http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Stardust Memories Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:24:47 +0000 a-n rss generator a-n The Artists Information Company and contributors edit@a-n.co.uk technical@a-n.co.uk http://www.a-n.co.uk/img/logo.gif http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Hi Anna,I enjoyed it very much and felt inspired to do something akin to this myself. You sent me the camera in half term and so in a way my life was slightly unusual that week. Probably the ones that didn't come out were the most representative-they were of my bed. I realise how much time I spend in bed as most of the pictures were of that. I draw and eat and email and watch BBC player in my bed-I suppose particularly in winter, as it's so cold in the studio.I went to London with my friend Vincent in his van and I find it very exciting going around London in a car seeing the landmarks so close. Vincent was very embarrassed because he likes to think of himself as a Londoner and I was being a tourist-taking photo's. The man in the photo is my friend Ed-my boyfriend I don't think came out. The only thing that was difficult for me taking photos of my life was that it was a limited amount especially as I have got used to digital cameras. I wanted to take absolutely everything-but this is how I feel about my art too I suppose and the reason I did the one a day project to try and process all of the information of life. This too used to be my reason for living in the countryside. One or two are taken in a 'staff development day' meeting and I gave the camera to a tutor who teaches photography to see what he would take I didn't know until looking at your pictures. Continues on next post... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Continued from last post 25 is a very familiar view to me it is the view from my bedroom window. The rose is called 'Peace' and was bred and named after the 2nd world war. It must have been planted when the school was still functioning. I like it because it is a living history and because it taps on my window at night. The flowerbed it is planted in also holds the skeleton of the school cat (a Manx) and a pet newt. I love these stories and I feel affection for the rose and the flowerbed. The roof is of the schoolhouse next door there is a married couple that live there and they argue a lot. There have been many generations of babies born in that house. I like looking at the sky from my window too and the curtains I have are very thin which probably contributes to my insomnia. My grandmother slept without curtains and she had a rose bed outside her window. She was a botanist and my mother used to say that my grandmother (who she hated) would probably bleed to death in herrosebush. In actual fact she did bleed to death but when she was living with my mother and it was inside which probably disappointed her.I hate having photo's taken of myself and I don't know who took this one. I lived for a while without a mirror and I am getting better at having photo's taken of myself but it is a conscious effort.So an insight into my life.... well I am a huge daydreamer and so I sort of half focus on objects while I am in my head really. Jamie is also a huge part of my life and he didn't come out. My bed also as I say is central!I hope this is useful email me if you want anything else.Annabel xxxx... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Dear Sir/Madam,Here is a proposal for an article for the communityWoodbridge, Melton & District News:I would be fascinated to hear any stories from paststudents of the old Melton school. I would love forthe past students to visit the school. Eventually Iwould have a meal that previous students could come toif they wished. Here are some of the things I havelearnt so far:The history of my studio's kitchen, the dentist'sdrill had gone in the corner, a little boy hadlockedhimself in the space that is now Emma's studio, butused to be a cloakroom. The patch of brambles in thebuilders yard outside my back door, that used to bethe playground, where Maureen remembered playingmarbles.The recorder practise in the room that is now thestore room. Frozen milk popping off the bottle tops,the glass blowing out of the windows in the war. Tapdancing lessons on the flagstones in the kitchen.Mrs Dee hiding behind the stack of coke in the placewhere I park my car. Dinners being made in the infants,where a wood saw now stands.I am an artist, my studio is in the old school,Melton. I think it's a beautiful and characterfulplace. I am studying for a PhD at present, thesubject of which relates to memory.Annabel Dover... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 A few years ago a sound artist came to St Martins and played some of the sounds he had collected. He played a deer barking and  one man in the row in front of me ( and of course I) knew what it was. I lived in Suffolk in a boat shed in the woods at the time. Later the sound artist asked us to write down our favourite sound and our favourite sight of London: mine were the sound of an Ambulance and the sight of a mouse on the tracks on the underground. After living in the countryside isolated and without parents present from adolescence I had felt comforted by the sound of city sirens when I went to stay with one of my sisters in Edinburgh-she said too that the sound of an ambulance reminded her that she was not alone in a village but in the epicentre of a world where other people were present alive and dying.I went to Transition gallery yesterday to see Alli Sharma’s bat paintings(in a brilliant show called Bad Animals) Alli was there and we talked about the discrete presence of nature in the city. On the underground at Bethnal Green I made myself late intentionally missing four trains. I realised that the coal covered mice come out just after the train has left and I wanted to take a photo of them-I had to run after them-they move very fast. The person I was late for was Sara Angel Guerrero-Rippberger at Chelsea college of Art . She is curating a show with research students, she described the show as having the look of a planetarium-which are things I have found very exciting-ever since seeing Annie Hall as a child. It’s something I talked to my beloved about recently..he described it as a false and beautiful narrative and I love the word too.I went to see the ‘Classified’ show in the Tate opposite and liked Mark Dion’s Thames Dig and Tacita Dean’s ‘Michael Hamburger’ 16mm film which shows the poet in Suffolk talking about apples including the dark purple apple Ted Hughes had given him and … ” Royal Russett and Orleans Reinette. These he propagated not from the normal method of grafting, but from pips, once triumphantly producing a particularly dark specimen from a core harvested in Ted Hughes's garden.” (Times Obituary Michael Hamburger 2007) the sound of the wind in the orchard was overwhelming and I was reminded of a love affair in Switzerland-which started after a storm tha had blown all of the school windows open (where I was working) and something that my mother had told me that when she lived in Switzerland and France: the mistrals caused people to have asthma attacks and feel panic- I thought of  Mimei Thompson describing her fear of nature…Pan and panic. I also thought of Angela Bartram’s fantastic  ‘Licking dogs’ video which is in EAST-the sight of Angela kissing an Alsation was very Little Red Riding Hood…Continued on next post... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Ctd from last post... I am still watching the film: images of Hamburger puffing on a cigar, being served food by his wife Anne Beresford, filmed behind wobbly glass…I am also looking up angina on my phone-as my beloved has sent me a message that his mother is ill and in hospital-there are so many different types:# Angina pectoris, # Abdominal angina, # Ludwig's angina, # Prinzmetal's angina, # Vincent's angina, # Angina tonsillaris,I like the description of Dean’s ‘Michael Hamburger 2007“As with the Linaean system Hamburger employs the basic principles of taxonomy or systems of classification as a means through which to bring order to the world. Yet his descriptions about where apples have come from and the careful cross-breeding, unlocks ideas of memory and history and becomes a metaphor for missing autobiographical detail”... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Congratulations on being selected for The Threadneedle Prize exhibition.We need 25 words from you on your work (i.e. on inspiration/ subject matter/ artistic technique).Best wishes,Emma Healey This reminded me of Marcel Duchamp responding to a question saying: "I will take 1 minute 48 seconds to respond to you" Dear Emma, "When a wild creature dies it’s an opportunity to marvel at its beauty. When a pet dies the unspoken communication between owner and pet dies too." Annabel... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 I don't remember any of the art in Peggy Guggenheim's museum in Venice but I still remember the names of her dogs. Duchamp's grave reads: "Besides, it's always other people who die." Peggy's grave reads: 'Here lies Peggy Guggenheim 1898-1979... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Tons of muck flows into the canals each day, and gives the crumbling back-quarters of Venice the peculiar stink-half drainage, half rotting stone-that so repels the queasy tourist, but gives the Venetian amateur a perverse and reluctant pleasure. Add to this the dust, vegetable peel, animal matter and ash that pours into every waterway, in defiance of the law, over balconies and down the back steps, and it is easy to conceive how thickly the canal-beds are coated with refuse. If you look down from a terrace when the tide is low, you can see an extraordinary variety of rubble and wreckage beneath the water, gleaming with spurious mystery through the green; and it is horrible to observe how squashily the poles go in, when a pile-driver begins its hammering in a canal. Jan Morris, VENICE I have seen an aqua alta but never quite this bad. The Academia still not finished (sale?) after 5&6-after 3years-so I could not see my favourites, Bellini, Mantegna and Piero de la F. However the weather is fine and warm and the food is great and prosecco is cool. Went to the 500 years of palladio at Vicenza (main reason for trip)-fantastic exhibition. Will reply to your email on my return. So sorry for delay but I was caught by all sorts of conflicting emotions and I hate e-mails except for business. Must try harder!! A presso. Father... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The window space had my mothers desk in it. I could look out and get a glimpse of the pavement often with a chicken on it trying to get grit from the road. My mothers diary laid out and her encrypted writing that I was embarrassed of in school notes and later I faked when I lived on my own. Rebecca. Prepared for a life as a mistress of a house. It was a three leaf desk with garland handles, it fitted perfectly into the large window near the flowerbed. I had found an earring belonging to a previous owner of the house there, she had been the first woman in the village to have electricity and had a lot of parties. The earring was shaped like a wedding bouquet but I think she never married. I hoped that her bedroom had been my bedroom and that the earring had been on her dressing table by the window and had flown out with the heavy push of an expensive curtain. Or maybe she cast the wedding bouquet out of the window as she danced into bed with a man. My mother’s desk had a range of artefacts: heather and a snail shell petrified inside a glass paperweight-I tried to chip the heather out but the glass went opaque and I mildly ruined it. A bible with a solid silver front- every time I looked at it I had the same impulse I have with a biscuit to bite the top solid part off the soft papery bit and indeed I had done that when I was five and the bible was delicately held together by the immobility by the desk-if a fly had landed near it-it would have disintegrated. The tray from Venice rested on this desk on the right hand side. It had three brass bean-bells from Africa on it and that’s all-my sister Harriet has those now. There was a miniature pencil that went with a lost diary and one or two stamps, a book being ludicrously extravagant. I have the tray now and it finally looks how I imagined it would if I owned it.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Dear Else,How are you? I loved your email and I knew I couldn't do it justice with my reply-but I thought I would send you one anyway. I looked up Bratitsimo and you are right-I got a bit carried away and ordered a top that I think maybe makes me look like I work in a building society-but I like it-and what's your account number please? Well that was for me mighty complimentary to compare me to Poppy from Happy go lucky I wish I was like her -it's my new goal in life and Maude is fantastic isn't she I love it when she throws the ring away because then she knows where it is!Audrey Tatou is so sweet isn't she-have you seen dirty pretty things? I saw that recently and I liked her.Norway how lovely- have you read the Summer Book by the old moomin herself? I have had a lot of Scandinavian fantasies after reading that-where are you staying? I will look it up on the internet. That's great you have lost so much weight so quickly. Have you tried listening to that oily reptile Paul Mckenna? 'I can make you thin' I start off laughing in a superior way at his faux American accent and novotel flip chart patter and then wake up 20 minutes later-so I am not sure what he actually says- he could just be brain washing me to tell people I know to buy his cds...it worked the first time for me but then I got back into the old dribbling at trifles-although since I found out that M&S sherry trifle was the number one sick-up of John Prescott I have lost my thing for them a bit. Ctd. next post... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 This week has been strange I did a bin-raid with Jamie on Wednesday very early in the morning at a place where I found out my father lived in 2003 in a little village near Cambridge. It was going to be some stupid Sophie Calle wannabe art project but it didn't go to plan as he was actually in the garden. I hadn't seen him for 18 years and had been told that he had killed himself the bin raid was to find out. I knocked on the door and he answered in his underpants and showed me in to a tsunami of crap: papers, chairs upside-down, food, like a weird badgers set! my dreams of being adopted had to be abandoned at this point, the genetic fingerprint all too evident as he sat in a pile of crosswords in his underwear with a boiled egg on his lap. I taped it all but I was an idiot really doing it- although the old snake had definitely lost his fangs. I have slept for the rest of the week-think it overwhelmed me didn't think I would ever see him again. I don't know how the hell you handled your father dying-I am in admiration. How do you feel? I hope you are ok-you seemed brilliant last time I saw you.Anyway...I wondered if you are free any of the weekend of the 21st/22nd/23rd June but you might be looking after Poppy or knackered after Manchester- would 20th July time be better for you? if you really busy could: wave to me across the street/have a drink/go to the archive/car boot whatever you fancy. Ps you and Paul are always welcome in Suffolk. (ha ha that sounds like a threat doesn't it!)Bye bye EllsAnnabel xx... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 I got the Owl and the Pussycat card in 1979. I told my mother I was going to keep it for the rest of my life.     August 4th. 1979   To Annabel with all our love on your 4th birthday, from Mummy, Daddy, Harriet, Liz & Caro.     August 4th. 2008 To Annabel with love and best wishes for a very happy Birthday. Father.   It was so lovely to see you: I hope that my surprise and nervousness did not appear as being unwelcoming. I would so like to meet under more propitious circumstances. Maybe I could take you out to lunch in Cambridge or the Orford Oysterage.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 A few years ago Alex Michon interviewed me for Arty and asked me about success.I told her if i thought i was going to live another five years i would feel a dreadful failure but if  I was going to live to over 100 I would feel quite good. My plan is to live to 100 and to die on my birthday to the sound of swifts; even if this means suicide. It seems very neat to me and confounds Thomas Hardy's doom-laden reflection on the source of human misery: knowing your date of birth but not your date of death. These people managed to die on their birthdays: * Ingrid Bergman - Aug. 29, 1915-1982 * George Washington Carver - Jan. 5 1864-1903 * Elizabeth of York - Feb. 11, 1466-1503 * Betty Friedan - Feb 4. 1921-2006 * Francesco Petrarch - July 20, 1304-74 * Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. - Aug. 17, 1914-1988 * William Shakespeare - April 23, 1564-1616 These people were willing themselves to death but their bodies weren't cooperating. They died within a week of their birthdays:  St. Francis of Assisi,Louis XIV, Sam Adams, Julia Child, Perry Como, Gary Cooper, Erich Fromm, Marvin Gaye, Estelle Getty, Andy Gibb, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Frida Kahlo, C.S. Lewis, Ezra Pound, John Ritter, Auguste Rodin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dinah Shore, Gene Siskel, James Whistler, Ludwig Wittgenstein... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 I watched Grizzly man last night and after hearing Werner say he thinks nature is made of "chaos, hostility and murder. I ussually like to watch 'Otters holding hands' on youtube but this morning my beloved reminded me that terry nutkins lost his fingers to otters. Here are some other facts and quotes that interest me about Werner Herzog: He once went on foot to Paris from Munich to see a dying friend. "Were I to become impoverished, it wouldn’t surprise or frighten me. I’ve never cared about possessions.” Herzog means duke in German, “like Duke Ellington. My nom de guerre.” "The lack of a father figure, says Herzog with a hearty laugh, was, in fact, a blessing. “I thank God on my knees that there was no commander around telling us what to do.” Fatherlessness also has symbolic resonance for an artist born at the end of the war, a child of a “lost generation”, as Herzog puts it. “My big brother and I were men at 13,” he says, “we could have raised families. "Well, I recently saw a film celebrating the life of Katharine Hepburn, whom I actually like as an actress. It was some kind of homage to her but unfortunately it turns out that she has these vanilla ice-cream emotions. At the end she is sitting on a rock by the ocean and someone off-camera asks her, 'Ms Hepburn, what would you like to pass on to the young generation?' She swallows, tears are welling, she takes a lot of time as if she were thinking very deeply about it all, then she looks straight into the camera and says, 'Listen to the Song of Life.' And the film ends.I was cringing it hurt so much. I still smart just thinking about it. And hearing this was such a blow that I even wrote it into the Minnesota Declaration, Article Ten, which I repeat here and now for you, Paul. I look you right in the eye and say, 'Don't you ever listen to the Song of Life.'"... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 I don't know of any such thing, sorry.On 28 Aug 2009, at 08:50, annabel dover wrote:> Dear Sir/Madam,> I am currently engaged in a PhD the subject of which is emotional attachment to objects. When I was eight years old I visited Arreton Manor and one object in particular had a profound affect on me: a piece of mourning jewellery housing the hair of a beloved daughter who had died of a chill caught early in the morning on a bowling green. Did I imagine this or do you really have such an artefact?> All the very best> Annabel Dover>... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144   “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me”.   "We were not far from the house now, I saw the drive broaden to the sweep I had expected, and with the blood-red wall still flanking on either side, we turned the last corner, and so came to Manderley.  Yes, there it was, the Manderley I had expected, the Manderley of my picture post-card long ago.  A thing of grace and beauty, exquisite and faultless, lovelier even than I had ever dreamed, built in its hollow of smooth grassland and mossy lawns, the terraces sloping to the gardens, and the gardens to the sea.  As we drove up to the wide stone steps and stopped before the open door, I saw through one of the mullioned windows that the hall was full of people." Rebecca Daphne du Maurier   "Laying on the bed resting, Janis said she could feel the 'busy' energy in the house from over the centuries, maids and servants walking about - that type of thing It wasnt till the next morning that Janis let me know of her 'experiences'...She had experienced an intense burning sensation in one of her arms - (the one she had out of the covers) - it lasted a good few minutes, afterwards it was fine again ." Arreton Manor  Haunted Britain.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 "I'm asking you to marry me, you little fool." George Fortescue Maximilian 'Maxim' de Winter in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier It's interesting that the hero of the book has four names and 12 syllables and the heroine has no name.   The monogrammed 'R's' we see on the napkin we assume are for Rebecca.   The ghost has one name that is everywhere. It is three syllables and ends in the letter 'a'. this scientists believe makes a woman more popular and more likely to marry: Amanda, Jessica, Belinda, Angela,Melissa,Odetta, Helena, Teresa,Marissa, Jennifer etc. Did Makita think about this before they branded their tools I wonder.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Dear BenAs you know I am interested in a person’s relationship to their objects and it’s the subject of my PhD. I want to make a book and I wondered if it would be possible for you to make a small hair cutting and put it under Sellotape and stick to a piece of paper (any kind) and to write a few words about an object-any: imaginary, one you would like, one you had or have lost, a childhood one, one you have now, one someone else you know has/had and you envied/hated-anything at all. Enclosed is a description by Roger Cardinal of his. Yours doesn’t have to be very long at all one sentence or even just the name of the object is absolutely fine and a few words fine too. It will be anonymous. I would very much like it to be handwritten.So to recap…1. A cutting of hair stuck with Sellotape onto a piece of paper.2. A handwritten bit of writing/notes whatever you want no more than an A4 and can be considerably lessThank you very much indeedI really appreciate itAnnabel xxThe Studio23 The StreetMeltonWoodbridgeSuffolk IP12 1PL07545 898 948www.annabeldover.com... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Dear Megan,I am a Fine Art PhD student in the UK. I know that theauction of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's personaleffects was held at Sotheby's. I am trying to locate apicture of The Duke of Windsor's socks (preferably inhis sock drawer!) or a picture of his Chimney sweepdoll.Strange requests I know. No doubt you have hadstranger ones. All the very best, Annabel Dover... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Annabel Dover wrote: Dear Sir/ Madam I was in the Fitwilliam museum yesterday and was looking at your big  owl. He is a punchbowl cracked by an earthquake in San Fransisco- is  that right?Please can you tell me more about it? All the very best Annabel Dover Dear Annabel Dover,It is not correct that this punchbowl was cracked an earthquake in San Francisco, and I hope that you weren't told this by a member of the Museum's staff. If yes, please let me know and I will make sure that they are given the true story.This owl was made by Wallace Martin in 1903, and it remained in his studio until after his death in 1923, probably because of the crack. It was sold by Sotheby's, in London on 24 October, 1924, 'The whole remaining stock of finished pieces of the Martin factory, the property of R.W. Martin Esq. (deceased). Sold by order of the administrator', lot 68; and was bought by the ceramics dealer, Cyril Andrade for Dr Glaisher for £25.The incorrect story about our owl seems to have come about because Wallace Martin is said to have made a punch bowl in the shape of an giant owl in 1893 for the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, a literary club founded in 1872 which has an owl as its emblem, and still exists. His first attempt is said to have been cracked, and another was made and sent (at least that is the story as printed). It is thought that this owl perished in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. A club member whom I met, when he came here on a summer school in the 1980s, tried to find out more about it, but was unable to trace a record of its purchase. There are at least two other large owls known, but not exactly like the Fitzwilliam's. As our owl very clearly has the date 1903 on it, it clearly is not the one mentioned.Yours sincerely,Julia PooleKeeperDepartment of Applied ArtThe Fitzwilliam MuseumCambridge, CB2 1RB... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Dear Patrick I wondered if you would help me with a project I am currently engaged in. Thank you All the very best Annabel x Dear Annabel, Yes...I would love to help. Will it have to be my hair? There are two versions that immediately popped into my mind...so I'll have to decide which one to go with. Maybe I could send both and you can then pick. Is there a deadline? Will the book be 1/1? All the best Patrick From: annabeldover@yahoo.co.uk> Subject: Re: Hairy book Haha! any kind of hair you like-some people I have asked are bald so it's the only choice they have. The book will be in a small edition Dear Annabel,Red Arrows are flying overhead as write this....this is not it but attached is a work from 2005, made from 2 sets of hair in Resin.I'll send my parts soon(ish)..All the bestPatrick   Dear Patrick I love this! It's very creepy and exciting. Where did you get the hair? Do you have red hair ? I do Annabel x      ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The pie-crust head of Craig Brown looks damp between the lights of Aldeburgh cinema. He is interviewing Louis Theroux and he has just assured us, the audience that Theroux (junior) has " a basic faith in human nature and a belief that we are all good" Is this why he seems so excited by the sinister? Hoping to expose the naiveties of Max Clifford, Jimmy Saville & American neo-Nazis. People driven by their need tyo control;ridiculed by their lack of it. I ask Louis a question assuming, naturally that we are a love-match, that he'll feel a sense of relief when I ask it-yes, that girl understands me Me: "Have you ever met anyone who was so funny that you felt sobered and could not find the humour in the situation, perhaps until later?" Louis: "So the question is um...have I ever met anyone so poisonous and evil that I didn't want to interview them?" I repeated the question but to no avail. I think he thought I believed that people could be categorised as evil. This has never appealed to me as it explains nothing.   Maybe Louis had a fundamentally happy childhood. His father may write lascivious memoirs from his condo in Hawaii, but maybe there was little darkness in the Theroux household. Louis continues to try and answer me by telling an anecdote about someone who initially comes across as very unpleasant but who later revealed his vulnerability through a love of Are you Being Served. I know of the photographs of Mussolini that were banned and that guests had to continue the conversations Hitler had stopped when he had fallen asleep half an hour previously. I watched Marnie the other night and was interested how Marnie's behaviour was explained and excused as part of a Freudian equation. I suppose my very unpleasant childhood may account for my vertiginous fear of darkness-of the literal and the modern 'murky and unpleasant sort. Vertiginous in the sense that I want to jump from high places. I feel I am from and part of something with such Exxon Valdese darkness that I must avoid it at all costs and yet it is somehting I often find myself overwhelmed by. So to owls: the most collected of all figurines in Britain and America. Traditionally birds of the dark and often thought to be ghosts. I have two owl stories, one light-filled and one a sort of twilight...   Ctd on next post Adapted from a text published in Dark Arty... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 In 1837 a young Hungarian boy called Iguatz von Peczely cared for an owl with a broken leg. He noticed a black stripe in its eye, which became paler as the leg healed. More than 30 years later, having qualified as a naturopathic physician, Peczely found the same complaint. His research into the 200 or so markings in the coloured part of the eye, which are unique to each person's health from their eyes is the basis of modern iridology. From The Guardian 27th Novermber 2005   In 1850 Florence Nightingale saved a baby owl from some boys who were tormenting it in Athens, smuggled it home, and christened it Athena. To be persuaded to enter a cage, the owl had to be mesmerised, but soon became a devoted companion. She would perch on her mistress’s finger for feeds, as well as bow and curtsy on a table, but her life came to a rather sad end in 1855.   On hearing of Florence’s imminent departure for the Crimea, the family left Athena shut in an attic. Starved of the attention she craved, the owl - it seems - died of a fit, leaving her owner heartbroken. Following Florence’s instructions, the bird was taken to London and embalmed. It remains in very good condition and was recently conserved by the National Trust, who for a time had it on display at Claydon House in Buckinghamshire. Florence Nightingale's sister, Parthenope wrote and illustrated a book: The Life and Death of Athena an Owlet. From The 24 Hour Museum 29th July 2004... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Thank you, I like creepy excitement too.  The hair came from my head and Theresa's head (my wife). She has wonderful red/gold hair. I have brown hair but when the sun shines there is plenty of red to be found.  In the future the work will be found in a lake and our DNA will be combined to create some kind of clone. My Daughter Eloise has Golden hair that would fit your book...maybe a new scan of both.   Dear Patrick That's really interesting thank you I have been thinking about red hair a lot recently and wrote it on my list of things to research at my last supervision meeting. There's a book on it but I have forgotten what it's called the something of desire...not as good as the Blonde book.  Red hair really is best seen in the sun and you can discover secret redheads that way it's true.I was recently at a party where there were two other redheads and I made them line up with me.  I would love a scan of Elöise's and Theresa's hair too if they wouldn't mind. I have just been looking at your blog which I like very much and found a giant squid ( did you see that picture of a giant squid that was in the observer/guardian a while ago? It was great I believed it was real but it was a text misprint and it was a replica) the hair picture you sent me reminded me of a squid/octopus so I was excited to see one on your blog.  I have only just understood the joy of reading and writing blogs. I have recently started one on the a-n site.     Annabel x   Dear Annabel,   Did the two other redheads mind? Was the line-up for a photo? Did a fight ensue? Yes...I know the 2 books, unable to remember titles too. I work in University Library.   Eloise had her hair cut into a bob recently, so I have a strand. She has Theresa's hair, very lucky. I find it very striking. When I first heard Theresa's name being spoken by her Brother at the start of 1996(before I met her), I imagined an orange/gold/red/pink formless cloud shape just above my head...I sort of felt it more than visually sensing it .   Yes of course you can use the image, I look forward to reading the blog. Full of detail. Lot's of Animals. Your website is very interesting too. I can imagine a huge monograph of your work. or museum in a whole house. or a theme park in a forest. I've attached a slightly better image of the work, plus a picture of the giant squid at Propeller Island. Violet Clark likes the picture, which is nice as I like her music.     All the best Patrick      ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Jumbo flying squid have invaded the shallow waters off San Diego, spooking scuba divers and beachgoers after washing up dead on the beaches. The carnivorous cephalopods, which weigh up to 45kg (100lb), came up from the depths last week, with swarms of them roughing up unsuspecting divers. Some reported tentacles enveloping their masks yanking at their cameras and gear. Stories of close encounters with the squid have chased many divers out of the water and created a whirlwind of excitement among those torn between their personal safety and the once-in-a-lifetime chance to swim with the deep-sea giants. The so-called Humboldt squid, named after the current in the eastern Pacific, have been known to attack humans and are nicknamed "red devils" for their rust-red colouring and mean streak. Divers wanting to observe the creatures often bait the water, use a metal viewing cage or wear chainmail to avoid being lashed by the creature's tentacles. The squid, which is most commonly found in deep water from California to the bottom of south America, hunts in schools of up to 1,200 individuals, can swim up to 15 mph and can skim over the water to escape predators.   "I wouldn't go into the water with them for the same reason I wouldn't walk into a pride of lions on the Serengeti," said Mike Bear, a local diver. "For all I know, I'm missing the experience of a lifetime." The squid are too deep to bother swimmers and surfers, but many experienced divers say they are staying out of the surf until the sea creatures move on. Roger Uzun, a veteran scuba diver and amateur underwater videographer, swam with a swarm of the creatures for about 20 minutes and said they appeared more curious than aggressive. The animals taste with their tentacles, he said, and seemed to be touching him and his wet suit to determine if he was edible. Guardian 17th July 2009... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 In "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins,"Borges describes 'a certain Chinese Encyclopedia,' the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which it is written that animals are divided into: 1. Those that belong to the Emperor 2. Embalmed ones 3. Those that are trained 4. Suckling pigs 5. Mermaids 6. Fabulous ones 7. Stray dogs 8. Those included in the present classification 9. Those that tremble as if they were mad 10. Innumerable ones 11. Those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush 12. Others 13. Those that have just broken a flower vase 14. Those that from a long way off look like flies.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Max de Winter sent you a message of Facebook "Where do I know you from?" Dear Max, Sorry you don't know me. I just liked your name and it is the same as the character in Daphne du Maurier's book Rebecca. I like the idea that the character was still alive somewhere; the book starts and ends with the recollection of a lost place and a suggestion that the unnamed present day Mrs de Winter and Max de Winter are still alive. Thank you for being my Facebook friend. All the very best Annabel Dover  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Helen Taylor M.A. Food Styling.  University of Central Lancashire. Dr.J.H. Birchall   helenc.taylor@btinternet.com                                                                       Questionnaire: Food, Nostalgia and Contemporary Cookbooks   PLEASE ANSWER ANY OF THE FOLLOWING AS YOU ARE ABLE-   Would you care to state your name and occupation? Annabel Dover Artist   Food is very important in my life, and food is central to many of my memories: Do you live to eat or eat to live? I love food and often if I am feeling depressed I think about food I would like to eat. I have tried to work out what it is exactly-it's certainly a substitute for addressing emotions. I have noticed I instantly want to eat after an argument. I am much more addicted to (excess) food than I ever was to cigarettes. I also spend a lot of my days feeling boredom and frustration and food fulfils temporarily that desire for that gratification-that sounds more sexual than I think it is-although I think that is certainly an element of it. I recently read bits of Paul McKenna's 'I can make you thin' and he mentioned how to be thin you have to stop eating when you are full-this is an alien concept to me! I think also if I gave up eating too much I might have to visit a psychiatrist-I think I would rather eat too much! I think also it's an aspect of my life that it seems acceptable to lack discipline in-as it will not actually hurt anyone (unless of course I become morbidly obese!)     