Rob Ryan at Somerset House
Last year, I visited Rob Ryan, the papercutting supremo at his studio in Bethnal Green, so when I heard he was transporting his entire workshop over to Somerset House for the duration of the Pick Me Up Contemporary Graphic Art Fair, this seemed the ideal premise to wander down the Strand and pay him a visit. It was a sunlit day that rendered everything in sharp focus, as if the city was setting out to resemble papercuts in celebration of this inspirational artist, for whom, undoubtably, a certain moment has arrived.
Leaving the sunlight, I entered the gallery where Rob will be working in his temporary studio for the next ten days like a monkey at the zoo. It is going to busy. Rob is going to get mobbed. It is going to be like feeding time at the penguin house. Visitors can see everything, peek over Rob’s shoulder as he sketches, then poke their noses in further to get an eyeful of all the cutting, printing, and other fiddly and fussy, fancy footwork that is involved in making his ingenious works. The dark subterranean space of the gallery had all the charisma of an old prison or an underground car park, but once I saw Rob’s cosy denim couch, his cutting table, his billboards, lamps and all the personal paraphernalia that is essential to his creative process, I was relieved to enter a familiar more sympathetic zone that goes by the name of Ryantown.
Even as I sat at Rob’s elbow while he drew branches on a tree in pencil, he had one eye on the photographers and cameramen prowling around, walking in slow motion. The dark space and powerful lighting made us feel as if we were enacting something, as if we were on stage or Rob Ryan was starring in the movie of his own existence. When asked to pose for the cameras, I thought Rob rose to the occasion with a bravura performance, as you can see above, assuming a bold, heroically comic stance that is worthy of Buster Keaton. Rob has no fear of clowning in the face of a media circus.
More than anything, Rob’s studio reminded me of the workroom in Bertolt Brecht’s house in East Berlin, where, on a series of different tables, the writer applied himself to a set of tasks simultaneously, plays, poems and letters. And so it is with Rob Ryan, only he has more projects underway than the British government. While Rob was drawing those branches on a tree on one side of the table, across from him a badge maker was furiously at work on the opposite side of the same table and half a dozen others of Rob’s loyal team were occupied in other tasks at different tables. On the next table, Rob showed me a larger paper cut in progress and, at another table, yet a larger one of a tree blowing in the wind. Then, he waved a fax of the template for “The Stylist” magazine for which he doing a cover, while explaining about the record label he is starting (Reacharound Records), his forthcoming tapestry designs and the plan to make his own customised Staffordshire figures.
I can barely keep up with all the work that Rob Ryan creates, his paper cuts, his prints, his ceramics and all the exquisite bits and pieces of graphic design for magazines and book jackets that keep cropping up everywhere. Yet most of all, I appreciate the silence and sense of calm that exists in Rob’s work. The intricacy is appealing, like lace or tapestry it delights the eye, and there is a childlike playfulness, almost an innocence to many of Rob’s pieces. They can be as delicate as cobwebs, and it is precisely this ephemeral quality which means they can also be read as memento mori. Every one a drama in microcosm, the emotional ambivalence of these evocations of the fleeting moment is what gives them such powerful resonance for me, melancholic and joyful at the same time. Rob has a benign eye and even the smallest works function as keepsakes to communicate his affectionate celebration of the transience and fragility of the human experience.
I could not reconcile the organised chaos of the studio and Rob’s attractive robust public persona with the intimacy of the work, until Rob explained that while he brings his ideas to the studio and works them out there, the source of his inspiration is elsewhere. His life in the world is his inspiration, not his life in the studio. Then Rob lifted up one of his beloved Staffordshire dogs, describing how he painted glasses onto it as a prototype for his customised Staffordshire figures. In doing so, he discovered that the ceramic spaniel had floppy ears corresponding to his own errant locks and that he had unwittingly created a self-portrait as a Staffordshire dog, and he roared with laughter at this daft notion.
