Oxford Town, Oxford Town

Now WASH your hands

At the beginning of the year I received an e-mail from my friend and Health Images colleague Petra Rohr-Rouendaal. Petra had been asked by Oxfam to do two hundred and twenty five black and white line drawings about water, sanitation and hygiene issues, for use in emergency situations around the world. She’d been working on this for a while, when it was decided that the drawings would be good in colour. In her e-mail, Petra, whose work is always in great demand, intimated that she could do without colouring all these images as well as drawing them in black and white. I replied, rather flippantly, that I would be happy to colour them if she didn’t want to, as I didn’t have much work on at the time.

So, between February and the end of June, that’s what I found myself doing. Seventy five images for Sub-Saharan Africa, the same number for Latin America and a similar set for Afghanistan and Pakistan. People shitting behind bushes, latrines, people washing their hands, preparing food, going to church, mosque or hospital, watching a puppet show, groups talking with each other, women collecting water from pumps and rivers, chains of contamination and so on... More or less every day for four months several hours on Photoshop for me, no exercise, a pain in the neck, an overworked mouse, but feeling that I was doing a worthwhile project, saving the world rather than designing leaflets for music festivals and drama productions. Stamina and deadlines and pleasure from working on Petra’s great drawings.

So, when I got an e-mail from a young Oxford graduate called Sarah-Jane Knock, asking if I would display some Health Images pictures at a conference entitled “Students and Development” at St. Anthony’s College, I gladly accepted the offer of a brief change of scenery. (The other changes of scenery I had had during this period were a short trip to Amsterdam and a couple of visits to the James Paget hospital in Gorleston for uncomfortable tests to see if I had bowel cancer).


In the Rose Garden

A couple of days before driving down to Oxford, Jacky and I attended a reception put on by our local environmental conservation charity The World Land Trust, for whom I’ve done graphics over the past twenty years or so. It was held at the home of Andrew and Alexandra van Preussen in Horham, near Eye in Suffolk. David Attenborough was there and it was nice to see him in the flesh, in his crumpled linen jacket. One of the van Preussen’s pride and joys, of which they seem to have several, is their rose garden. Since one of the WLT’s latest projects is in Paraguay, they had invited two musicians, Alberto Pino and Christoval Pederson, formerly members of Los Paraguayos, to play their instruments, a guitar and a harp, in the rose garden. Terribly civilised on a June evening in rural England, pink champagne and canapes.

Presentations were made in the Great Barn and included a film of David Attenborough in his twenties, on a politically incorrect ‘Zoo Quest’, wearing a dark suit and tie in the rainforest. After the film, Sir David said that he had done everything he could to stop it being shown, even offerring to bribe the WLT. He explained ruefully that even this had failed and commented that this had probably been the first time that the WLT had refused to accept money. Referring to his younger self, he asked, quizically, “Who was he?”.


And so to Oxford...

The drive across to Oxford was uneventful until I lost my way on the outskirts. I passed the huge Cowley car plant where they make some of the smallest cars in the world - Minis. Taking a wrong turn, I entered the village of Sandford upon Thames. I saw two people sitting at a bench outside the village pub, so pulled up to ask if they could direct me to Freelands Road in Oxford.

They turned out to be a friendly couple who were, in fact the pub’s landlord and landlady, relaxing as they had no customers. The man went into one of the neighbours’ houses to ask if they could help. The landlady shouted out to her daughter to come outside. An extremely fat thirteen year old girl came to the pub doorway.

“When you go on the school bus, is there a stop at Freelands Road?” “yes”, the girl replied glumly, “It’s just past the garage that’s closed down”. The mum was then convinced that she knew the place and gave me accurate directions. Then the landlord returned from the next door cottage with completely different directions.

Just recently I’ve been reading ‘Waterlog’ by Roger Deakin, in which he mentions the village of Sandford on Thames, in which I had mistakenly arrived. He talks about Jerome K. Jerome’s ‘Three Men in a Boat’ in connection with Sandford and quotes the author’s description of the Sandford lasher, whatever that is. “The pool under Sandford lasher is a very good place to drown yourself in”.

I met Sarah-Jane Knock at her house and was introducede to her house-mate Jo, a rather serious girl who had just finished her finals in Pure Maths and Logic. I was well impressed and thought how wonderful it must be to study pure mathematics for three years in Oxford when you were young.

A pair of crossed oars were displayed on the kitchen wall. These had been gained by Sarah-Jane’s fiancee, John. “I haven’t got my blades yet”, she explained. They were also into rock climbing and bouldering. I said I used to go out with a girl from Chesterfield and not far from where she lived we used to watch rock climbers. It was out beyond Chatswirth Road, the road in which my former friend lived. “Wow”, expostulated Sarah-Jane, “ I used to live just off Chatsworth Road, in Holymoorside”.
Another small and insignificant coincidence. She then told me that her non-identical twin sister was now working for the government’s Child Poverty Unit, having also done a degree at Oxford, a city partly populated by boys and girls who had done well at school, many having been head-boys and head-girls.

We drove to St. Anthony’s college with the stuff for the exhibition. With the help of her friend Emmanuel, an interesting French boy with a long face who was also studying International Development, we put up the Health Images display.


Another coincidence

In the evening I was on my own, as Sarah-Jane was going off to a ball at Balliol. Before leaving, she gave me directions to a couple of recommended pubs. I walked into town alongside the Thames which is, I think, called the Isis in Oxford. I made my way on the towpath past the boathouses of various colleges and saw the narrowest narrow boats I’d ever seen. Meeting the road by the ‘Head of the River’ pub, I crossed over the bridge and made my way into town, passing several American tourists en route.

When I reached Cornmarket, I was surprised to see, in the distance, a busker playing a harp. I walked slowly past, enjoying the sound, and bent down to put some coins into the busker’s hat. Straightening up, I looked briefly at the harpist and was astonished to find that I recognised him. Yes, it was Cristoval Pederson, the Paraguayan harpist I’d met two nights previously in the rose garden in Suffolk. We laughed and greeted each other. “What are you doing here?”, I asked. “I’m busking”, replied Cristoval. He was staying with a friend in Oxford and would be doing a gig the following night at the Holywell Music Room with a singer called Miriam Scruby.

I wandered past a long queue of students in dinner suits or shiny dresses, waiting to get into the ball at Balliol. Then, down an alleyway, I found ‘The Turf’, an ancient higgledy-piggledy tavern which sells moderately good ale. Next, I partook of another solitary pint of beer in ‘The Eagle and Child’. This was the pub where a literary group, who called themselves ‘The Inklings’ met to discuss literature and have a drink. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein were leading members with a religious bent.

Continuing my modest pub-crawl, I called into ‘The Head of the River’ pub, where the TV was showing a European Championship football match between Turkey and Croatia, historical adversaries. At the final whistle, I made my way back along the towpath, finally arrivig at Freelands Road where I read a few pages of Louis de Berniere’s brutal ‘War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts’ before nodding off.

In the morning, I decided to go back into town, so was soon plodding again along the towpath. The drizzle was moderate to heavy and there was plenty of Saturday morning activity in and around the boatsheds. I saw thirty dicks and ducklings all in a line, proceeding in an easterly direction on the river. Several coaches cycled along the towpath shouting at young rowers. “Bury that blade!”, “Wrist flat, arms straight”, “Charlotte, sit up, don’t hunch”, “Not like that”, “That’s better”, “Keep going”,

Up in town, a young man handed me a leaflet I hadn’t asked for. He had a placard that read “Have you met your father yet?”. The leaflet was quite a dark red with black type, like letterpress. On the back it said “A child needs its parent, human beings need the Creator”. I went into the HMV store.

Browsing through the CDs I noticed “Inna Gadda da Vida” by Iron Butterfly and UB40s “Rat in the Kitchen”, the cover of which I designed twenty years ago. It looked like our kitchen at Holly Tree Farm, which hasn’t changed much except that there are now no American jets in the windowframes. The peace dividend that never happened much. I weanted a new CD to play on the journey home but couldn’t find anything among the millions of albums. Funny, but it happens that way sometimes.


Natural History in Cabinet

Heading towards the university’s Natural History Museum, I spotted several empty Veuve Cliquot bottle, presumably discarde after the ball. Headaches this morning, strangers in strange beds. Inside the museum I first noticed a flock of busy bird enthusiasts from the Oxfordshire Ornithological Society. They were nerdlike and may have lived with their mothers.

Just along from the OOS display was a chest of museum drawers with six rows and four columns. On top was a sign that said ‘Natural Histort A-Z’. It was a game for children. On the front of each of the drawers was a letter of the alphabet. U and V shared a drawer, as did X, Y and Z. The bottom drawer contained the answers. Work it out for yourself. In each drawer were specimens from the collection whose names started with the letter on the front of the drawer. I opened a few. In M were shells, for Molluscs. In R was a rabbit, sectioned vertically to exhibit its internal structure. In D resided some very large and shiny Dung Beetles.

