Doug would fall asleep to the sound of DC10s and 747s. His family lived in Chicago, on the flight path of O’Hare airport. He’d regularly wake up to find a model plane at the foot of his bed, beautiful liveried models or simple balsa wood kits. He’d slot the wings into the body and play obsessively until the rubber band finally snapped. Before long his dad would return from another business trip with another model plane. When the family moved to Texas they flew United and Doug saw the livery from his models at full scale. The family flew Delta to Hawaii on holiday. Doug’s dad was upgraded but he wanted to sit next to his wife so Doug sat in first class. Doug, although swamped by his Pucci inspired orange chair felt at home. On his next flight he complained about his sweaty neighbour and was upgraded again, he was still just thirteen. Over twenty years later he still falls asleep to the sound of planes overhead, now he lives under two flight paths, Oakland and San Francisco.
02 Sep 2012
A red purse. Red scrunchies in her hair. Red Vuarnet sunglasses. Even Janice’s KitchenAid, bought in butter yellow in the mid 70s had a new coat of auto paint in Porsche red. With the new paint job the machine sped through the dough making on the run up to Holiday. It whirred away for two days with barely a pause. Twenty years later its mechanics hadn’t faltered but it looked tired. The paint had chipped and dulled to a more matt finish. An offer of a new black KitchenAid from Janice’s son Jeff was too good to refuse. In return Jeff inherited the machine that made up the sound track of his childhood. Another ten years on and the motor is still going strong.
26 Aug 2012
After Chris’s marriage crumbled he went to live with his brother in America. He fell in love with the country and it’s cars. He worked on AC Cobras for Carol Shellby. He reluctantly returned to England but soon met Lorna. They returned to the states, marrying on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Lorna dressed as a squaw and Chris wore a Cromby coat – easily passing for a local cowboy. They honeymooned in Flagstaff. The condiments are from their first breakfast as man and wife. This year they are making the big move from Dorset in England to Arizona.
19 Aug 2012
Dave is obsessed by all things small and has been since he himself was small. As a kid he would shrink crisp packets in the oven. He’d blow up balloons, drawing faces on them then watch their smiles shrink as they slowly deflated. He grew up in Rayleigh in Essex, his neighbours were a couple in their 60s, Henry and Jayne. Jayne shared his love of small things, for years she’d collected matchboxes and small packets of sugar from cafés and hotels. The boxes lived carefully stowed in two old plastic ice cream tubs until the day she gave them to Dave. He poured over them for hours, they were the beginning of his interest in typography, one of his many talents now is as a designer. He still loves them because they’re small, he suggests that this might be that, as a grown man, he himself is still small.
12 Aug 2012
At aged 16 Bashiran set off from Sargodha in Pakistan for East Africa. She was travelling to meet her husband-to-be who worked on the railways in Tanzania. They went on to have four children. When their second daughter Lubna was 5 the family moved to England. They settled in Rochdale where they had relatives and Mukhtar returned to Africa to fulfill his contract. Life in England was difficult. The scarce money that they had didn’t buy much. Their new home was a condemned terraced house and birthdays were forgotten because there was nothing to pay for them. In the mid 80s Lubna won a place at university. She moved into a shared house. She worked hard, one week night she finished late and returned home to a dark house. She turned on the kitchen light to find the room filled with friends pulling party poppers. Her flat mates Naomi, Tracy and Lisa had made birthday bunting and a big cake. Lubna has kept the bunting and empty party poppers in a small tin for twenty five years.
05 Aug 2012
Andy has worked as a gardener at Blue Gate Fields School in east London on and off for 15 years. He tends a series of raised beds for the youngest kids, he sows sunflowers, cabbages, lettuces, berry bushes and beans. He also grows strawberries and tomatoes, these are always harvested for him, normally before they’ve fully ripened. Twenty years ago the school burnt down, it was hurredly rebuilt and just last year its entrance, which had never been big enough, was redeveloped. Two concrete columns flanked the old doors, each one ringed by a series of shallow shelves creaking under the weight of wobbly clay spiders, fairies and footballers, cats and witches. One morning Andy arrived at work to find that the building work had begun. Peering out from under the wreckage of the demolished columns were scattered the cast of creatures that the kids had made. Andy rescued as many as he could, the witch and her cat now live in his kitchen.
29 Jul 2012
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