Let me admit I am a fan. I love the wit of Rob Ryan’s vision of the world, picking up loose ends of pop and popular culture, from samplers and Staffordshire figures to pin badges and record sleeves, and weaving them all together like an extraordinarily clever bird to make a uniquely colourful nest that is unmistakably his own.
These tiles are available from Ryantown in Columbia Rd and www.misterrob.co.uk
Juke Box Jimmy, the Scots Cockney
Here is Jimmy in 1969 on his wedding day at St Dunstan’s, Stepney, aged twenty-three, full of life and surveying the world with a grin that indicates a man who knows his way around. Yet only ten years earlier, he came to London from Cowdenbeath where Jimmy’s father was a Scottish miner who wanted a better life for his three young sons. In their corner of Fife, the only sources of employment were the mines or the docks, both declining industries. With brave foresight, he quit his job and came alone to London to seek a new life for his family and once he had secured a job at the Truman Brewery in Brick Lane, they came to join him.
“I went to Daniel St School and when the teacher asked me to read a story from the book out loud, I said, ‘I’ll have to read it in Scots, Sir,’ and obviously all the kids laughed. I didn’t speak Cockney at that time.” admitted Jimmy, describing his first encounter with cultural displacement, adding that he picked up Cockney at once and never looked back since.
Jimmy has been a regular customer at E.Pellicci in the Bethnal Green Road since 1959 and once he had polished off his steamed pudding with custard, we walked briskly West together, weaving our way through the back streets over to 19 Old Nichol St.
In the nineteen sixties, Jimmy used to work up on the third floor as an optical technician, manufacturing spectacles at Prince’s Optical Company and enjoyed a high old time. “We did have some great laughs,” he confided with a twinkly smile.
In Jimmy’s animated company, the street transformed before my eyes as he pointed out the exact spot in Camlet St opposite, where the foreman became visible as he approached – explaining that someone always had to keep watch at the window, especially if all the staff of the spectacle factory were skylarking up on the roof making comedy home movies with a super eight camera, as they liked to do. Crossing to the corner of Camlet St, Jimmy placed his hand on a sill with a significant grin. Here lived the infamous Nell who threw a bucket of piss from this window onto any car that parked outside. Then, with a gesture in the direction of the site of a hut across the road where Marc Bolan played, Jimmy walked into Redchurch St, that was all cabinet makers in his personal landscape of memory, which, I began to realise, was more vivid to him than the mere shadow of our present day.
I ran at his heels scribbling in my notebook as we made our way East, Jimmy speaking to me as if to one blind, indicating landmarks that were visible only to him, referring to the names of pubs closed years ago and pointing out the bullet hole from the shooting of Ginger Marks in Cheshire St, in the wall that no longer stands. Passing the Cheshire St washhouse that is now flats, he said, “When we first came down from Scotland we used to come here for lovely baths.” Then he halted in his steps, pointed reverentially and announced, “This is where I spent my youth playing football on the grass.” Such was the limitation of my vision, all I could see was the bare concrete car park in front of us.
Next, we crossed Vallance Rd to arrive at the corner of Menotti St where Jimmy lived when he first arrived from Scotland. “There were five of us living in two rooms on the first floor, a front room and a bedroom. I slept with my dad on the lower bunk and my mum slept on the top bunk with my two brothers. The rent was too high and we had mice in there.” Jimmy recalled dispassionately, as he peered up expectantly to the blank first floor window of the newly built flats that occupy the site today.
Everything has changed on this side of the street, but a passing train drew Jimmy’s attention to the railway opposite. “It took a while to get used to that!” he said and looked over at the gloomy dripping arch that he was was too frightened to walk under alone as a child. He indicated the corner where his loyal friend Alan, who lived in Whitechapel, would wait until Jimmy was safely inside his front door before turning for home. Then we walked away into Weavers Fields in the afternoon sun.“This used to be all debris here – bombsites – we loved it,” declared Jimmy, gazing around at his former playground in delight.
“I feel most at home in Bethnal Green, my roots are here because this is where I was brought up. That’s why I come five days a week to Pelliccis, when you go in there you feel part of a family, and I love all the hospitality that goes with it. There’s two chaps I see on a Friday, they are my friends from seventeen years old. To me, it’s the best place I’ve found for food – when they close for a holiday, I’m lost, I don’t know where to go.”