The roof of the museum was made of ironwork, rather like a Victorian railway station cum cathedral, complete with pointed arches and upper clerestory. God’s waiting room. The displays took me back to the days when I studied Biological Sciences at university. Familiar words like Phylum Hemichordata, represented in the exhibit by some acrn worms from the Class Enteropneusta. The some arrow worms from the Phylum Chaetognatha and, moving on, the wonderful Hercules Beetle from somewhere in south America, Dynastes hercules. Raising my eyes, I observed an ophicalcite column from County Galway,
before coming to rest in front of a delightful Secretary Bird, Sagittarius serpentarius of the Order Falciformes. “The name comes from its plumed head which resembles old-fashioned lawyers’ clerks with quill pens stuck behind their ears”. The the jaw bone of a tiger followed by the familiar shells of the snail Cepea nemoralis, which is very common in Oxfordshire - tigers are not. Oxford gentlemen academics from the Ecological Genetics Group studied C. nemoralis in the fifties and sixties, wearing tweed jackets and smoking pipes and occasionally engaging in same sex activities with undergraduates who wanted to get on in life. From these studies they concluded that natural selection was happening all around us every day.

Wandering on, I overheard a large American girl say to her friends “Oh, butterflies and moths - I can’t be dealing with insects”. Then a lungfish pickled in formaldehyde, looking very contented.


Pitts River

I proceeded into the amazing Pitt-Rivers museum, muttering to myself “For fuck’s sake don’t start writing a blog about this, you haven’t got the time, you’ll never finish”. Within minutes I was taking notes.

Just to say, briefly, that I loved the huge Haida totem pole from the Queen Charlotte (not the rower) Islands in Canada. It had cost $36 in 1901. And that I found the jumbled cabinets absolutely absorbing, mirrors of human possibilities.....

The first cabinet I examined was entitled ‘ Methods of Making Fire’. The next, ‘Coiled Baskets’, then ‘Trumpets’, followed by’Drums’, after which I looked into ‘Bells, Rattles and Xylophones’. Just fascinating. Next, ‘Spinning and Winding’, to the right ‘Lutes’, then ‘Writing and Communication’. I chatted to the attendant, an old boy with a pleasant Oxfordshire accent, about the subject of the next cabinet - ‘Lamellaphones’. He said that, many years ago, on a late night bus, he’d heard a West Indian bloke playing one. Finger pianos. Top deck.

“Oh shit, this is all getting far too interesting”, I thought to myself, imagining the M25. I couldn’t help looking into ‘Tallies and Counting’, ‘Message Bearing’, ‘Writing Equipment’, ‘Saddlery’, ‘Zithers’, ‘Votive Offerings’, ‘Sympathetic Magic’, ‘Charms Against the Evil Eye’. Apparently, Sumerian records from ancient Iraq going back 5000 years mention the Evil Eye.

Feeling rather enchanted, I made my way through ‘Amulets, Charms and Divination’, ‘Treatment of Dead Enemies’,
‘Betel-chewing Equipment’, ‘Opium Pipes and Equipment’, ‘Smoking Pipes and Water Pipes’. After a short break to look at the ceiling I ventured into ‘Skates and Snowshoes’, Stools and Headrests’, ‘Wooden Locks and Keys’, ‘Objects Used As Currency’, ‘Staves and Weapons Denoting Rank’, ‘Vessels’, ‘Rank, Status and Prestige in Nuristan’, ‘Ornaments of Boar Tusk’, ‘Combs’, ‘Mirrors’, ‘Hair’, ‘Head, Neck and Breast Ornaments’, ‘Ornaments of Teeth, Claws, Quills and Bone’, ‘Tails and Buttock Ornaments’, ‘Trade Beads’, ‘Feather Headdresses’ and ‘Death’.

The attendant handed me a form and asked if I would mind filling in a questionnaire about my visit. I awarded full marks to every category and ticked every box with enthusiasm before moving ever onwards to ‘Buckles and Fasteners’, ‘Umbrellas’ and ‘Games, Puzzles and Toys’. At one point there was a notice saying that this museum had inspired several writers, including Philip Pullman, Penelope Lively, James
Fenton and Colin Dexter.

Gazing into ‘Surgical Instruments - Algeria’, I thought “Colin Dexter’s not a writer”. Then a beautiful Hardanger Fiddle caught my attention, with its six sympathetic strings and four unsympathetic, not very compassionate ones. I asked the attendant if he could show me the smallest object in the collection and he took me to see a tiny doll, made in England and less than a centimetre high. That was enough.

On my happy way back out of the natural history museum I stopped to admire an Emperor Scorpion, Pandinus imperator; a Scarlet Tarantula, Lasiodora klugii; a Whip Scorpion from Peru, Phrynus sp.; and some lovely Sea Spiders from the Class Pycnogonida. There are more than a hundred thousand species of pycnogonids alive, including the one on display, Colossendeis wilsoni from Antarctica. Got to get out of this place....

I walked back along the river with a full head. It didn’t matter that I’d failed to purchase a CD. I hit the road at Donnington Bridge and went into Bridge Stores to get a bottle of water for the drive home. The shop was run by a Chinese lady, whose six or seven year old son said to me “You got a dinosaur on your pad”. He had a slight but most attractive strabismus in one eye and was referring to the notepad I’d bought in the museum. I asked him if he’d ever been there. “I bin to Pitts River” he replied joyously. That was my last small encounter in Oxford before my drive home, which featured ‘Sundirtwater’ by The Waifs, the ‘African Blues’ compilation and the ‘Reggae Love Collection’.

A Cure for Herrings

We sailed on the Stena Hollanica from Parkeston Quay at about 11 p.m. A couple of days in Amsterdam. I grew up about three miles from Parkeston, and my dad regularly piloted the ferries to the Hook and yet I’d never been to Holland in my life before. The nearest country to home.

Somewhere in another lifetime...

One of the best friends of my youth was a boy called Gerrard McCaffery. He left school at 15 and got a job on the boats. He passed his driving test on his seventeenth birthday and the next day bought a Jag. Second hand, walnut dashboard, leather seats for the girls. He’d graduated from his Lambretta but was still a Mod. Ben Sherman shirts Pirate Radio off the coast. One summer I had an Austrian girlfriend. I can’t remember her name but I strongly associate that period with Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum and ‘Hey Jude’. Take a sad song and make it better. Then I went off to university, discovered a bit of the world and came back to find that Gerrard had taken over the Austrian girl and was about to marry her.

Nearly thirty years later, the phone rang and it was Gerrard, calling from Austria. Quite unexpected and fairly boring. Our friendship had only ever been about being Mods and chewing Juicy Fruit while trying to pick up girls on holiday from the East End in his Jag. By the time he phoned I didn’t do any of those things. All I really remember about the call was him saying something like “I’m quite surprised you’re still alive. I thought you and Hughie Short might have died of drugs or drink by now”. He was a ski instructor.

It was exciting to be going on board. We were a bit early, so we had a drink in the Cliff Hotel in
Dovercourt, then made our way to Parkeston. The football pitch where I often played for Little Oakley against Marine Shops had been concreted over and was now a lorry park edged with wire fencing and searchlights on pylons. As we approached, the security bloke emerged from his kiosk. He looked like he’d watched too many American films. Sunglasses at this time of night? He tried to look as if he was taking us seriously as nautical terrorists - two white-haired people in a respectable family saloon. He directed us, militarily, to our parking place. We embarked some time later, a bit delayed as Jacky became absorbed
looking at a series of embroidered panels made by the womenfolk of Harwich and depicting the town’s history and landmarks in a charmingly naive style. There was, for me, a pleasant familiarity about the whole scene.

I had the top bunk with C.J.Samson and ‘Sovereign’. It was rough getting up there as I hadn’t noticed the ladder. We both slept comfortably and soundly. Before we knew it, we were wandering towards the train at the Hoek at 8 o’clock on a quiet Sunday morning. We had to change at Rotterdam.

Classic landscape from the train. Dykes, cows, distant sharp church spires, the occasional farmhouse, diggers digging ditches, stands of poplars. Opposite us was a living consequence of Dutch colonialism. A young girl with a doll’s face, Indonesian bone structure like Java man. Interesting profile, wearing a hood edged with imitation rabbit fur.

We got to Amsterdam at about ten o’clock. The city’s early success was partly down to a man called Willem Beukelszoon who, in 1385, invented a new way of curing herrings. This meant that the herrings lasted longer before going rotten and so could be exported. Together with the beer trade the herring business helped Amsterdam’s merchants to get the economy going. The rest is history...

Except for dodgy people

Coming out of the station millions of bikes, leant together in rows of Olympian proportions. On the
pavements. We found the Hotel France where it had always been, on the Ouderzijds Kolk, the edge of
Chinatown and the Red Light District. We chose the Hotel France because it was fairly cheap and left our bags there till
check-in time later.

