Subversive Role Model

The Lost Friend

2009-03-23T08:36:00.000-07:00

In an age in which you can find all of your old friends by way of social networking sites, it’s ironic that I have lost one. How careless.

I’m in touch with people I thought I would never hear from again. I’m even in touch with people I never wanted to hear from again. Sadly, I’m not in touch with someone I thought was a true friend, someone I felt I’d know all of my life. It’s a shame and all a bit of a mystery.

I met Simon at university. He lived in the bottom flat of my halls and the first time I spoke to him was at the union on the first night. He was wearing an Oldham Athletic top; he had spiky, bleached hair with a brown, fuzzy goatee beard. He seemed to be laughing all the time. We got on straight away, we shared a mutual passion for art and football and we had a similar background, albeit he was from Oldham and I Nottingham. He was the easiest person to get on with on that first night and our friendship grew from there.

By Christmas most of his flatmates abandoned him, either through dropping out or moving in with their newly found girlfriends. Si was left with Chris – A homophobic Cradle of Filth fan who put more effort into making home brew, and playing Mario-kart, than attending any lectures. With his awful taste in music, personal hygiene and a 24 hour cannabis habit Chris wasn’t great company - Si’s frustration eventually led to a scrap with him in the kitchen.

Our friendship softened this potentially ruinous situation, by giving Si an outlet he was able to laugh at Chris rather than want to kill him. We also built up a network of new friends away from the halls.

It’s hard to describe Simon’s character. He wasn’t funny in the sense that he could hold court and deliver gags and amusing stories - he was funny because of the situations he found himself in. How he responded to people, his love and interest in odd characters. This story is my favourite concerning Si...

We were out at the Roadmender in Northampton, a dark, grotty nightclub where you could see half-decent bands. On this particular night they had an offer on spirits, a pint of vodka for a quid or something equally ridiculous. Si took advantage of this and quickly got wankered. He’d disappeared by 10pm. In the morning I went down to see if he was ok. After knocking for a few minutes, he unlocked the door and then quickly retreated back to the darkness of his room. It took him a while to register who I was. I then noticed the trousers he’d been wearing the night before, they were ripped to shreds. I asked him about them and he seemed equally bemused. It then clicked. Quickly, he led me to the flat’s bathroom. It was a scene of chaos. Washing powder had been spilled all over the floor , it been had mixed with water, creating a paste. I could see footprints in the gloop and they reminded me of those seen on the surface of the moon. Simon started to recall what happened. He got back to the flat early in the morning; he went to the toilet where he must have fallen unconscious. When he woke up he assumed he’d been locked in the toilets of the nightclub. In a panic he tried to get out via the window – knocking the powder, which had been on the windowsill, on to the floor. As he climbed out he impaled himself on the latch, snagging his jeans. He was unable to move. The window only opened at 45 degrees and so there he stayed, his face pressed up against the window until the sun came up. By this point he’d sobered up enough to figure out how to get out. He sacrificed his jeans, ripping them off like the Hulk and escaped. He danced in celebration in the morning light and went to bed.

Since we left university I've seen Si about six or seven times. I've heard nothing from him in the past four.

In 2004, I invited him to my stag-do in Edinburgh and my wedding. He seemed excited and paid the fees for the accomodation and entertainment. The week leading up to it I hadn't heard from him. I tried e-mailing and calling to find out what time he'd arrive etc. Nothing. On the day, everyone arrived except Si. Still no answer on the phone. I spoke to his housemate who said he'd pass the message on but no to no avail. We were worried about him above all. Consequently he failed to turn up for the wedding too. John, my best man, finally got in touch with him. Simon apologised and told John he was going through a rough patch, his parents were getting divorced and it was all a bit of a shock to him. I offered support, he thanked me but said he had his own way of dealing with it.

In 2005, we managed, to my surprise, to do an art show together in Nottingham. It was a good night. However, I can remember thinking that this could be the last time I saw him. I thought to myself what would happen if I stopped calling and e-mailing him? Would he get in touch? The answer was no. I took it all quite personally wondering what I'd done. Consequently I've discovered he's done it to all of his friends. He's cut himself off from everyone. Even his website which displayed his artwork has long gone. There's no trace of him online whatsoever. A mutual friend told me something had happened to his mum. She wouldn't tell me because Si had told her in confidence. Also, recently one of school friends said he too hadn't spoke to him for two years.