Walking the streets with Jimmy, each place became familiar and domestic, and I envied his ability to strike up conversations with everyone who walked into his path. To Jimmy, the street is a social environment where he feels at home and can meet anyone as an equal. He expects to speak with everyone and his only disappointment is when he receives no response to his open-hearted entreaties.
Next day, I took the 309 bus from Bethnal Green to Poplar where Jimmy lives alone with his cat in a small flat, to see the juke box he is renowned for. The glistening handsome machine enjoys pride of place in the living room, lined with filing cabinets containing Jimmy’s vast and meticulously organised record collection. Unfairly dismissed from his job one day, Jimmy won justice in the form of a lump sum of compensation at a tribunal, allowing him the once-in-a-lifetime chance of an expensive purchase. So he bought the beautiful Seburg jukebox you see below, which he cherishes as a symbol of both his self-respecting independence and the love of music that fills his life today, even if he rarely plays the machine out of consideration for his neighbours.
“I’ve still got the Scottish tongue, though I don’t use it now,” said Jimmy, turning Scottish with complete playful authenticity to surprise me, as if he had switched records in his own internal jukebox.“Even when I go back to Scotland I find it too embarrassing to speak it in front of the Scots, but I always spoke Scots to my parents.” he explained. Then, changing tone and referring back to the moment when his father came South more than half a century ago, he added quietly, “I’ve got him to thank for everything in the first place.”
Spitalfields Antiques Market 5
This is Eric Holah who was a buyer before he was a seller. When he moved house, Spitalfields became the obvious place to sell off his clutter. “Council Estate Chic, that’s my look,” he explained mischievously, “I am obsessed with collecting, so this was my way to get rid of stuff.” Once he began selling, something unexpected happened, he became addicted to coming here, so now Eric buys to sell. “Last week, I had a week off and I couldn’t even walk through the market because I didn’t want to see who had my pitch – I knew if I saw it I would want to rearrange their stall,” revealed Eric, rolling his eyes in self-parody.
This is the radiant Caroline Dill who loves everything from the nineteen sixties, especially bold floral prints and vanity cases. Although it was her mum who grew up in the sixties and passed on the enthusiasm, with her long straight auburn hair and pale round face, Caroline Dill certainly has the look of that era. Among her selection of colourful vintage luggage, the original Pan-Am flight bag is especially covetable. “My flat used to be completely sixties, but by my partner’s not so keen on it, so now we meet somewhere in the middle.” she confided sagely, clutching her funky tangerine ice bucket protectively.
This is the gregarious and charismatic Griff, caught in a rare contemplative moment behind his stall. “I have been buying and selling since I was fourteen,” explained Griff, by way of introduction. As a sculptor, he started in the antique business by restoring broken stone sculptures and selling them, but has since diversified into wood, marble and granite sculpture too, as well as painting and ceramics. Griff has a keen eye and an amenable manner, and we enjoyed puzzled over the large earthenware pot you can see on the stall with two dragons incised in the glaze, which is his current object of fascination.
This genial gentleman is Davey, who came in September to give it a try and has been coming back ever since. “It was a new venture, I started selling off things I had collected over the years,” explained Davey, before he was interrupted by an enquiry about his Cheyne Patent Skirt Gauge. It was a costume expert who confirmed the gauge for sale on Davey’s stall dated from the flapper era, when hemlines went from the ankle to the knee in five years. “You can’t know everything about things from the past,” enthused Davey in delight, afterwards, “That’s why I came here, because there’s so much to discover.”
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
The Last Derelict House In Spitalfields
This is the view of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s spire upon Christ Church seen from the weaver’s loft at the top of 2 Wilkes St, the last derelict house in Spitalfields. Once upon a time people used to wander among the streets surrounding the shabby old church, savouring the romance of these ancient Huguenot houses that had seen better days and were then used as workplaces or left derelict. Those days are long gone, since Spitalfields got toshed up, the church was scrubbed behind the ears, the sweatshops moved out, skips appeared as renovations began and the value of these dwellings went through the roof.
