The Real Mad Men

On the recommendation of Adrian Hon, I've been watching Mad Men for the first time. It's awesome: hard-drinking, heavy-smoking guys and girls in sharp suits and swishy skirts.

It reminded me that my mother actually worked as an artist at an ad agency in London in the early 1960s - she was the first female artist they'd ever taken on. In fact, I'm amazed to find that the agency where she worked still exists, albeit with a rather annoyingly pop-up-ey website.

So of course, I had to ask my mother about her experiences, in light of Mad Men. She confirms that there was a lot of drinking - many of the guys, John Golley included, had been soldiers during the war and had taken to drinking to drown their memories - and everyone smoked in the office. She had no comment on the sexual shennanigans, and says there was some antisemitism, but it wasn't widely acceptable. One man in her office even got fired for being antisemitic.

We chatted about Madison Avenue for a while - she said "of course it was much more cut-throat than the London ad agencies," and illustrated with a story.

Apparently a colleague of hers at Golley Slater had worked in New York for a Madison Avenue agency for a couple of years. He told her that he worked with a famously out-of control writer who, one day, was so enraged with an artist that he punched him in the face. The guy stumbled back, tripped, and fell out of the window. From the 19th floor.

"What did the people who were watching do?" asked my mother.
"Why, they called their friends to let them know there was a vacancy," answered her colleague.

Little Iran

A busy day today, so just a quick pop-in running between appointments. I pass by this Persian grocery store all the time but I've never gone in. Perhaps the strange pictures of animals on the outside put me off... somewhat reminiscent of the Double Meat Palace: "how the cow and the chicken come together even though they've never met. It's like Sleepless in Seattle if, if Meg and Tom were, like, minced."

But it's not at all meat-themed inside. In fact it reminds me of one of the things I love about London and all big cities - that you really can, to some extent at least, "visit the world" in just one city. Iranian food, Iranian music playing, people speaking Persian... No violently quashed electoral protests or rabid antisemitism, just a pleasantly Disney-ish Iranian cultural experience of fascinating foodstuffs:

Pergamot jam! Carrot jam!

Sour grapes!

These remind me of the triangular packs of Snowcrest orange juice I used to drink when I was a child. Or maybe they were imported from Israel... perhaps there's something about the middle east that favours pyramid-shaped juice boxes.

I have no idea what this is. It's a brown paste-like substance in a plastic sachet. Seems to be made of... cow? Maybe it's beef stock? Googling "ghareghoroot" doesn't help me because it just comes up as a forum user name. Any ideas?

And here's a lovely Hogarthian picture which the lady who runs the store explained to me means something like "if shopkeepers give a lot of credit, this is what happens! So, don't give too much credit and make sure if you're a customer that you pay back your credit - you don't want to ruin the shopkeepers!" Did people ever dress like this in Iran? Or is it an imagined Dickensian past? If the latter, at least I'm not the only one doing some cultural tourism.

 

C is for cupcake

Some days you have a great idea of a cool thing you want to go and do in London. And some days you wake up with a migraine that means that every time you stand up it feels like someone is jabbing you in the left eye with an icepick. And you have to think again.

Today was one of those days. Despite migraine, I'm not prepared to abandon the challenge on day 3, so I decided on an extremely low-key plan. Went to google maps. Typed in my address. And then did a 'search nearby' for... cupcakes.

Which took me to Chewies Bakery on Haverstock Hill in Belsize Park. A shortish drive from my house, and somewhere I could park directly outside. Very important on migraine days, when every movement drives aforementioned icepick deeper into my skull.

God bless the cupcake craze. I know everyone else is basically tired of it now, but I'm not! Look how pretty they are!

I took some photos, chose my cupcakes, and was already mentally composing a post that read something like "Chewies has beautiful-looking (non Star Wars-themed, unfortunately) cupcakes, but the guy serving was a bit surly", when he said:

"I take it this is research?"

I blinked a bit.

"Taking pictures, asking for a receipt. You're not the first. Market research, right?"

