Stardust Memories

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

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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