We wandered down the nearest street. Indonesian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian establishments, an
English Pub with a sign in the window saying “Everybody Welcome Except For Dodgy People”, a bread shop with the word Brood in big letters across its window, a place for foot massage, a gay bar, an Asian Fusion eating house, some souvenir shops, rubbish bags, dog shit, the smell of skunk, long-legged girls on sit up and beg bikes, picaresque and seedy. I read later that this street, the Zeedijk, has seen its fair share of wine, women, drunken sailors and drugs for several centuries. A Bhuddist temple, Chinese Acupuncture, a Scandinavian Pub, Japanese, Portuguese and Greek restaurants, Tapas bars, a shop selling requisites for dope smokers, small tins with pictures of cannabis leaves on their lids.

Entering Nieuwmarkt we saw the last surviving gatehouse of old Amsterdam, a great hulk with turrets, the whole thing built of brick, in 1488. Amazing bricklaying. For some time it was used as a place for weighing market produce and was known as the Waag, which means weigh in Dutch. We sat at a cafe, as you do in European capitals, and had a coffee or, in my case, a glass of hot water. And a green tea bag, separately. Along from us sat a woman wearing high leather boots, a mini-skirt, a blouse unbuttoned to display an expansive cleavage and on top a three quarter length plastic leopard skin coat. She looked like she’d had a hard night.

Joods

We proceeded down St. Antoniesbreestraat, where the Jewish community used to live. They’d never been made to live in a ghetto in Amsterdam. Nearly all the old houses had been knocked down in the 1970s and replaced with uninspiring apartment blocks. We passed smelly coffee shops and Rembrandt’s house, making our way to the Joods Historisch Museum. A man wearing a natty white skullcap came out of a door into the Portuguese synagogue. We carried on into the museum and entered into a reconstructed synagogue. A large Torah scroll unrolled on a lectern, silver jads, long handles of silver with little hands at one end, not backscratchers, used by the cantor to keep his place while reading from the huge Torah. Also on display a set of circumcision instruments.



Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition came to Amsterdam. Many were rich merchants with good global business contacts so they were welcomed by the Dutch. A couple of centuries later, the poor Ashkenazi relations arrived in Amsterdam as refugees from Lithuania, Poland and Germany.

The Portuguese connection seemed to be quite strong. The Portuguese synagogue was the largest synagogue in Europe when it was built. In the museum/replica synagogue there’s an imposing oil painting of a Portuguese dude by the name of Soussa. He’s sitting handsomely in a wealthy setting, a sheen of great wealth on his face. He’s holding an orange in his hand to symbolise his acceptance, as a Jew, into the Amsterdam establishment. He seems to be wearing lipstick, I thought. I was fascinated to learn that of the 400 or so plantations owned by the Dutch in the northern part of South America, more than a hundred were owned by Sephardi Jews.

Another interesting Jew who lived in Amsterdam was the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. He was Jewish but didn’t make himself very popular with the Jewish community as he didn’t believe in God. I studied some of Spinoza’s philosophy at university, along with that of all the other philosophers discussed in Bertrand Russell’s “History of Western Philosophy”, which I really enjoyed and read from cover to cover. Spinoza argued in favour of a rather attractive philosophy known as pantheism, according to which the ‘divine’ exists in everything in the natural world, a bit like some Eastern religions such as Buddhism. To most Jews in Amsterdam, though, he was just a trouble-maker and they sort of sent him to Coventry.

Another trouble-maker was a man called Sabbatai Zevi, pronounced Zvee. He was a serious bullshitter who pronounced himself to be the new messiah. Plenty of Dutch and other Jews were taken in and started to worship Zevi. Later, people lost faith in him, particularly when he converted to Isalm under the Ottomans!

Some other items caught my attention in the museum. A sort of flag made out of buttons to advertise the wares of a lady called Sally Polack who, like the great Argentinian bandoneon player El Polaco, must have come from Poland. Lots of little lead seals originally attached to meat as a sign that it was kosher. Photos of poor Jews in Amsterdam in the early twentieth century - hawkers, rag and bone men, matchbox and shoelace sellers all living in poverty in slum conditions.

Duende Dos

That evening we walked across to the western side of the city. It was all a bit more spacious than our hotel area. Big trees in spring leaf hanging over canals, of which there were plenty. We saw people sitting on their front door steps drinking wine, overlooking one of the canals. We passed houseboats large and small. On the deck of one was a huge pot with a lilac tree growing out of it. I had the pleasure of using a ‘pissoir’ for the first time since my visit to Paris at the age of fifteen. It was odd to be urinating while looking out through the metal grille at young people picknicking on a landing stage below on a warm, relaxed spring Sunday evening.

We were heading for a tapas bar called ‘Duende Dos’ on Nieuwe Willemsstraat in the Jordaan (Garden) area of the city. The place was pretty full when we arrived at around 7 o’clock, everybody tucking into their tapas, drinking wine, families, some Spanish, pictures of flamenco dancers on the walls with the word ‘Pasion’ written on them in large letters. A cheerful buzz. As it happens, I’ve been having a bit of a Spanish phase recently. A few weeks ago I went to a concert by the wonderful flamenco guitarist Juan Martin; I’ve been looking again at the BBC ‘Por Aqui’ book to revise my Spanish, I’m learning a tune called Latinish Gypsy on the guitar, been reading ‘Hacienda’ by Lisa St. Aubin de Teran, went to see a film version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ “Love in the Time of Cholera”, playing again my Radio Tarifa CDs and, most recently enjoying some TV programmes presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon about Spanish art and culture.

Actually none of these were really reasons for us heading to Duende Dos. Instead, we went to hear the music of a gypsy jazz guitarist born in Vietnam of English parents. His name is Robin Nolan and he’s written the most useful tuition books on gypsy jazz guitar playing. His band was playing later so in the meantime we amused ourselves with a bottle of Rioja, several aceitunas, boquerones, alcochofas, patatas bravas and an ensalada espinacas. Our waitress was so helpful and everything tasted good. At the table behind us was a Spanish slightly extended family. One of the women had a stammer. I’d never heard anyone stammer in Spanish before.

The musicians turned up - two lead jazz guitars, double bass and rhythm guitar played by John Friedrichs. Jacky sat next to his wife and had a good chat. Wonderful music, just the right atmosphere. Sitting with us were two young musician friends of the band. They were students, one studying composition, one a gypsy jazz guitarist, so I bought them a couple of beers. One was from Turkey, the other from Greece, historical enemies but best mates.

During the interval I had a chat with John the rhythm player . He gave me a few tips. I said I practise with a metronome. He said “Do you know how to practise with a metronome?” I said I thought I did but maybe I didn’t. John said that what you have to do is set the metronome going and tap your foot, keep tapping until you get the rhythm in your whole body and only then start playing your chords. John said you have to do this for two hours a day for ten years. That’s what he’d done, anyway. I bought Robin Nolan a beer by way of thanking him for his tuition books. After the interval the band was joined by an alto sax player who was also a fine musician. More or less a perfect European evening.

Johnny Sahib

I woke on Monday morning feeling weird and claustrophobic in our hotel room with no window so went out for a stroll to clear my head. I just wandered around the block, relieved to find that it was a cooler day. Just walking, getting my head together, on a canal bridge when a woman passed on a bike and addressed me in Dutch. I walked on, half awake, and the woman called out “Hey, Johnny, don’t go away. You wanna buy my bike? I don’t really want to sell it but I need some money”.

She looked Indo-Chinese, I imagined her to be from Vietnam but maybe more likely Indonesian, Dutch East Indies. Another consequence of colonialism. I said I didn’t want to buy the bike. She looked me in the eyes and said “You wanna come with me?”, in a quiet Eastern female voice. She was quite pretty in a Dutch East Indies kind of way. “No, my wife’s in the hotel just round the corner, but thanks for asking”.

“Can you give me a few coins, just a little something? I can’t even afford the metro”. I didn’t say “Why do you need the metro when you’ve got a bike?” and gave her a few Euros. She thanked me and we went on our ways, me feeling weirder than ever at the thought conjured up in my mind by this encounter. Especially her calling me Johnny, like Surabaiya Johnny or Johnny Sahib. I reflected on the way that there was still a kind of colonialism in the relationship between the woman and her clients. The same poverty and vulnerability, the same abuse of power. I found it all very sad, as she was probably a heroin addict and had, no doubt, stolen the bike to get some money, a common practise among Amsterdam junkies I think. What a life...Johnny.

Alive, alive-O

I ambled back to the hotel and walked into a broom cupboard next to the door at the bottom of the stairs. A very strange pre-breakfast interlude altogether.

The arrangement at the Hotel France is for guests to take breakfast at the next door establishment, the Molly Malone Irish Pub. As we walked into the dark bar, Sting’s weedy voice came through as piped music. “Message in a Bottle”. Wooden casks lined the walls, labelled ‘Poteen’, ‘Klarenaer’, ‘Jameson’, ‘Paddy’, ‘Korewijn’, ‘Roggenaer’, ‘Taainagel’.

