ARTISTS TALKING

# 9 [8 October 2009]

According to Tigg who was told this by the travel writer Pete McCarthy (it must be true) the post box nearest to my flat is one of the oldest in the country.  Next to what was once a rather eccentric greetings card shop it has now morphed into a pretty reasonable late night, fast food takeaway; with contrasting bins.
Looking around the city, talking about, drawing and measuring up post boxes I have come to realise that there are quite major differences to their designs. What I think of as A Pillar Box is the National Standard pillar box (1859) but there are many variations.  It was Anthony Trollope, the novelist, a Post Office surveyor at the time who first introduced them, to the Channel Islands in 1853. These were red, but subsequent post boxes were painted dark green.
In an attempt to unify the design a factory in Birmingham was asked to be the manufacturer. Unfortunately the instructions they were given were wrongly measured, so the first four boxes were eight feet (2.4 metres) tall. It also had a vertical slot for the letters.

www.postalheritage.org.uk/history

# 8 [6 October 2009]

Marital infidelities in French ‘end of the (last) century’ novels  are maintained via Le Petit Blue, a pneumatic postal network that ran around central Paris from mid nineteenth century until the 1980’s. Though I’ve got the occasional glimpse of them in department stores and banks I had thought it was only a French thing but apparently the 'Despatch’ system was developed for banking information in London, where there were on-street pneumatic post boxes and even pneumatic links into people’s homes.  You placed your letter into a large lead capsule then they were then blown to the next station.  There was even a human scale version tested between Holborn and Euston.  In New York someone built a secret pneumatic mail system that went under Broadway. NASA’s Houston control center used them during the first moon landings. Prague still has a 55km network of piping in place but it is inoperative due to flood damage a couple of years ago.

www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/pneumess/pneu...

# 7 [1 October 2009]

Quite a Sebaldian day. On a mission across town to see a friend, went into the grim building in which he works, up the lift, knocked on the door of his office. “Come in” only to be confronted by a room full of hand made shoes, some very elaborate. Baffling. A seriously pale woman emerged from behind some sheleves, asked me if I was OK, I explained that I was looking for Mick, had he left? She said that I had got the wrong floor, he was directly above.  As I went back along the corridor, she called me back, “Are you Jonathan Swain, did you ever live at 55 Vere Rd?”, “No” “That’s odd, I lived there for about five years, we were getting mail delivered with your name all the time, no-one ever collected it. It’s probably still there.” she wrote the address down on the back of a card. Curiously when I mentioned this incident to Mick later, he looked at the photograph and said that he had actually met ‘Max’ Sebald whilst paddling in the sea at Clacton.

# 6 [26 September 2009]

All the knitting groups that I have dropped in on in the last few weeks have been wonderful.  Spangly and warm.  Supportive energy, full of wit and humourous goading.  But in, clack clack, clack clack, an anecdote, clack clack, thrust, clack, parry, clack, the punchline, fall around laughing, clack clack, clackety clack.  A real treat.
It’s not just up-close social either, through the internet knitters have become an international energy field. Mainly coming via the USA where there are a lot of websites offering free patterns, chat rooms, beginners advice and youtube videos of different techniques and stitches etc. The same energy exists online as it does in the backroom of pubs. Fantastic. For starters check out www.ravelry.com or Purl, my local woolshop, www.purl-brighton.co.uk

# 5 [26 September 2009]

I know it’s a sewing thing, but today I bought a tape measure for my pencil case.  My tool of choice for the next few knitting weeks.

Whilst I was in the Fabric shop, I couldn’t help drifting off into the sensual joys of the place. It’s the kind of place you don’t mind queuing because there is always something to look at and people always ask the staff mind boggling questions. The gentleman ahead of me in the queue looked out of place, well cut suit, groomed silver beard and solicitor spectacles. Portly chap, who asked for a metre of wide elastic for his pajama bottoms but then asked if they would take him on as an assistant in the shop as he’d always loved the place, he  was willing to work there for nothing! If he hadn’t said it, I would have.

# 4 [22 September 2009]

FICTION/MEMOIR/TRAVEL is the convenient catch all classification that the publishers have placed on the back cover of all the novels by the German writer W.G. Sebald. In several of his books Sebald includes snippets of found photographs, obscure diagrams, snaps that he has taken himself (in black and white) and old postcards that he has picked up on his various excursions. These pictures don’t help with the clarity of the writing at all, but they add another layer to the story he is telling, an authentication.
Have the photographs been created to justify the fiction? Is what Sebald is describing really what you are looking at in the badly creased image or is he making it up?

# 3 [17 September 2009]

The pressure to get any postal dispute settled quickly. The standard rabid headlines of credit card misery and delayed pensioners, the horror financial reports of massive losses and bloated pension funds. The media reaction has made me realise how much of a core to all forms of communication the postal system is.  It can be presented  as a twee old fashioned concept but when the chips are down control of the Royal Mail nee Post Office is still a critical part of contemporary life.

# 2 [17 September 2009]

Provoked by another threat of postal privatisation as floated by Government earlier this year.   I wanted to show  support, humorous and heartfelt, for the whole system of postage and letter writing in an era of fast, and flimsy, technology. Not sentimental, but something that said “It’s a complex system that works OK. It doesn’t need to be mucked around with or sacrificed to accountancy fashion.”
As a daily, on-street symbol of this struggle, pillar boxes look increasingly fragile and vulnerable. I want to put my arms around them. Hug them dearly, they are my contact with friends and family. I wanted to make sure that they survive through the cold winds of winter, metaphoric and real. Post boxes, and by extension the postal workers need a small sign to show that their daily labours are acknowledged and appreciated. To show that they are loved.  A warm statement that causes no damage.  A cosy demonstration of thanks.

# 1 [14 September 2009]

This group photograph will be a complex, guerilla collaboration between myself, the knitting circle, autonomous postal workers and a lighting crew.  The over lit congregation celebrating a fluffy post box will be chanced upon by nightime revellers. Hopefully it will be a slice of irrational magic and humble warmth, the kind of thing darkness induces. Closer to fiction than fact.  A very short, millisecond memorial;  an acknowledgement of  the long history and future importance of the postal service and those that work in it.  Treasuring a threatened form of communication. 
After all the attention the post box cosy will be left in place,  a portent for a further, unexplained rash of copycat knitted cosy actions.