No one knows why Si has become a recluse.

Greene's Nottingham

2009-03-13T03:03:00.000-07:00

A Gun For Sale by Graham Greene will be a little known Nottingham-based thriller to many people.

For a start it's set in the fictional city of Nottwich, but as Greene admits it is actually Nottingham - an industrial city, a few hours north of London.

Graham Greene knew Nottingham, he lived in the city for three months in 1925-1926 and worked at the Nottingham Journal.

The city didn't create a massive impression on him, he complained in a letter: "This town makes one want a mental and physical bath every quarter of an hour."

However, it was memorable enough to base his book here.

Nottwich as Nottingham

A Gun For Sale was published in 1936 and it's overall theme was how wars can be started by the few and for profit.

In the first few pages we're introduced to an assassin called Raven who murders a minister and his secretary.

This act gives momentum to a possible European conflict, just as the first world war began with an assassination.

Raven is hired by a dying industrialist named Sir Marcus who manufactures, among other war-related items, gas masks.

Raven is conned out of his payment and pursues those who have wronged him from London to Nottwich by train.

Nottingham oozes off the pages and Greene even name checks the road he lived on - All Saints Terrace (Located near to The Arboretum and Hyson Green).

In the book he describes the road as "two rows of small neo-Gothic houses lined up as carefully as a company on parade."

Strange city

Greene said Nottingham was "the first strange city in which I had made a home, alone, without friends."

This feeling of alienation comes through in the pages of A Gun For Sale. Nottingham is murky and grim, a bit other worldly in a sense.

So why do I like it? Well, it's a great story but it's set in a Nottingham I never knew... a Nottingham before the war, before mass-consumerism, chain pubs and franchises.

Maybe it was a bit austere and over industrialised but I'd still like to have a walk around the streets during that time.

Greene's novel takes me as close to that as possible.

The Streets Are Ours...

2009-01-02T06:15:00.000-08:00

The city shouldn’t just be the place where you do your shopping, eating and drinking... The city streets should be our gallery, a place of inspiration. We go on city breaks to do this very thing and bizarrely we look more when we’re in Rome or Berlin than we do on our own doorstep. Architecture gives a city its character, its uniqueness.

At present, there’s loads of buildings sprouting up around Nottingham and sadly the majority of them lack invention and imagination. Aesthetically they're awful. For example, take the building which will house Waitrose soon, it’s the blandest building you’ll ever see – akin to something out of East Germany during the Cold War. What goes through the minds of developers and architects? Do they even live in Nottingham? If they do, do they look away when walking past their buildings?

This leads me to an architect with a real imagination – some might say too much – Watson Fothergill. Born Fothergill Watson in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire in 1841, he was the son of a lace merchant. He changed his name to Watson Fothergill in 1892 to continue his maternal family name.

You will know his buildings. They’re the huge red-bricks with the dark wooden eaves; a mish-mash of Gothic and Old English styles with gargoyles, stone carvings, turrets, Bavarian balconies and bay windows which jut proudly into the air. They’re the product of an artist, a man overflowing with creativity.

Sadly, some morons made the decision in the 1960s to knock down his masterpiece, The Black Boy Hotel, and replace it with the concrete soul-grinder that we now know as the Primark building. It was like torching the Mona Lisa and replacing it with a doodle on a fag packet, a disgrace.

It wasn’t the only Fothergill to be demolished over the years but thankfully many still exist in the city centre and in surrounding areas. My favourite is Fothergill’s office on George Street. It’s smaller than his other creations and as a consequence it’s more subtle. Currently it’s vacant so if you’re in the market for a new office…

Fothergill Watson rarely ventured out of Nottingham and the beauty of this is, in our world of homogenised high streets and outer of town retail parks, we have magical buildings unique to our city – worthy of a visit from tourists.

Culture vs Credit

2008-10-13T01:39:00.001-07:00

Due to the current economic climate, we’re told everyday that house prices are declining; we’ll have to pay more tax; our pensions, investments and savings are becoming worthless. However, help comes from the arts. Art, film, books and music can save you from the bite of the credit crunch and make you realise that money isn’t everything.