Today, that process is almost complete, as I visited the last house in Spitalfields to be rescued from decay, where I met Peter Sinden who is overseeing the repairs on behalf of Anisur Rahman who bought the building in the nineteen seventies as a warehouse for his cash and carry business, Star Wholesale. When he bought it, the house had been a workplace for generations with boards nailed over panelling, false ceilings added and layers of flooring concealing the original floorboards. Behind all these accretions, the old structure remained intact and when the additions were removed, along with some of the fabric, in a former restoration attempt no-one bothered to dispose of any of the timber from the house. While elsewhere in Spitalfields, properties were being turned upside down, removing all evidence of the previous occupants, Mr Rahman did nothing and, as a consequence of his benign neglect, 2 Wilkes St exists today as an eighteenth century time capsule.
Stepping through the door, I was amazed by the multilayered textures that are the result of human activity throughout the long history of the building, especially the flaking paint that reveals every single coat taking you back three centuries. The house has a presence that halts you in your step. It grabs you and you lower your voice without knowing why. You stand and gaze. The reflected light from the street falls upon dusty old floorboards, visibly worn beside the windows where people have stood in the same spot to look down upon Wilkes St since the seventeen twenties – when the house was built by Henry Taylor who was responsible for the house next door and several others in the vicinity. Of all the old houses in Spitalfields I have been inside, this is the one that has best retained its atmosphere. All of its history remains present in the dense patina, that speaks of everyone who has passed through. The house retains its own silence and the din of the contemporary world is drowned out by it.
Peter Sinden is the proprietor of the Market Coffee House and has brought the expertise that he acquired in the work he did there. His first realisation in Wilkes St was that no timber should leave the house, because all the piles that lay around comprised the missing pieces of an enormous three dimensional jigsaw waiting to be put back together.
The central staircase of the house had collapsed but he rebuilt it with the original treads, on wooden bearers that support each step, in the traditional method, starting at the bottom and working his way up – just as a joiner would have done in the eighteenth century when all carpenters did their work on site. Today, a staircase would be manufactured offsite on “strings”(which are the side panels used to support the treads) and then reassembled in situ but, by reconstructing the staircase in the old manner, Peter was able to refit it in the way that was most complementary to both the irregularities of the building and the staircase. I was fascinated by the few surviving hand-turned stair rods, one sole example with a barley sugar twist for the first flight and others with a simpler profile for the upper flights. These will now be copied to complete the staircase.
I could see my own breath in the air as we descended into the dark musty cellar by torchlight, to enter a kitchen where the beam of light fell upon eighteenth century matchboarding and a flag floor, just as I have seen newly installed in other houses at great expense. The torchlight caught portions of an old dresser and a stone sink, beneath layers of dust, grit and filth – presumably abandoned in the nineteenth century – again similar to those I have seen in recreations of period kitchens. Any of Charles Dickens’ characters would recognise this space.
Peter explained that the floorboards above our heads had partly collapsed in the nineteenth century and been shored up, with another floor laid on top to level it up. Inserting new supports, he had lifted the ground floor eight to ten inches back to its original level. Elsewhere he has removed warped panelling and steamed it flat before replacing it. On the first floor, he took me into an intermediary space off the stairwell that linked to the rooms on either side, divided from them by partitions. This was a rare example of a powder room. Any of Henry Fielding’s characters would recognise this space.
You will never see a skip outside 2 Wilkes St because Peter’s approach is that of minimum intervention, he speaks of sympathetic repair rather than renovation. Always reusing the original timbers wherever possible, he is treating the project as you would the restoration a piece of fine old furniture. With an open-ended timescale and a sympathetic owner, work can progress slowly. “You take stock, be patient and you let the house speak for itself,” explained Peter, who is undertaking the painstaking work for Mr Rahman without remuneration. “He is a friend and I am trying to help him,” said Peter, talking plainly. Casting my eyes around the house, it was also easy to understand how this project could become compulsively engaging.
