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Neither Here nor There
I helped Margrét move her stuff down to Brighton, first to a rather
dismal guesthouse with a nasty landlady at James Street, and then to
her more permanent lodgings up Freshfield Road. The old lady there
was a Mrs Rodgers, a motherly old thing who was very nice to both of
us. With me still at Corsham and Margrét in Brighton it meant a lot
of commuting at weekends, usually by train but sometimes by coach
when the money was running out. Margrét and I discovered that we had
very similar interests on the art side of things and soon started
working together. Once, on a Sunday evening when I had just got back
from Brighton, I was waiting for the bus at the station at
Chippenham. To my surprise, Rosemary Ellis arrived there in her Land-Rover to meet some people at the station. She saw me
and offered me a lift back to Corsham with the others. But it was a
very silent drive back and I could tell that I was not in Rosemary’s
good books. On more than one occasion I got ticked off for being
away at weekends. Nobody ever even thought to ask whether I had been
actually working down at Brighton. On a few occasions Margrét came
to Corsham and was once accosted by Rosemary who accused her of
wasting my time! This was so extraordinarily rude and inappropriate
that I took Rosemary to one side and told her my mind with no holds
barred. I was really very angry which doesn’t happen often. I
thought that the incident would probably herald the end of my days
at Corsham, but somehow I was suffered to finish the course. This
Brighton thing had the advantage that I had the benefit of the
facilities at both Corsham and Brighton.
James Tower turned a blind eye to my presence there at weekends
because he saw that we were doing something worthwhile and Margrét and I were soon
producing work and taking part in exhibitions together. The first of
these was the big Play Orbit show that Jasia Reichardt (ex-Corsham
staff) co-ordinated at the ICA in London. We produced a huge
praxinoscope which we used for mixing images and colours. There’s
a picture of it on our website at the top of
the section ‘Our work’. Peter Juerges and I were the official entrants on behalf of
BAA. There’s another chap mentioned in the catalogue of Play Orbit,
Roger Deakins, but I’m afraid he has completely disappeared from my
memory. I can neither put a face to him nor remember what part he
played in the project. Sorry Roger if you’re reading this!
However Margrét was no longer BAA and never got credit for her
considerable share in the work of producing the strips. We
have been working together ever since and you can see a lot of our
stuff on our website. |