Read Jean-Dominique Bauby’s memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Bauby had everything. He was the editor of Elle in Paris, he had money, a beautiful girlfriend and a sports car. One day after picking up his son he suffered a massive stroke which left him with locked-in syndrome. It meant his brain was unscathed but he lost the use of his whole body - apart from his left eye. Bauby wrote his book by blinking. An assistant would go through the alphabet and he’d blink at the letter he required. The most heartbreaking bit was how desperately Bauby wanted to ruffle the hair of his son. A simple action which can easily be taken for granted. The book, and later the film, says no matter how bad you think your life is things could be worse. Maybe you can’t afford to buy those new shoes, but at least you have your health.

The Lives of Others is a German film set during the Cold War. A Stasi officer is assigned to spy on a playwright thought to be a traitor. It’s a wonderful film and there are not enough words to describe how amazing it is. However, the underlying theme is that art can light up the darkest of places. The Stasi knew this and used it as punishment. An aged writer becomes a broken man after the Stasi prevent him from showing any of his plays in Berlin. A life without art, books, film and music wouldn’t be worth living and what does it cost? Very little.

This year British band Elbow finally got some credit for four fantastic albums when Seldom Seen Kid won the Mercury prize. Without realising you would have heard their anthem ‘On a Day Like This’ - the BBC used it on their Olympic coverage and you hear it on various TV programmes. It contains the line ‘So throw those curtains wide! One day like this a year’d see me right! – It’s such an uplifting piece of music and can brighten up the darkest of days. Music, good music that is, can keep our spirits high.

The headlines are depressing and maybe things will get a bit tight for many of us but as long as we have enough to eat, pay the bills and indulge in a spot of culture, life won’t be that bad will it?

Power of Cartoons

2008-09-22T04:38:00.000-07:00

In Britain we don’t take cartooning as seriously as we ought to. Yet great cartoonists can express a complicated idea in one picture, whereas a journalist could write 1000 words and still not get the message across. Which one are you more likely to look at and enjoy?

Pete Dredge is Nottingham’s best known cartoonist. He got into cartooning in the 1960s after reading The Adventures of Dan Dare in the Eagle comic. Later, as he waited for his father to have his hair cut at The Black Boy Hotel, he started reading Punch.

Pete was around 12-years-old when he nurtured ideas about becoming a cartoonist. In 1976, after studying graphic design, he took the plunge and dived into the world of freelance cartooning. He hasn’t stopped working since.

I asked him why cartooning isn’t taken seriously enough in this country.

“It's fair to say that the majority of the public associate cartoon with kids animation or an inferior, crude drawing style.

“I think the problem is that the well crafted cartoon looks deceptively simple to produce. In fact it takes years to master the skills necessary to produce a drawing that says a lot in such a small space.”

In 2006, a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. It initiated violent protests across the world during which the Danish Embassy in Beirut was torched. The Arab world later began boycotting Danish goods, and Denmark’s exports fell by 35% to Muslim countries. All of this because of cartoons.

So, could cartooning be the most powerful art from? Pete argues that it is.

“The job of a cartoon is to communicate an idea to the onlooker in a clear, concise and powerful way. This may range from a joke situation or social comment through to a stark, political statement that has more impact than a page of editorial text.

“A cartoon should be unequivocal, [there’s] no 'what does it say to you?' subjectivity that fine art enjoys. So, in that respect, the cartoon is the most powerful art form.”

As you would expect Pete is passionate about his profession and recently joined the Professional Cartoonists' Association. Their aim is to raise the profile of British cartooning. Pete did his best to do this very thing in his home city.

He was one of the organisers of The Big Grin Cartoon Festival which took place on Broad Street in Nottingham from 2002-04. Despite its popularity, a fourth festival never emerged.

“We were all unpaid volunteers and we tried desperately to get funding for a full-time organiser to take it to the next level after three successful years, but we were thwarted in this endeavour.

“There were too many other events competing for attention in the summer months in Nottingham and, on reflection, my own thoughts are that a festival of this nature would prosper in a smaller location.”

It’s a shame, and had it continued it could have gone a long way to explain why we should love but also take cartooning much more seriously.

Life of Laura

2008-08-29T02:16:00.000-07:00

Dame Laura Knight was born in 1877 and grew up in Nottingham.