At the recent Annual General Meeting of the Spitalfields Trust, held in the building next door, Douglas Blain, chairman of the trust, spoke of the threat to these old houses in Spitalfields that he sees coming from new money today. Where once in Spitalfields a few enthusiasts renovated their houses, mostly doing the work themselves, now these buildings are a magnet for the super rich who may expect to strip out interiors according to their whims and, in doing so, bear no regard for the subtleties that make them special in the first place. In this context, 2 Wilkes St serves as a timely reminder of the authentic atmosphere of old London that Fielding and Dickens knew, which is incarnated here, witnessing the presence of all our forebears, and which can too easily be destroyed forever.
Philippa Stockley, novelist
This is Philippa Stockley, novelist and painter, who lives in an old house at the back of the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel with her cat Battie, named after the famous Dr Battie that once lived nearby and treated patients with mental illness (renowned also for his bat like ears), who became the origin of the colloquial term “battie” for insane.
I offer you this diverting story of Dr Battie as a single example of the myriad pieces of unlikely and intriguing information that garnish Philippa’s astoundingly articulate conversational style, making it quite an adventure even to sit down for a chat with her. She has that rare gift of confiding such informed observations of the world, couched with a particular elegant levity, that it makes you feel very intelligent simply to be the recipient of her insights and in turn you strive to match this eloquence, in order to return the compliment, which results in a conversation with as many swift twists and turns as the tango music that was playing on her stereo when I arrived. The dialogue was advancing at a break-neck pace, until Battie jumped onto the table next to Philippa’s chair which was the cue for her to engage in a nose-rubbing battle with her cat, allowing me time to collect my thoughts, being unused to such sharp company.
I shall never be able to establish whether Philippa Stockley always wears a glamorous dress and a silk shawl in the afternoon, which is surely the prerogative of a novelist, or whether this dazzling outfit was for my benefit, but I was certainly impressed to step from the dusty street and follow the trail of her perfume into the parlour where I took her portrait. There was something familiar about the pose she assumed, the décolletage and the satin drape. “Who was that seventeenth century painter who painted ladies in silks?” I asked rhetorically, to distract her as I composed the picture,“Lely,” she replied without pause for thought or even having to search.
Like many smart women, Philippa Stockley wears her intelligence lightly and describes her achievements in the context of her shortcomings. Having revealed that she wrote her first novel, “The Edge of Pleasure,” in two weeks, writing two thousand words a day – six thousands words some days – to complete it in sixteen days and selling it the week after, she then qualified the story by informing me that she could not drive, swim or run. I think we can overlook these deficiencies in the roll call of Ms Stockley’s accomplishments, because I have no doubt that there are always plenty of volunteers eager to drive the charming novelist wherever she pleases to go, also available to dive in and rescue her if she were drowning, and equally delighted to run that vital errand on her behalf whenever it should be required.
“I was so excited.” she enthused, “Those two weeks were the best two weeks of my life because I had no idea what I was going to write about. I didn’t know my characters’ names and I couldn’t believe how they just walked into my pages fully dressed. I wondered what they were going to do next. Once the story began I couldn’t stop it.” In retrospect, Philippa Stockley treasures the experience of her first novel because it was something that could not be replicated, “So you think this is easy, but then you discover it’s hard. Your heart tells you, you can do it, but your brain insists you cannot. The next one took two years but I was also working full-time and I never took a day off. I wrote every evening, every weekend and through Christmas.”
After a degree in English at Oxford, Philippa Stockley studied at the Courtauld Institute where she wrote a thesis upon costume in the novels of Fielding and Defoe which gave her an introduction to the background of her second novel, “The Factory of Cunning.” It was envisaged as the sequel to “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” which Laclos had intended to write but never got the chance. Philippa read texts of the period for a year before launching into an elaborately plotted drama that brings the Marquise de Merteil (who escapes at the end of Laclos’ novel) to England where she adopts the name Mrs Fox, using her wit and ingenuity to forge a new life exploiting the debauchery, romance, intrigue and avarice that comprised eighteenth century London.“I had this character Mrs Fox and I couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with her story,” recalled Philippa fondly.