Do you buy cookbooks? – Are they old or new publications? Not really. I look at my sisters-they all have Nigel Slater and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's-there is a snobbery they wouldn't have Jamie Oliver's now although pre Sainsbury's perhaps they would have done.   I like Elizabeth David because she was an exciting woman and I suppose there are elements of her writing that alludes to biographical details that Nigella Lawson has adopted in her books and certainly on her programmes. There was a lovely Aga book of the 30s I found at my aunts which was written in a way that almost echoed the aspirations of the soon to be developed NHS...you could see more of a social concern that might be interpreted as nanny-stateism now.   What draws you to them?   I like the idea of ridiculous food I think like a lark inside a quail inside a pheasant etc. repulsive to eat but visually beautiful to imagine-Andy Warhol's recipes are probably not that apetising to eat. Edward Bawden's collaboration with Fortnum and Mason highlights the magical as does the great Surrealist recipes of 'goldfish' soup which I think was just carrot-revolting but magical like Meret Oppenheim's furry cup and saucer-which highlights I suppose all of those sensual texture experiences of eating. All the gold leaf and artifice of Lee Miller's food somehow seems nobler than Fanny Cradock's lurid mashed potato!      ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 I understand that there is a growing trend in cooking programmes on television, but does this mean that more of us cook from ‘scratch’ ingredients or are we just passively observing the ‘experts’ and so cooking has become entertainment.  Do you cook?I occasionally cook-rarely. I am going to make bread this week-sometimes I plan something like that or to make a pudding. I am making cyanotypes at the moment and the process is chemical-but really very similar to cooking and I do get bored with it. I admire people that can cook. Sometimes if I have a fantasy it will be to imagine cooking all the time lots of cakes and looking after babies-this is obviously a desire for nurturing I have denied in myself and probably will for a while. I think if I had time and a lovely big kitchen and quite a lot of money I would enjoy buying food-but I would prefer leaving it in its singular state-that's how I felt about the chemicals too really-they looked so pretty on their own the prints couldn't help but disappoint me-the opposite of alchemy!Do you use cookbooks to do this?If I am at my sisters I look at hers-but on the whole I make it up often not very successfully-I should they certainly teach you new skills. I love those old pattisier booksWhat are your five favourite cookbooks?Oh dear I am such a novice! I haven't ever found the one I want-it must exist. I did find a great one in Barnes & Noble in New York-I copied the Baked Alaska recipe down and made it for the person we were staying with. My sister bought some very smelly leeks for the first course that she was making. We went to a gallery to look at a rare Joseph Cornell box, not realising it was a private home and stank their apartment out! My ideal book would be really simple and things you could do to enhance things say-really simple fish next to...well what would accompany it really beautifully.What is your favourite recipe?  (or recipes)Gingerbread-from someone called Bronwyn-I suppose it's maternal substitution. My mother is and was an appalling cook. She used to put cheap crisps in the oven till they were soggy and call them game chips... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 HT: What drew you to it?  (or them) – Can you recall how it was presented?I often cook things that I enjoyed making as a child, not necessarily just because I want to eat them now, but because I can share them with others.  It is the memory of the process itself and who I made them with that creates a fond nostalgia for that moment past.  (Favourite recipes might be Brighton Pasty, a family recipe, which I made with grandma, Scampi Portokali, a Cypriot dish favoured by my mum, or homemade limeade which reminds me of Sri Lanka).Do you cook certain dishes or enjoy particular foods because they have special meaning for you? -Could you give an example and describe its meaning for you? AD: Most of my childhood was loathsome but when we went on holiday and stayed at my grandparents house in the Isle of Wight I loved it. They had a cook who used to make really simple food but I still dream of it and that was the first time I had butter not margarine. I knew when I was an adult that I would always have butter and would never have to wear tights again! The other food was ham and new potatoes from their garden and a pea soup which I think was 90% chicken stock. My father was a vegan and he tried to impose this on us for years. I have only had one steak but it felt dangerous to eat it and I felt liberated! A lot of my adolescence I was anaemic and craved meat but knew it wouldn't be worth my fathers rage if I ate it secretly.Some food memories are not about cooking:Do you have a favourite or most striking food memory?AD: Sorry got carried away above-yes loads. When we went to Edinburgh it highlighted to me how everything I usually hated was lovely in Edinburgh-like the rock. There used to be a baked potato shop called Tatties there too and I loved going there-we were hardly ever allowed baked potatoes at home as the drain of my mother's oven was too much of a strain on the national grid.My mum says she loves using her grandmother’s rolling pin.  This Victorian piece of wood seems to have its own life story!Are you attached to certain objects through nostalgia or memory?  Could you give an example and describe its meaning for you?AD: Loads I think-I think other peoples maybe more than my own. I recently raided my fathers recycling bin. I hadn't seen him for 18 years so his old papers with the crossword filled in have a strange emotional value for me.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Do objects have emotional values?AD: Definitely we give them a social life and believe they have an aura. I am in communication with a police psychic at the moment and I am very interested in the power we imbue objects with. I recently went to Rome and was surprised that a lot of relics are hidden. It's a shame-it's a natural way for human beings to express the emotional breaks in their lives.Artists’ commonly seem to utilise the idea of memory and nostalgia to put across their personal ideas.  Can you think of a different subject/ area where nostalgia and memory are used to convey or interpret a message?AD: Christian Boltanski: clothes, Gerhard Richter & Luc Tuymans: newspaper articles and photographs, Cornelia Parker & Joni Mabe: alchemical objects & relics, Mark Dion in an archaeological way. I love the pseudo-scientific methodology of all of these artists.Which of our senses is most closely linked to our memories of food?AD: I think it's the texture for me on the whole that is residual, so touch. The first time I tasted coriander it made me feel something exhilarating and I still feel that when I taste it-I love it.I have noticed a trend in today’s recipe books for ‘nostalgic’ styling, particularly in the visuals.  Why do you think that this might be?AD: I think it's true of cosmetics too-perhaps it encompasses two strands that we desire a yearning for a (misplaced I am sure) 'wholesome'/organic/hand-made-with a knowing sophistication.Do you think that food and cooking means something different today- has the significance of food and cooking changed over the years?I suppose there must always have been aspirational aspects to food-Roman food for example-or say something like Steak Tartare-seeming sophisticated and redolent of a certain era and social status.Do you feel that our food is being designed?  If yes, how so? AD: Yes-packaged-brandedThere seem to be a great number of recipe books on the market.  One might say that they are very fashionable.  Certainly, food is talked about, consumed and bought in huge quantity. Why do you think there are so many cookbooks being published today?   Can you account for their popularity?AD: Maybe many reasons...Catalogues like 'Toast'!Observer Food MonthlyIt's a sociable thing to do and we need to socialiseAnxiety about status perhaps? It's a middle class pastime partlyHow do recipe books engage the reader? AD: For me I like to dribble when I look at one.What makes memories come alive for you?AD: Dreams I think. They are very important to me. Without memory there is no way of going forward. Maurice Halbwachs talks about our need for the past to locate ourselves in the present-I agree even if this is a false past as someone like Raphael Samuel says-we may create a more glamorous past to help us cope with our own identities in the present.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 No, it is not true. A local man in Wells had some stalagmites (not stalagtites) cut from the floor - sawn off. Pope was presented with one by a "Mr Bruce", but it is no longer in his Grotto as far as we know. There is no record that Pope ever visited Wookey, or Wells. At 16:45 17/09/2009, you wrote: Dear Mr Beckles Willson, Please can you tell me is it true that the stalactite in Alexander Pope's grotto was shot from the roof of Wookey Hole? All the very best Annabel Dover... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 " I am watching Roman Holiday and just saw the scene where Greg takes her to a wall that has plaques on it to commemorate wishes that have come true. Is this real place??"Ginger   Posts: 4869 | Location: Naples, Florida 02 May 2004 Mary Jane Vetralla, Italy" This is the wall near Porta Portese where there are "ex votos" set in the wall to remember people who were killed during the WWII bombings. Not really wishes, sort of "RIP". "Ginger, we tried to find the Wall of Wishes, too but were unable to locate it or even determine if/when it did exist. Have you read my trip report about Roman Holiday? What a great movie!" We also have a set of notes from Valerie on touring Rome to find several of the locations from the film.Marta Blog: Postcards from the Trail "I googled it and some person who is a Roman Holiday devotee posted that part of the wall is on the Viale del Policlinico, southwest of the Villa Borgese. The plaques are no longer in place. How sad."Ginger Naples, Florida May 2004 "Here are shots of the "Wall of Wishes." I'm satisfied that the stationary camera panned from 10-01-1 to 10-01-5. In other words, the street is as you see it, without any cutting in. Hope this helps locate this important location! Paola and Diego have information on the best candidate for the Wall of Wishes... "The plaques were real. The place is called "Mura Aureliane" (Aurelian Wall) and those plaques were "ex voto" , a term for a panel painting, usually small, or, more rarely, a statue, donated as a token of remembrance, entreaty or thanks by individual believers or communities and hung at sites of pilgrimage or holy places. Unfortunately those plaques have been removed many years ago." From Love bunnies blogspot.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 I just tried to ring my sister and as I put the telephone to my ear I heard the a deep Welsh man's voice talking all I heard was: ‘No words found…’ terrified I put the telephone down and now I regret it.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 annabeldover@yahoo.co.uk wrote:    Attention:  General Support  Message: Please can you tell me about the grotto wall in the Isle of Wight I am trying to find information about it. All the very best  Annabel Dover   Hi there,I believe the Grotto Wall is all tied in with the Santa Express and Specials that they do at The Isle of Wight Steam Railway.  The web link is as follows: //www.iw*steam**railway*.co.ukIf I can be of any further help, please contact me.Kind regards,Kevin Daniellsisleofwight.com/   Dear Kevin There is a wall that was made i think in the 1930s and has shells and bits of broken china ornaments and domestic tools. About three years ago i spoke to a man at the Isle of Wight Tourist Information and he told me where it was but now i have forgotten. All the very best Annabel Dover   Barabara Jones writes in Follies & Grottoes on the Isle of wight: Incredibly little. Certainly the Island did not become fashionable until Queen Victoria built Osborne, but there were some big houses in the 18th century, and the chines could have sheltered plenty of conceits. There are obelisks at Appledurcombe and Bembridge, a castellated cowshed at Norris Castle, a swiss Cottage at Osborne and a tower to tennyson near farringford. Blackgang Chine The entertainments include:a skeleton of a whale, a gnome village and distorting mirrors.   Ryde Appley Tower on the sea wall. The gardens  are noe municipal but when it was a private house King George and Queen Mary liked to have tea there.   St Catherine's Down A pillar most beautifully situated. There is a stone ball on top and the column is dark with moss. It commemorates the visit of the Czar to Britain: in 1857 another tablet was added to the allied dead of the Alma, inckerman and Sebastopol.    ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Hi Annabel,I have searched everywhere for details of the "Grotto" that you describe.  The only one I can fin is mentioned on an "enjoyengland" page and that grotto is in Margate.  The page also has a text link to the Isle of Wight.  Other than that I am at a loss.Regards,Kevin Daniells... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 I went to the zoo on Friday andmy favourite creatures were the sealions. They had a 'training session' where Clare their keeper delivered a speach with the monotony of an air stewardess explaining that the sealions could hold up each flipper and open their mouths so that they could be inspected by the vet.   I was reminded of a story I heard a few years ago about a talking sealion (I thought-actually a seal)'Hoover'  who was looked after by a couple in Maine. Hoover didn't start to talk until he was given away an then he said mostly "Get outa here Hoover". Edinburgh University is researching seal speach at the moment and lucky students spend their days talking to them. Hoover (1971? – July 25, 1985) was a harbor seal who was able to imitate basic human speech. Hoover was an orphan when he was found by George and Alice Swallow in Maine in 1971. George and Alice decided to take him home. At first the baby seal didn't want to eat, but soon he ate at the pace of a vacuum cleaner (hence his name). When Hoover outgrew the bathtub, he was transferred to the pond outside their house where he began to imitate people's voices. Again he was moved, this time to the New England Aquarium, where he told visitors to "Get outta here!" in a thick New England accent.  Thanks to this, he became famous, and appeared in publications like Reader's Digest and The New Yorker and television programs like Good Morning America. Hoover died on July 25, 1985 due to complications during his annual molt. His obituary was published in The Boston Globe. None of Hoover's six pups (daughters Joey, Amelia, and Trumpet and sons Lucifer, Cinder, and Spark) spoke, but his grandson Chacoda (or "Chucky") has shown an ability to be guided in his vocalizations. As of 2007, Chucky remains vocal but has not shown an ability to mimic human speech. Aquarium staff continue to work with him. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 This week surfers in Cornwall found a dead Thresher shark. In 2007 a trawler fisherman caught a 16ft thresher shark off the coast off Land's End, Cornwall.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Sent: Thu 9/24/2009 9:17 AM To: North Cluster Academic Subject: Missing mug Hi all My tea mug went missing from the kitchen area yesterday. It is cream with a lilac dragonfly on the front. If anyone knows where it is, please return it to the staff kitchen. Thanks Jo... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Men in hoodies have been taking rubbish and putting it into white vans this week: The 'spies' were part of a week-long waste analysis study by the Northamptonshire Waste Partnership, a collaboration of eight local authorities working to reduce rubbish going to landfill. An external contractor was told to go through the bins of residents.   One thousand houses were targeted as part of the survey, including 780 in Northamptonshire. But none of the inhabitants of Cedar Close, Irchester, near Wellingborough, Northants, had received any notice from their council about what was going on.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 "Whilst doing my dissertation on the artist Joseph Cornell, I read an article entitled 'Pergolesi's Dog', New York Times, August 20th. 1980, by Guy Davenport (author and former teacher at Kentucky University). In the article he mentions a "Countess Borghesi...a vaudeville figure of the 1930's. She had a trained dog who typed answers to questions on a special machine that fitted its paws. After the crowned heads of Europe became bored of her act, she and the dog legged it to hollywood and dropped into oblivion." I cannot find any books, photographs or web links relating to this particular Countess Borghesi, although there are others. I suppose it was only her stage name but I don't know. Can you help me? Thank you."... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 My mother used to say to me: A swarm of bees in May Is worth a load of hay. A swarm of bees in June Is worth a silver spoon A swarm of bees in July Is not worth a fly. Along with sawing off my big toe (no PE either) this was one of my early money making schemes. to try and lassoe a swarm of bees in June into a Quality Street jar. There was, this week, a car accident in Turkey involving a beehive in a lorry and a car one person was killed. The bees attacked the ambulance and firemen that came to the rescue and a group of beekeepers in white suits had to come and take the wounded way on stretchers. twenty people were went to hospital with bee stings.   