Her early life was steeped in poverty. Her father walked out on the family and later her mother died. She had to bring the rest of the family up by herself.

Despite these early blows she lived an incredible life, dying at the age of 93 in 1970.

The bulk of her work was concerned with ballet and the stage, and much of these drawings and paintings are being exhibited at Nottingham Castle (18 July - 28 September).

Timothy Willcox is the curator of 'Laura Knight at the Theatre'. He explains what he's included and how Dame Laura tried to express dance in her pictures.

"I wanted to show everything from little sketch book pages to large exhibited pictures...

"The thing about the ballet and the theatre is that dance is an art of pure motion and painting is an art of pure stillness. It's the tension of how you achieve the impossible and put dance into the picture."

Alongside these works there will be an opportunity to view work not seen since Dame Laura's death.

Having exhibited all over the world and becoming the first female artist recognised with a damehood in 1929, Laura was very much involved in the war effort.

During the war she was asked by the Ministry of Information to paint pictures of women in the forces for propaganda purposes.

In 1946, Laura made her own request to become the official war artist at the Nuremburg trials.

Most artists would have sat inconspicuously with a sketch book.

However, Laura wanted to paint from life and so squeezed a huge canvas into a glass fronted press box. Timothy says:

"People were saying 'what's this woman artist doing having this ringside seat?' Once she was booted out of there she slightly lost heart and finished it off at home."

The finished painting 'The Trial' can be seen at the Imperial War Museum.

I went to see the exhibition yesterday and it's marvellous.

You can see not only large finished paintings but lots of sketches. It's always fascinating to see work as it appears in a sketch book and then how they evolve into paintings.

Dame Laura was one of those dedicated people whose work was their life pursuit. She wasn't concerned with making lots of money and becoming a celebrity, unlike many of today's artists, she had her subject in theatre and dance, and pursued it to the last.

You could fill your life with the X-Factor, Heat Magazine and alcohol. Alternatively you could do something which is much more fulfilling and make art.

Bad Santa

2008-08-07T07:24:00.000-07:00

“How desperate would a person have to be to have sex with a legless pensioner who’d last had a bath in the 1980s?”

In May 2005, I travelled to London to meet my friend Andy. I met him on a Thursday night, when he usually played football. I played for Andy’s team and we lost 3-1 – my only notable contribution was a lay-off to Andy who belted the ball so hard I’m amazed the keeper didn’t hurt himself saving it. After the match we got drunk in a lovely little bar and talked about Ewoks.

On Friday we awoke with hangovers and watched Trisha. The plan after breakfast was to visit Tate Modern and work our way along the Thames before heading to the National Portrait Gallery. The day would be topped off with a trip to see The Revenge of the Sith at the Barbican – I realise Star Wars is hardly high art but at least we saw it at the largest performing arts centre in Europe.

We grabbed some lunch near Westminster and sat in the park where all of those protests about the War in Iraq used to be. While we sat on a bench eating our sandwiches we spotted a film crew trying to shoot a couple kissing and dancing. It looked like a Bollywood film. I say trying because a bearded old man in a wheelchair was deliberately trying to get in shot. He was being a right nuisance. Every time they wheeled him off, he returned and parked in front of the actors. An exasperated producer tried a final time before he was told to “fuck off”. They gave up and left. The old man wheeled himself towards us.

You could have described him as looking a bit like Santa Claus. Santa that is, who has hit hard times. His beard and hair were unkempt, grey and dirty. He had teeth missing and his fingers were yellow. He looked as though he had been punched below his left eye. He smelt of both alcohol and cabbages. He had a bit a Scottish twang and he was clearly off his face. As if to further highlight this picture of sadness and desperation, he had no legs. He started chatting to us and we responded respectfully. He never told us his name, let’s just call him Santa. We asked him about getting in the way of the film crew.

“I like being a bassstad… an’ they foockin’ deserved it.”