She turned down a three book contract when her first novel was published and has never accepted commissions, preferring to pursue her writing on her own terms, which is a rare course of action when most people who would be eager to accept the money. Instead, she has remained true to the capricious art of novel-writing, chosing to put the manuscript of her third novel in a drawer for over a year because she was dissatisfied.“I think I spliced a truck onto the back of a bus,” she explained bluntly, “I am going to reread it and rewrite the second half.”
At this point in our conversation, Philippa poured herself a generous glass of sherry and produced a box of chocolate mint wafers to bolster her spirits, as we made our way into the garden in hopes of a fleeting pool of sunshine cast beneath the April sky and she revealed that this was only the second interview she had ever given. I feared I had stirred up such a multitude of thoughts, asking her to account for her writing, that I left her now with her head spinning. Fulfilling his role as a writer’s pet magnificently, Battie gambolled on the lawn to provide respite.
We talked about Dickens and his extraordinarily tenacious ability to pursue a narrative without looking back. “All roads lead somewhere,” said Philippa, in unquestionable confident summation. The tantalising paradox is that writers set puzzles for themselves to solve, acting in blind faith that there is a solution, knowing that they alone can find it and then setting out to write their way there. “It sounds mysterious but really there is no mystery,” Philippa declared brightly, trying hard to persuade herself, as she sipped her sherry in the sunshine, her red hair glowing with light and her pale hands turning blue with cold.
Alexander Hartog, Tenor & Mantle Presser
Clive Murphy put a small acetate on his turntable on Saturday morning and we settled down together to enjoy the crackly recording of Alexander Hartog singing. He had not heard it since 1978 when Clive’s book edited from interviews with Hartog,”Born to Sing,” was published. At first, we could not even get the record to play because it was such a flimsy piece of plastic, but eventually we used sellotape to fix it in place on the turntable and, once we had experimented with the speed, Hartog’s sonorous tones filled Clive’s kitchen.
Alexander Hartog died in 1983 and when Dobson Books (the original publisher) closed down, all the other recordings of Hartog were lost for ever, making this unique recording especially significant. So you will understand that it was powerful moment for Clive, as well as being the ideal opportunity to remember the remarkable life of this gifted singer. “It’s almost as if he were here,” said Clive, when the disc began to play, recalling the original studio recording session.
Clive Murphy moved to Spitalfields in 1973 to search for subjects for his oral history project, living at first in the former headmaster’s study of St Patrick’s School in Buxton St, and dining at Georgina’s Cafe in Brick Lane. “I ate there regularly and there was this very loud talker, always arguing, always debating. So I invited him immediately to do a book. He was frightfully keen, he’d come down Buxton St almost dancing on his way to the interview.” recalled Clive in delight, uplifted by the rich operatic tones of Hartog singing.
Alexander Hartog earned his living pressing clothes in the garment industry, but his being was focussed upon fulfilling his musical talent as a tenor. In “Born to Sing,” he gives an engaging and candid account of growing up in the Jewish community in the nineteen twenties and of his lifelong pursuit of a singing career.
“The feeling I had – and it didn’t go away throughout my youth – was that the Lane (Petticoat Lane) was a carnival. There was a man who sold ointment to cure corns. He didn’t have any corns himself but he’d put some ointment on the side of his hand and say if you wrapped it in a bandage you could peel off the corns like the skin of an onion in the morning. People bought and nobody came back. Another man sold what he said was extract of Spanish fly – ‘Don’t give it to minors! It’ll make them into men and women before they leave school!’ He had – as a come-on – a strong-man with a heap of rubber expander-sets he was forever threatening to pull but never did. I’ve got an idea they were related!
An old Jamaican woman had a birdcage with a canary in it and hundreds of little printed pink strips. She’d ask what month you were born, then tap her stick on the perch and the bird would pick up a pink slip and that was yours for a penny. I found out that I was going to be married three times and have seven children, I want my money back.