I had no idea the cupcake business was so competitive! Also, I get slight aphasia when I have migraines. Not full on slurred words, but I talk more slowly and sometimes I choose the wrong word. (I once spent a migraineous lunch calling someone 'Alistair' who I knew perfectly well was called Alexander. I knew there was something wrong with the word I was saying, but couldn't work out what it was.) So it took me a while to work out a response. Eventually I said:

"No, no! I... I have a blog! And I take receipts because otherwise I'll forget I've spent the money and wonder where it all went!"

Which he did seem to believe. Missed opportunity though - if I'd been feeling less crappy I'd have asked him about the cutthroat world of cupcakery. I'll have to pop back - it looked like a lovely place to sit and read the paper. Also, the coconut cupcakes are entirely awesome.

***

Something I've already noticed, even though it's only day 3 of this project: I like the way that going somewhere new interrupts my habitual thoughts. I think probably everyone has thoughts that one returns to again and again - and usually not happy ones. An old grievance, a continual worry. I can sometimes mentally 'look up' and realise that I've been obsessing over the same old problem for maybe an hour and to no good effect. I end up feeling snippy or agitated or irritable just because I've been thinking about things that annoy me. (Which is all very well if you can *do* something about it, but if it's that thing your great aunt Vi said to you when you were 13, it's probably best just to let it go.) I think going to the same places every day can keep your brain on the same old track; or at least that going somewhere new somehow helps you jump the rails and start, instead, to wonder about how many new cupcake places are opening in London every day....

Hello, Art

Off to Vyner Street in East London today with my friend Miki to look at Art. I didn't know until today that this street is full of pretty much nothing but art galleries. Not the Cork Street "how much for a late Lowry" kind of gallery but the new, funky kind of gallery where they exhibit things which make you think "is this art or did someone just spill a bucket of paperclips on top of a soiled mattress by mistake?"

Actually, that's very unfair of me.  I never would have gone to these exhibitions without Miki's suggesting it, and many of the things we saw were very fascinating.

We started at Nettie Horn Gallery, where some wonderful bubbled images by Abigail Reynolds suggested that a papery timewarp had broken out in the middle of tourist landmarks. This doesn't look as good as it did in real life - much of the beauty was in the 3D effect.

There were also crazy, beautiful pseudo-maps by Emma McNally, which could have been star charts, or geological maps, or surveys of 'the bombsite after World War 3."

The most striking thing we saw at Nettie Horn was a little house made of stuck-together, sawn books, by Rosie Leventon. This, I have to say, is a case where I think the artist really hadn't appreciated the meaning of her own work. We stayed in the room with the book-house for a few minutes, during which time everyone who came in had an instant, audible reaction. There were gasps, people going "wow" or "huh".

This is what Rosie said about this piece in the handout:

"Made mainly with romantic and other novels, Leventon's tower block refers to suburban social housing - symbolising a space where large numbers of people gather without however being able to see, from an outside observation, any traces of life other than small spots of light."

Which I don't think, all due respect Rosie if you ever read this, is what it was about at all. It was about books: how we respond to them, how we feel about them, what the symbolic power of them is. Books are beautiful, all lined up next to each other. When I first saw the house my instinctive reaction was: "oh, that would be lovely, to live in a house all made of books". But then, when I saw that the books had been sawn up and glued together, couldn't be read, I began to feel weirdly horrified.

 

I realised that I relate to books as friends [even more so because some of the books in the house *were* written by people I know, like Toby Litt and Tash Aw] - I get a warm feeling when I see books that I remember, have read, have loved. To see them unreadable, 'dead' was weirdly like seeing mutilated photographs of my friends.

Books are important - to me, to society - it's very disturbing to see them treated as just a pile of wood pulp, even though I know that's what they are.

So, I went to see some art and had a response to it! Miki, who's doing an art degree, says that this means both the visit and the art was a success.

We ended up at the Dialogue Gallery, which was exhibiting an installation by Gerard Mannix Flynn dealing with the decommissioning process in Northern Ireland - essentially a room carpeted with shell-casings, with wooden rifles on the walls.