I asked why and he didn’t give us a coherent reason without smiling and gurning. He then asked one of us to do him a favour. I thought he was going to ask us to wank him off or something. He wanted more vodka. I said I’d go to the shop for him. As far as I was concerned we weren’t going to change his alcoholic ways, so why not do a good deed? I was helping an elderly, disabled man after all. Plus, I found it all very amusing. He gave me £20 and ordered Andy stayed putt. Effectively, Andy was a hostage. I popped to Tescos and bought him some Smirnoff; I also bought a disposable camera to take a picture of him. Whilst I was gone, Santa told Andy he’d been in prison for a lengthy term. He had also grabbed and clutched Andy’s hand forcefully.

I handed Santa his vodka, he told me to keep the change. I refused. He then said in a sinister voice, “I’ve got more money.” Well good for you. “It’s at home.” There were two implications here:

1. He would lure us back to his house, or bedsit, and beat us to death – not sure how he would manage with no legs, wrecked on vodka, that but still he was a frightening character.

2. Saying he had money implied he wanted to pay for something, this is what I suspected all along; he wanted us to shag him. How desperate would a person have to be to have sex with a legless pensioner who’d last had a bath in the 1980s?

I could have been completely wrong. He might have just wanted the company. I asked him if I could take a picture. He agreed and sat back in his wheelchair posing like a Pope or a King. I was about to press the button on the camera when he swung out at me and shouted “FUCK OFF!” Andy and I decided to move on. The novelty of the situation was getting rather scary.

“Right, we’d better be off.” I said standing up.

“Where y’ goin’? He said.

“We’re off to the National Portrait Gallery.” I replied.

His aggressive manner lightened and he whispered like a little boy.

“Can I come?”

Andy and I looked at each other.

“No.” I replied regretfully. “I’m sorry.”

We walked away. I kept looking back and he was still sitting there watching us slowly disappear into the throng of the city. He looked like a puppy which had been left at home, looking out of the window. I felt sorry for him but where would it end? If we kept being polite and good willed we’d have been wheeling this sad, broken man all over the place, taking him to the pictures; carrying him up the stairs to Andy’s flat; watching Jools Holland on the TV and finally tucking him up in bed. “’Goodnight Santa!” “Fuck off!”

Learning the Force

2008-08-04T06:01:00.000-07:00

Nene College is now known as the University of Northampton. Whilst I was there in 1997, it was an institution in flux and as a consequence somewhat schizophrenic. What was it? - A college, a university, or both? They settled on the latter; calling it the ‘University College of Northampton’ in 1999.

Due to the college’s ambitious plans of becoming a university in the future, they needed to attract as many students as possible. They weren’t picky when choosing. It not only attracted students who needed a second chance after screwing up their A-levels – but also people you would never think of meeting in higher education.

A case in point was my flatmate Mark. Mark was the first person I met on arrival day at the college; he wasn’t supposed to be there until Sunday. He was likeable but not very bright. He was small, skinny with a shaven head; he had taken far too many drugs – which had included heroin. He likened himself, all too seriously, to Luke Skywalker. I will never forget his speech about how one day he will learn The Force and become Obi Wan Kenobi – all this in a thick Leicester, or should I say ‘Less-tarr’, accent. His voice also had a touch of the Scooby Doo about it.

During our first conversation he offered me a spliff. I'd never smoked before, I was always going to try it but not on the first day. I knew about the side effects, including possible bouts of paranoia, and the last thing I wanted to be was all weird and teary on my first day.

Mark had moved in with the help of two of his friends, neither of which I liked. They didn't come out with us that night and in the morning there was a trail of minor destruction, they'd made a mess in the kitchen and set fire to bits of paper which had been stuck to our doors. Cigarettes had been stubbed out on the corridor's carpet.

Mark was doing art but his work was shocking; not in the Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin sense - It was just crap. He worked with marker pen on giant sheets of paper drawing people boxing and smoking spliffs. At one point he persuaded me to do a boxing pose for him whilst he took pictures. When he got the snaps back he claimed I looked like I had tits.

I would roll my eyes at Mark’s deep reflections on the course of his life but there would be others bowled over by his wisdom. We had a relationship like Blackadder and Baldrick, except I wouldn’t make any witty putdowns for fear of becoming unpopular and looking spiteful or pompous. I kept quiet and watched the sage in action, which was funny at least.