A very plausible Welshman with a good speaking voice did a mind-reading act. He bandaged a girl’s eyes and asked her questions about people he pointed to. He pointed to me and asked me did I want to ask her anything. Very quietly I asked him to ask her would I succeed in my ambition. She said, ‘No,’ and that came true.”
In the nineteen thirties, Alexander Hartog took singing lessons five days a week at the Toynbee Hall in Commercial St with Robert Kent Parker who was both an inspiring teacher and an anti-Semite, yet Hartog adopted a philosophical attitude, taking what he needed from these lessons. Conscripted in World War II, he encountered similar prejudice and was discharged for “lack of moral fibre” but never became cynical or discouraged, and it is his resilience and optimistic nature that make his story such a charismatic read.
“I heard Music Hall choruses, popular songs … I was entranced. It was my first taste of Show Business. It was my first Variety Show. I went every night for a whole week! They used to greet me at the door. ‘Hello! That boy’s here again!’ But I had to pay a penny every time! The next show I saw was the last season of the London Music Hall, Shoreditch. My brother Alan took me. I laughed at Max Miller’s jokes though I was only four!
Tonight was my turn to be on a Variety Bill of some importance. And what an evening it was! My voice was at full blast, and they used to say at the Mile End Old Boys’ you could get up off your seat, walk out of the hall, out of the building, across the road and fifty yards down to the bus stop and still hear me. When they stood up to applaud at the Troxy you knew you’d done something. It never seemed to end. They’d to bring on the pop group to quieten everyone down. A stagehand gave me the thumbs-up. He’d heard me from the flies. He said, ‘I always like to hear from the flies. If they’re good they’re good, and if they’re bad they’re terrible, and you were good, kid!'”
I was fascinated by Alexander Hartog’s eye-witness account of the shabby world of the last days of Music Hall and Variety, seen from the sidelines by an affectionate stage-struck enthusiast – a true amateur (in the complimentary sense of that word). His dream of a musical career granted him a sense of artistic possibility and drew the applause of audiences who appreciated his gift. “I have no regrets because, although I didn’t make a success of it, I enjoyed the company, the excitement and the endeavour. Even the disappointments make life interesting.” concluded Hartog, with endearing candour,” There was always hope and something to keep me going over long and sometimes dreary weeks of work. There was always the pleasure of anticipation.”
Thanks to Clive Murphy, Alexander Hartog’s story exists in print for all to read and his voice lives on in this tantalizingly brief recording – both are touching evocations of a robust and generous spirit. “Born to Sing” was the epitaph upon Hartog’s tombstone at Rainham and, as a firm believer in reincarnation, ever true to his undaunted nature, he ended his book with the wish, “Better luck the next time around!”
“Born to Sing” Clive Murphy’s oral autobiography of Alexander Hartog can bought at Labour and Wait.
Columbia Road Market 31
My neighbours came round to help me polish off a bottle of rum last night and we sat in the garden until late before retreating inside to enjoy the fire. Consequently, with rum still coursing through my veins, the perfection of this Spring morning acquired a surreal clarity that was further emphasised by the beauty of the crystalline sky, unsullied by a single jet trail. The eruption of the volcano in Iceland has permitted a once-in-a-lifetime glimpse of the London sky before the age of the aeroplane and although I was never particularly aware of their sound, the absence of this background noise has engendered a powerful eerie silence in the early morning streets of Spitalfields.
I should have got up earlier though, because Columbia Rd was crammed with excited customers when I arrived, including some wide-eyed folks still dressed in their finery who had come straight from the nightclub to the flower market. Another neighbour asked me to get him a Rhododendron and Foxgloves, so I bought him this sturdy red Rhododendron for £10 and five Foxgloves for £8. For myself I bought an unusual Periwinkle (Vinca Minor Azurea Flore Pleno) for £4, in a delicate blue with fine double petals, to plant in a shadowy dry corner of my garden, where even Hellebores and Bugle have not made an impact. If it thrives, it can remind me in years to come of these rare silent skies of April 2010.