Last year I was biking behind a man in a car with bees flying 'round in his car. He had a beekeepers suit on and helmet-he looked like Max in Annie Hall with his sun visor on.   A few years ago I was walking along the path by the river watching a man swimming with his black labrador when a cloud of bees engulfed me. They didn't hurt me at all and they passed over me like a ghost.   I was playing football with my friends Will and jamie outside the school where I live. Will kicked the ball and a cloud of treacle billowed up from the ground. The bees trickled out of the earth and over the high  Edwardian roof of the schoolhouse and poured into a hole in the roof.   My grandfather kept bees and every time one stung my mother he said 'poor bee. he is dead.' My mother is alergic to bee stings and her arm goes the size a thigh if she's stung. My father is too. I am not and i am reassured that like the daughter of the ugliest people in the world in Graham Greene's short story of the same title she is entirely different.   My beloved cycled through a swarm of bees. He was cycling uphil breathing hard and had to hold his breath.The bees were by the road swarming from a tree.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Giant Lego penguin stolen from doorstep   A THREE foot tall Lego penguin was stolen from the doorstep of a home in Little Bealings.The Lego bricks, stuck together in the shape of a penguin, were snatched from Martlesham Road between 7pm on Tuesday, September 22 and 11am the next day.Anyone with information about who took the item or where it is now can call PC 163 Hammond on 01473 613500... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Last night I dreamt that I was watching a fellow tutor, John, in a cine film. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and had Shawshank redemption glasses on and the tenor of the scene suggests it was the sixties. He was sitting in a bullet shaped sidecar with three babies and a terrier. The babies were playing pat-a-cake with the terrier as she stood on her hind legs and two dead babies were kept in coffins under them.Hanif Kureishi describes women who read cookery books in bed as ardour dampening. Talking about dreams is also meant to be a very efficient way of ruining a relationship boring your partner: they will be thinking about how much they are going to bid for their moleskin plus fours on EBay while you are describing the finer aspects of the colour of the hummingbirds that landed in the river Orwell last night. I have a friend who finds anything maritime so dull he can’t think about getting an erection. Each person’s list will be different In The Singing detective Peter Marlowe tries to stop himself from getting and erection as the nurse wipes unguent on his body by thinking of: The Blue Peter dog, Women’s Hour, Tax returns, George Formby.I worry that anyone I love will be bored by the constant mention of my father and the dreams that are more real than my daytime feelingsConscious fears:Is my boat sinking?I should lose some weightWill I end up childless?I would be a dreadful motherI don’t want to be homelessI would like to live somewhere differentIs my cat depressed?I will never find someone I can marryUnconscious:Is my father living in the room where the landlord keeps his furniture? I am frightened of the old school I live in. Sleeping here on my own. I am writing this at 2 am. The high windows that I know are outside my room. The new glass replacing the old that was shattered in the war. I have just run through the black studio needing a wee into the headmaster’s office that is now my loo and home to my zebra finches.I give the finches old nests and they take them apart and make theirs much better. First they started off with a flimsy cotton wool and parcel-stuffing nest that had huge holes. Then they assimilate a greenfinches nest along with its fag ends and thread. Now they are on a blackbirds nest-which is lined with mud and harder to dissemble.(Dream) I am making a film of the old school I live in and the ghosts of the children I wanted to film were demanding some kind of equity rights.Waking logical explanations:There is a strike at work tomorrowMy boyfriend was teaching film yesterdayI am scared of ghostsI have just heard of another ex pupil who has died this week... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Margaret Attwood looked at a survey taken in the 1980s in the U.S.Men’s biggest fear: humiliatedWomen’s biggest fear: raped and killed... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 My new wallet: Is an old wallet and belongs to my friend Cad’s Nana. Nana looked like Rembrandt and like my grandmother was paranoid that tinkers were stealing the stones in her Waterford garden. Nana did other funny things that can be attributed to her being Irish: she called Thomas her grandson Toss, she wrote cheques for thousands of pounds and forgot to sign them- when questioned she would unzip her wallet and say ‘Here have a pound.’Nana hated any kind of boozing and even on Christmas Eve stared at me as I quaffed a modest glass of sherry. No swearing unless it was blasphemy. Loathed the Pope, loved the Father. Mistrusted everyone apart from her daughter.I keep finding new compartments: Greenshield stamps gummed to the inner wall and in the credit card space a Co-op voucher expiration date 1989. A revolting piece of string that dangles from the zip-sticky with Nana. I cannot cut it off. The sherry eyes would look at me.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Hello Angela is Kevin in please? Hello it's Annabel sorry Oh sorry, is it I alwyas thought it was Angela I am sorry. It's Geoff here from the seniors at the yacht club. Hi Geoff I think you've got the wrong number, sorry. Oh that's alright. Now I'm sure I got the right number, are you sure? Hold on wait...wait...it's here we are. Now I told you it's... oh no I see. I just tried to record this conversation on my phone. I listened to the recording and it's just lots of me humming and typing and scratching and the cat licking herself.   I missed the interesting conversation I had with the checkout  boy who is training to be a marione and the checkout woman in M&S who is one of a twin-she, Georgette the jolly one, her sister Dreen the misery. I liked her name I told her and she reminded me of Georgette Heyer and the silk substitute.   I missed the conversation with the man in the tractor shop when I went to buy a CCTV camera sign. He told me how his father was murdered in a fake hunting accident. he had been there and had lost a knee cap-that's why he couldn't join the Army-that's why he ended up in Suffolk.    ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 I recently stayed in my mother’s house while she was away. A small 1970s bungalow with large dark furniture squeezed in like a dollshouse that has the interior scale wrong.The three part Parisian wardrobe with cherry wood inlay is in my mothers will for me. I thought I could live in it under a tunnel if I am ever homeless.The shower has handrails and a seat for my stepfather; he lost his leg in a Lancaster in the war.I couldn’t have sex in the bed. The dreams I had were my mothers dreams being desperate for a wee, finally finding a loo and then realising the walls are see-through and the loo is on a dais on a building site manned by hundreds of construction workers. I wonder if Alex dreamt of POWs. He didn’t remember.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Fao Annabel   Good afternoon. The wall that springs to mind is the side wall of what used to be "The Shell House", Cambridge Road ,East Cowes     http://ourpasthistory.com/Gallery/album301/Untitled_Scanned_60     The whole house and garden were at one time covered with pictures and models covered in shells, but now is reduced to just the side wall of the house, which is cleary visible from the road.   Could this be the one? In the meantime, I will search for other possibilties.   Regards   Steve   The young Freddy in 1852, when looking for shells on the beach, had his bucket of shells kicked at by another boy. Freddy kicked back, not knowing that the other boy was prince Albert Edward, the son of Queen Victoria.The queen, having heard of the incident, praised Freddy because of his aplomb to defend his shells and awarded him with some money. The story goes on saying that this incident might be at the origin of mr Attrill's creative effort.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 I came home to find my way blocked by a pile of furniture, tubes of Anusol, divorce papers, my brother in laws knighthood certificate, stump socks, cigarette cards, pebbles, king penguin classics and picnic hampers full of receipts, dining room furniture, My sisters milk expresser.Three of my sisters had similar piles and I was jealous of the sister who got my stuff and the Freemason apron and case.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Between the hours of midday on Tuesday 22 September 2009 and midday on Friday 25 September 2009 in a public house in Market Hill, Woodbridge, offender or offenders have removed a distinctive 3 foot tall decorative wine glass.  Were you in the area at any time? Did you see anyone in possession of the stolen property?  Do you know the whereabouts of the stolen property? If you have any information relating to this incident, please call Woodbridge Police on 01473 613500 quoting reference WO/09/1853.DO NOT USE THIS NUMBER IN AN EMERGENCY OR IN A SITUATION THAT REQUIRES AN IMMEDIATE POLICE RESPONSE WHEN YOU SHOULD RING 999.Police Direct Team... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Just before the Revolution, Charles X threw wild parties in the catacombs of Paris. During World War II the French Resistance set up its headquarters here. Today modern troglodytes again have parties in the underground. There are raves and underground cinemas. Regular patrol of the police is futile, as there are hundreds of kilometres of underground tunnels,the present day special Catacombs police are colloquially called cataflics.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Officers are still to identify the body they found near to the defunct Marazion railway station on August 15 at 8.50pm.The victim is described as between 30 and 45 years old, 5ft 8in tall, of a thin to medium build, with grey hair and blue or green eyes.He was wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket and black Belstaff motorcycle gloves.He was also dressed in beige trousers, dark brown desert-style boots and, unusually for the time of year, he was wearing three tops underneath his jacket.In his rucksack, police found a Duracell torch, a Casio LCD portable TV and radio, and a pair of sunglasses.The bag also contained a plastic cheque-sized wallet which contained an old £1 note, an unwritten postcard of New York, a multi-tool and a small key.The man also had a gold Bucherer watch with a black face and black leather strap.A copy of the Motorcycle News magazine, dated August 12, was found nearby.The station closed in the 1960s and only an abandoned station building surrounded by weeds and grass remains.Anyone with information is asked to call 0800 405 040.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 switzerland & Africa  Dear Harri & LizSorry to bombard you with writing requests. I wondered if you have any memories from childhood (or more recently-Harri) of Africa(the bits where you lived when you were young) and in particular Switzerland. I want to write a brief (again anonymous) Atlas of Switzerland-mums version my version both of yours and of Africa too. Did Caro ever live in Switzerland?Lots of loveAnnabel xxx... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Dear Harri, Caro and lizI know you are all very busy. I wondered how you would feel about writing about any of the houses that we/you lived in...Africa/Geneva/Friary Lodge/Paddocks/Overstrand/Lane End( or Brookfield/Westward Ho)or if that's too horrific anywhere you have lived since.Thank you thank youAnnabel xxxxxxxxxxxxxx... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The museum of lost objectsLost and foundlost propertythe biography of a lost objectlost please helplost please findbrokenlost foreverCobra MistDead endCul de SacNo 'phone lineFortune telling with objectsvoodoosouvenirthe secret life of an objectthe life of other peoples' objectsthe hospital for objectsthe tidal wave of crapstoragereturn of the killer objectthe inventorythe family inventoryjumble salethe biography of a jumble salethe tale of an ornamentthe atlas of objectsthe family museumthe family crypthomelandnostalgiathe dollshousethe tale of an objectthe hospital of lost objectsthe family hospitalthe receiptsthe liststhe lost journey of an objectthe story of an objectthe avalanche of objectscorona (eye & planet)the aura of an objectthe prescription of objectsthe compendium of objectsthe bible of objectsthe Jane's defence manualcrazy pavingmarble memorial\small memories of a found objectfound and lostanatomy of an objectbroken objectsparts of an objectobjects of another erafragmentpartArgosFoundling museumlove tokensfoundling tokensagents of changethe palm readergleaningleftoversstockgleaning for fun/painthe museum of rubbishthe remnant museumthe story of the glaneusefiling an objectscanninginventorisingdocumentingdescribingempty/gone/lost/disappearancea long history of objectsBermuda TriangleWoolly bearsMicro stories-of objectsThe lost biography of objectsThe family logbookOrnamentsThe collector’s logbookFrost in JulyFrost in MayThe collector of foreign objectsNorth south east westObjects of AugustFortnum & MasonPlastic objectsRigby & PellerStereoscopeKaleidoscopeTelescopeOpera glassesPeriscopeBinoculars (horses)The tunnel of thingsTotal eclipse of the objectThe parlourThe larderRemedial objectsStore roomNecropolisThe objects domainThe dream life of objectsThe houseGenesis of an objectx-rayMapGraphMedical historyCoroners reportAutopsyDioramaSubtitleThe beauty contest of objectsThe wrong turn of an objectThe fragment of a storyHairsistersplanetariumplanisphereskeleton... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Man died in network of tunnels he made through house of rubbish A man whose home was so full of rubbish that he had to build an intricate network of tunnels to get around may have died after losing his way in the labyrinth. Investigators believe Gordon Stewart, 74, died as a result of dehydration, after becoming unable to find his way out of the mass of carrier bags, boxes, old furniture and other junk. Police had to call in a specialist diving team because the smell from the house, Broughton, Buckinghamshire, was so overpowering.   Related Articles Pensioner 'entombed in labyrinth of tunnels carved into rubbish' Neighbours had become concerned that they had not seen Mr Stewart for several days and raised the alarm. According to witnesses, the officers were faced with mounds of foul-smelling garbage which he had used to construct tunnels around his home. The smell was so over-powering police had to call in a specialist team - equipped with breathing apparatus - to search the two-storey house. They discovered a confusing system of tunnels networking around the interior of the building, with Mr Stewart lying dead inside. Locals say Mr Stewart, who wore a pony-tail, was often spotted riding his bike around the streets. One neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: "He was slightly eccentric, but very clever. He was just a collector. He came home with a load of cardboard boxes and lived in his own world." A second described his death as a "tragedy". Neighbours said Mr Stewart's home had been accumulating rubbish for at least 10 years. A car dating back to the 1950s stands in the garage believed to have been left untouched for years as garbage built up around it. A spokesman from Thames Valley Police, said: "Police were called on Friday at 12.26pm by a member of public who was concerned for welfare of a resident on Narbeth Drive. Police forced entry where they found a man's body. "There are no suspicious circumstances." Police also confirmed that officers had to call on the help of the Thames Valley Police Specialist Search and Recovery team to find the body. The team specialises in diving rescue operations, but is equally well equipped and trained in recovering bodies during land searches. With the use of protective equipment, breathing apparatus, gas detectors, analysers and remote cameras, SSRT officers can enter and search confined and contaminated spaces, where the atmosphere may be noxious or poisonous, with out putting their own safety at risk. It is believed Mr Stewart lived alone and has no next of kin. A post mortem examination is due to be carried out at a later date."... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 What is a Ghost?  The common definition of a "ghost" is a spiritual being which once was running a body until that body died, and is now hanging around or "haunting" a certain area. The spiritual being in question did not go to heaven or hell and did not get another body, but remained in some physical location (often the place where they lived before they died, or in some cases the location of the death itself). Bathroom ghosts are relatively harmless. But they can be annoying, or even frightening.There are different types of bathroom ghosts. Some are relatively friendly or simply curious. Others might be trying to scare you. In most cases, they are just confused beings who don't fully understand where they are or what they are doing. In some cases they might not even realize they are dead.When bathroom ghosts(or any ghosts, for that matter) try to scare you, they are really just trying to create an effect. In other words, they are bored. Keep that in mind when you get the creeps or chills in a haunted area.Some ghosts will just come and look over your shoulder to see what you are doing. Some hide around corners and peak at you when they think you aren't looking. But the irritating types are the ones that try to scare you for amusement.