
Madhuradas Lakhani was a Gujarati entrepreneur, one of many who made Uganda their home under British rule. He set up the first printing press in Kenya and a timber yard and Pepsi Cola bottling plant on the outskirts of Kampala. In 1972 all of this came to an abrupt end. Ten years after Ugandan independence Idi Amin awoke from a dream declaring that god had instructed him to expel all Asians. This was the culmination of the government’s Africanisation policies, it forced the Lakhani family and countless others to surrender everything to the authorities and flee the country. They were given asylum in England where Madhuradas began work as a lorry driver for Scunthorpe steel. His daughter Nita, who had always had staff to prepare family meals, learnt to cook for the first time. She prepared Indian food with British ingredients, being careful to close the kitchen windows after complaints from neighbours about the smell. Nita’s daughter Meera is now compiling all the recipes her mother has taught her into a book. She has cooked every dish at home in London using the spoon her mother first bought in 1975.
23 Sep 2012
Edie was an 8 week old puppy when Tori brought her home. She was a registered show dog, a Cocker Spaniel named Wish Upon a Star. Tori changed her name to a simple Edie, after the socialite Edith Bouvier Beale, Jacquie O’s first cousin. This was a fitting name given her canine pedigree and her elegant owner Tori. This elegance has been dented regularly by a slobbery ball inadvertently rolling out of Tori’s Marc Jacob’s bag across a meeting room floor or the faint smell of wet dog clinging to the pockets of her MaxMara coat. Tori is now so attuned to collecting tennis balls for Edie that the sight of any stray ball rolling down the street has her checking herself before she breaks into a sprint. This is the object Tori never leaves home without.
16 Sep 2012
Jim Davies was variously an electrician in a Staffordshire coalmine, a craftsman for a piano manufacturer, and later for the motor trade and, during the war, a rear gunner on a Lancaster bomber. He was a man who appreciated craft and mechanics. In 1981 his daughter re-married. His new son-in-law Brian had lost his father when he was still in his thirties. They quickly developed a close relationship. This Swiss army knife was a birthday present from Jim to Brian. The following month, Jim, who’d been diagnosed with cancer, died. This was hard for all of his children, Brian had more distance so he was a little more robust and able to help care for Jim. Brian regularly uses the knife and each time he is reminded of Jim.
09 Sep 2012
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