Breakfast was pretty lousy, crappy bread, jam in plastic containers, slabs of processed Gouda, all designed to get lots of people fed with something in as short a time as possible at the lowest possible cost. Good fun, though. Sting moved on to “So Lonely” or was it “Sue Lawley”? An old French couple sat silently beside us. Everything cramped, terrible seating arrangement, surrounded by all things Oirish - a copy of The Irish Times, empty bottles of Hennessy cognac and Coleraine whiskey.

Tucking into a slab of processed Gouda, I made Jack laugh by saying “Well, I’ve already walked into a broom cupboard and been propositioned by a Vietnames prostitute and it’s only breakfast time”.

Button Heaven

Our plan was to go to the Noordemarkt. On our way there we saw the customary array of long-legged young Dutch women bearing down on us from their sit up and beg bikes, plastic flowers adorning their baskets, gingham check plastic seat covers. The longest femurs in the world.

We passed a dusty shop window in which the sole item on display was the severed leg of a mannequin, wearing a black stocking. I took a photo and then noticed that some wag had signed it in chalk on the wall next to the window frame ‘Man Ray ‘07’.



At Noordemarkt we saw a man selling glass and tile cutters. He demonstrated the efficiency of the tool to an enthralled crowd, cutting glass and tiles without a hitch. By the time we got there, he had only small fragments left. The cutters came with a guarantee that there was no way they would work anything like as well when you tried to cut a tile or a sheet of glass at home.

The market consisted, unsurprisigly, of a bewildering mosaic of stalls, some selling clothes, others ‘antiques’.One had the neck of a not very distinguished old guitar for sale, along with a His Master’s Voice type of record player.



At the button stall, I witnessed Jacky’s Assumption into heaven. All sorts of buttons, mostly round, but not all, different sizes, textures, patterns, finishes, colours. We spent a good half hour there, coming away with 40 Euros worth of buttons, three old postcards and an interesting label which I had bought because it had the word Surabaiya on it.




The Rijksmuseum

We walked all the way down to the Rijksmuseum. On the way we admired a lamp post which, like most of the others in Amsterdam, had ivy winding round it as part of the ironwork design. This particular lamp post also had a complete bicycle tyre on the ground around it.



Monday seems to be late-opening day, most of the shops being closed until after lunch. “The Rijksmuseum Is Open”, declared a huge sign on the front of the building. The museum is being refurbished and only one wing of it is open, showing an exhibition of the “Masterpieces” of the collection. The logo for this exhibition was a capital M. Boring or what? Anyway, we didn’t mind seeing only the masterpieces so bought a couple of entry tickets from a nice lady who sneezed violently. I said “Bless you”. She explained that if you sneeze three times in Holland, the sun will shine next day. She added that, in her experience, this never happens.



The first room had written on one of its walls “After the 80 years war (1568-1648), the Dutch expelled their Spanish rulers and established an independent state”. I think the Spanish ruled at that time basically because of marriage with Hapsburgs. During the 80 years war, Amsterdam first supported Spain. Then, after about 10 years, Amsterdam switched allegiance in 1578 in a U-turn known as ‘The Alteration’. After this, the city was very definitely Protestant, as the Reformation spread through most of northern Europe.

The first two paintings I looked at were large canvases of sea battles made using pen and ink. I’d never seen this technique before - it seems to produce a sort of cloudy, ghostly look. Both were painted by Willem van der Welde, an early war-artist who travelled with the Dutch fleet, made sketches as the battles were happening and later worked them up into large paintings in his studio. ‘The Battle of Terheide, painted in 1657, must be at least ten feet wide and about eight feet high. It depicts hundreds of ships, going back into the distance (i.e. higher up on the canvas) and records the blockade that English ships put on Dutch harbours in 1653. During the battle, the Dutch commander Maarten Tromp was killed.

The second of van der Welde’s pen paintings is ‘The Battle of Livorno’, painted a few years after the event in 1655. It shows the English ship ‘Samson’ going up in flames after being hit by a shot from the Dutch man o’ war ‘De Haalve Maan’, captained by Cornelius Tromp. There are masses of English sailors in the water, a jumbled crowd of them tumbling down, some clinging to burning masts. Horrendous. Each figure is carefully represented and, although the painting is several feet wide and high, the figures are each only about three inches tall. On the stern of the ‘Samson’ is a slick graphic motif of ‘The Man In The Moon’...

Then an allegorical painting, 1614, by Adriaen Pieterz van der Verme, depicting the competition between Protestants and Catholics to win the souls of ordinary Dutch people. The Protestants wear black while the Catholics wear monkish habits. The Protestants in their boat, and the Catholics, including a Bishop with his mitre, fish from their boats, using nets to try to catch the peoples’ souls. On the left bank, the Protestant reformers, on the right bank the Papists, the old religion.

In a cabinet we saw some artefacts associated with the Dutch colonial exploits, objects owned or stolen by the merchants of the Dutch East India Company, claimed to be the largets trading company in the world at that time. One of the early multinationals. The object that caught my attention was a slender wooden box about 20 inches long, made in either South India or Sri Lanka, somewhere between 1675 and 1700. The outside surfaces of the box were decorated with finely carved ivory plates. The carved plates were fixed to the box later and mainly showed floral motifs. It was actually a case to contain one of the characteristic long-stemmed pipes that you see in old Dutch paintings. The label said “Dutch merchants smoked their pipes wherever they went”.

The Dutch West India Company, the DWI, is referred to in several of the works on display. The DWI operated in Brasil, Suriname and one or two other places in the Caribbean region, as well as in North America. They traded in furs, gold, sugar and slaves. Something to be proud of.

Next, I studied a painting done in 1680 by Melchior d’Hondecoeter, an artist who specialised in the representation of birds. An undercoater. This picture showed a pelican, some ducks, a casuary, a flamingo and an African crowned crane (as far as I can remember, the national bird of Uganda). The painting was commissioned by stadholder Willem III and was intended for Het Loo Palace, where Willem and Mary had a menagerie of exotic animals.

Then a violin, complete with strings, made of earthenware, faience, around 1705. The violin is covered back, front and sides with the Dutch tile blue. On the belly, a picture of people dancing in a dance hall, on the back a fiddler plays in front of an inn. I started to wonder how resonant it would be if played, and then read the label which said it was just an ornament and not meant to be played.

A beautiful still life of fruit, flowers and shells, painted in 1671 by Balthasar van der Arst. And then an amazing rendition of fine lace in Rembrandt’s 1639 painting of a young woman called Maria Trip. Meindert Hobbema paintings like the landscapes you see from the train between Rotterdam and Amsterdam. When I was 16 one of my favourite paintings was Meindert’s “Road with Poplars”, only seen in not very good reproduction in a Thames and Hudson World of Art book. Lots of roads with poplars in rural Essex, too. Next, a portrait of Ephraim Bueno, a renowned 17th century physician and scholar. I think Ephraim may have been one of the Sephardi Jews.

Next, a most memorable small painting. A little crowd of people stood in front of Vermeer’s “The Kitchen Maid”, transfixed. It was like a magnet, drawing the viewer into its calmness. The only movement in the painting is the stream of milk being poured from a jug. The colours, half blue, half light grey/ochre just sit together and send out a feeling of spiritual balance. Hypnotic.

We looked at some Pieter de Hooch and Paul Sanredam. Jacky said “It’s quite nice to see these paintings of the streets because they’re just like the streets we’ve just walked down”.

In the end I wondered why there were no Breughels. It was because Breughel was Flemish, mostly Belgium, rather than Dutch. I don’t think there are many Breughels in Belgium either. Vienna’s probably best.

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams

That evening, we had a drink outside a cafe in Nieuwmarkt to the sound of a very bad, very loud band playing in the square. On one of the bars in the square was written “Boulevard des Reves Brises”, rather Dylanesque, I thought.

Later we had a meal in an unusually spacious (for Cramsterdam) Vietnamese restaurant on the picaresque Zeedijk. Broken dreams, drunken sailors.

Our Dear Lord in the Attic

The next morning, we had breakfast at Molly Malone’s again, cramped, little elbow room. Bland slices of Edam with boiled eggs, a strange environment full of sleepy people,Sting still straining on “Message in a Bottle”, in his strangulated voice, Sue Lawley again and Desert Island Discs. “In this desert that I call my soul, You always play the starring role”. Melodramatic or what?. Sting would choose all his own songs to take to the desert island.

Jacky deftly pilfered several rolls, eggs, slices of cake that we would need on our journey home. The three Japanese people sitting at our table politely took no notice. They were actually concentrating hard on their fourth and fifth frankfurters and their mounds of scrambled egg. The climax of Jacky’s performance came when she snatched the largest apple, in a daring raid on the fruit bowl, on our way out, dextrously transferring it to her bag to join the other victuals sectreted therein. During breakfast, she also found time to clarify the meaning of the word ‘popinjay’ for me. As I said, I’ve been reading C.J.Samson’s “Sovereign”, which I’d strongly recommend to friends with a historical bent.

We went to see a canalside house where, in 1663, a hosiery merchant called Jan Hartman built a church in his attic. His wife, Lysbeth Jans, came from a family of compass makers. A big demand for compasses at that time.