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Maharani Indian Restaurant I looked at the jellied range of opals on Sarah's hand and asked her about her ring. It was not her original wedding ring, that had been stolen by a little girl at a birthday party and brought back two weeks later. Sarah had claimed on the insurance , who then told her to send her wedding ring back-ridiculous we all thought! and so she bought it off them. She still had it she thought, a tiny engraved gold band with a single jellytot gem. No-that was the first engagement ring that her husband had proposed with to another girl. He was 17 when he proposed. Now in his fifities he is still embarrassed at the mention of the other ring.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Poor Pat the Cook was accused of stealing my grandmother's ring: a large rainbow opal with chips of refracted sunlight reined in with a tight gold band: an electric jelly.   Missing too was a charm bracelet which I had hoped to inherit. it had disks with all of the grandchildren on including the dead one and the one that changed it's name. Mine was ornate and different from the others. I didn't like it it was like my extra middle name and my Edwardian colouring-too Rococo and an indication I was a cuckoo.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 From: Melissa KittlSent: Mon 12/10/2009 13:21To: North Cluster AcademicSubject: Missing Cup Hi all, My cup is missing, its like a soup cup, and it says on the side about Quitting eating Chocolate, if you have it, please could you return it to me. Thanks Melissa Kittl... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 I have just been staying in a flat in Chelsea. There was very little evidence of the previous owners. 1. Dust in hoover bag 2. Tea stain on duvet 3. Smear on carpet 4. Sticker on a knife holder 5. Pencil height mark on the wall 6. Black Dockers tee-shirt in the top of the wardrobe cupboard.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 A lock of Elvis Presley's hair has been sold to a mystery buyer for $15,000 (£9,200) at an auction in Chicago. The clump is believed to have been cut from The King's head when he joined the US army in 1958. It is one of 200 items of memorabilia which have gone under the hammer this weekend at Chicago's Leslie Hindman auctioneers. The pieces were from the personal collection of the late Gary Pepper who ran an Elvis Presley fan club and became a friend of the singer.   One of the priciest items to be sold was a white cotton shirt with EP monogrammed on the chest which went for $52,000 (£31,827). ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144  As the neighbour of Dennis Severs  for 20 years, I had the unique experience of the "collection of atmospheres" which he created in his Spitalfields house. We bought our 1724 houses, both derelict, in the same year, yet where the restoration which I attempted took well over a decade, he had his atmospheres up and running for visitors within months. He could have been an inspired theatre-designer, for improvisation was his watchword. Things were rarely what they seemed: velvet was generally Dralon, not sewn together in swags round the four-poster bed, but stapled, the pillars were taken from nearby fruit-market pallets; the walnuts hung on the chimney-piece were real walnuts, simulating what Grinling Gibbons might have carved. In the candlelight the magical look was what mattered, and his dictatorial commentaries added to the magnetism, even if they encouraged the summary ejection of unsympathetic visitors. With each room devoted to a different period, while taped sounds of the Jervis family were heard off-stage, he constantly developed his tours for visitors. I would get a ring on my frontdoor-bell, with the frantic message from Dennis over the Entryphone: "Can you put your kitchen light out: it's the Jack the Ripper episode". I never did get to go on one of his tours, though I went round the house on many occasions, and I regularly heard through the wall the sound of the Boer war train leaving Waterloo. I was glad that he quickly gave up his names for the rooms on the top floor - Scrooge's room with a high clerk's desk, and Little Nell's room with its truckle bed. Much happier was his re-creation of an illustration from Beatrix Potter in his cellar-kitchen. The Jervis family of Huguenot immigrants, his own invention, were what mattered, and knowing that my house had once been inhabited by James Stilwell, (master silk-weaver reputed to have woven the cloth of gold for Queen Victoria's coronation gown), Dennis invented a half-true character in Blanche Stilwell, sworn enemy of Mrs Jervis. I marvelled at the ingenuity with which he simulated carriages and carts clip-clopping up and down Folgate Street outside. He was a great neighbour, and I am glad that the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust plans to continue his work, with the tapes of Dennis a ghostly presence alongside the Jervises.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Queen's coat bought in jumble sale for £10A woman, Gaynor Andrews, has discovered her favourite second-hand coat, bought for £10 from a jumble sale nearly fifty years ago, was previously worn by The Queen.   Gaynor Andrews with her mother Margaret and the special coat. The Queen wearing what is believed to be the coat bought by Margaret Andrews Photo: SWNS The 57-year-old, from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, was surprised when she saw the distinctive silk jacket, inherited from her 82-year-old mother Margaret, in a photograph of the monarch dating from 1953. She said the family had always known the coat belonged to someone important but had no idea it had been worn by a young Queen Elizabeth II shortly before she set off on her tour of the Commonwealth.   the coat from a gentleman who was arranging a jumble sale for the Sea Cadets in Epsom, Surrey. “He told her it had come from ‘a high-up place’ but wouldn’t say any more. Mum paid between £5 and £10 for it in 1961 – which was quite a lot in those days – and thought nothing more of it. “It was only when I was looking at the television guide a few weeks ago when I saw an old picture of the Queen. I thought ‘that coat looks familiar’ and when I looked closer I realised it was the exact same item.” She added: "The photo was of her during her 1953 tour around Britain. It's a very distinctive coat so I was shocked to see it on her. "I've never seen anything like it anywhere else." A spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace would not comment on the coat but confirmed some of the Queen's old clothes end up in public hands after being sold on.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Coming out of the loo in the Rose & Crown on Lower Slone Street I felt a tug and thought I must have hair caught on a chair. I turned round and saw a Chelsea pensioner holding my hair in his hand. He recited a poem about his Danish daughter, Amelia, her aquatic life in the womb. Here eyes he described as Whitby jet. He hated the X Factor but most of all Carol Thatcher. He loathed vulgarity. Respected Rodin's The Kiss. This he thought was something beautiful-love not lust. I don't know how he would have felt about Auguste Rodin the man...or even the sculpture of Balzac. He described a look he had seen a man give to a woman at the bar and he said this was the only thing that made him feel OK when he went back to the hospital. He thought of his Danish wife and daughters and felt they had washed away on an iceflow in the night.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Cunard's Queen Mary was built and fitted with an Art Deco style that was part country house post foxhunt, part nightclub pre-drinks. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique's Normandie was an opulent, glittering hareem. War broke out as the Queen Mary was carrying Bob Hope to New York. After that the Queen Mary became The Grey Ghost, stripped of interior and painted battleship drab. The Queen Mary lives in California now where it is, again, part museum part hotel.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The remains of the last known stuffed dodo had been kept in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum but in the mid-18th century, the specimen – save the pieces remaining now – had entirely decayed and was ordered to be discarded by the museum's curator or director in or around 1755   Asked to show the remains of the dodo to some high ranking Japanese business men who had recently made a huge contribution to the Ashmolean,  using the appropriate gloves Richard placed the remains in glass vitrines on acid-free conservation paper. He had been advised under no circumstances should he let the businessmen touch the artefacts and to ensure this rule was upheld whilst demonstrating the greatest diplomacy. Tense, Richard went to the loo and took his gloves off and on and off again. Welcoming the businessmen in he shook their hands with the gloves off, remembering to put them back on again when it was time for the inspection. The businessmen were very charming, spoke perfect English and respectfully held their hands clasped behind their Saville Row suits.   After they left he put the dodo's remains away. He sat down at his leather embedded desk and felt both tired and relieved.   He saw in the light from the large wobbly-glassed window that there was a small whisp of fluff on his desk and he was glad that it had taken this moment to make it's debut and remaining hidden on the windowsill while the businessmen had been present.   Looking closely he realised it was a dodo underfeather-the rarest of all. The thought of putting his gloves back on and opening the safe door and getting the clearance to do so was too much, so he put it in the part of his wallet reserved for stamps.   Several years later he moved to Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire where he opened a strange sort of antique shop specialising in relics. He kept the dodo feather weighed down by a milk-glass marble on a Spode dish on his garter-blue bookcase. He liked to tell the story and although he was shy it meant that there was always something he could entertain guests with.   One time he was showing his friend Dan the feather and realised it wasn't there.   He doesn't know where it is. He thinks maybe  1. Henry the hoover   2. His daughter licked it as it was close to when it had snowed and he had shown her snowflakes on the tongue;from then on she had tried other things on her tongue too, a scientific justification for a return to infancy.    3. The cat?   4. Maybe it's still in the house.   He has sold the house. The new owners now about the dodo feather and spend a lot of time examining their dust.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Ghosts represent my biggest fear. When I was little I would wake myself up all through the night thinking there would be a ghost looking at me. Somebody since suggested to me it's a fear transferred.   My mother used to tell us about a house she lived in when she was young. It had been one of Henry the VIII's hunting lodges and was panelled with dark wood and had a gallery. Her brother once dropped a junior hack saw from the gallery onto her head down below in the sitting room. Her father used to drop down Fox's Glacier mints to her.   On Christmas Eve 1953 a man dressed as Father Christmas stood at the end of her bed. He smiled and he walked out of the room, down the corridor to the locked baize-covered servants doors. In the morning my mother told her brother as she was already too old to believe in Father Christmas.   Her brother remarked that the man would regularly sit on the wicker nursery chair in his room and look past him crying.   My mother is convinced the ghost was John Cobb the land speed record champion who had conducted an affair with his mistress in the house, to a tragic conclusion.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 When I graduated from college, my grandfather insisted I have a briefcase. His gift was incredibly sweet and thoughtful but I never had much use for a briefcase, especially such a traditional style. I kept the briefcase for a few years, but when I was getting ready to move from California to Boston, the briefcase joined the garage-sized pile of other objects I had to trash, sell, or give away. The briefcase was donated, among many other things, to the Salvation Army, where I hoped it would make its way to someone who would actually have use for it. That was almost two years ago. My grandfather died recently and all I can think about is that briefcase.I'm interested in the irrational affection we feel towards inanimate objects as well as the narrative and meaning that get attached to this otherwise mundane stuff over time, thanks to who we got the object from, or who we were with when we purchased or found it, what our life was like at the time, what it's like now, and where we've been in between, all of which is carried on in the object, regardless of whether it still exists or not. Creating a virtual memorial for my lost briefcase is the least I can do to honor my grandfather's gift, while, to some extent, confessing my guilt over getting rid of it.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Fontana's table of value (according to Sotheby's& Christies) Red & Gold (most expensive) Silver White Orange pink green brown  Werner's Nomencalture of Colours: Published in 1821. It lists 110 colours with examples of animals, vegetables and minerals that share the same tone. Another book, Cercles chromatiques de M.E. Chevreul from 1861, consists of a sequence of 11 colour wheels. The first is divided into 72 pure colours. In the subsequent wheels, 10 per cent black is added until the last wheel is completely dark, colourless... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Bodhan Litnisansi came from Russia to France as a teenager in the 1930s. He fought in the Second World War, was captured and spent five years in a prison camp. After the war he was repatriated to Viry-Noureuil, where he bought a house that was cheap and dilapidated. Reconstructing his house, he started to collect shells from the local restuarants wich he used to decorate the walls. Litnianski also started his daily visit to the local tip, hoarding his finds in a slag heap at the back of his house. Out of this encyclopedic collection of Viry-Noureuil's stuff, grew a garden of jumbled chronological stratas; a mythical map of the village. This wall is the side of Litniansi's house and is not just rendered with these objects but made out of them. These, he told the local newspaper, were among his favourite objects, because of the stories they told.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The interpreter who accompanied me to the garden is over six foot tall, he could see above the wall, so I thin that the dimensions are roughly Vitruvian, fitting the proportions of Litnianski's body.   Like the windows of the Edwardian school where I live, designed to be above the child's height, so that students would not be distracted by the view outside. The main dioramas of small objects are at eye level. In the Poetics of Space, Bachelard describes the interior as an intimate space and the outside a void. Litnianski's garden in this sense is an interior space and looking at it even when he was alive gave me, at least, the impression of entering something private and forbidden. Litninianski (or in my case his son) used to invite the visitor to follow him into the space, where you would remain enclosed until he let you out.   On first sight of the house, it has the appearance of a modern hermitage. The hermitage was designed to look as though built by the hermit himself, with his surrounding objects. Looking more carefully, one can see the house is tiny and hidden within these rocky columns. It is more lie Saint-Pol Roux's home, a fisherman's cottage encased in a manor house. Litnianski began collecting things that had become useless, dirty, broken, empty, unfashionable or perhaps embarrassing.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144  An article by Jeffrey Kastner in Cabinet magazine features an "unusual artistic collaboration between the French artist Hubert Duprat and a group of caddis fly larvae": A small winged insect belonging to the order Trichoptera and closely related to the butterfly, caddis flies live near streams and ponds and produce aquatic larvae that protect their developing bodies by manufacturing sheaths, or cases, spun from silk and incorporating substances—grains of sand, particles of mineral or plant material, bits of fish bone or crustacean shell—readily available in their benthic ecosystem. The larvae are remarkably adaptable: if other suitable materials are introduced into their environment, they will often incorporate those as well. . . . After collecting the [caddis fly] larvae from their normal environments, [Duprat] relocates them to his studio where he gently removes their own natural cases and then places them in aquaria that he fills with alternative materials from which they can begin to recreate their protective sheaths. He began with only gold spangles but has since also added the kinds of semi-precious and precious stones (including turquoise, opals, lapis lazuli and coral, as well as pearls, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds) seen here. The insects do not always incorporate all the available materials into their case designs, and certain larvae, Duprat notes, seem to have better facility with some materials than with others. Additionally, cases built by one insect and then discarded when it evolves into its fly state are sometimes recovered by other larvae, who may repurpose it by adding to or altering its size and form.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Ornithologists from the University of Oxford discovered a 2,500 year old bird's nest on a cliff in Greenland. The nests belong to gyrfalcons - the largest species of falcon in the world - and is the oldest nest ever discovered. They also found three other nests that are more than 1,000 years old and feathers from a bird that lived more approximately 670 years ago. The nest have been used by generations of gyrfalcons, who return on a regular basis.   Gyrfalcons are not the only birds who return to their nests year after year for thousands of years. By carbon dating solidified stomach contents, peat moss deposits and bone and feather samples from various moulting sites, researchers have in the past shown that colonies of snow petrel have returned to the same sites for 34,000 years and adelie penguins for 44,000 years... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 An England football flag, a pair of underpants, two white socks and a soft toy are among the unusual objects recovered from the nests of red kites. The birds of prey are known for their tendency to steal items of clothing from washing lines to make their nests. Their odd haul also includes a glove, a sponge ball and the greying underwear, the RSPB revealed. The knick-knacks were found in nests across the north east of England where the birds were reintroduced into Gateshead's Derwent Valley four years ago. Two of the older kites, which were the first pair to breed in Gateshead since 1834, also became grandparents at the age of four. bird of prey with a wingspan of almost two metres - became extinct in the north of England during the early 1800s... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Of all birds it is probably the magpie that is most associated with superstitions. However, most superstitions regarding magpies are based around just one bird. Throughout Britain it is thought to be unlucky to see a lone magpie and there are a number of beliefs about what you should do to prevent bad luck. In most parts of the UK it is believed that you should salute the single magpie and say “Good morning Mr Magpie. How is your lady wife today?” By acknowledging the magpie in this way you are showing him proper respect, so that he doesn't curse you with his bad luck.In Yorkshire magpies are associated with witchcraft and you should make a sign of the cross to ward off evil. And in Scotland a single magpie seen near the window of a house is a sign of impending death, possibly because magpies are believed to carry a drop of the devil’s blood on his tongue or in another legend because he was the only bird that didn’t sing or comfort Jesus when he was crucified.  Rossini wrote a tragicomic opera entitled La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie) about a French girl accused of theft who is tried, convicted and executed. Later the true culprit is revealed to be a magpie and in remorse the town organises an annual 'Mass Of The Magpies' to pray for the girl's soul.  They have also been known to kill small pets such as guinea pigs.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The platinum ring was finally recovered when her fiancé found it in a bird's nest at the bottom of their garden. Julia Boaler, 36, thought the £5,000 ring had been stolen when it vanished while she was taking a shower at home. Miss Boaler and her partner Justin Laycock, who live in Gleadless, Sheffield, were baffled at how the pear-shaped diamond could have vanished. Miss Boaler, project worker for homeless children, said: "I was heartbroken when my ring vanished and Justin was not best pleased either. "I left it on the bathroom window ledge when I took a shower but it wasn't there when I returned. "I thought it must have fallen in the bathroom or even fell out of the window but it was a complete mystery. "When Justin got home I told him what had happened and the pair of us searched everywhere. "We ripped up the bathroom lino, pulled up floorboards and even took the panel off the bath thinking it must have somehow slipped through but still it was nowhere to be found. "I tormented myself for months looking all over the house for it thinking that my mind must have been playing tricks on me. "I repeatedly rummaged through drawers and lifted carpets and turned the car inside out. "I even accused the window-cleaner of swiping it as the window was open, but he swore blind that he knew nothing and I no proof. "We eventually gave up looking. "A few years later we had to put the wedding off as I gave birth to our son Luis. "Needing more space we found ourselves putting the house up for sale so I made Justin tidy up the garden and cut the trees back. "He started to prune our big oak tree and noticed an old nest in the branches so he nipped up a ladder to have a look inside and found my missing ring. "I was gobsmacked. "The bird must have swooped down and nabbed it from the open window. "It's amazing the ring was still there but I'm so glad to get it back." Still engaged, the pair have now insured the ring and are planning to tie the knot in the very near future.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144   Leopold Blaschka and son Rudolph Blaschka made 847 life-size glass plants for Harvard University, where they remain. More lifelike and more painstaking than a Dutch still life, these glass botanical specimens feature decaying leaves and decaying blossoms, visiting bees and fungal infections. These plants are neither scientific-too singularly perfect to study; nor art-too much like copies to be anything other than kitsch.   These objects designed to aid classification of species, are themselves hard to classify. Originally called ‘scientific models’, now referred to as ‘the glass flowers’ their role has subtly changed since conception.   The models have rarely left Harvard, Originally a few specimens left by hearse, not by custom-made crates using NASA technology.    The glass plants have inspired acts of obsessive love. One of their creators described them as his life’s work, he was unable to go on holiday, he worked relentlessly (not even taking Christmas day off to go to Brighton as Auerbach does). The Blaschkas' started off making jewellery and glass eyes; they felt finally they had found a craft worthy of their skill in the Harvard specimens.   The Blaschkas’ counterfeited botanical forms and modelled jellied delights: ruby petals, sapphire stamens and crosier of an emerald fern.   When visitors such as the Queen of Sweden came to visit Rudolph in his workshop, she was amazed that he worked in temperatures of 95 degrees-the windows and doors sealed so that no flicker of air could disturb the flame used to manipulate the glass.   Many others tried to visit and commission plants for themselves, or to discover the ‘secret’ method of making these objects. There were and still remain rumours that the plants were very easy to make-there was a hidden method.   In 1941 a professor at Harvard’s reaction to the bombing of Pearl Harbour was to make the glass plant cases bombproof.   Pilgrims still visit the glass flowers and are instructed to walk softly, to breathe gently and to stay (as with the reptile house at London Zoo) away from the glass.   The glass plants of South America, the Royal gardens of Pillnitz and of the Blaschkas’ own garden at Hosterwitz are still growing in cabinets at the Botanical Museum of Harvard.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 This image is of Rue de Sebastopol in paris. I dumped someone elses objects and watched as people took things from the pile. Agnes Varda in her film The Gleaners and I documents the french tradition of gleaning. In wine regions of France, where a limited number of grapes must be used to classify wine, the leftover grapes are cut off and left on the ground; birds, wild boars and human gleaners pick them up. These fallen grapes ar called 'conscripts'. Benjamin describes a collector as a prince who rescues a beautiful girl; perhaps Litnianski can be seen in this light as a saviour in possession of these objects.   In an interview with Raw Vision magazine in 1994, Litnianski said he chose shells firstly because they are beautiful and secondly he had never been to the sea. All of the objects in his garden were, he said, shells.   Benjamin again on interior trace remarks The original way of living was not in a house, but in a shell that carried the imprint of its inhabitants  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 In October 1976, asked to name three books he had been reading, Nabakov listed: a translation of Dante's Inferno, an illustrated guide to North American butterflies and a book of his own, "The not-quite-finished manuscript of a novel"  Recovering from illness he had, in his febrile state been reading his not-quite-finished book aloud to an audience of: "peacocks, pigeons, my long dead parents, two cypresses, several young nurses crouching around, and a family doctor so old as to be almost invisible". Last Tuesday the not-quite-finished novel was published. Out of a Swiss vault. Thirty years after his deathly plea to his wife Vera to destroy it.The Original of Laura has been assembled from 138 index cards. Penguin has printed the book including the index cards which are covered in , scribbles, food stains, tea cup marks and Nabakovs greasy fingerprints.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Hoffman Ma of Shanghai travelled to New York to buy Michael Jackson's sequined glove for a quarter of a million pounds.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144   This is an image of the clutter that Ursula Goldfinger argued with her husband, Erno about. Perhaps in the way that Daniel Miller in his essay, Possessions’ talks about the residents of the modernist flats of the Lark Estate, who use ornamentation to express their individuality in an environment not of their choosing.     In its present state the garden looks abandoned: Manderlay at the beginning of Rebecca, encased in brambles, nettles and roses, it fulfils the romantic requirements of a sham ruin, where the cultivated growth of ivy symbolised authenticity and elevated the status of the ruin. If the garden is a narrative, it is at its haunting end. Or perhaps it is suspended in a sleeping-beauty state, a remembrance of something that no longer exists.   Yet it has always been this, and now it is a museum within a museum. Bodhan died five years ago and he is no longer to be found encased in this labyrinthine shell. The gate is locked and the new voice of the garden is his neighbour, Odette. Like the film, the Go-between’ which is set in 1900, written I 1952 but has the overwhelming look of 1970 when it was made; of the different eras that the garden commemorated, it seems to be set at 2005 the year that Litnianski died.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Curator Renaud Proche co-curated a series of archives of stuff in an artists studio: http://the-backroom.orgWhen visiting an artist Renaud's started to notice the things on an artists fridge door, the postcards on the walls and the tat that they had collected. He felt that by noticing these things he was starting to take in the things that were at the back of an artists mind. As a visitor to the archives you were free to go through the artists stuff with no curatorial input. Manilla files, archive boxes, sectioned filing cabinets, magazine racks, covered walls with cardboard with a selection of stuff.on, a TV hooked up and a sound station. Renaud felt it was important to show this collection of culturally interesting and relevant things that might not get out into the world.   With each exhibition the material shown was different-relevant to the place where it was being shown (like a Medieval storyteller moving from town to town and adapting the stories) making it more live and alive.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Berlin's Memorial MileGroups representing both the homosexuals and the Gypsies began many years ago to plan for their own plot on Berlin's memorial mile. But they were both stalled, not only by long processes to secure land and funding, but also by contentious infighting over what the memorials should look like and to whom, precisely, they should be dedicated.For the Sinti and Roma, the dispute has been raging for years, with construction of the fountain to commemorate the 500,000 Sinti and Roma who died in the Holocaust originally set for 2004. But two separate groups representing Gypsies in Germany could not agree on the inscription, and the project stalled -- transforming a rickety wooden sign marking the spot across the street from the German parliament building as an unintended monument to bitter infighting. Even the 2006 agreement by the German government to provide funding failed to resolve the stalemate.The design calls for a fountain conceived by Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan, inscribed with a poem called "Auschwitz" by Italian poet Santino Spinelli. A triangular pillar will jut out of the fountain with a rose placed on the top of it. Once a day, the pillar will sink down into the fountain and the flower will be replaced. The project is expected to cost €2 million ($2.95 million). Construction is now set to begin in February.Plans for a monument to homosexual Holocaust victims (the Nazis imprisoned 54,000 homosexuals and some 7,000 died in concentration and work camps) were delayed by a similar dispute. In 2003, the German government approved plans for a €600,000 memorial, but some advocacy groups objected to one facet of the design: a video of two men kissing that would play on an endless loop at one end of the monument. The video, they argued, did not recognize the suffering of lesbians as well as gay men. In the final design, a video of two women kissing will rotate every two years with the video of a male couple.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 All but a few stretches of the Berlin Wall were torn down in the first heady months after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.). Yet some east Germans still cling to memories of the 40 years they lived under communist rule — memories that have grown more affectionate with time. Speciality shops and some websites offer east German board games, 15-packs of the infamously rough Cabinet cigarettes, Be Ready condoms, even cans of Trabi Duft — fumes from the iconic Trabant car — and the very brand of hair gel preferred by former east German leader Erich Honecker. Young Berliners still gather at "authentic" G.D.R. parties, where guests don the uniforms of state organizations, swill Little Red Riding Hood sparkling wine and dance to ballads like In the East, which sold 300,000 copies a few years ago. This phenomenon of nostalgia for the lost east is dubbed Ostalgie.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Queen Victoria and later Freud asked their staff to make an inventory of their belongings; Freud had his maid reposition his objects exactly on his arrival from Vienna, to Hampstead. Queen Victoria had her objects photographed from every angle, and these photographs were put into albums for her to look at. She would no doubt be pleased to know that on the carpet at Osborne House, a plaque marks the place where she fell to her death. Originally I started out with the thought that I would make a visual inventory of the objects of the garden individually on a white background, suggesting the diagrams of the pacific voyage of Captain Cook that Nicholas Thomas has evaluated recently in the book: The Culture of collecting. This method will no doubt change as I hear more of the stories associated with the objects.Susan Stewart writes on this signifying use of fragment for whole:The set of objects a museum displays is sustained only by the fiction that they somehow constitute a representational universe.”... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Today we found a freedom pass on the train table. It belonged to Mr R.A. Gillies of Kensington and Chelsea. In our excitement my beloved left his bag on the train. It had two executive 1970s pens in one silver and one solid gold. I coveted the last. The pens belonged to his accountant father and had signed a cheque for 50 million dollars. They were nestled in a red leather pencil case I had bought for him-because it reminded me of the inner silk lining of dracula's cloak and he likes vampires.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Otto Frank preferred the annex empty. "Everything was hauled away during the war and I prefer it stays that way."... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The man wore a beige SAS beret and 21 military medals and badges, including the Military Cross, as he walked alongside 600 genuine war heroes.  He had medals from campaigns including the Second World War, Korea, the Falklands, awards for both officers and privates and even a foreign medal. Military experts have confirmed it would be impossible for one man to have been awarded all the decorations. The man was confronted by Jim Nicholson, who helped organise the march in Bedworth, Warickshire, on November 11 and admitted being a fake before disappearing. Members of the Bedworth Armistice Day Parade committee and servicemen have now launched an appeal to name and shame the man they call a ''cowardly Walter Mitty''.  ''We have had idiots like this try to join in a few times and we tell them to get lost. The Bedworth Parade is the biggest in the country outside London and follows a three quarter of a mile route from All Saints Church in the centre to the Cenotaph. This year the families of four Royal Warwickshire Fusiliers killed in Afghanistan attended to lay wreaths in memory of their loved ones. Mr Owen, who has a UN medal and Korean Veterans medal, said: ''There are men and women on that parade that went through hell. The man wore the winged dagger of the SAS on his beret, poppy and tie-pin, as well as a veteran's badge on his lapel. On his left breast he wore a rack of 17 medals starting with the Military Cross (MC), and the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). On the MC he has a bar signifying the Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service, while on the DSO there is a bar for Mentioned In Dispatches. Neither bar is ever worn with those medals. Next comes a foreign cross, thought to be Polish, which should only be worn after all the British medals. Then is the Queen's Commendation Medal, the Military Medal, the rank version of the Military Cross for privates, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Meritous Service Medal and the Campaign Service Medal. On the row underneath he has a South Atlantic Medal for the Falklands, a Gulf Medal for the first Gulf War, and an Accumulated Service Medal - worn back to front. Then comes the Saudi Arabian Medal for the liberation of Kuwait, the Kuwaiti Liberation Medal and four more unknown foreign medals. ''To start with you never wear two rows of medal, you wear one long row overlapping," he said. ''The real outrage is over the gallantry awards - if anyone was awarded this many they would have got the Victoria Cross. ''The Queen never gave permission for the Gulf war medals to be worn on uniform and the entire order is wrong. The man, who probably bought his collection online or from antique shops, is technically committing a criminal offence and in theory could be prosecuted.