Mark was very popular, everyone seemed to know him. Part of his attractiveness was due to being a part-time dealer. He turned our kitchen into a cannabis factory, the packing stage at least. He would microwave tile-shaped slabs of cannabis resin; cut them down into Oxo-sized cubes; weigh them on his personal brass scales and then place them into bags with £10 or £20 labels attached. We would get people knocking at the flat door all the time. To further highlight Mark's drug obsession, and stupidity, during a trip to Amsterdam he posted back some weed to his home address. Needless to say the police came knocking.

In all fairness, people liked him for who he was: Harmless, friendly and at times quite charming. I was a bit jealous of him. The one quality I did crave the most was his self-confidence; I had little and he had it in abundance.

He started seeing a girl called Becks who was pretty and smart. He was seriously punching above his weight. She had clearly fallen for his lines like everyone else had. I think she liked Mark for the novelty. He was never marriage material but he was amusing. I fantasized about her getting fed up of Mark and knocking on my door for a cuddle and then some...

Mark was failing his course because of his poor attendance. He couldn't get out of bed for 9am lectures. This had a lot to do with smoking weed into the morning, playing some shit techno, full blast. (Paul who lived next door had to start taking sleeping tablets). Mark's friends were rallying around trying to save him, preventing the inevitable expulsion. The day before a meeting with his tutors he decided to take part in our vodka challenge in the kitchen. The aim of the game was to pick lots out of a hat which would either say one, two or three. These were how many shots you were supposed to take. It was a bit like Russian Roulette and Mark became the tragic Christopher Walken figure, repeatedly picking out the threes. He got slaughtered and pissed all over the table. Becks, the sweetheart, cleaned it up with the mop.

Mark got his last chance, I have no idea how. However, his relationship with Becks was on the rocks. He told me she'd asked him if they could talk instead of just having sex. He had replied: "Sweetie-Pie... you've got your friends to talk to..." He looked for my approval; I looked out of the window. Becks eventually decided she'd rather be his friend. It didn't seem to bother him. He started seeing Paula from Burnley, who barely spoke or acknowledged me. She was a bit rough to be honest. I heard them shagging in our little toilet and the mental image burned into my mind. However, he had what he wanted which was sex on tap.

Mark's artwork wasn't showing any signs of improvement. He suggested to his tutors that his shaved head was a piece of conceptual art and he was paying homage to Ripley in Alien 3. He claimed they bought it but they were humouring him, biding their time. He failed his year.

Mark hung around for a bit before the summer break. He'd got into a fight with a moronic rugby player and ended up with a broken jaw. He was a forlorn figure sitting in my room and rolling a joint; his jaw was in some sort of metal contraption and he was trying to repeat the Luke Skywalker analogy. I actually felt sorry for the daft sod.

A year later a group of us were walking into town talking about Mark. In the distance, in the glow of the street lights I could see a boney, child-like figure, “Look there he is…” I said. Speak of the devil and all that. “Hi Mark we were just talking about you.” He was flattered and started laughing. I was actually pleased to see him. Then he said: “So Neil, are you still roasting that bird?” He was referring to Niki who I had started seeing before he left – she's now my wife. There was no answer to that and I just shook my head and smiled.

A Little More Conversation...

2008-08-01T01:26:00.000-07:00

Conversations with my mum and grandparents were never about anything important like the middle-east or global warming; it was ordinary, everyday stuff. These conversations might have seemed banal to some but to me they were amusing and at times full of accidental innuendo. I loved being a spectator, mentally recording their conversations. Below is an example of how one such chat used to go.

My grandad, or dada (Prounounced dad-dar – and nothing to do with the cultural movement of 1916) is sitting in the armchair near the window, the light reflecting on his glasses. He’s in his favourite brown polo shirt, extra large to stretch over his big belly. He used to be obsessed with sport; a hard tackling centre-back who played for Notts County Boys in the 1950s. When he went down the pit he packed the footy in because of the risk of injury, if he couldn’t work, he and my grandma wouldn’t eat, simple as that. When he was made redundant in the 1980s, his high fat diet, consisting of bacon, chips, cheese, sausage and steak, kept at bay by the hard, torturous graft, triumphed over his once muscular torso, hence the bloated tummy.