In the drawing room was a box bed. People didn’t have separate bedrooms in those days and some say that they slept sitting up. It was certainly a very short bed. There was also a cabinet with painted panels depicting scenes in the life of the Prodigal Son, who had “squandered his inheritance and returned home to a loving father”. This reminded us a bit of John. One of the panels showed the son being enthusiastically prodigal, his arm around a young woman, his hand squeezing her bare breast as she holds a glass of wine in her hand while a cellist and a violinist serenade the fun-loving couple.

At the top of the otherwise domestic house was a perfectly formed Catholic church. This was the Reformation yet, in tolerant Amsterdam, the authorities turned a blind eye to Catholics worshipping, even though Catholicism was officially banned. It was OK as long as the building in which they worshipped didn’t look like a Catholic church.

To me, the church looked surprisingly big. Most of the space was taken up by rows of chairs, which could accomodate something like 150 members of a congregation. The altar was ornate. Around the walls hung paintings about ‘The Assumption of the Virgin’ and ‘The Lamentation of Christ’. Some putti, with a label which read ‘Twee Putti’ in Dutch. And a pulpit that could swivel back into a recess behind the altar, to save space.

Behind the altar, we looked into a cabinet that contained three crucifixes in bottles, like ships in bottles. Sting’s breakfast message made flesh. Also, some rosary beads. In Dutch, a rosary is a rosencrantz, apparently. It made me wonder what guildernstern meant. It then made me wonder what ‘Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead’ meant. Did it mean that rosaries are dead, that the Protestants have won? One rosary had large beads in the form of skulls, ten smaller beads in between the larger ones.

We also learnt about the Miracle of Amsterdam which happened in 1345. A sick man had vomited after being given the wafer during his last rites. The vomit, including the eructated body of Christ, was thrown into the fire in the sick man’s house. The wafer, miraculously, refused to burn. This was considered to be seriously meaningful, so much so that the wafer was taken to the Oude Kirke for safe keeping. But, again miraculously, the wafer re-appeared in the house of the sick man. Once again it was taken back to the Oude Kirke. After a while, it turned up once more in the sick man’s house. He couldn’t get rid of it. I don’t know if the sick man died in the meantime, while all this transsubstiation was going on, but I wouldn’t have blamed him. Anyway, this was the Amsterdam Miracle and people from around Holland and further afield started to make pilgrimages to Amsterdam to celebrate the wafer’s strange behaviour. Incredible, really. Still, it was only 1345 and most people were pretty stupid then.

In the two kitchens downstairs were some charming faience tiles on the walls. Blue drawings, thin lines, on off-white backgrounds, Delft blue, just one small figure or an animal in the centre of each tile. Wikipedia explains that “faience is the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed pottery on a delicate pale buff body. The invention of a pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip of a lead glaze, was a major advance in the history of pottery”.

This technique for tin-glazed earthenware was brought to Andalucia by the Moors. Later, some of this was exported from Southern Spain to Italy, often via the island of Majorca, from which majolica gets its name. By the late fifteenth century, tin-glazed earthenware was being made in Italy, particularly in the town of Faenza, the French for which is ‘Faience’. Apparently, “a painted majolica ware on an opaque white ground” was exported from Faenza not long afterwards. Some of this Italian faience was imported by the Dutch, who soon began to make their own, particularly in the town of Delft. Delftware is usually decorated in blue on a white or off-white background. This, in turn, was influenced by the blue and white porcelain that was
imported into Holland from China in the early sixteenth century.

This museumhouse is called the Amstelkring or “On’s Lieve Heer op Solder”, Our Dear Lord in the Attic. It also had a confessional. Today, you can go into the bit where the guilty sinner would have sat and looked through the screen towards a latent peadophile. But you can’t go into the bit where the priest would have sat. A sheet of clear perspex across the front, securing the imbalance of power that has endured through the centuries.

An old dream





As we left Oudezidjes Kolk, teams of men, in orange overalls, were putting up orange bunting and orange balloons all the way down the Zeedijk, ready for Queen’s Day. On the train going back to Rotterdam, we again saw lots of herons, ditches, dykes and diggers. Between Vlaardingen and Maasluis I noticed a cruise ship with a reproduction of the Mona Lisa printed on its huge funnel. Weird. The ship was named ‘Mona Lisa’. Cruise ship aesthetics.



We arrived at the Hoek in good time so decided to have a quick look round the small town. Would it be a mirror image of Harwich? As we left the station, we were greeted by some sheep.



We had a drink in the nearest bar, the Cafe Prins Hendryk. This, for me turned out to be a memorable experience but it’s not easy to explain it well. I had once, or maybe more than once, a dream in which I was in a bar in Holland. I grew up in Harwich and my dad often piloted the ferry to the Hoek of Holland so throughout my childhood there was mention of The Hoek. It’s also to do with illustrations in school text books. Line drawings of Dutch people, a farmer with a cap on and a bulbous, friendly Dutch potato-nose, with canals and windmills and cows in the background, perhaps in a geography book, maybe in the “Learn Dutch!” book that I once got out of the local library circa 1961, maybe avatars of the illustrations in our school French books, schoolboy stereotypes. This sort of stuff all mixed together. I pushed open the door of the Prins Hendryk and there I was, in that dream, those recollections, those fifty year old associations. Not deja vu, though, something quite different. Wonderful.



Old-style, lots of wood, everything wood except the things that were made of brass or glass. A seafaring theme, not even a theme, nothing so self-conscious, just a bar in the Hoek of Holland. I just felt so strongly that my dad had drunk in this place more than once. The barman was one of those line drawings, too. He brought me a beer and the special offer Koffie mit Appelgeback for Jacky. Black and white photographs of old ships and ferries decorated the walls in a way unnecessarily as the whole place was like a ship, like my dream.

As we sat there, me in a sort of happy trance, a fat woman played on a gambling machine, taking deep drags on a cigarette and looking somewhat unhealthy. She was wearing anoutdoor sports type jacket with the word ‘Annapurna’ written on the logo on her sleeve. Wearing her heart attack on her sleeve, I thought, childishly.

A young woman, local, just like Harwich people are in Harwich, confident in their smallworld security, was just going out of the door, in her unsporty grey tracksuit when the barman said something to her, probably about her swollen belly. She turned round sharply and, laughing, proudly displayed her distended body, at which the barman shouted “Sexy!”. Another little Hoek van Hollander on the way.

We wandered out and toward the ferry, noticing some bandy-legged bikers in full leathers and enjoying the signs everywhere that said “Ein Prettige Reis”. We had a pretty journey.

Shelter from the Storm

The young people who meet in the park in Halesworth, down by the skateboard area, needed somewhere to sit in bad weather. In response, the local crime prevention panel decided to launch a project to raise money to purchase a youth shelter. I was asked to help decorate the shelter, so at the end of May, 2007, I started going down to the park in the evenings to try to get the young people to draw or make suggestions about how the shelter might be decorated. Usually, I went with Lorraine and Hester, two youth workers who regularly liase with the young people. On our first visit, the young people asked when, exactly, the shelter would be installed. They'd heard rumours about it but were a bit sceptical about it actually happening. They declined to do any drawing, at first, until the shelter was actually there. They also said that they could build the shelter themselves. I pointed out some of the practical difficulties in building a shelter that might have to withstand some heavy use without collapsing, and so on.

At the next meeting of the crime prevention sub-committee that I had joined, I reported what the young people had said. I also said that I'd organise a workshop for them, at which they could draw or sketch their ideas for the shelter artwork. The following week I went to the park again to inform the young people about the proposed workshop. I displayed some flyers advertising the workshop, pasting them in places in and near to the skatepark, trying to ensure that they would be clearly visible to the young people. The workshop was to be to be held at the local arts centre, The Cut, which is just a few hundred metres from the park. I also printed out about 40 flyers. Lorraine said she'd give them out to the young people when she went to the park on her regular round.

The day of the workshop arrived. Monday July 30, 2007. I was looking forward to seeing the young people in The Cut arts centre- usually there are mostly older, middle-class people there. I had prepared the art materials and bought kit-kats (chocolate bars), mineral water, paper cups, etc. I arrived at The Cut at 7pm, prepared the room and the materials. Lorraine and Hester arrived at 7. We waited until 7.30 and, disappointingly, no-one showed up. When I mentioned this, some weeks later, to an experienced community worker, Iain Tuckett of Coin Street Community Builders, he was not surprised that no-one turned up. "It's a matter of culture", he explained. I had underestimated the power of this aspect of 'culture'. Although The Cut is just a few hundred metres away from the skatepark, in physical distance, in 'cultural distance' it is on the other side of the world.