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Dear Colleagues, Barry Sewell has had left on his desk (which is opposite the stationery cabinet in North cluster) a set of keys. The keys are on a SNC chain and consist of 3 gold keys. If you believe they are yours please would you come and see me. Regards   Jane Wegg ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 > Hello! I thought you'd given up all> hope as I hadn't heard from you.> Unfortunately mum passed away in April this year so her> memories have> gone with her.But if I can help in any way I will.> Margaret.> > -----Original Message-----> From: annabel dover [mailto:annabeldover@yahoo.co.uk]> > Sent: 08 November 2007 13:27> To: Watchman, Margaret - Ipswich> Subject: Melton old school former pupils> > Dear Margaret,> It has been a very long time since you sent me your> fantastic email which mentioned your mother working in> the kitchens.> > I am still going ahead with the project. I am waiting> to hear from the Arts Council who are taking an age to> respond.> > I will contact you again when I hear from them. I hope> you are well.> > All the very best,> Annabel Dover>... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The Flame of Liberty in Paris has commemorated many things. Franco-American relations, the fallen French Resistance workers and now Diana Princess of Wales, who happened to have been in an accident under the Pont d'Alma tunnel. The flame is the gold leaved burning ember of Liberty's torch.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Police in Poland have recovered a sign stolen from Auschwitz and arrested five men. The metal sign which reads "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work makes you free"), was stolen from the entrance to the former Nazi death camp last week, sparking a nationwide hunt. Polish authorities made the recovery of the sign a priority and the museum, police and anonymous donors offered a reward of nearly £25,000 for information leading to its return. Over 1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in the Nazi death camp located in southern Poland during World War Two. Prisoners arriving at the camp used to enter thought an iron gate topped by the German-language motto. It is understood the thieves had cut the sign into three pieces, but the motive for the theft remains unclear.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Lessons learned from the latest lost Christmas tree hunters Dad, kids rescued after getting lost on Christmas tree hunt Family missing for three days used twigs to write 'Help' in snow Associated Press Published on: 12/19/07 Paradise, Calif. — A father and three children who vanished on a Christmas tree-cutting trip in the Northern California mountains were found alive Wednesday after huddling in a culvert for warmth during three days of heavy snow. A California Highway Patrol helicopter crew spotted Frederick Dominguez waving his arms atop a small bridge and landed nearby, sinking into 2 feet of snow, flight officer David White said. White said the crew found the family on their last pass over the area as snow from another storm, even bigger than the first, started to fall heavily. Hours later, after he had been checked at a hospital, Dominguez described three harrowing nights in the wild as he tried to keep his children from panicking and succumbing to the numbing cold. "You just want your kids to be safe and you're just praying, 'God, keep my kids alive,'" he told reporters gathered at Feather River Hospital in Paradise. The rescue came as their family and friends were starting to lose hope, with another storm moving in and beginning to dump yet more snow in the foothill region about 100 miles north of Sacramento.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Town hit by lost Christmas tree A police investigation has begun after unidentified workmen cut down and chipped an Oxfordshire town's Christmas tree. Witnesses said the men arrived on Saturday at 1430 BST at Vale Avenue, Grove with a truck and chipping machine and disposed of the tree on the site. Planted in 2006, it has been used each year since and was surrounded by a 1.2m(4ft) fence. At first it was thought the tree had been stolen. Why would anybody cut down a tree so soon before Christmas? Graham Munday, Grove Parish Council A parish councillor reported the theft to the police on Saturday evening after noticing the tree was missing. Graham Munday from Grove Parish Council, said: "I couldn't believe it. "I thought, why would anybody cut down a tree so soon before Christmas? "You would wait until a few weeks before Christmas if you want to sell it on." Subsequent enquiries revealed the tree had in fact been chipped by the men, who arrived at the site in an unmarked van. "Police think they were possibly bona-fide tree surgeons who have taken the wrong tree down," said Mr Munday. "But how could they have mistaken it?" Thames Valley Police appealed for more witnesses to come forward to try and identify the men behind the incident. A local developer said he would replace the tree in time for Christmas.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 My mother, like myself is very clumsy. Last year she fell over onto the 220 Christmas decorations her husband had saved from his childhood in the 1930s.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Today I am sitting pissed by the fire after failing to log in to my account.   Auerbach and Freud are off to Brighton, the one day of the year where they don't crack the ice on the loo bowl. How do they avoid bumping into one another? If they see each other on the pier do they have to scarper-like the horrible scene from Brighton Rock.    ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Last night I had my single layered anxiety dream: I was on the train and I missed my stop because I had spread all of my stuff all over the train carriage (This time books, often it's clothes and my cat, and zebra finches). I am near Paris but because I take so long to collect all of my stuff i end up somewhere like Kings Lynn or Great Yarmouth. A young girl sitting around the table asked how I could possibly work without my work being classsified and put into sections. I panicked and responded defensively: "Actually I'm doing a PhD and it's a bit different from 'A' Levels (little lady).   We went past a waiting room full of meatballs resting on the bench. I just managed to stuff my books into my wicker bag, a bulbous moses basket with biros, eyeliners, and in the past knitting needles sticking out of its inflated puffa fish belly.   I got out of the train and saw an island on the river populated with about 20 black labradors (sealpups?) which I knew was the winning piece from the Saatchi show. Oh lord I have to get a taxi to the studio now.    ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Roger Cardinal, Art Historian and the man who coined the phrase 'Outsider Artist' sent me a new year email today in it he told me "I read the other day that Alberto Giacometti used to keep a vixen in his Paris studio, but that it ran away on the very day he got back from Switzerland after the war."... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 In October of 2003, the Spurlock Museum accepted a donation of a WWII silk map from Barbara Nelson. This map will fit very well into the Museum’s military collections as well as into the extensive map collection. Barbara received the map from her father who served in WWI. He in turn received the map from her Uncle who served and acquired the map during the Battle of the Bulge in WWII. This map is made of silk and is printed on both sides. One side is of France, Germany and Switzerland. The other side is of Belgium and Germany. The map shows elevation, roads, railways, bodies of water and towns. Back of Map Silk maps were originally created by Christopher Clayton Hutton who worked for the British Military Intelligence. These new silk maps could be hidden and stood up very well to the elements in the field. The United States began to produce its own silk maps after November of 1942 after a meeting with the British Intelligence. The maps were a great asset in assisting POWs escape.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The Victorian Schoolhouse where I live and work is composed of years of remnants shoring up upon one another.  It has rising damp and 'Jews Ear' growing in it. It has four shaved corners to prevent children hurting themselves on the sharp red brick provides home for masonry bees. Under my sweet and chocolate wrapper wallpaper commemorating Christmas, Easter and birthdays, the sulphur yellow of the walls shows through from the 1960s, the Beryl blue of the 1950s beneath that. Darwin described the shadows of the glaciers he saw in Tierra del Fuego as Beryl Blue; a reference to Werner's Nomenclature of Colours a visual taxonomy of colours, which he had on board the Beagle. This colour was divided into animal, vegetable and mineral with a colour that corresponded to each of these categories: the same colour as the beauty spot on wing of Teal drake Celandine magaritaria as well of course as the mineral Beryl. (Photographer Arnaud Mags’ Nomenmclature)The roots of the elder tree erupt through the concreted playground two collared doves live there. Where the boys played football there are the careful Andre brick sculptures of the builders yard. Different piles for different colours:  from the lowest temperature it takes to cook a brick to the highest: familiar cinnabar red, purple, peat brown and black.A split door previously belonging to queen’s cousin David Ogilvie's, from his house in the Peter Pan holiday haven, with its islands and mere-house in the clouds water tower. Thorpeness rests upon a filigree ironwork bed frame, a defunct fridge houses the smaller tools: spanners, trowels, mortar boards. A rich man: a folly money could help philanthropic and hospitals-a folly. (Barbara Jones)Inside the schoolhouse there is a hoarding of finds in islands-inlets. Out of this encyclopaedic collection of lost objects of jumbled chronological strata’s: a mythical map of the people and their stories. Out of the pile comes life-creative source material to- impose a narrative onto nonsensical and disjointed memories and emotions.“The storytellers have not realised that the Sleeping Beauty would have awoken covered in a thick layer of dust; nor have they envisaged the sinister spiders’ webs that would have been torn apart at the first movement of her re tresses. Meanwhile dismal sheets of dust constantly invade earthly habitations and uniformly defile them: as if it were a matter of making ready attics and old rooms for the imminent occupation of the obsessions, phantoms, spectres that the decayed odour of old dust nourishes and intoxicates.” Bataille... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 On April 8, 1947, workman Artie Matthews found the body of Langley Collyer just 10 feet from where Homer died. His partially decomposed body was being eaten by rats. A suitcase and three huge bundles of newspapers covered his body. Langley had been crawling through their newspaper tunnel to bring food to his paralyzed brother when one of his own booby traps fell down and crushed him. Homer, blind and paralyzed, starved to death several days later. The stench detected on the street had been emanating from Langley, the younger brother... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144  “ it was an apartment turned pigsty…filled with piles of pictures, reams of paper, stacks of books, packages, wrapped models for sculptures, all lying helter-skelter on the floor, everything covered with a thick coating of dust…Except for a few friends, Picasso allowed no one in. The dust could fall and settle wherever it like, without fear of some cleaning woman’s feather duster.”   In conversation with Picasso, by Brassai, on the subject of Picasso's studio... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Damien Hirst’s recent self portrait as model of Picasso’s portrait in his studio wearing nothing but pants: charisma, reports of sexual energy and mystical power; a minatour in his lair George Jamesone is the first recorded artist to be painted in his studio in the 1640s. Powerful and cultured, surrounded by his work and a well chosen group of objects that demonstrate his culture, wealth and status to rival even the famous Antwerp studio of Rubens.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 A man doing The Knowledge on his moped. The heavy push of the gate and his physical memory of the space (Bachelard) Knew this space far better than I. The people that live in Lane End have dreams about other places they have lived as I do about the rooms they are sleeping in. The carpet, The look of the gloss paint on the alcove where the post used to wait to be opened. Bills lying there for months. Estate Agents enquiries, Pizza delivery adverts for years.  The Staffordshire Shepherd and girl looking on over to a pastoral Scottish landscape engraved and in glass on the other side of the hall. Now they look toward s a turbulent sea scene a reminder of on my stepfathers heritage: his father was a lifeboat man.  Realise the miserable Christmases that happened. My father taking one of our present to the children in the home he ran. My Mason and Pearson hairbrush I had waited for a year to get instantly taken and used by another less fortunate little girl causing me to go hot in the face with frustration.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The flat dissapointment of a going to a New Years day party. The flatness of a new year and the first day of it and the air of hangover-expecting to feel a sense of recognition with someone-a longing for a lost love or homeland. A neutral, clean and comfortable home.When I was almost thirteen years old my mother moved to Vatican City Rome to mend Papal robes. My father dissapeared. My sisters were at university. My mother left me a copy of her signature so that I could fake school letters. I moved into Canon Sherlocks house. The Canon had died two weeks previously. The shape of his body still (imprinted) on the ticking sheet upstairs. A well like the dipmade for water in flour for pastry in the mattress. His rubbish was still in the bin, mostly paper and pelargonium heads maybe he had given up eating. Radio 4 was turned down but on. And so I adopted his habits. From a very strict upbringing to no rules at all I started to live like the ninety one year old Canon who had just died. The ship was waiting for a new captain and I was it.Tinned peaches in syrup next to Birds powdered custard. I made the obvious connection and tried them and liked them. Post war treats for a child born in 1975. I turned the radio up and enjoyed Humphrey Littleton on Sorry I haven’t a clue and several other radio programmes. The Times that came through the door for a while I read over several days. As I did with: Lolita, Pnin, Tess of the D’urbevilles. The cat seemed to accept me as the new master. Drawers and drawers of things-even a table that I thought had false pockets opened and yeilded a set of silver asleep on cobalt velvet beds. Wine stains on the wallThe rope on by the stairs shiny with greaseBirds custard powderPeaches in syrupRadio 4 (turned down not off)Threadbare cat used to pee by the fireplace guessed it’s name began with E  ‘Worm E”  in a seven year old engagement diary was known by me as ‘E puss and Mr E’ ever after. I found out that Epuss was calle Edgeware several years after he died. He had brought a copper pipe slow worm in from the compost heap he briefly returned to kitten before the excitement killed him.Portraits of past Sherlocks-dark etchings with Spaniel ear wigsChrist in the corner looking down as an out of body experienceTwo bedroomsWalls covered in fabric-only other place Liberty of London (and Indian restaurant)Cold in the final room and could hear next doors jacuzziAiring cupboard-walk in where I did a lot of my English A level essaysPainted on the landing looking out through the diamond windows under the spiders webs, slugs, snails, caterpillars and moths that lived in the overhanging thatchApple tree rotten in the garden and a tame fox and pheasantAntlers on the outside of the shed-brought inside.The kitchen- not the same.Lined with paper sticky and rings of Lyles golden syrup Midwinter and Meissen crockery... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Last night I came back to my studio. It was like an Aesop tale in horizontal: Embryonic fleas clinging to my pusscats back, pusscat clinging to my back, me clinging to Humphrey my bears back, he clinging to several Amazon box carcasses, they interlocking with the Guardian, they wrapping piles of my paintings, all of us wrapped in duvet.   An ex-boyfriend wrote in a song: " Bel's bed is full of magazines, bras and broken pencils"... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The tale of Casper the commuting cat, who would politely queue with bus passengers before contentedly riding around Plymouth, made headlines and raised smiles around the world. Sadly the cat's love affair with the open road has proved his downfall after he was killed by a hit-and-run driver, it emerged today. A notice appeared at the cat's usual bus stop saying: "Many local people knew Casper, who loved everyone. He also enjoyed the bus journeys. Sadly a motorist hit him … and did not stop. "Casper died from his injuries. He will be greatly missed … he was a much-loved pet who had so much character. Thank you to all those who befriended him." Casper's life on the buses came to international attention last year. It turned out that for four years he had been riding the no 3 bus, passing the Devon city's historic dockyard and naval base, en route. He tended to curl up on a seat or sometimes purr around fellow passengers' legs, all the way to the final stop, stay on and make the return journey. Drivers got used to letting him off at the correct stop. His owner, Sue Finden, said she had never understood what he was doing until a bus driver let her into the secret of Casper's travelling. "I couldn't believe it at first, but it explains a lot. He loves people and we have a bus stop right outside our house so that must be how he got started – just following everyone on," she said at the time.