My grandma, or mama (mam-mar), and my mum are sitting on the settee. Mama looks on edge. She always does, always worrying about something. Whenever I phone her she always answers nervously, like she’s about to receive bad news. When I say “Eh up, it’s Neil” her tone changes and relief comes into her voice - which always makes me feel like I’ve made her day. She’s been to a lot of funerals in her life, as you would when you’re the third youngest of thirteen children. There are only five of them left. So I guess she’s had a lot of those calls reporting the death of a sibling or their partners.

Mum is wearing a Cliff Richard T-shirt she got from one of his gigs - I can’t imagine Cliff doing a gig, Oasis do gigs, let’s call it a concert. She still has a bit of adrenalin kicking around after perming and colouring old ladies hair all day. She has a cup of coffee in her hands. Mum asks dada what he wants for his birthday; before he can answer she excitedly turns to mama.

“Hey mam, you’ll never guess who I’ve seen on Bulwell Market.”

Nelson Mandela? The Pope? Sigourney Weaver?

Mama plays the game and lists a menagerie of really bad superheroes.

“The Meat-man?”

“No.”

“Potato-man?”

Mum shakes her head.

“Cob-man?”

I could imagine Cob-man as the villain.

“No… Sooty.”

The bear?

Mama looks absent. She bites a finger nail.

“He’s got a ‘tache, goes in the Highbury…”

Still nothing.

“He got done for selling dodgy chicken…used to live on Northolme Avenue, near where you used to live.”

Before there’s even an inch of recollection, Dada pipes up.

“I’d like a nice cock…” He says, all too warmly.

I spit my tea out.

After fifty years of marriage I felt it wasn’t the time or place to come crashing of the closet like Indiana Jones.

“You what?” Says Mum.

“My birthday… I want a cockatiel.”

Mum and I look at each other and laugh. It’s lost on my grandparents. Maybe they didn’t call a penis a cock in their day. Infact, that generation used to call each other a cock with affection - "How you going on cock?" or "Alright me old cock?" I distinctly remember Vera Duckworth using the word liberally.

Mum has since died and these conversational gems of ordinariness died with her. I’m not sure mama and dada converse properly with each other anymore. I regret not buying a video camera sooner and filming them all in full flow but I guess that would have spoiled the naturalism of it all. But still, it’s comforting reliving these moments through the old memory box.

Keith Houchen!

2008-07-28T04:31:00.000-07:00

On the way back to school from the chip shop, Lilley decided to test our limited knowledge of sex. We were 12 years-old. Sex was what James Bond did and something they talked about, but never did, on EastEnders. It was a subject as far from my understanding as trigonometry.

Lilley was obsessed with sex. He claimed he'd had sex with a much older woman (I say much because an older woman to us could have been a 16 year-old). There were plenty of holes in his story which we gleefully exposed during a maths lesson. However, Lilley's burgeoning sex drive was developing quickly; I once had to wait for him while he had a wank in his bathroom during lunch. Eventually I left him to it and went back to school. "I'm going now..." I said. "Okay" came the groan. He was always holding his cock or getting it out to show people. On one occasion during a PE lesson he presented his penis to us all, Paul Dear spotted it and shouted "Sir! Lilley's got his tail out!" "Put it away Stuart" came the tired response from Mr Dean.

Lilley chucked his question into the ring. If Perry didn't answer Lilley would pick on me like a sadistic French teacher, his hope would be that I wouldn't know or I’d guess horribly, he could then humiliate me. Knowledge is power and all that.

"Who knows what premature ejaculation is?" Said Lilley. We both went quiet. Did either of us know? I knew what premature meant and 'eject' sounded like 'ejact' so I had some sort of answer prepared.

"It's when you cum... said Perry, "Early."

Lilley laughed, "Very good."

"Now... Neil"

Oh fuck. What was he going to ask me? What a sixty-niner was? I'd heard of the term but didn't have a clue about its terminology. I'd be known as the sixty-niner kid or something unimaginative like that. Here it came. He was sure he was going to catch me out…

"Who scored the second equaliser in the 1987 Cup final?"

Never had I, or will I ever again, shout 'Keith Houchen!' with such delight.

Last Words

2008-07-21T04:05:00.001-07:00

The last words my Grandad said to me were: “I know what I’ve got to tell you…” Before he could tell me, the cancer pulled him back from this momentary gasp of lucidness and his words became wheezes and air.