We decided to pack up and take some pencils and paper down to the park. The young people were busy talking, drinking and smoking. To help 'establish rapport' I accepted a can of Carling from Westley. Some of the young people eventually did some sketches, one or two of them quite promising. When I got home that night, I had a look through the drawings. One boy had drawn a Burberry-patterned baseball cap and a doughnut. He's got a job cooking doughnuts somewhere. Another boy, who had been praised as being a good artist, drew a head with a penis and pubic hair coming out of it, with the word 'You" at the top. His way of saying "You dickhead". A third youth drew a bottle of beer. The label read 'Stella Actatwat', accompanied by the slogans 'Chavs Should Move To Beccles' and 'Drinking Is For Noobs'. A young man smoking a joint drew a nice rural landscape changing into a cityscape, to go on the inside of the shelter. A thin, pale girl drew some nice little graphic symbols - yin-yang, a cartoon face taking some ecstasy tablets, a couple of mushrooms and some clouds with lightning. One boy did some lettering saying 'Hendo' underneath which he wrote the word CORPZ, a skull taking the place of the O. Two girls did happy girlish pictures of sub-Manga style faces with the slogan 'Halesworth Engoy'. The mother of a two-month old baby drew a fly-agaric mushroom, her baby being passed around the young people while she drew. A boy boy drew some quite stylish squiggles which could be turned into a good decorative element, while another simply wrote on his sheet "Kangaroos - a nice colour like pink". Interesting, I thought, this is the sort of raw material I can work with.


I reported all this back to the sub-committee and learnt that the local council was delaying things and requiring full planning permission for the shelter, having earlier said that this would not be necessary. I continued to visit the young people in the park over the summer and into the autumn, every couple of weeks. It was good to get to know them better, although not many more drawings were done for the shelter. On September 24, a Monday, I went again to the park in the evening with Hester and Lorraine to chat with the young people and keep them informed about the project. We told them that the shelter was now due to be installed in mid-late October. Some of the young people were unable to speak because of the drugs they'd been taking. I had a chat with a young man called Ricky, who Lorraine and Hester were reluctant to approach, as he's a bit rough sometimes. Ricky said the shelter should be painted in blue camouflage colours. He was fairly out of it, too.

A couple of Saturdays later, the Four Towns Bus was in Halesworth. This is a double-decker bus which travels around providing services for the youth and other local groups. Whe it was first acquired, I had the job of decorating the outside of the bus using coloured vinyl. On the Saturday night I went on the bus to meet Eric and Hannah who run the youth centre here. As always, they were most helpful and invited me to go to the youth club on any Monday or Wednesday evening, which I did, on two occasions. Later I went down to the park with Hannah to talk to the young people. It being Saturday, most of them were busy binge-drinking and smoking dope. They weren't very interested in drawing but it was nice to see them. Hannah struck up a conversation with one young man and explained about the project. She introduced me and the youth, who was fairly well gone, said "That's funny, there's a famous artist called Bob Linney who lives in Walpole". I felt somewhat flattered for a moment but then he said to me "Your voice sounds like a retarded twenty-one year old". I told him I was not retarded and certainly not twenty-one years old.

On my first visit to the youth centre, Eric was again very helpful but the young people there were pretty scatty. A group of boys and girls sat round a table with pens and paper that Eric had supplied. Mostly they were just writing their names in graffiti tag style. I asked if they ever drew pictures and they said that they didn't. One boy said he wouldn't do a drawing for the shelter but would just come and paint it when it was installed. I said no thanks as, without planning, it would probably look a mess and the people who used the shelter would have to look at it for years.

Several of the youth club members took pieces of the thick A3 paper, scribbled on them with thick felt-tip pens, scrunched the papers up and chucked them in the middle of the table before throwing their pens on the floor and shouting something vaguely obscene. They got through lots of paper but not many useable drawings emerged from this process. I asked Eric afterwards who cleaned up. "Oh, we do", he replied cheerfully, picking up discarded felt-tips and balls of paper.

Like the older ones in the park, this group showed little aptitude or desire to concentrate on drawing designs for the shelter. There was so much noise going on, too much happening, a big TV set turned up to full volume, somebody banging out of tune on an old piano, others throwing pool cues onto the floor, music blaring out of the sound system. A cacophany. Short little spans of attention, all a bit depressing. When I did a second session at the youth club, a week later, it was a bit calmer. Several young people drew 'tags' with felt-tip marker pens. This is definitely the favoured art style among the youngsters. Not sure how popular it is with the sub-committee...

I drew out black and white line-drawings based on two of the tags - Max and Logo. I used these two because they were not just boys' names but might also suggest other meanings. I also put together a design for the inside of the shelter, based on the drawings that the young people in the park had made. On Friday October 12, I went down to the park but the only two people there were Alan, one of the sub-committee members and Finn, a young skateboarder. I took the opportunity of showing them the drawings I had prepared and both approved of the approach re. art style. This was nice, as there had been some discussion about using a 'graffiti' style, some committee members wanting to avoid the use of the word 'graffiti', preferring 'alfresco art' or, at my suggestion, 'street art'.

The next night I went onto the Four Towns Bus again, and was interested to meet Duker, one of the rural community/youth workers. I also spoke to Hannah, who had helped paint the mural we did in Halesworth four years ago, and which has survived remarkably well. I showed the drawings to Hannah, Eric and another youth worker, Jackie. I explained my preference for the 'tag' art style and they thought it was a good idea, too.

Monday October 15 was the big day. Three men arrived from Rekk, the company that manufactures and supplies these youth shelters, and proceeded to install the shelter. A sort of short Nissan hut on legs, benches along either side, with open ends, made from aluminium, much of which had been 'powder-coated' to produce a dark green colour. Not the best base colour from my point of view, but still. The only other option had been dark blue. I went to the park the following day - installation was complete, the shelter's legs having been cemented in. While I was there Alastair, the chairman of our sub-committee, and the driving force behind the project, appeared and we chatted a bit. At the base of the two front legs of the shelter two names had been scratched into the concrete - it must have still been wet when the young people went down there on Monday night. One was 'Josh' and the other 'Hog'. Alastair complained a bit about this so, trying to be positive, I said something like "Well, man has been wanting to make marks like this ever since the first cave paintings". "Yes", replied Alastair, "I just rather hoped civilisation had moved on a bit since then". We chuckled.

The next day I went down to do some tests with different paints. I had been informed by the man at Rekk that "any acrylic paint will be fine". I had my doubts. The inside surface of the shelter was incredibly smooth, while the outside had a similar surface except that it was covered all over with moulded bumps in a regular pattern. One of the more difficult things I've had to paint, and I've painted most things by now. I dabbed on a bit of acrylic and let it dry. It stood up on the surface, almost inviting you to pick it off. I tried some emulsion, which was better but still far from perfect, so decide to use, for the most part, acetone-based spray paint, just like the graffiti artists use. The latter adhered really well. While I was doing this, I chatted to three sad boys who were sitting in the shelter. One, whose name I forget, although he had been at school with my daughter, had just moved back to Halesworth after splitting up with his girlfriend after two years' living together in Ipswich; and Ricky was there, feeling sorry for himself as he's got nowhere to live at the moment and has been sleeping rough, being woken up by unfriendly policemen in the middle of the night; and Jacob, who announced that he had just that morning been kicked off the course in motor mechanics that he'd been doing at Lowestoft College. A sad group, plenty of swearing and rolling of roll-ups.

On that Wednesday, I started getting into the painting properly. I'd hardly started before a member of the anti-youth dog walking brigade rushed to judgement. "What does that mean?", asked the woman, not making any effort to say hello or introduce herself in any way. Several thoughts went through my mind in quick succession. I didn't reply, as I felt I should be diplomatic. After all, I was a responsible citizen and represented the sub-committee of the Halesworth Crime Prevention Panel. I didn't want to get them a bad name. After a pause, I said "Good morning. Lovely morning, isn't it?" She then delivered a short monologue about the ills of today's youth. I said I thought it was our generation, not the youth, who were the vandals since we had created such a commercialised society blah blah blah.




Later, four or five young people came along and watched what I was doing. Lorraine came and so did Hannah, who brought her pet ferrets in a large cage. She took them out and let some of the others hold them, if they dared. Soon the young people were saying "Can I have a go?" Cayley and Jacob sprayed a star each after I had demonstrated. Lorraine also did a star. When we'd finished it was funny because the one I'd done was the worst, drippy.

The next day, Patrick and Josh helped to spray the mountains and other elements in the landscape. A few of the others showed some interest, but didn't actually summon up the energy to do anything practical. "What time will you be here tomorrow?", Patrick asked, enthusiastically. 'Things are looking uo', I thought to myself. Tomorrow was the first day of half term.




So, the young people of school age were off school. This was good because, broadly speaking, the young people who had left school were less inclined to get into the painting while those still at school had not yet developed the skills required for doing nothing for extended periods. Patrick arrived soon after I got there. Then came James, Jacob, Ben, Neil et al. We did the sun. I had decided to use a stencilling approach in an attempt to make the images look fairly neat and respectable. This involved cutting stencils in my studio and then taping them up against the shelter walls before spraying through the open areas. So we masked round the sun with a stencil and carefully sprayed it to produce a blend or gradation from yellow, through orange, to red. We did a few coats, as one of the adages of spraying is "It's better to do several thin coats than one heavy coat". In my experience, it's actually very difficult to apply a heavy coat without the paint running more than you want it to. It drips too much. A little drip is quite cool. Lots of drips just look like you don't know what you're doing.