The room itself was strangely haunting - walking on crunching shell-casings I couldn't help reflecting on how many bullets are created each year, how many people are shot with them. But in this exhibit, the best part of all was the artist's statement, which I'll quote from here:

"As human beings we are constantly trying to deal and come to terms with internalised trauma. Being unable or unwilling to resolve certain issues, we cling even tighter to them and, though we yearn for peace and rest and progress, we can't seem to let go of that which threatens to destroy us.

"What is it like to walk away from conflict, to put your weapons beyond use? To dwell upon all the years committed to the never ending cycle of fright, fight, flight....

"Letting go is always a process of loss, a process of grieving. The dawning realisation that you cannot retake what you've reconciled to let go of. And the final slow acceptance that it is no longer of service to you anyway."

I loved that. A carpet of shell-casings as physical representations of all the things we've done to ourselves and to others. Weapons which we have to put down. Beautiful. Art: would do again.

Undead in Hendon

"I want you to come with me, and to come in secret, to the churchyard at Kingstead."

Arthur's face fell as he said in an amazed sort of way,

"Where poor Lucy is buried?"

The Professor bowed.

Arthur went on, "And when there?"

"To enter the tomb!"

Arthur stood up.  "Professor, are you in earnest, or is it some monstrous joke?  Pardon me, I see that you are in earnest."  He sat down again, but I could see that he sat firmly and proudly, as one who is on his dignity.  There was silence until he asked again, "And when in the tomb?"

"To open the coffin."

Dracula - Bram Stoker

Since I wrote a novel about Hendon, I've been increasingly intrigued by the history of this rather anonymous London suburb. So, imagine my delight when I discovered that Hendon Cemetery is supposed to have inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula. In particular, 'Kingstead' cemetery, where Lucy Westenra is buried is supposed to be based on Hendon Cemetery. I thought a visit to the Cemetery would be a good way to inaugurate my challenge, so I popped in today on the way to some friends for lunch.

Cemeteries have an aura, there's no denying it. You can walk in as light-hearted as you like, but when you've walked past a child's grave, or one of a 19-year-old man killed in the Second World War it's impossible not to start reflecting on life's One Big Fact. It's funny; our generation (perhaps every generation?) approaches life as if it's a game, with loads of rules for how to win. Accumulate stuff! Visit places! Fall in love! Have babies! Become famous! We forget, I think, that the games all end the same way. A walk around a cemetery is a salutary reminder. 'Remember you will die' applies to me too.

I walked around the cemetery, trying to spot the 'Rundell tomb', where in 1828 someone apparently broke in and severed the head of one of the bodies, thus inspiring Stoker. I was fascinated by the many different nationalities who have ended up in Hendon: a Russian man who died in 1928 at 36 years old (what was he doing here?), the founders of the Chinese Church in London, many Italian and Polish people, and some Vietnamese people. Hendon has been multicultural for at least 40 years, judging by the graves.

I was also interested by the 'picture' gravestones - which have photographs of the dead person embedded into them. I'm more used to Jewish cemeteries, in which because of the Jewish idea that "we're all equal in death", there's a lot more uniformity. I wonder how people choose those pictures: is there a temptation to choose one of the person in the prime of their life, rather than nearer the end? Does the person choose their own picture beforehand? And why do I find these pictures a bit weird even though I find the carved faces of noblemen on medieval tombs picturesque? Perhaps it's about the difference between painting/sculpture - which can try to reflect a person's 'spirit' and photography, which usually only captures a moment, a weird look, a fixed smile. Or perhaps it's just snobbery on my part: photography is sculpture for the masses.

After a fruitless 45-minute wander, I decided to give up my search for the Rundell tomb. Now, with a bit more pointed googling I discover I was looking in the wrong cemetery. The right cemetery is St Mary's Hendon, not a five-minute walk from my flat. An expedition for another day. Good to know that Lucy's restless spirit has been laid to rest for many years now, though.