I didn’t want to incur his legendary wrath by telling him I couldn’t hear or understand him, so I nodded along trying to look surprised and interested. He could have told me anything. It could have been the secrets of our family history, which he’d fervently declined to tell me.

It’s more likely to have been something to do with a painter, Rembrandt or Renoir, or something he’d remembered about my football team, Nottingham Forest. It could have been his counter-argument (which he’d already told me) to a particularly damning article I’d read about Churchill. It must have kept him awake all night. He had already told me I was wrong earlier in the year, but maybe he’d read or thought of something else, which could prove the historians, and me, wide of the mark. I’ll never know what he was trying to tell me. He fell asleep and that was the last communication I had with him. He died two days later.

The last meaningful words he ever said to me came after some banter with a nurse. He was trying to get out of bed and go home - he’d already tried to escape through the window a couple of days before. He rattled the sides of the bed with one of his bony legs attempting his break for freedom. He was never a man to tell what to do and since my uncle or my sister, weren’t there to calm him down, I felt helpless. A nurse with a weary face pounded in, roughly propping him back up on his bed like an oversized doll. A few weeks before he would have had her for breakfast, but today, emaciated and weak, she had the upper hand.

“Who’s this then Michael?” She said pointing to me. “Grandson” the weakened voice replied. “I think you’re better looking than him!” she replied, winking at me. Many old men would have loved this spot of contrived flirtation, but my Grandad ignored the comment. “We’re very alike” said the slightly rattled voice. “We share the same thoughts about things and if he has the life I’ve had… he’ll be happy.” With that he slumped back into the bed and fell asleep. It delighted me. At last, an outward expression of respect. He did love me.

Making A Meal Of It

2008-07-21T03:15:00.000-07:00

In 2003, I told my grandparents I wasn't going to eat meat anymore.

My Grandad remained silent. He looked out of the window, tapping his fingers on the side of his chair. He couldn't comprehend such a thought. No meat? What's wrong with him?

My Grandma was more sympathetic but also concerned. What is he going to eat? Without meat what on earth is left? Briefly, she thought to herself and then she asked some questions.

"Can you eat potatoes Neil?"

"Yes."

"Can you eat bread?"

"Yes."

A pause.

"Can you eat chicken?"

Go Paint Yourself

2008-07-21T03:04:00.000-07:00

On the face of it self-portraiture may appear to some like an exercise in ego-mania.

I can see their point if the artist painted themselves in the nude with bulging biceps and a massive appendage. That would clearly be a classic case of 'look at me aren't I macho and virile'.

At university I did actually see a life-size nude self-portrait by a fellow student, a lot of detail, and hard work, had been put into the drawing of his penis.

What did that say about him? I dread to think.

Narcissism may be the motive for some artists but for many, past and present, and including me, it's a perfect way to experiment and express some deeper angst.

Rembrandt was the master of the self-portrait. Throughout his life he painted and drew perhaps around a hundred of them. Principally he did them to practice and perfect his painting skills but they also served another purpose - a visual autobiography.

Rembrandt's early self-portraits show a man at the height of his success; in some he looks a little cocky. His later works present a man who looks poor, lonely, unloved and perhaps slipping into dementia. They're heartbreaking.

I've painted quite a few self-portraits. None of them are particularly flattering but that's not my aim. With yourself you have a ready and willing model; a chance to try some new techniques – obviously, there’s always the possibility you could end up looking like John Prescott's scrotum.

So, how do you paint a self-portrait? Every portrait artist will have a different method and I have to admit, I don’t think you can teach art, just encourage it. Anyway, a few tips…

Decide what you want to say about yourself. Are you trying to explore your identity or express something that's happened to you? Can an object in your painting be a key to understanding what you’re trying to say, or what you fear? For example, a skull can often represent mortality.

Your expression can be the key to something you’re trying to communicate to the viewer. The self-portrait you can see on this page is about anguish and frustration but the story is ambiguous. I like to keep the viewer guessing.

You don't have to be particularly talented to create a self-portrait, or indeed any kind of painting. Francis Bacon didn’t have an art background, or education, but he did it anyway and created some of the most influential paintings of the 20th century.

The best advice I can give is to get cracking, use a mirror or photograph, pens, paper and paint and just give it a go, you might surprise yourself.