As we peeled the stencil away, Jacob and Patrick, who had done most of the spraying got excited. It was great - the sun looked good. "That sun's fucking phat", exclaimed Patrick. "Fuck, that look good", Jacob said, putting his arm round Patrick's shoulder. A few minutes later, they asked if they could work for me. Full-time assistants, getting paid lots of money. "Fuck, that'd be cool", fantasised Jacob. Nice thought, though. Don't know how I'd cope with non-stop swearing.

The we did the river. I left most of this to the boys. Ben joined in and it was great to see them really getting into it. Ricky came along with his continuing tale of woe. He'd slept in the church with only the doormat as a blanket and was still shivering. He said that the police took his shoes away to check their sole-print against some prints found at a crime scene. Some of the shops in town had been burgled, including, confusingly, the shoe shop. Ricky was a suspect mainly because he had been caught, a few weeks back, after stealing a load of alcohol from the local supermarket. Apparently, one night he'd staggerred down to the park carrying a massive box full of all sorts of goodies - beer, vodka, alcopops. He'd been generous with it, and the young people had had a bit of a party down there. A community of sorts. Ricky was supposed to appear on bail in Lowestoft that day. I said he'd better go otherwise it would all get worse for him. "I don't want to spend my last fiver getting a fucking train to Lowestoft. I've had enough", he said, being tough but very upset. He said he might go up to see his aunt in Yarmouth. She's a heroin addict. He could get an overdose from her and commit suicide. He's come off heroin fairly recently - to prove it he showed me several pin pricks in his arms. "Do you want to see my groin?". he asked me. "No thanks, I believe you", I replied.

At the weekend, I worked in the studio preparing stencils, still for the landscape image on the inside of the shelter. It's amazing how much longer everything takes when you work on a large scale. After a morning's work, I'd look at what I'd done - maybe drawn up half of one side. Big is slow. Remember that, all you budding community artists. Very slow. This was the bit with large fly agaric mushrooms, snow-capped mountains and Tibetanish clouds. In my mind it was the Jianjinshan or Snowy Mountains of western Sichuan, over which Mao and his depleted troops struggled on the Long March - I've recently been reading a book about the LM. Nice to be drawing these simple shapes in the warmth of the studio listening to Gypsy Jazz, trying not to put my back out of joint bending, kneeling, stretching to draw it correctly, getting the lines to have some grace and style.

I went down to the park on the Monday morning - October 22, 2007. It was too damp to do any painting. A bit of unimaginative real graffiti had been added to the image over the weekend. Someone called Conor and another called Chopper had written their names in rather babyish, uninteresting lettering over the urban clouds that we had sprayed so carefully with their blends from red to yellow to white. More or less impossible to correct without starting again. I was a bit disappointed but, later in the day, when things had dried out a bit, happiness returned as several boys and girls worked enthusiastically on the image. The girls, Cayley and Ellie, actually said that they'd cleaned off as much as possible of the crappy 'graffiti' yesterday, which explained why it looked so faint. That made it feel much better for me. It seems that most of the young people thought the 'graffiti' was crap. Chopper turns out to be a boy I know reasonably well and Conor is his mate Conor. Harmless pratts, really. Small town not very tough tough guys.

Ricky turned up, still alive. Actually, I'd been quite worried about him. He was much happier and said that he's got the chance of a flat. Later, Jacky, the Community Support Officer came down to tell Ricky that he's not allowed to sleep in the church. While she was there, Jacky offerred him some not very friendly advice like "Get a life" and "Get a job". Afterwards, Ricky commented wryly that she had not exactly offerred him much 'Community Support'.

Tuesday was a cold, bright day but again condensation was a problem to begin with. I corrected a stem of one of the mushrooms and later we were able to get on better. Ben worked hard with me all day and it was good to get to know him a bit. Working with someone is one of the best ways to get to know them, I think. Several others also did a bit - a girl called Charlie, Jacob, Patrick. Max, who had drawn the original Max tag at the youth club came down and was impressed with the coloured version of Max that I showed him as a computer printout. He didn't get involved, though.

There's an older bloke who spends time down at the skatepark, maybe in his late forties. Whenever I, or any of the youth workers, appear he melts into the background and wanders off. Lorraine and Hester have never really managed to engage him in conversation. The general suspicion is that he sells drugs to the young people but I don't know. Anyway, he strolls around with his Doberman dog. The dog wears a muzzle and the man doesn't say much. One day, he and I were the only two people down there, so I thought I'd have a go at a conversation. "Hi, nice dog. What's his name?", I asked. I was a bit freaked out when he replied "Max". I said something about painting the Max tag on the shelter. "That's a coincidence", added the man and then melted away again, leaving me feeling a bit odd.




We did the sun's rays, which meant climbing up and down the stepladder and standing on wobbly benches holding on to the end, spray can in hand. Patrick and Ben did most work on it - 16 year olds. They constantly play 'music' on their mobile phones and are particularly enthralled by a song that teaches the listener to 'suck dick'. It has charming lyrics, like "Do your girlfriend's teeth get in the way?" at which the lads usually roar with laughter. The young people seem to swear an awful lot. They shout a lot, too. Jacob's amongst the loudest and specialises in shouting things like "What ho, old boy" at the top of his voice whenever frightened looking OAPs come within range.

On Wednesday Patrick, Ben, Liam and George did most of the work with several others hanging around. Ricky turned up to report that his meeting with the potential landlord, and other guy with whom he'd be sharing, had been disastrous.The other lodger, apparently a woman-beater by repute, didn't want Ricky staying there, so Ricky had to sleep rough again. Someone from the church bought him a meal of fish and chips at lunchtime. "I've had enough", he said again. "I might just go and hang myself". He'd been to the surgery in the morning but his doctor had not been there. I asked him why he wanted to see the doctor. "'Cos of all these thoughts going round in my head, man".

The work went well, although I discovered that one of the older boys had chucked a can of spray paint into the nearby river without me seeing. Jacob was there again, although he didn't do much work. He announced in a loud voice that one of the smaller boys, George had "lost his anal virginity". I hadn't heard that one before. Lots more swearing but a good working atmosphere. My friend Julia, walking her dog Miff in the park came over to have a chat and a look at the shelter.

Started Thursday by doing a small cloud with George. Soon a group of 12 year old girls came by. I knew three of them quite well and they each had a go at spraying a bit on the cityscape - Nancy, Freda, Matilda, Freya and Eleanor. I added some details on the buildings. Later, a man came and made some comments about the shelter. He was carrying a Guardian newspaper, which I usually take as a promising sign. "So now they'll have somewhere comfortable to do their binge drinking" was his opening, and somewhat disappointing, remark. He went on to predict that the painting wouldn't last long before it was spoiled by graffiti. I pointed out that the mural in the underpass had lasted for about four years without being seriously disfigured and added that I thought that most of the young people here are fine and not a threat to society. He complained about the litter the young people leave. I said that the Crime Prevention Panel is planning to raise money so that a sturdy bin can be put next to the shelter. "They won't use it", he said, immediately. I think his glass is half empty.




I spent the weekend and Monday cutting stencils for the Max image and went to the park on Tuesday to make a start on painting it on the outside of the shelter. Ricky turned up, limping and on crutches. "What have you been up to?", I asked him. "I went to Bungay at the weekend and got shot in the leg", he replied. "Shit", I said, "Do people carry guns in Bungay?". "Oh no, I went round me mate's house on Saturday and we were messing around with his air rifle. He shot me in the leg by mistake. I had to go to hospital - they kept me in overnight". He showed me a small hole towards the top of his inside leg where the pellet had gone through his track suit bottoms". "That was close", I laughed. "Yeah, just a few inches higher it would've got me in the nuts". He'd enjoyed the warm bed.

On Wednesday a boy called Henry came and had a chat. He was the one who Lorraine had said was very interested in art/graphics and was supposed to be a good artist. The only thing of his that I'd seen was his representation of 'You Dickhead', which I referred to earlier. He asked if he and some of the others could paint the remaining side of the shelter. They didn't want to plan anything, just to be given some spray paint and allowed to get on with it. I said it would look a mess unless they planned it a bit. I also said that I didn't really want to buy the paint for that out of what I was getting paid. I thought it would be great, from an ownership point of view, if they did the remaining side, so tried to be as accomodating as possible. We made an agreement that if he produced a rough design before the next sub-committee meeting the following Tuesday, I would put it to the committee and recommend it. I gave him my phone number and said to give me a ring whenever he had prepared the sketch and I would come to Halesworth to collect it. I also asked why he hadn't shown any interest in the project before now and reminded him that I'd been down to the park regularly since June with art materials. He said he'd been busy. Very frustrating, actually, because, of course, the meeting came and went and Henry didn't re-appear.