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The photographs, dating from the 1940s, feature a glamorous Audrey Hepburn-lookalike travelling the world on cruise liners and attending weddings and parties. Airmail love letters from a mysterious 'Xavier' are addressed to a Miss Anna Paton - presumed to be the woman in the photographs - who would now be in her 80s.   The fascinating love story was found, together with birth certificates and important documents, in a purple plastic bag on the back of a coach which terminated in Bristol in August 2008. The bus company spent the last year trying to trace the owner without success and are now appealing for anyone with information to contact them. The mysterious purple bag contained more than 70 black and white photos and airmail letters, with many bound together in delicate pink ribbon. It was left on long-distance coach that terminated in Bristol in 2008 and either came from London or from Devon and Cornwall and was operated by First. The letters all begin ''to my love'' and are signed off ''god bless you my darling, my lover, X.'' The poems are clearly romantic in nature and one refers to the couple as ''mistress'' and ''lover''. One two-page poem is titled: ''The lovers' complaynt on his evident incapacity to fulfil his mistress her task''. In the poem the author speaks of his longing for Anna by asking: ''Simply to gratify my Anna's curious pleasure is / It really honest to loot poor grave's golden treasuries? ''(T'will be the only pinching I am likely to be allowed / Unless I goose her secretly in the middle of a crowd.)'' From addresses on the envelopes, it appears Miss Paton lived at addresses in Chelsea and Knightsbridge in London, St Ives in Cornwall and various overseas locations. She also lived in Barcelona in Spain, Sydney in Australia, Antibes in France and Lisbon in Portugal during the 60s and 70s. Anna Paton also spent time on board the Blue Star SS Auckland Star, calling at ports in Senegal in West Africa and Cape Town in South Africa. Bus company First have written to every UK address on the envelopes to find the elusive Miss Anna Paton - but have so far received no response. Karen Baxter, spokeswoman for First in the South West, said: ''These letters clearly have special significance to someone. ''Within the bag are also several love notes that would have been sent with bouquets of flowers, and there are also several handwritten poems. ''It would be wonderful to reunite this lost property with its owner. The photos are also amazing; really capturing the spirit of the 1940s, 50s and 60s. ''Looking at the photographs and the dates on the letters, it's clear that the owner would probably be in their 70s or 80s now, and I imagine these letters and photos would mean a great deal to them, or their children. ''I genuinely hope we are able to trace their owner and return them to their rightful home.'' The letters were kept in First's lost property for a month and were retained by the company after that due to their perceived importance to the owners. Karen Baxter added: ''There's definitely some kind of link to high society, given the extensive travelling this woman carried out during that era. ''It is obviously a love story with swathes of hand-written poetry and romantic letters.'' The lost bag also contained an Australian birth certificate in the name of Muriel Mayklim Jackson (the daughter of Isobel Paton Jackson nee Fitzsimmons and William Sydney Jackson). There were also two deed poll name change documents, both dating from 1956. Isabel Paton Jackson changed her name to Isabel Paton, and Muriel Mayklim Jackson became Muriel Mayklim Paton. There is also a newspaper cutting from 1953 showing the wedding notice of Miss Muriel Jackson to Mr Peter Heath, from the society pages of the Sunday Herald Newspaper in Australia. Anyone with information should contact Karen Baxter, First's PR manager, by emailing karen.baxter@firstgroup.com.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 A real romantic puzzle eh? Carlotti in Spain lay off the Sangria because you sound rather detached from reality. Pray tell, where is the filth that you see in this story? - Doreen, London, 09/12/2009 09:23 Click to rate     Rating   3 How wonderful to have know such love and affection. Letter writing was so important then and people used their imagination to write beautiful words. Nowadays it's all emails and texts- so impersonal. I hope the letters and photo's are reunited with the owner and/or family. Wonder if they should try the Australian press? - jojo, Swansea, 09/12/2009 08:47 Click to rate     Rating   12 Carlotti, Spain - you sound like a very bitter person. Where is the so-called "filth" in this? What is the matter with you? - Liz, Brussels, Belgium, 09/12/2009 07:59 Click to rate     Rating   22 The young lovers are standing in front of the Spanish steps in Rome......................................which is not in Portugal. You guys need to get out more often! - Mark, Beverley, East Yorkshire, 09/12/2009 07:52 Click to rate     Rating 92 With this kind of explicit filth articulated a generation or two ago, is it really any surprise that we now have a feral society the members of which stop at nothing for self gratification. Such stuff was a time bomb which has now gone off. - Carlotti, Spain, 09/12/2009 07:37 Click to rate     Rating   93 Why has it taken them a year to try and get help? - Adam, Dorset  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 A shame to publish such private and personal letter contents without permission of the writer/recipient. - Adam, Hong Kong, 9/12/2009 1:08 Click to rate     Rating   79 Maybe it was the SAS dude with all the medals? - Thud McGuffin, Newtownards, Northern Ireland, 9/12/2009 0:38 Click to rate     Rating   34 The photos are from the 1960s, not the 40s. - Athena, Greece, 8/12/2009 18:51 Click to rate     Rating   52 I empathise with the situation ... In 1954 she was 15, I was 18, and we fell in love. Unfortunately her father disapproved of me. I didn't join the Foreign Legion but the RAF fitted the bill all the same. In Oct 1956 I got posted to Cyprus and she continued writing. But then in June 1956 all letters stopped. I Returned to the UK in April '59 but by then she and her family had both disappeared from the radar - never found any trace. By a series of coincidences - plus some help from the internet - we were reunited in November 2002. She's now 71, I'm 74 and living happily ever after. Any good love srtory either starts happily and then ends sadly - or vice versa ... So all in all this story got to me and I hope there's an ending appropriate to the circumstances which brought it about in the first place ... miromike london england - Miromike, London England, 8/12/2009 18:23 Click to rate     Rating   179 Those were far better days, people had so much more style and finesse. - Barry, Shevington, 8/12/2009 17:13 Click to rate     Rating   129 Geez, you guys really need to clean out your buses more often, at least after every major war. - Mike Bonner, Ottawa, Canada, 8/12/2009 16:41 Click to rate     Rating   71 How sad that the contents of these , clearly personal letters have been used in the newspaper like this ! whilst I appreciate it would be nice to return them to their rightful owner, the private nature of the letters should have been kept that!! PRIVATE ! - justjospain, spain, 8/12/2009 16:34 Click to rate     Rating   97 "In the poem the author speaks of his longing for Anna by asking: 'Simply to gratify my Anna's curious pleasure is / It really honest to loot poor grave's golden treasuries?" Nice try. That'd be PALGRAVE'S Golden Treasuries, after Francis Turner Palgrave, anthologist of English lyrical poetry. He put the first Golden Treasury together in the 1860s. They still print them, as I recall. Handwriting's tricky, you know. Just ask Gordon Brown. - P. Algrave, Oxford, 8/12/2009 15:00 Click to rate     Rating   69 What lovely souvenirs from a lost age! I do hope they are reunited with their owner or her heirs. If nothing else, the story would make the basis for a marvelous screenplay. - A J, Ex-pat, Missouri, USA, 8/12/2009 14:31 Click to rate     Rating   94 Interesting story - it sounds to me like maybe the woman in the photos died and someone was moving some of her belongings on the bus and this bag fell out of the box. You probably wouldn't miss things like letters and a birth certificate if they weren't yours. - Anon, Earth, 8/12/2009 13:52 Click to rate     Rating   103  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The studio is cold and bright today. I feel fuzzy in the head. The skip has gone and I still seem to be surrounded by a deep litter of clothes and embroidery thread, Haiti auction letters, brown tape, hot chocolate mugs, books that half interest me, and the mouses bed. coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwidgespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater Sooty bird has a girlfriend and I realise that his last two mates were boyfriends. Snowybird sits still on the top rung of the ladder and fades into the whitewashed wall. Sootybird has been plumping up the cushions in his nest.   The Pig (cat) has gone quiet, fat and depressed. The lavatory has blocked again. Every time I come back, the water is rising and the tank is dripping. An old student told me he was on the toilet when the bomb dropped and smashed the school windows out. I blame him for the blockage.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 John the life model sits still for 3/4 of an hour examining the pipes with his engineering eye. John got a his uncles medal form the war office last week. When John was 14 he travelled by coach to the Dutch boarder where he stayed with the head of the Dutch resistance. Eating cold ham, homegrown broad beans and new potatoes  in the garden. John's host remarked that his uncle had been buried in the garden. Before John left the hosts wife asked John's parents to sign the tablecloth. Later she embroidered the names into the cloth. This she did for everyone who had come to stay and visit the graves.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Anything to declare, ma'am? … Yes, this live, wriggling jewel-encrusted pet beetle brooch … Sorry ma'am, you don't have the right paperwork, you need a PPQ form 526 It was an unlikely fashion accessory but the arrival of a jewel-encrusted beetle at a US border post certainly bugged customs officers. A woman crossing from Mexico at Brownsville, Texas, declared the live insect decorated with blue and gold as she drove up to enter the state but she did not have the right paperwork. Pest control measures meant officers promptly confiscated the item worn as a brooch on the traveller's sweater and sent it for further inspection. The beetle was attached to the woman's clothing by a gold chain and safety pin. The story of how the six-legged fashion victim was intercepted came in a press release and video from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), part of the security machine responsible for protecting the country from terrorists and a body more used to trumpeting the seizure of cocaine, marijuana, hidden cash or fugitives from justice. "CBP officers seized the decorative clothing accessory and sent the live beetle to the Plant Inspection Station at Los Indios International Bridge for further identification. Because the traveller declared the insect no monetary civil penalty was issued," the official account declared. "Moving live plant pests in any form, including pets, imported into or exported from the United States must be declared to CBP on PPQ form 526 declaration for importation or exportation, must be properly labelled and packaged prior to release by CBP." Animal rights campaigners were less forgiving, reported the south Texan newspaper The Monitor.. Jaime Zalac, for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,said: "Beetles may not be as cute and cuddly as puppies and kittens, but they have the same capacity to feel pain and suffer. It's ironic. We spend hours each week helping kind people find humane ways to relocate lost insects such as ants, bees and roaches that wander into their homes. People feel so good about not hurting them, while this woman paid someone to mutilate them." Beetle species have proved popular subjects for jewellery for centuries and attaching it to live beetles is apparently not uncommon in Mexico. Jackie Kennedy is said to have been given one with emeralds. Not the usual pimped-up beetle that customs officers impound Link to this video... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 A few years ago I saw a beautiful picture in my friend Mark's gardening book. I thought then that it was the pencil trace of Tolstoy's profile after death.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 The other night I watched The Conversation. I got hold of the film by asking the lovely, shy man in Video Heaven if he knew what I meant when I described a film where blood floats out of the toilet. In the film I notice that Gene Hackman spells his name out and it is Harry Caul. I wonder out loud if it's Coppola being ironic as Harry is monosyllabic and those born with a caul on their heads are meant to be great orators. I look up the connection and Professor Fred Westman of Illinnois has already made the connection and lectured his students on it. The jelly mac Harry Caul wears are embryonic, the description he makes about slipping down into the bath and regaining consciousness greased all over in holy water-are indications of his ability to resist drowning. Cauls were solf for high prices to sailors who would be immune from drowning if they wore it on them at all times. It was a perk of a Medieval midwife, to smuggle a caul. One in a thousand are now born with a caul and most parents don't realise as the doctor/midwife ussually punctures and bins the evidence. Liberace, King Zog, Freud and Freud's 'Wolfman' were all born with cauls.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144   Shackleton's expedition sailed from Cape Royds hurriedly in 1909 as winter ice began forming in the sea, forcing them to leave some equipment and supplies, including the whisky, behind. However, no lives were lost. Shackleton's whisky recovered from South Pole ice The crates of whisky were found under a hut built and used by Shackleton They were buried beneath Shackleton's Antarctic hut, built in 1908 for a failed expedition to the South Pole. The ice-bound crates were first discovered three years ago. The master blender at whisky company Whyte and Mackay said the find was a "gift from the heavens" for whisky lovers. Richard Paterson, whose firm supplied the Mackinlay's whisky for Shackleton, said: "If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analysed, the original blend may be able to be replicated. "Given the original recipe no longer exists this may open a door into history." Al Fastier from the trust said: "To our amazement we found five crates, three labelled as containing whisky and two labelled as containing brandy. "The unexpected find of the brandy crates, one labelled Chas Mackinlay & Co and the other labelled The Hunter Valley Distillery Limited, Allandale, are a real bonus." The smell of whisky in the surrounding ice also indicated full bottles of spirits were inside, albeit that one or more might have broken.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Mag and Bet helped me to play Bingo. I sat on a table with them. Bet had a 'Take a Break' magazine and they had their own camping cutlery that they had brought with them. Mag filled my bonus bingo sheet in for me. I felt like I did when I was little, surrounded by sisters on a kitchen table. Mag and Bet had a gentle intimacy that suggested to me that they were sisters, adn indeed they were. Bet had been married for 52 years, Mag for 51. They said they were terrified at the thought of them dying. Bet told me her daughter in law caught German Measles when she was pregnant and that both she and the baby died. I thought of Susan Sontag and her comments about an illness being foreign, Spanish Flu, English Flu (in other countries). I wondered how German Measles came about German Measles came about a s a title. German Ocean a much more lovely name than North Sea. Alsation more poetic than German Shephard?... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 Brighton pavillion was built for the Prince Regent so that he could dip his gouty foot into the sea and get pissed on gin in the garden.  During the First World war the pavilion was again used for recuperation and served as a military hospital for Indian Corps troops The Sikh and Hindu soldiers who died were cremated on the Downs to the north of Brighton. The Muslim fatalities were buried in a specially constructed cemetery in Woking, Surrey: at this time, Woking contained the only purpose-built Mosque in England. Although the Indian Military Hospital closed in early 1916, it reopened as a military hospital for limbless British soldiers. It did not return to civic ownership until 1920.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 I've just bought a Reader's Digest Atlas on eBay. It was one of the things I used to look at in my father's study. I would look at the photographs of the rocks and minerals on black velvet backgrounds. Topaz on silk reminsiscent of a net gown worn by Princess Margaret on the beaches of Mustique, or an amethyst concertina babydoll in Liz Taylor's mirrored wardrobe. Back to the drab vegan dinners of the kitchen in my Liverpool house: The Overstrand, The Esplanade. I am not sure I have bought the right edition of the Atlas.It is being posted to me at the moment.  ':-) Never done it before, but I've just been into paypal and requested a payment of £13.50 which (apparently) they will request from you. Once you've paid it let me know (they may - I'm not sure) & I'll mark it as paid and post to you. I hope you get a lot of use from the book, it was my sons, he was killed in an accident 9½ years ago aged 24. :-('... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144 My new flat is around the corner from the derelict irnmongers Martin & Newby that for a time housed in it's lavatory the world's oldest light bulb which burnt for 109 years. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/555144