Max started to take shape on Thursday. Not many young people down there, half-terms finished and my helpers are mostly back at school. Nevertheless, it was a lovely, bright autumn day and I'm up on the stepladder masking out when I become aware that there's someone else nearby. I looked round to my left to see a large man, maybe in his 60s, standing there shaking his head from side to side, as if tut-tutting. When I looked round, he said "That's terrible. Really bad. Really bad stuff" and then just walked off before I had taken it in. "Cheers, mate", I thought to myself, a bit shocked, "Now fuck off and read your Daily Mail". Not a very encouraging start to the day.

Later, the Guardian-carrying complainer returned, as well. He definitely sees the project's main aim as being to provide the young people with a comfortable place in which to drink copious quantities of alcohol. I pointed out that I thought part of the idea was to provide a focal point for the youth to gather so that they didn't congregate in other parts of the town, like near the war memorial or near peoples' houses. Philip (we were on first name terms by now) asked me a series of questions about how the park is policed, what the Crime Prevention Panel does, etc. I was as helpful as I could be but had to tell him that I was not really the person qualified to answer his enquiries. I was just the artist - don't shoot me nor the piano player. I told him I'd ask someone from the CPP to give him a ring, which they did later that evening.

On Friday, I carried on with Max. I had quite a long chat with PC Phillips who's got an arrest warrant for Ricky, who didn't go to court yesterday. I haven't seen Ricky since Monday. The PC also said, interestingly, that he's met Ricky's mum and that she appeared to be a perfectly nice lady. Ricky, on the other hand, has been ranting on about what an effing cow she is for not letting him stay at her house. Two sides to every story.

Later, I had a chat with Neil, who shambled up in his baggy trousers. One of the more wastery looking boys that hang out down there. This was the first decent conversation I'd had with Neil and I was pleased to discover that he has much more going for him than appears at first sight. He's doing an 'Access to Music' course in Norwich, for which he has to get up at 6.30 three mornings a week to get the bus. He told me that his class is currently studying Bob Dylan's 'Blowin' in the Wind', and learning about protest songs. I thought this was a good subject to be learning about. Worth getting up early for. We talked about the young people doing one side of the shelter and I showed him a book called 'Spraycan Art', pointing out illustrations of cool black graffiti dudes in New York sketching out their designs before starting to spray.




Oh yes, and going back to the policeman, he quite liked the tree on which the skaters have hung several dead skateboards. It looks good. I had a chat with Finn about Nina Simone's 'Strange Fruit", which was nice.

The following Monday was a damp day and as my daughter Jo was going back to Brighton , I decided not to go to the park. Instead, I made a start on the stencils for 'Logo', the design I have in mind for the last side of the shelter. On Tuesday I worked on Max. A woman came along with her poodle while I was working. I turned round to look at her, wondering what to expect, and she exclaimed, enthusiastically, "This is wonderful!". She looked around the inside and came out saying "It's lovely". I thanked her and said how encouraging it was to get such positive comments.

An older man with his greying dog approached, a bit later. "Comin' on, innit?", he observed cheerily. We had a chat during which I learnt that his father had never hit him or his siblings during his childhood. He nevertheless respected his father and always did what he was told. He said something favourable about David Cameron but quickly apologised - "I don't want to get political". After pointing out the importance of the traditional family he took his dog off for a shit on the Millennium Meadow. A little while later, Stephen, who used to run the Dunwich Ship pub, came along. "You're not Banksie, are you?" I was quite impressed that he knew who Banksie was.

I then chatted with Rob, the local dealer, and Hogwart. Rob phoned Henry to see if he'd done the design yet, because the meeting is about two hours away. He'd done nothing - no change there, then. Rob and Hog were happy about the way the designs were coming along, although they didn't offer to do any work on it.

I went to the meeting that afternoon, where I received a vote of thanks for working successfully "under difficult conditions". One of the committee members said "It's an object lesson watching the way Bob relates to the young people", so I was pleased. I said we should try vinyl for the Awards for All logo, although Steve, another committee member, thought it would be peeled off straight away. I said lets try the cut vinyl - I can get two copies done at cost price and if, in the end, they're damaged, we can think of something more permanent. I've also got to get permission from the kids/parents in the photos I took, so that they can be used as publicity.

On Wednesday I spent a cold day painting Max. Getting to the end, just adding highlights and finishing touches. Several complimentary comments from passers by. One man came up and said "Graffiti artists don't usually take so much trouble over their work". I had a chat with another man who had a stammer. We talked briefly about 'ownership', although none of the young people were able to help today. As he went off, he said "Well, it's g-g-g-great what you're d-d-d-doing". Later, Finn, Rob and Hog moved the dead skateboards to another tree, in case one fell on someone walking along the path underneath the tree.

I put the final touches to Max on Thursday, then spent the following weekend preparing stencils for the last side which is based on the word 'Logo', one of the tags done at the youth club. After a short holiday in Venice, I went down to the park on Thursday but it was too wet to do anything. The next day was bright and sunny but even at 1.30 p.m. there was a heavy layer of condensation on the shelter, so again I did no painting.




Saturday was a dry day, for once, although I still had to wipe off some condensation at around 12.30. Managed to do the first big stencil for Logo - blue background using the groovy 'Montana' paints, which are really nice to use. Two girls, Olivia and Sally helped with some spraying. Patrick, Jacob, Hogwart and a few others were down there rolling joints and generally having a laugh. Patrick also did quite a lot of spraying. He and Jacob, at one point, climbed onto the childrens' play equipment and did some really cool stoned scat singing. Very musical - actually, Jacob plays drums.

Despite forecasts of heavy rain for Monday from three different websites (BBC Weather; the Met Office; UK Weather), we had no rain, so I was able to do a couple of hours painting on Logo. Westley, Maria, Jacob and Hogwart were in the shelter. Wes and Maria had been to court this morning re. the fight in Halesworth several weeks ago. As it turned out, all charges against them were dropped. Wes was much relieved, as he would have got a prison sentence if found guilty. He was celebrating with a box of twenty Carlsberg Export beers. He offered me one but I declined, mainly because I wasn't feeling too good with 'man-flu'.

I did the L and O backgrounds. Alan came along with his dog Jasper and told me that the commissioning ceremony would be at 10.00 a.m. on December 5. This means that I've got a bit more time than I thought, which is good, in view of the inclement weather. Wes went off to get a kebab and left the half-full box of Carlsberg Exports under a bush in the park, telling Jacob and Hogwart to look after it. As I was leaving, they were also leaving the park, carrying Westley's beers. I was just getting in the car when I noticed Jacob, Hog and another boy coming up the lane, Jacob in the lead. He suddenly turned round and said something to the boy carrying the beers, who immediately put the box down behind a clump of weeds, hiding them from view. Next, a police van approached and the driver wound down the window and had a word with Jacob, who told me later that the policeman had said "Don't get run over - it makes too much paperwork for us".

Wednesday was a nice morning after yesterday's rain. I continued with Logo on my own. The only people I chatted to were Alan (and Jasper) and Josh. Alan talked about various things while I applied a stencil. Regarding litter, he said "The only things I really object to are broken bottles and vomit". I said "The two things go together, don't they". Josh is a pleasant, laid back boy who is hoping to study catering at the new college which used to be the local Middle School. I know Josh's dad, who is called Keon Joy. I wondered what Josh's surname was - he lives with his mum, the parents being separated. It could have been Josh Joy. I finished the G and one of the Os, again impressed with the nice colours in the Montana Gold range of spraypaints.

Later, I e-mailed Steve to tell him that the lottery logo can't be done in vinyl after all. The lettering is to small for the cutter at EPS Transfers to handle. We'll have to get by with the metal plaque supplied by the Lottery people. I'll mount it on wood and it can be held up by someone when photos are taken at the opening ceremony.




On Friday, I only managed about an hour painting before a hail and sleet storm forced me to stop. The following Monday, I finished painting Logo and stencilled an additional figure onto the empty area of the landscape on the inside of the shelter. Had a chat with an 80 year old gentleman who had been a senior local government officer (Superintendent General) in Hitchin.




For me, that was about it. The commissioning ceremony took place on a very rainy morning in the park. None of the young people who might use the shelter were in attendance - presumably, nobody had thought to invite them. There was no shortage of people from various civic and police bodies, on the other hand. I had seen only one or two of them in the park before. They had their tea and biscuits in the shelter and had their photograph taken in the rain. A few journalists braved the weather and interviewed some of us who had been involved. On the Friday of that week, we made the front page of the Beccles and Bungay Journal, with a large colour photo of people standing in front of the shelter and quite a good article entitled 'Shelter From The Storm'. It reminded me that there are still a couple of small jobs to complete at some point - "Bob now wants to cover the shelter in a transparent anti-gravity coating, and also plans to add some glow-in-the-dark stars on the inside of the roof". I had mentioned anti-graffiti paint to the young reporter, but I quite like the idea of anti-gravity paint. I have nice visions of Patrick, Jacob, Finn, Hogwart, Josh, Wes, Ricky and crew floating away, stoned, swearing, arguing, drinking beer, shouting and laughing.....